New Missionaries -  January 27th

 The Beginning of Ground Hog Day

 If you have seen the movie Ground Hog Day you will remember how every day was a repeat of the previous day.  Well our Zone Conferences had a little bit of that feel to it this time.  We headed to Northumberland for the Feb 1st meeting.  This was the first time we have met there and it was to be a trial run for future conferences.  President felt we would save missionary miles and times by meeting in a more central location.  Since we now have to meet every six weeks, staff is going to providing lunch every other time.  This was the trial run for that too.  I did a small survey to see what the missionaries would like for lunch and it was unanimous to have Hawaiian Haystacks.  A bit of an undertaking but everyone loved it. 

We had a bit of snow driving across the state to get to Northumberland.  It wasn't too bad until we had to get on I80 and got surrounded by big rigs.

                                                This was the first of our repeating days. 

 Sisters always go first.  We have such polite Elders.

 

 This was the group in Northumberland.  We had approximately 57.

 This is our mental health couple , Elder and Sister Christensen.  She helped me in the kitchen with the lunch and then they did a presentation in the afternoon session.

 This was the first time for presenting awards for the cleanest apartment.  It is amazing what a little competition will do.  One set of Elders and one set of Sisters in each Zone can win.  It was surprising that overall, the Elders had higher scores reported from their inspectors.  

              Willing Elders helping to clear the walkways in Brookville, our next repeating day.

 Another day but the lunch looks surprisingly the same.

The missionaries always write little thank yous to the ladies who provide lunch.  They post these all over the kitchen while they are out being sung to.

 This is the Altoona and Jamestown Zones meeting in Brookville.

 We always have a ton of supplies and mail that we haul to each Zone Conference.

 Elder and Sister Caanan with Sister Johnson.  The Caanans are on a Member and Leadership Support Mission.  He was an Institute teacher and so they teach an Institute class one night a week and they are doing an Addiction Recovery class one night a week.  They just celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary last month.

 Sister Casler helped out at the Greentree conference.  She always seems to get stuck cleaning the floor (which was filthy before we got there).  Sister Casler is our Church Service Missionary.  She works in the office with us but she will be leaving us in April. She has been working there for 2 years.

 This is the Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh West and Pittsburgh North Zones meeting at Greentree.

           Sister Wall will be leaving us March 1st and so she had a Tshirt out for everyone to sign.

These are our two Chinese missionaries.  Elder Li is from Qing Dao originally but his family now lives in Utah.  Sister Lyu is a Temple Square missionary on loan to our mission for a couple of months.  She will be leaving us Feb. 21st along with Sister Shum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now why did I refer to all of this as the Ground Hog Days?  When we were in Brookville, we were just 20 miles away from Punxatawny PA.  And it was on Feb. 2nd.  That is where  Gobblers Knob is - the home of Punxatawney Phil.  After we finished with our conference, President Johnson made sure that he and the senior couples headed up there.  He was so excited to be at Gobblers Knob on Groundhog Day.  We were just glad that we went long after the other 10,000 people had gone. Elder Clarke made a joke about us experiencing the repeating Groundhog Day.  We had three days of the same meetings and the same food each day.

 

The rest of these pictures just show some of the activities we have been involved in over the past few weeks.  Most of our extra curricular activities are with the Young Single Adults.

Family Home Evening - We had a boat making competition.  Each team of two had 10 straws, 2 pieces of paper and some masking tape.  The competition was to see who could construct a boat that would float the longest when weight was added to it. 

                                                                Mark and Andre stratagizing.

 

Alec and Dan

James and Jill.  Should have gotten the award for spending the most time on meticulously designing and building tactics.  Theirs was the one that sunk the fastest.

The master builder.  Also the winner with a little help from me.

Bryan and Jackson.  

Twice a week, Monday and Friday nights, we are now conducting English class with several Spanish speaking people.  It started with us going to the home of a husband and wife who are members of the church but we now meet at the church. Last week we had a lady and her son join us who are not members.  They are from Venezuela. This week the Elders found a man and his son from Guatamala who joined us.  None of these people speak English so it has been quite interesting.  Thank goodness the Elders are with us most of the time.  The Reyes family also have 4 children who speak English and an interpret when necessary.  The other two boys do not speak any English.

 This week at FHE they did soap carving.  There were cars and hearts and Alec did a great fish.

We also went to several performances this month.  The first was a Neil Diamond tribute band that performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony.  If you closed your eyes the singer sounded just like Neil.  It was a really good performance.

The second performance was The Hunchback of Notre Dam.  Very good performance and I really enjoy being able to go to these old theaters.  They have been restored beautifully.

Well that is our first half of February.  It has been very busy and we look forward to a slow week this week.  More to come though.  We will be preparing for new missionaries coming in the end of the month, a few missionaries going home before then.  We have tickets for a few more performances and in a couple of weeks we are having an activity for the senior missionaries.  Stay tuned.

Jan 1 to Jan 17

The first half of the month was a fairly busy one filled with lots of activity outside of our office duties.

President and Sister Johnson came to our District Meeting.  This was the time for individual interviews with the President.  

Elder Clarke, Sister Clarke, Elders Richens, Holley, Hunter, Walker, Ibarra, Chaifin, President Johnson and Sister Johnson.  This was our last meeting with Elders Richens and Holley who were transferred to another area and Elder Hunter who was waiting for his Visa to come through.

We meet at the same time in the same building with another District and so between interviews Sister Caanan and I prepared lunch for all the missionaries and the Johnsons.  They always appreciate being fed.

Elder Clarke took Elder Hunter and Hatch to the airport a few days later,  Their Visas came through and they are now in their originally assigned area, which is Argentina.

The next day we took Sister Mackelprang to the airport to return to Enoch Utah, her hometown.

Elder Clarke accompanied Elders Halls and Ibarra on a teaching assignment.  They live near the incline up on Mt. Washington and so when he picked them up, he did a selfie with downtown Pittsburgh in the background.

Just thought I would throw in a picture of what I work on occasionally.  I am doing a wooden spool quilt.  All I need to do is add the borders and it will be ready to quilt on my new machine that is waiting for me back home.

Friday night game night with the Young Single Adult Ward.  I was teaching them to play Mexican Train.

You can't really tell how big this pizza is by this picture but just think about the fact that that is a 2 liter bottle sitting there.  Could not believe how big it was.

The kids had fun trying to figure out how to do this trick.  They were ready to pull out the chairs before they were in the right position.  I was sure they were going to end up on the floor.

After we finished our game of Mexican Train, the kids decided to use the dominoes in another way.

On Sunday we had a Linger Longer.  Theme for the lunch? Favorite cereals.  It was a really big hit.

Enjoying all that sugary cereal.  At least they added some fruit to make it a little healthy.

On January 16th we had 15 new missionaries arrive and 1 returning Elder who had gone home to have knee surgery.  So glad he was able to return .

We did training for the newbies the next day.  When missionaries gather you always have to have lunch for them.

On Saturday the 23rd we attended two baptisms.  The first was for Jackson, on the right, who is amazing.  He just walked in to church several months ago and has been meeting with the missionaries ever since.  He has taken his time to get to this point but what an amazing testimony he has.  His baptism has to be the most spiritual I have ever attended.  I am sure that Andre playing his violin contributed greatly to that spirit.  James , on the left, baptized Jackson.                                         

After Jackson's baptism we went to a Peruvian restaurant with the Bushmans for dinner.  Brother Bushman had forgotten his glasses and so he borrowed his wifes.  You can't see it that well but they are chartreuse on the front and white with pink polka dots on the sides.  Quite styling.

After dinner we headed back to the church for another baptism.  We are teaching English to a Mexican family and their daughter was being baptized.  The room was full of Ward members and friends.  There was a small contingency of English only people there so Elder Ibarra translated for the speakers.  I was so impressed that they had several children give the talks and Joanna's brother and sister gave the prayers.  The family served dinner after but we were so full we just headed home.

I mentioned we are teaching the Reyes family English.  We have gone for a couple of weeks now to their home.  We are trying to do 2 nights a week.  As they have been doing this they have mentioned it to others and it sounds like we may have a few more joining us.  Next week we will start teaching Monday and Friday nights at the church where we hope to pick up a few more participants.  The program we are using is called Daily Dose and is one the Church recommends. It is an interesting way of teaching but we have been having fun with it.  It is a good thing that the Elders start out with us each time though because the Reyes' speak un pocito English and we speak even less Spanish.  The interesting thing is that Bro. Reyes works in a restaurant around the corner from his home where no one speaks Spanish.  We asked if his children speak both English and Spanish.  The answer is yes but the children will tell you they do not like to speak Spanish.

As we get more and more involved with things outside of the office we are enjoying our time here more and more.  This next week will be a very busy one as we travel to 3 Zone Conferences.  I am doing the food at all 3 and so it should be an interesting time.  I will be sure to post lots of pictures next week.

Happy New Year

This is a post that I did but somehow or other it did not actually get posted.  Late but I did not want it to go to waste.

  Christmas was a very low key thing this year.   

It has been nice that the emphasis has been more on the birth of the Savior but I did miss the family.  Back at home, my kids all decided that Sunday was too busy a day and they wanted to have Christmas Breakfast and open gifts on Saturday morning.  They Face timed us and so we were able to see the grandkids open their presents from us and their cousins.  It was fun watching but then of course they did not want to stick around and talk because they were ready to go put all those Legos together.  Even the granddaughters are into them now.

Wayne did not want to buy a Christmas tree so all we had was a tiny decorative tree that Sister Johnson hauled down from the Mission Home attic.  I cleaned off all the shelves of our hutch and it worked very nicely for the cards, nativities and the few gifts we had for each other.  I made stockings for both of us because of course I wasn't thinking of Christmas when we were packing up last July.

Our meetings at church on Christmas Day were pared down to one hour and we met with 2 other Wards that meet in our building.  Good thing.  There were only 4 missionaries, 4 Bishopric members and about 4 Young Single Adults from our Ward.  Even with 3 Wards, we just filled the chapel and a few rows of chairs set up in the cultural hall.  It was nice to be in a meeting with more people but I have gotten used to not hearing small children making lots of noise.  Still it was nice.  

Christmas dinner was just Wayne and I and the Christensens who live a few doors down.  We did at least have a traditional turkey dinner.                                                                                                                  

This is our Christmas Corner

 This past week was a slow one as far as the office work went but we had a few "extra" duties that took up our time.  We had an Elder who had to go home a few weeks early to accommodate his school schedule.  That meant there had to be a few changes in assignments.  Elder Clarke got to go up to Butler to pick up an Elder and take him into Pittsburgh to catch a bus that took him across the mission to his new area.  Since he had to leave very early and I had a dentist appointment that morning, I did not go with him.  He stayed in Pittsburgh to attend our District Meeting.  We also had another missionary leaving early and so Elder Gray in our District was going to be transferred up to Beaver Valley the next day.  I do not know the reasoning but someone bought all these fake mustaches (maybe because he is assigned to a Spanish Branch) and they wanted their picture taken.  This is a very good group of young men.  I hate to see Elder Gray go.

 

 I got an email from our friend Lily, in China.  This is her with her son, John Kong.  This is a young lady who met a BYU China Teachers couple the year before we arrived.  They were on a bus and seemed to be a bit confused about where they were going.  Lily introduced herself and asked if she could help.  She ended up helping them with navigating Jinan and helping in any way she could.  The next year, our friends the Paces kind of inherited her and the rest of us got to know her and loved her.  She went on a few of our tours with us and even joined us for a few potlucks after church.  It is so sad that we cannot let her know about the church. 

 Lily named her son John after the BYU teacher she met and Kong is the family name.  Her husband is a descendant of Confucious.

This next week is going to be another quiet one.  Salt Lake administrative departments are closed for the holiday and so that limits what we can do.  First of the month is slow anyway.  We will be preparing for 17 new missionaries to arrive mid-month.

Just a little update on our flooded vehicles.  The new truck is doing fine, the 12 passenger mission van is okay and a mini van is running after spitting out ice cubes from the exhaust pipe.  The insurance investigator did declare 4 of the vehicles totaled though and so a company is hauling them away for parts or whatever.  4 less vehicles that the Fleet Coordinator has to sell. 

January Happenings

We had 5 Visa Waiters arrive with our last group of new missionaries. Two Elders are waiting to go to Argentina, 2 to Portugal and this is Sister Ashton who WAS waiting to go to Costa Rica. Unfortunately for us, she was only with us for three weeks. We got to take her to the airport when her documentation came through. It was so sad when we got to the airport to check in and found out that her flight had been canceled. We had to make arrangements for her to stay with the closest set of Sisters and then took her back the next day when she was able to catch another flight.

A few weeks ago, Elder Clarke decided he would do an act of service for the Elders in our District. He took all his shoe shining supplies and polished each Elders shoes. For a few it was a major difference. Poor Elder Ibarras Doc Martens no longer have the yellow stitching but he is okay with it. His shoes do look good.

After District Meeting, the our Elders and the Elders in the District which is meeting in the same building, stay around and fix lunch,  Elder Ibarra was making tacos.

Every once in a while the Bishop of the YSA Ward calls a "Huddle" after all the meetings. This is a time that he goes over things he does not want to announce in Sacrament Meeting because he can go into more detail. We have a little group that usually sticks around after to fix food or just snacks to socialize over. This week they made hot chocolate. Good for a very cold day.

 Last Friday was VERY cold.  The maintenance guys in our office building decided that they needed to check the automatic fire sprinklers.  When they tested it, a pipe burst.  This all happened in the attic but the empty office on the second floor above us was flooded.  The fire alarm had been going off for quite some time but someone said they were testing it.  When it shut off Sister Casler thought she heard water and went looking.  She found the ceiling in our supply room dripping.  We were placing buckets in several places and then I went into the Presidents office to see how it was.  Big Leak!  It had run down the wall and our new carpet had a huge wet area.  There must have been a very big drip too because the couch was quite wet.  We left the office that evening with a big fan blowing on the carpet.  Monday morning, all was well.

This past week we had interviews by President Johnson at our District Meeting. Sister Caanan and I fixed lunch for the 2 Districts. Such good young men who deserve to be pampered occasionally.


                                 
On Saturday, we decided to go into Pitt and spend time indoors at one of the many museums. Being a onetime steel town, this is an all steel car. In person it is really pretty. Looking at the next picture can you guess which one we went to?


                                                                                     
There are a lot of Heinz things in Pittsburgh. The Heinz Museum is a fantastic place. I think there were about 5 floors. Each floor is a different theme and one of the floors is a Smithsonian presentation. There is an amazing picture history of Pittsburgh.

There is an area dedicated to Mr. Rogers who was from Pittsburgh.

We discovered that there are a lot of famous people who hail from Pittsburgh. Did you know that Dr. Salk was from here and that the polio vaccine was discovered in Pitt?

 We have been talking for quite some time about going up on Mt. Washington to get a good picture looking out over the city.  We finally went this week but it was a very cold, windy, overcast day.  This is where President Johnson takes all the new missionaries after picking them up from the airport.  They take a picture of the whole group.  We figure we will wait for a brighter day to go back up and take a selfie.

We had one day of snow at the beginning of the month.  It is amazing how they can keep the roads so clear but it makes such a mess of things.  It's a little hard to see but all the cars end up with a white film all over.  The darker cars look pretty bad.

It also makes a mess of the roads after the snow has melted and things dry up. This is our parking lot at the office. That is not snow. It is the residue of the salt they spread all over. This is what all the roads look like until it rains and washes it away.


The last few weeks have been pretty slow but we are getting ready to have a whirlwind week.  All of the Visa Waiters documents have come in and so Monday we will be taking several of them to the airport and then we will go help prepare dinner for the 16 new missionaries that are coming in that day.  Tuesday we will be training the new missionaries and transfers are that day.  We also will head for the airport again to take a Sister who is going home.  We are going to try to teach English to a Spanish speaking family the Elders have set up.  They are always so enthused when talking about doing it but scheduling just does not work.  We hope for success this time.   Hopefully I remember to take a few pictures.

I have  been taking more pictures of the things we have been doing so there are a lot to post and it is hard to get them organized chronologically - mainly because I do not want to take the time to figure out what I am doing.  I do not really think this blog is user friendly.  For that reason, I am just putting the pictures on in random order and I will explain what the pictures are from.

 At the end of November we held Zone Conferences in three cities.  This was the first.  It was in Cranberry and the Relief Society sisters went above and beyond in decorating and feeding us a very special lunch.  It was wonderful.  We are lucky that we get to attend in all three areas so we were well fed that week.  At each conference, there were lots of musical presentations of Christmas music.  It added so much to the spirit that was there.  The training focused on the Light the World initiative for the Christmas Season and it was just such spiritual lift for all in attendance.

 The next week we had 6 new Sisters come in along with 4 Elders and 1 Sister who are waiting for Visas to come in so they can serve in South America.  We do not know how long they will be here.  Could be a few weeks or a few months.  On Dec. 6th we had orientation for these new missionaries.  This picture shows them with their trainers.  This is also transfer day and so after the training is done there is a massive shuffle of missionaries who are going to new areas.  Half of our mission meets here after the training to make the changes. 

 In our Young Single Adult Ward we have a lot of very talented people.  There are several who are music majors, in the theater arts or just plain like to perform.  One Saturday afternoon, we attended the Junior Recital of one of the young ladies.  I never even knew Maddie could sing. She did a fantastic job.  In the evening another young man, James Newton, was performing with a group called the PalPITTations,  The members of this group are all medical students.  They had volunteered to do this performance as a fund raiser for some clinics in Pittsburgh.  I felt like I was sitting in a Pitch Perfect competition.  They are all acapella.  A few of the numbers were VERY good and a few not so good but it was a fun evening.

 Since Maddie performed in the afternoon and James was in the evening, we decided to go to the Phipps Conservatory in between performances.  I had gone there with Margo during Christmas many years ago and I remembered how fantastic it was.  They go all out decorating for the season.  I took so many pictures but here is just one to give you an idea of how pretty things were.

 Last weekend we headed for Ohio.  We went to lots of fabric stores, some cute general stores and a wonderful Christmas store in Berlin and Millersburg.  This is in Amish country.  While I was in one of the fabric stores Wayne decided to sit outside on the porch even though it was freezing cold.  While waiting there an Amish man drove up in his buggy.  When he was tying up the horse he started talking to Wayne.  He told him that most of the Amish in the area no longer farm but work in some of the manufacturing plants.  He lives on acreage but he only has a few animals and just does a small garden.  When he left Wayne took a picture of his buggy driving away.  I was glad he got a shot like this because I had read that they do not like having their pictures taking so if you want a picture of their buggies you should do it from behind where it does not show the people. 

 

As we drove through the area, we were often driving through farmland along small country roads.  As we passed one farm we saw all these little structures that looked like oversized dog houses.  Each one had a calf in front of them.  I guess it is a way of protecting the young calves in the winter weather.  It just looked kind of funny.

  

 This was the real reason that we had gone to Ohio.  This is Jasper Li.  He is the cousin of our good friend Robin.  Robin was assigned to help us when we arrived in Jinan, China.  We ended up meeting most of his family.  Towards the end of our year there, Stan Pace and Wayne wanted to go to Yellow Mountain.  Robin offered to go with them and help with the arrangements.  Much easier if you have someone who speaks the language.  Jasper went with them.  We had also met Jaspers parents one night when they invited us over to make dumplings.  We knew Jasper was wanting to go to school in the United States and so we were really excited when we heard he was going to Dennison University in Ohio.  We had been wanting to visit him ever since we arrived in Pennsylvania.  We were able to meet him for dinner and then he took us on a little tour of his campus.  Dennison is in Granville, Ohio.  It is like stepping back in time.  It is just a quiet little University town.  The school is spread out over a hilly area and it is just a quaint area.  Jasper seems to like it there and is doing well.  We had not seen him for 2 years and so he seemed a little more confident and grown up.  It was just great seeing him.

We had booked a hotel room near Dennison and did not plan on coming home until Sunday.  We checked into our room and checked the weather report.  It did not look good.  It was supposed to start snowing at midnight both in Ohio and Pittsburgh.  After only 30 minutes in the hotel we decided we would not chance it and we headed home.  We made it back by 11pm with no snow.  In the morning this is what we woke up to.  We carefully drove into church and hoped it would not be any worse when church was over.  The weather held and the Department of Transportation does a wonderful job of salting the roads here.  Great for driving but not so good on the cars.

 

 Here is a bit of a contrast.  As we freeze we can be reminded of how warm it is in Guam. 

 

 When we go down to the theater area, we like to walk over to Market Square where they have the Christmas Market set up.  I enjoy looking in Kathe Wolfharts store at all the German nativities, nutcrackers and pyramids.  Just makes me want to go to Germany again.

 And last week we went to see Mannheim Steamroller.  That performance was on a night when a storm came in. 

 This was what it looked like when we left work before the Mannheim concert.  It was pretty snowy but we road the T into town and it was fine.

 On Thursday mornings we drive into Pittsburgh to attend District Meeting.  Pretty much every week we have seen Uber cars that are the self driving kind.  Pittsburgh is a test area for the driverless cars.  Of course there is an emergency driver in it and there is an engineer in there too to gather data, etc.  I am pretty sure that that is a modern technology that I am not going to take advantage of for a very long time.  It scares the heck out of me to even think of it.

And that brings us up to today  We went to bed last night having heard that there was going to be an ice storm and to expect icy roads today.  Wayne woke early and was looking at his phone where he saw an alert for the icy conditions and he also saw something about flooding.  He did not think much of it until we got a call from our Fleet Coordinator saying the police had called and told him the creek behind the Mission Office had flooded and our vehicles we store there were under water.  We rushed to the office and were met with quite a sight. 

 

This is what you see from the road above our parking lot.

 

This is standing below the steps into our office.  

There were several police cars with lots of officers there watching the scene.  They said that one of the cars lights had been blinking off and on and then just quit.  We assume the computer on that one is fried.  They advised us that the current was rushing pretty strong and they figured there was mud on the bottom that would make it pretty slick to try to wade over to the vehicles.  They were concerned that someone would slip and fall into the water and risk hypothermia.  The fire department would not even risk trying to get them out. The pickup on the left is brand new.  We had just picked it up on Friday.  The van next to it is a 12 passenger one used to pick up the new missionaries when they arrive.  Hopefully it is high enough that it is not too damaged.  The rest of the cars were to be sold.  Thank goodness that 4 cars had been picked up by a dealer who bought them yesterday.  We went back after church and several of our Elders had pulled the truck out of the water.  The water had been high enough that it flooded the inside but the truck started and seemed to run okay.  They pulled two other vehicles up to drier land but then they were so wet and cold they had to stop.