Plugging Along

Today's post is just about some interesting Rensselaer stuff.

On the first weekend in May, everyone puts all their spring clean-up junk out on the curb and the city picks it up.  Clean it up and get rid of it.  It's not cool, however, to drive along and take stuff other people have set out.  Although I think it's perfectly logical to do that.  After all, they obviously don't want it.  But somehow it's not kosher.

We live in Rensselaer, which is the county seat for Jasper County.  We have an airport, about the size of French Valley airport in Murrieta.  There is an upcoming air show in Fair Oaks (the next off ramp off the freeway - which is about 20 miles up the road) and they use Jasper County airport as a staging area.

We do a lot of service.  Here is Craig mowing the Stake President's lawn.  I was in the house practicing a special musical number with his daughter, and Craig was nosing around the garage.  Next thing you know, he's riding the mower and grinning from ear to ear.  Unfortunately, he only got 1/2 of the lawn mowed.  Notice the lawn mower has a steering wheel.  Now he wants to drive one with duel controls that can turn on a dime.  Ahhh, city folk.

On Wednesday, we went on splits up at Hebron.  The sisters and I did service.

 Here is Sister Michelson (rhymes with pickle-son).  She was in charge of raking.  We were filling this small area inside of the rocks with dirt.  They have amazing dirt here in Indiana.  Really rich.

This is Sister Williams.  She is from Idaho.  She ran circles around all of us.  That girl is amazing.  When we were done here, we went and visited another family while Sister Williams mowed their lawn.

]

Almost done.

This is their house, nestled in the trees, back from the street.  Sooooo peaceful.

This is the drive-in we stopped at in Monon.  The food was really good.  Under the awning, there are picnic tables to sit at.  (Sorry, I ended that sentence with a preposition.)

We worked at Robert Wagner's house, helping him pack.  Craig had been out to his garage through a very overgrown backyard.  As we were ready to leave, Robert found a tick on Craig's shirt.  Eewww.  We don't have ticks in Murrieta.  Here is Craig hitting a baseball to Robert's son, Daniel.  They are lucky to have a yard big enough to play catch and shag fly balls.  And give Craig a bat, and well, you may as well relax for a while.

Finally, I should report on the near tornado we had a couple of weeks ago.

We were watching TV and I was Skype-ing with my daughter when all of a sudden the power went out all over the city.  The sky was full of black clouds.  The lightning was flashing up in the clouds.  I mean constant flashing.  It was like the clouds were on fire.  Then the tornado sirens started.  Craig was standing outside with the neighbor looking at the clouds.  I asked them both if they know what the sirens meant, because I was pretty sure they didn't mean run outside and watch the storm.

The sister missionaries came running over, and asked if they could stay.  It was raining and they were soaked.  We wrapped them in towels and blankets.  We gathered in the bathroom, with a candle...and waited.  We were not really scared, just taking precautions we had heard a lot about.  The point is to get into a room that has as many walls as possible between you and the outside.

We waited in the dark until the sirens stopped.  We heard the next day that a tornado did briefly touch down on the outskirts of town.  The lights were off for about an hour.  The next day, we went and bought more candles.  We also bought another 5 gallons of water and some flashlight batteries.  I'm ready.  Bring on the next storm....which may be this week.

Carry on everyone.  

Zone Olympics

Craig and I were in charge of the zone activity.  The elders wanted to have an "Olympics" but didn't want to over-power the sisters.  So Craig and I came up with several events that were more equitable.

 1)  Ten cups were lined up on the table.  They had to blow up a balloon, and then use the escaping air to knock over the cups.

2)  Each person had to run to the chair, eat two soda crackers from the plate next to the chair, blow up a balloon, then pop the balloon.

3)  Each person had to run to the table, put on the ski gloves, unwrap a stick of gum, put the gum in their mouth, take off the gloves and run back.

4)  Each person had to run to the table, open three bandaids, put one on each elbow and one someplace on their face, then run back.

 5)  In the ping-pong race, a ball was balanced on a paper plate.  Each person walked an obstacle course up and back.

6)  Corn tortillas were tossed and the catcher had to catch three.  Then the thrower became the catcher and the next person came up to throw.

7)  You had to use the straw to put 10 M & M's in the cup.

8)  Twenty-six cards were stacked up on the jar.  You had to blow them all off except for the last card.  If you blew all the cards off, you had to start over.

9)  This was a card passing game.  A card was passed down the line in front with the right hands, then behind their backs with their left hands.  The new card could not be passed until the current card was back at the start.

10)  Each person had to sort 1 cup of Fruit Loops into 6 cups - one for each color.

 11)  Using pool noodles, they had to roll a marble across the floor and knock over empty toilet paper rolls.  This was not timed.  The winner had the most points.

Here are three of our sisters taking a selfie.  The headbands denote their team color.  And what would any activity be without mustaches?????

We had a few more events, but my phone died.  LOL.  It was a lot of fun spending time with these wonderful kids!  They work very hard.  It was nice to relax and socialize for an afternoon.

It's All About the Zone

We have an awesome zone!  There are 32 missionaries in the Valparaiso (pronounced Val-praise-oh) Zone.  We have spent a lot of time with them over the past week or so.

Had a GREAT Zone Conference yesterday.  Everyone is so strong.  Sat behind two beautiful and sweet girls assigned to work in Gary, Indiana.  They are awesome, especially because everyone equates Gary to Santa Ana.  Scary.  But they love it.  Lots of good work getting down by these great kids.

Last week, we met everyone at the temple in Chicago.

Note:  I'm not in the group picture because I'm behind the camera.

After the temple, we met at the Mission President's house for lunch.  They fed us chicken, watermelon, pineapple, potatoes and gravy, salad, rolls.  And for 36 people (and a lot of growing boys) that is a lot of food.  They do this about once every three months.  After the lunch, we had a meeting with the President and his wife.  We were done about 3:30 in the afternoon, just in time for Chicago traffic.  The two hour drive took us 4 1/2 hours!!

On the way TO Chicago, we stopped at Costco and spent more money there than we had spent in the previous month.  Sheesh, we decided we should just not leave home that often.  Anyway, we were driving by this house that had a garden for a yard.

We stopped, and the man came out and invited us around the back.  The yards were gorgeous.

Big koi pond.  Hundreds of tulips.

This is his backyard.  If you look WAAAAY down there you will see a patch of brown ground ready for the vegetable garden.  Their property continues 300 yards into the wooded area at the back.  ALMOST makes me want to live here.  Really beautiful.

He invited us back in the summer to see the summer flowers.  YES, we will go.

Our neighbors had "pizza night" and invited us and the Sister Missionaries.

First, you roll out your dough.

 Add sauce.  As you can see, I had 1/2 alfredo, and 1/2 tomato.

Choose your toppings:  sausage, chicken, two types of cheese, mushrooms, olives, peppers, onions, pineapple, ham.

More sauce, more cheese.  Then bake on a pizza stone.

 Craig, teasing the dog.  BTW, he ate half of that pizza.

The sisters were stuffed!

Zone Meeting yesterday.  I learned that there are only three missions in the World where they have issued ipads to all the missionaries as a way to use technology in teaching and reporting.  Our mission is one of them.  Craig and I, however, do NOT get one.  But they are so cool.  They keep videos on them, teaching lessons, appointment schedules, phone lists, etc.  All their scriptures, hymn books, pictures, and stuff is on there.  They can use FACEBOOK, but only for missionary purposes and only for about 1/2 hour a week.  The kids are really good at using the technology.

Because two state roads cross here in Rensselaer, there are lots and lots of road signs.

In case you are confused, they are meant to help.

Two of the closest cities.  We have family night every other Monday in DeMotte, and the nearest chapel is in Hebron.

I kept looking on the map for Indot.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  Who knew?  INDOT = Indiana Department of Transportation.  Duh

Marysville was another town I couldn't find.  Everyone talked about it like it was a big city.  Then one day coming home from the temple I saw a sign for Merrillville.  Yep, that's it.  Now, I don't know about you, but when I say Merrillville, it doesn't sound anything like Marysville.  Can you see why I was confused?

We had our first gift from Sam.

Craig says, "How are we going to get it out?"  I replied, "We???"  Sorry, not in my job description.

And one last note:

If there is no house, there is no sidewalk.  The sidewalks are put in WHEN the house is built.  There you go.  It makes going for a walk much more exciting.

Meeting with Joe tomorrow (an old farmer if there ever was one) and Pastor Ben on Friday.  The work moves on.

Meeting people

On the first day we attended church, we met with the Bishop and he gave us about 15 names of people he wanted us to visit.  The first lady we visited opened the door just enough to see who we were and started to close the door.  I called through the closing crack, "I have soup!!"  She opened the door just wide enough to take the soup and rolls.  I said, "I'd really like to see your quilts."  She said, "NO." and that was that.

The second sister was home, but didn't have time for a visit as her significant other was just pulling up and they had to go into town.  She took the cookies, however, and was polite.  Then, we found out she immediately called the Branch President's wife and complained that we had come and that everyone KNOWS she does not want anyone to visit!!!  (But she DID like the cookies.)
Ditto with sister #3.  She came out, took my homemade bread, and made a comment to the effect that she was sure "someone" would eat it.

So you can see that meeting new people has been hard for me.  I'm always nervous to cold call them.  I keep saying to Craig, "What's the worst thing that can happen?  They can say No?"

But this week we met some wonderful people.  We visited with Dick and Heidi Jarvis for about an hour.  Heidi is going to be our tour guide to Chicago.  She has a friend who is a travel agent and is going to plan a "tourist" day for us.  She goes quite often and will make sure we don't end up in a bad part of town.  We loved them.

I had called Monique Outzen several times with no answer.  We had stopped by twice and dropped off cookies.  Then, out of the blue, she came to church on Sunday.  I liked her immediately.  Her son plays baseball, so we went to his high school game today.  We are going again on Thursday, and having pizza with her family afterwards.  Yea!!!

We stopped by another family (the second time with cookies) and only the daughter was home.  I knew she was nervous about having anyone come in when she was alone, but as I was leaving, I told her I did tutoring.  She began telling me that she was failing math and could really use some help.  I wish we could have connected earlier because there are only 3-4 weeks of school left.  But I'm so glad someone is finally taking me up on my offers to help.

I also had TWO spur-of-the-moment serving opportunities.  I saw an older woman struggling to carry groceries.  I pulled over and jumped out to help.  She hugged me.  It was sweet.
The second opportunity came as we were waiting to drive across the street.  We could see a woman digging holes in her lawn (and not having an easy time of it).  We pulled up.  She asked what we wanted.  I said, "I've brought my husband to dig your holes."  "What????" she replied.  Too funny.  It only took Craig about 10 minutes to get the job done.  Way to go, Honey.

This is Ernestine.  We spent a few hours helping her clean out her flower beds.  And as you can see, it was windy.  It's ALWAYS windy.

This is Ernestine's yard from the back looking toward the street.

She has problems with moles.  The little building that looks like a doll's house is her garage.

We visited with Kelly.  She lives on a large piece of property bordered on two sides by small streams.  As you can see, the beavers have decided to build across one of them.  Cool, huh?

Craig and I went on "splits" with the sisters and zone leaders.  I took the sisters to dinner at Steak and Shake.  I even went tracting with them.  They are Awesome.

So as we were driving past this empty foundation, our neighbor explained that the building that USED to be here was destroyed by a tornado last year.  Oh yeah.  See the buildings in the background?  Those are our apartments!!!  Yikes.

Spent the morning shoveling sand.  This is Stacey, our neighbor.  We love her.  She's a slave driver!  In case you are wondering, I'm taking the picture from my "sitting-down-supervising" position.

It's supposed to be 85 degrees on Wednesday.  Finally!!