Upkeep for our trusty van!

Our poor tired van needed some upkeep this past week.  We put so many miles on it and often drive on rocky, rutted roads.  We had to replace the back two tires (already had replaced the other two) and got new brake pads or something to do with the brakes - yes, it's true, I don't listen too well when Wayne starts talking about our car, or any car...   And it was still leaking transmission fluid from a service several weeks ago, so that had to be fixed as well.  Of course it took two different appointments at two different locations, and more time than anticipated, but that's to be expected, right?  If only we could cut down on the amount of gas it uses.  It does get good gas mileage, but we drive it so much.  We are very grateful for its size, reliability, and dependability.

We also have done battle with bugs this week.  Earwigs, beetles, spiders, other crawly things.  Guess the bugs (or is it insects?) like the heat and humidity.  And obviously our apartment isn't airtight, 'cause they keep finding their way in.  Even found an earwig in our bed and one in my washcloth as I was taking a shower!

We taught several lessons this past week and visited quite a few of our shut-ins and less active ward members.  Wayne went home teaching several times and I went on a long visiting teaching route Friday. Today (Sunday) I picked up a handicapped investigator for church,  Wayne and I taught the temple preparation class, then Wayne taught the high priests' lesson.  We had the Parks over for dinner after church and worked on genealogy before taking them home.  Then Wayne met his HT partner and they visited a hard-to-see single lady (inactive because her ex-husband is in our ward...).  Then he drove to Moorefield to help his friend Johnny do his home teaching.  This next week will also include more home and visiting teaching visits as we try to encourage members here to go out, and have offered to assist them, if needed.

Wayne had a busy day Wednesday.  It was Transfer Day for our mission and two of our Petersburg

Elders Farr, Plumb, Bell, Rodrigues

missionaries were transferred.  Their companions wanted to go to the meeting also (3 hour drive to Columbia, near Baltimore) - one of them was called as our new District Leader and had a meeting after the transfer meeting - so our van had to transport Wayne, our four Elders, and all the luggage and bikes for two of them.  We could tell there wasn't enough room for me, so I had to stay behind with the whole day to myself and no car!  I didn't mind, and I think some of the other senior sisters that Wayne talked to at the meeting were a little envious.  I spent the day writing postcards to my grandchildren (and walking to the post office to mail them), reading, studying for temple prep and VT lessons, making handouts for visiting teaching, weeding my little flower beds, and doing apartment chores.  Wayne left at 6 am and got home about 4 pm.

Good-bye to Elder Plumb and Elder Bell

We sent off Elder Plumb (one of our very most favorite missionaries who has been here since February) and Elder Bell, both great young men. We welcomed to our District Elder Bronson, from Ogden, Utah, and Elder Hall, from Bancroft, Idaho.  We will come to love them too.  In the evening I did indexing with a couple other ladies, and Wayne went home teaching.

Loading up

Yesterday (Saturday) we made a couple visits in the Lahmansville and Mayfield areas.  One to our elderly

Beautiful West Virginia back roads

friend Irene, who gave me the African violet last fall.  She was happy to see us and had saved a newspaper clipping for us about whip-or-wills, we are hoping to hear them some night. She obviously had been anticipating and looking forward to our visit, she is lonely and we seem to be her only link to the church. Then we visited our new friend Mindy, the lady we ran into at the Food Pantry who hasn't had any contact with the church for many years.  She is raising three grandchildren and now wants the Elders to teach them, we are excited about that. We tried to find another lost member way out in the country.  Beautiful drive, and we did find what we think is her house, but no one home.  We saw a sign pointing to "Dolly Sods" a popular National Forest recreation area we have been

The road gets narrower

wanting to see, so we took off on a road that got progressively worse and worse, and went way further that we thought it would.  Nice view from the plateau on top, and several good hiking trails that we may explore later.  An adventure.

Narrow, curvy, muddy, and foggy!

Dolly Sods area

Hiking trail to a beautiful viewpoint on the edge of the plateau,
we will explore this some future day...

We did service at the nursing home, Wayne sang there Friday night, too.  We had our highs and lows,  good visits and ones that fell through.  We are frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm for home and visiting teaching and we excited about several individuals and couples that are preparing to go to the temple.  Missing home and family, but loving the work and the people here.  Thanks for your prayers and encouragement. Stay strong in your faith.  Keep the commandments and serve others.

I know you've heard this before, but I just love
these little white churches in the country.
This is the Davis Baptist Church outside of Maysville. 

 

Way out in the country, came upon a chicken house right by the road.

 

Blackwater Falls, Sunshine & Storms, Fireflies

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!  Our love goes out to our wonderful sons and sons-in-law, who are just the greatest dads there could be.  Wayne and I were each blessed with good, honest, hard-working fathers, who loved and served their families all their lives.  I was fortunate enough to marry a kind, patient, honorable man who turned in to a pretty amazing father himself.  To honor him, we had grilled steak and corn-on-the-cob for lunch today, with key lime pie for dessert - and then he got to take a nap!  What a nice day.

We have had a great week!  I'll begin back at Monday, our P-Day.  We headed out early in the morning

Mt. Storm Lake and Power Station 

to explore a place we had been wanting to visit - Blackwater Falls. It's about 45 miles northwest of Petersburg.  We drove past Mt. Storm Lake to get there, which is very interesting.  Mt. Storm Lake is a man-made 1200 acre lake in the Allegheny Mountains.  The water is used to circulate through and cool the large, coal-powered Mt. Storm Power Station, which produces electricity for Washington, DC. The water temperature in the lake seldom drops below 60 degrees and the lake is a popular recreation area for boaters, swimmers, and scuba divers! The power plant is huge and uses about 15,000 tons of coal per day, I believe. We also drove by one of the coal mines in the area,  the Mountain View Mine, owned by Mettiki Coal. There is a wind farm in this area too, with 132 wind turbines. I think they are beautiful.

Mt. Storm Lake

Coal Mining

Wind turbines

Then we got up to the Blackwater Falls area.  There is a nice wooden walkway down to the falls - it was fun going down, but coming back up was a little more difficult.  There were lots of walking paths in the surrounding area and other smaller falls that were pretty too.  We saw several deer, a large lodge and many cabins and camp sites, interesting birds, and lots of lush forests.  It was very beautiful and pretty quiet since it was a Monday.  We had lunch in the nearby tiny town of Davis, at a small deli.  Fun experience.

Blackwater Falls

View out the car window on our drive home

When we got home I did some chores, one was vacuuming out the van.  Then Wayne took our four Elders out to a service project of helping clean up an old house for a member's son who is coming home from the service.  They all worked hard, then were fed Kentucky Fried Chicken, then piled in the van to come home and got it very dirty...  

Tuesday we had Zone Training in Woodstock, Virginia, about 90 miles from here.  Part of the training

involved "real play" of contacting people on the street and striking up a conversation.  Several of us got to be the "real" people on the street.  Wayne and I were grumpy old folks, Wayne pretending to be a minister of another faith.  We do grumpy well evidently, guess we've been practicing for that one.  One of the missionaries really got into the moment, pretending to be a redneck fixing his car,  even had sound effects ... Hopefully it helped the missionaries develop their conversational skills.  Real play is usually not our favorite thing to do, but this made it fun.

Wednesday we picked up the Elders early again and drove to Wardensville, a small town about 45 miles east of Petersburg, to help our friend Will and his family load up a moving truck. They are moving to Baltimore.  Will is a large black man who recently played football for the Baltimore Ravens. When he stood by Wayne for a picture, Wayne said Will's arm on his shoulder felt like it weighed 50 pounds!  Will and his wife Jennifer have two very cute children, Roman and Clarissa.  We love them.  Will's mother, Sheila, also lives with them.  Sheila has been a member of our church for about 20 years.  Will and Jennifer joined about a year-and-a-half ago in Front Royal, just before they moved to Wardensville and into the Petersburg Ward.  Because of distance, lack of gas money, health problems of

little Clarissa, etc. they have only been to our ward a few times.  But we found them and visited them regularly, and helped them out when we could with transportation to appointments and once to the hospital with Clarissa.  We really like them and will miss them, but we hope the move is a good one for them.  Jennifer already has found a good job and they will be very close to a church building.

Will, Jennifer, Sheila, Roman, & Clarissa

Clarissa

Our work is done and two Elders try to get into
the same seat in the air conditioned Orton van...

When we got home from Wardensville we cleaned up and made a couple visits, then I went to the Family History Center and helped a couple with FamilySearch and Indexing.  Very fun two hours.  Wayne drove out in the country to visit a man who is not attending church because of hurt feelings many years ago.  Wayne visits him occasionally and just is a friend and listener.  (I encourage Wayne to go by himself when I am working on genealogy, because the one time I did go with him, he and Tim talked for two hours about hunting, fishing, motorcycles, and music....)

The rest of the week was normal.  Visits, lessons to prepare, errands to run, chores to do.  It would be hot and humid one minute, then pouring down rain the next.  We are grateful for good air-conditioning in our apartment and also for good umbrellas, which we don't always have with us at the right moment...  One highlight of the week for me was seeing fireflies (or lightening bugs) for the first time.  As we were driving home from a late appointment Thursday night the trees and bushes to the side of the road just sparkled - it was magical!  Last night we drove up to the park on the hill near us and just watched them in amazement. Don't know why we don't have them "out West".

I'll just say again - I don't know where the time is going!  How can it be the middle of June already?  We are keeping very busy and trying to do some good.  We are having fun, and I think we are growing younger instead of older....    Our love to you.    

Keeping Busy in BEAUTIFUL West Virginia

West Virginia countryside

Pretty uneventful week...

We have had a reasonably quiet week.  Both feeling good,  weather has been changeable - hot and humid one day, cool and rainy the next.  Wayne did get to go fishing Monday morning - didn't catch anything but on the way home he stopped and visited a less-active man he had been trying to catch at home, so I guess he did catch something after all!  We had a fun barbecue at a member family's home, great lunch then fun afterward:  corn hole (of course),  pellet guns to shoot at targets,  board games with the kids.  There were two families, two single members, and six missionaries, so a good group.  Very nice.

The rest of the week was spent doing our end-of-the-month visiting and our regular service hours at the nursing home and family history center (room).  We had a great visit with our new friend that we met at the food pantry and she wants the elders to start coming and teaching her grandchildren.  I took our neighbor up to the hospital so she could visit a friend and we watched her baby for an hour.  Our good friends, Dave and Elaine, showed up on our doorstep one morning with strawberries, lettuce, and onions from their garden (that Wayne helped roto-till).  That was a nice surprise.  My good friend Traci gave us chili, cornbread, and chocolate cake today - in appreciation for all the rides and visits.  Very sweet of her.  There are several in the ward that must think it's our job and we get paid to help them and run them around, so it's nice when someone expresses appreciation for our efforts...

Last night Wayne drove way out in the country to give a blessing, then picked up our High Priest Group Leader and drove an hour and a half to the Stake Center where our stake president was giving some priesthood leadership training.  He didn't expect it to last 3 hours!  Then a long drive home.  But again, I appreciated the "alone time" and was car-less, so couldn't go anywhere.  I did get the apartment cleaned, prepared for our temple prep class, caught up our mission journal, -- and watched a Hallmark movie!
Nice testimony meeting today.  The Parks came over to our apartment after church for dinner, then Audrey and I went back to the church and worked on genealogy.

We are looking forward to a trip to the DC temple this week with the mission president and other senior couples.  And I'm sure we'll find lots else to keep us busy and out of trouble.

Happy Anniversary this week to Julie and Matt.  What an awesome couple.  We miss you so much.
Our love to all our family and friends.

Busy, busy, busy...

We old folks have really tired ourselves out this week.  Been very busy, every day.  But it's been good busy therefore it's been a good week.  I won't bore you with all the details, and I do have some good pictures, so just the highlights.

Monday Wayne got up early and went fishing,  I walked downtown to the dentist.  Now this was really not fair -- Wayne likes to go fishing and I hate to go to the dentist!  I just went in for a cleaning, but the dentist is our bishop and he somehow coerced me into x-rays and a check-up as well.  I know it was a good thing, because I do have bad teeth.  Nice to know all is well.  In the afternoon we worked at the local food pantry. Our ward takes a turn for a week every seven weeks and the week we are assigned we work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.  It's a good service opportunity.  Monday we worked with three people from another church, Wed. with another couple from our ward, and Friday with our four Elders.  As an added bonus, on one day we met an inactive member of our ward who was happy to give us her current address and phone number  -- we had been searching for her since we got here and couldn't find her.  So we have already been to her house and met her husband and since she works at Subway we just happened to pick up sandwiches there Friday and had another good visit.  How did our paths just "happen" to cross?

Tuesday we got up early, picked the Elders up at 6:30 am, and drove to Berryville (1 1/2 hours) for Zone Conference.  It was great, but long, 8 am to 4 pm.  Good instruction from the Mission President, our Stake President, the Stake Family History Director, and the AP's.  We left right when it was over to drive home in time for our service commitment at the nursing home.

Wednesday we had Zone Meeting in the morning, worked at the Food Pantry, and taught two lessons in the afternoon - one with Traci, one with the Parks.  Then I went to the church to do indexing and give genealogy help while Wayne made a visit with a couple of the Elders.

Thursday was an awesome day.  We picked up our friends Johnny and Janet K. about noon and they helped us with visiting teaching and home teaching all afternoon.  We drove clear to Wardensville to visit Deb F., back to Mathias to see the Lists (furthest out home in the ward), on the way back to Baker we stopped in at Kelly K's (our Elders Quorum President) to check on him as he has been having back problems (it's his week to clean the church and we told him not to worry about it, that the missionaries would take care of it). Then we visited Woneda at the nursing home, and drove up in the hills to see Carol L. (so hard to pin her down to an appointment time,  we were very happy to make connections there).  Carol is not in the best of health and was concerned about getting a mountain of mulch spread around in her flower beds so we asked if we could bring the Elders out on Saturday to help her.  She was very appreciative of the offer and agreed. Whew!  We delivered Janet and Johnny back home, they had a fun day with us.  We drove back to Petersburg, had a quick dinner, then made one more visit, delivering a large print Bible & Book of Mormon to a less-active member who is having vision problems and had requested them.  Another long day.  But very productive.

Friday morning we cleaned the church with the Elders, worked at the Food Pantry, made a couple of visits, then prepared for the First Annual Petersburg Ward Campout!  We picked up a couple of Subway sandwiches, picked up a couple of passengers, then drove out past the community of Arthur to some beautiful property our bishop owns, for a lovely evening.  We enjoyed visiting, playing Corn Hole, tossing a football, eating, roasting marshmallows, hiking, listening to live music, and having a spiritual thought and ward prayer around the campfire.  We didn't stay the night, but we did go back up Saturday morning for breakfast before taking the Elders to their service project.  We had a good time helping Carol with her yard work. The Elders enjoyed getting dirty and working hard.  Her home and yard are beautiful, we love it there.  She prepared a nice lunch for us too and was so appreciative of the help and the company.  (and she came to church today!!)  We were tired afterward, came home and rested, then picked up a few groceries and prepared for Sunday dinner with friends (who ended up not coming).  Wonderful church today, we taught the temple prep class and Wayne taught the High Priests.  In the afternoon we took the Elders out to the nursing home in Baker to visit Woneda, then to check up on some people that didn't come to church.  Now we are relaxing and looking forward to our day off tomorrow - but we are going to some friends' home for a barbecue with several ward families (I think there was talk of paint balling there too, the Elders are pretty excited about that...)  Wayne is hoping for a little fishing time,  I am hoping to get a little housework done and then just doing nothing for a little while...

Pictures to follow.  It's been a fun, busy week.  We like keeping busy and have felt useful and productive. We've put a lot of miles on our poor van.  Our little garden is growing.  And so is our love for the wonderful people here and for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  What an awesome experience we are having.   Much love to our children, their spouses, and our grandchildren - we miss you so much.

Jacob teaching me how to play Corn Hole

Campfire, hot dogs, and marshmallows!

Ward Campout

Wayne's good friend Johnny   (he loves to fish!)

Hike to a nearby pond

Music in the woods

The Elders join in

My two good friends, Katrina and Kassie,
our Bishop's daughters, both have Angelman Syndrome
They are so loved in the ward

Dancing for their breakfast

Bishop cooking breakfast

On our way to Carol's house, a tiny graveyard in a field

Little country church

Saturday morning service project

Relaxing and watching the Elders work

Ups and Downs

Lots of rain this past week,  the rivers and creeks around here are running high and muddy.  But when the sun does come out everything looks so sparkling clean and beautiful.  Our little patio garden and tiny front flower beds are looking good, too.   It's been a little rough since I (Janie) have not been feeling well all week. I've had a bad cough, congestion, weepy eyes,  and tiredness. We're thinking it may be allergies - pollen level is unusually high in this area this year.  I've never had allergies before, but it's a new environment with lots to get used to so maybe that's it.  I am trying an OTC allergy medicine and am feeling much better today. We'll see.   Anyway didn't do as much as we should have last week, but we still had a few miracles.

I did drive my neighbor JeriLee to several appointments last week.  Her little baby Corinna is so cute. On Monday we made a trip to Wal-Mart and "happened" to run in to a less-active ward member who said we could come visit her the next day, we were happy about that.  On Tuesday we made the drive to her home and had a good visit.  As a bonus, after we had been there a while her 18-year-old son and older daughter arrived - we had been trying to get in to see them also, so it was great to get to chat with all of them.  We also helped at the nursing home a couple nights and Wayne sang there Friday night.  We taught a lesson on Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching to John and Audrey, they are excited to get going (and asked when they would get name badges like we have....).  Today we started teaching a temple prep class too.

On Tuesday night I was making phone calls to set up appointments.  I called Cathy S, a lady we first met a couple weeks ago as we searched the ward list to find the lost and forgotten.  Wayne had finally found an accurate address for her so we stopped by.  Anyway, when I called this time she invited us to visit on Friday.  When we arrived she was so glad to see us and told us how much our last visit had meant to her. She said that she had told her mother, who lives in a different area, that we had come to see her.  Her mother is an active member and she then revealed to her daughter that she had been praying for her and praying that someone from the church would visit her. She encouraged Cathy to keep meeting with us and Cathy said that she intended to.  Cathy said that even my call on Tuesday to set up an appointment had brightened a difficult day she was having and that she sure was happy we had come to see her.  Wayne and I pray daily that we will be instruments in the Lord's hand and that we will be where He needs us to be - it's nice to hear that we can be the answer to a mother's prayer and find someone that really needed us to come...

Happy Birthday tomorrow to Angie!!  We love you and miss you.  We think you are amazing to balance so much in your life!

Now I'll turn the writing over to Elder Orton:
Thanks.  I think she does so much better.
This week-end I missed a fun event.  My sibling reunion at Mark and Annettes' in Ogden.  I would have loved to be there with you but am glad to be here also.
We would have missed another great event.  We had a 3 mission meeting in the stake center next to the DC temple.  Presided over by Elder Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve.  Elder Clayton of the Seventy was there also along with a new member of the Seventy,  Elder Wong.  There were about 700 missionaries there and it was an inspirational meeting.  What do you think Elder Ballard was sent here to tell us way out here?  He told us we needed to talk to more people, be bold, strengthen the wards and baptize more of God's children.
Sometimes it is not what is said that you remember but how you felt and what you "heard".  He told us that the Lord is definitely hastening His work.  Also Satan is hastening his work!  So I heard this:  Where does that leave us if we just continue to do what we did last year or the year before?  If we don't do differently we will be left behind in the hastening.  We need to evaluate what we have been doing and then formulate what we need to do next so that we can be a help.  We need to talk to more people about the gospel, we need to live the gospel better and be better at keeping our covenants.  We can do it.  All of us!
We did get a lot of comfort from Elder Ballard's apostolic blessing as he closed.  It was that our families would be blessed for our being here in the service of the Lord.  If we can do something that will bring joy to our families, that is what we want to do.  Especially if it will help you walk in truth.  As John said in 3rd John 4:  "I (we) have no greater joy than to hear that my (our) children walk in truth."
Farewell for now, we love you all!

Happy Mother's Day

Tree at our church, saying Happy Mother's Day!

I was blessed with such a wonderful mother, Marge, and two special grandmothers, Georgia and Ethel. What a blessing in my youth.  When I married into the Orton family I gained another mother, Clora,  and she was very special too and a great example to me.  We are so so fortunate in our family to see the amazing mothers that our daughters have become and grateful that our sons chose wonderful wives that are amazing mothers as well.  As we work with so many dysfunctional families we appreciate more and more the blessing of good, strong, faithful, dedicated mothers.  Happy Mother's Day to each of you.  I know the Poyfairs had a special experience, talking for over an hour with their son Dallin in Mozambique, Africa, for Mother's Day. Isn't technology wonderful?!  We enjoyed Skyping with them earlier today too and could almost smell the wonderful Minestrone Soup that the family was making for Karli!

We have spent too much time in the car this week - but that just happens some weeks.  We made a trip to Columbia, on the outskirts of Baltimore, on Wednesday for transfers.  We traded our Elder Mordecai for our new missionary, Elder Rodrigues, who comes from a small town near Yosemite Park in California.  We will come to love him as we have all the missionaries we have been privileged to serve with.  A bonus of our going to the transfer meeting was to see a couple of  missionaries who had served in our area - Elder Salazar and Elder Goodell give their final testimonies as they prepared to go home after serving an honorable mission.  What fine young men.

We spent a lot of the day yesterday in the car too as we took John and Audrey P, and Sonja M to the temple. Audrey and Sonja were just baptized a few months ago and I have been doing genealogy work with them.  Yesterday they did baptisms in the temple for over 40 family names!  It was an awesome experience for them and for us.  Sonja said it was her Mother's Day present to her mother who died several years ago, she was so excited.  We love them so much and it will be so neat to be with them over the next year as they progress and take more steps in their eternal progression...

I was able to work more on genealogy, picture albums (for a member), and indexing while Wayne took the

New steps for Sonja,  Priesthood in action

van to be serviced Tuesday afternoon, then back to be checked because it was losing transmission fluid on Thursday (yes, it was their fault).  And more housework and indexing Friday when Wayne went to a service project, then fishing with Johnny.  Sometimes it's difficult just having one car - other times, I kind of enjoy being "grounded".   Today we have been delivering Mother's Day flowers to women we missed at church today, it's a beautiful day to be out, so pretty around here and the temperature is in the 80's.

Again, Happy Mother's Day.  We continue to love it here and love what we are doing.  Especially we love our Savior and are very aware of everyday miracles and tender mercies.

After the service project...

Boot Hill Church

Sara - This picture is for your Dad, we met this couple, the Barnham's, at the
Temple Visitor's Center yesterday.  When we said we were from LaGrande, they asked
if we knew their friend Tony Blake - Yes we replied, our son married his daughter!  Small World.