Busy Week

We started our week with one of my favorite activities.  I got to go to the Mission Home on Monday to help prepare dinner for 20 new missionaries who arrived that afternoon.  It is always so fun to see them as they arrive tired but excited to finally be in the mission field.

One of the Elders is originally from Qing Dao in China so it was especially fun to meet him and reminisce a little bit.  He left China when he was 18 and his family now lives here in the States.

Tuesday was Orientation and Training for the newbies and that is always a busy but enjoyable experience.  We travel to Greentree for a morning of instruction followed by a great lunch, which I end up helping with, a little more training and then there is an influx of other missionaries as they all meet at that chapel to meet up with new companions and head for new areas.  It is transfer time!

We have a Senior Couple who had to leave after only two months because of a medical emergency in the family.  We told them not to worry about cleaning their apartment and so Wayne and I headed for Meadville on Friday to clean and get things ready for our Move Crew to go and load up all the furniture and household goods.  I wish I had taken pictures.  They lived in a very old home that had been converted into apartments.  There were very high ceilings and all the doorways were arched.  The doors looked so neat.  There were about 3 fireplaces in there.  It was a very interesting place.

Just off the highway in Meadville there is a Dept of Transportation service yard with a lot of very interesting art work.  "Read Between the Signs" is one of them.  There also is a continuous mural made out of old recycled road signs. There were huge flowers that were amazing.  All of it made from used road signs -  pretty clever and spectacular.

Our mission is an iPad mission and usually the new missionaries receive their devices as soon as they arrive.  This time there was a hangup on the delivery and so they did not arrive until the day after transfers and all the new missionaries were now scattered all over Pennsylvania.  Since we were going to Meadville we decided that we would deliver the iPads to as many as we could.  We took 4 into Pittsburgh on our way to Meadville.  We took one to a missionary who lives next door to the apartment we were cleaning and since we had gone so far already Wayne decided to drive up to Erie to take one to a new Sister up there. 

 A house decorated with pumpkins and mums in Erie.

 They even decorate the meters.

 The Fall colors are getting darker.  The reds are finally coming out.  The yellows are already falling.

 As we drove down to Lake Erie, we passed several grape vineyards.  Wayne was told that this is a major Welch's grape area. 

 Saturday morning, Wayne went to participate in a service project on the Montours Trail.  This is the railroad tracks that have been turned into a walking trail.  I ran errands all morning and worked on a quilt top that I hope to finish sooner rather than later. In the afternoon we went into Pittsburgh to locate the Aviary.  The Senior Missionaries are having a fieldtrip there next weekend.  We wanted to make sure we knew how to get there.  Our Ward Halloween Party was that night so we killed a little bit of time driving around and then went to the church.  We were still too early for the party so we went to dinner at the Tamarind Restaurant behind the church.  The restaurant is in an old house.  It seems like there are a lot of businesses like that.  It is nice to see that they do not just tear down old buildings  There are some beautiful old houses here. 

Oh boy, my favorite kind of food - Indian.  They did have wonderful Garlic Nan though.

 At the party, we had so much food that they had to have a Linger Longer the next day at church to use it up.

 Bone yard ring toss.  I took a few pictures of things before the party got started and it was a good thing because they turned all but their special effects lights off and it was almost too dark to see anything.

Jedi Princess.  Alec had fun twirling in the dress all night.

 We had one very talented make-up artist.  Bryan sat for quite a while to get this look.

 Jill, our little peacock and Stephanie the make-up artist.

 The night was just a very laid back evening of mostly socializing.  It looked like we had just about as many people as show up for church on Sunday.  That really is not a large number.  Hence all the left over food.

Today we shipped off 4 more iPads and then Wayne drove several hours in the opposite direction as we had gone on Friday and delivered 3 others.  At least the weather was nice today and he had a nice drive while I stayed in the office and worked. 

Tonight is Halloween and all of our missionaries were told to stay in their apartments and to do a Halloween Haul Out.  They are supposed to clean their apartments real good.  I know the missionaries who live next to us are doing that because I can hear them vacuuming, etc.  We are stocked up with candy but we did not have one single trick or treater.  How disappointing.  I really expected some kids since we see them playing here all the time.  They must know some better places to go to.