December 17-23

December 17th Monday p-day
Christmas is a busy time and especially when you are on a mission. P-days never seem long enough. The mornings are spent studying so you only have the afternoon to get anything done. This Monday besides grocery shopping I went shopping for items to trim the tree. When I got home I decorated the tree and that was all the time I had.

 We had dinner and then we went to the FHE seniors group in the Dalles 1st and 2nd wards. We were asked to show the a power point presentation of the birth of Christ that I did for the cottage meeting. They seemed to really enjoy it. Then we had a gift exchange. Everyone brought a $5 gift and each of us had a chance to choose a gift. I received some body wash and a mess shower sponge. Refreshment are always delicious they out do themselves. They served a really rich chocolate cake.

December 18, Tuesday
We had a district meeting and it was a great meeting. Elder Peterson is the our new district leader and an excellent teacher. He taught the lesson on how to teach to involve the learner. When we teach with the spirit how do we get those we teach to receive the spirit?  Our job is to help those we teach to act and follow through on their commitments. In other words so they become active learners. We did several role plays to practice this concept.
After the lesson we went home and I made cookies to take to a special Christmas gathering for the senior missionaries at the mission home in Richland, Washington. We had to packed because we were going to spend the night at the Mission President's home. We left by 3 pm. and arrived after a 2 1/2 hour ride from The Dalles to Richland, Washington. We were shown to our room and then we joined 6 other senior missionary couples for dinner. During the dinner conversation I asked the other women what they were doing on there missions.

I found out that there was only one other couple doing what Don and I do. Some worked in the office doing different responsibilities. One couple took care of all the housing for the mission. One couple was a on a service mission. Another couple were on a proselyting mission. All of us felt that we were right where we belonged, and everyone was happy and excited about the work they were doing. As part of the evening we helped Sister Greer stuff envelopes with items for the Elders for their Christmas gifts from President and Sister Greer. When the evening was over most of the other missionaries went home because they lived in the area.  Elder & Sister Pace and Don & I were the only ones sleeping at the Mission home for the evening. I was glad we didn't have to drive back home at 10 pm.

December 19, Wednesday
In the morning after a nice breakfast, Don and I went to the Columbia River temple only a couple of blocks from the Mission Home. It was a beautiful temple.

After the temple we joined the rest of the missionary conference for the east side of the mission for a special luncheon. The sisters in the ward prepared a special Christmas lunch for all of us Seniors and the Elders.

Elder and Sister Pace

President and sister Greer

All the missionaries getting ready to sing a song to thank those who prepared the Christmas luncheon.

When the lunch was over we decided to get some things done in this larger town. I got a hair cut and Don and I went to Walmart and while I shopped he had the oil changed in our car. Then we headed back to The Dalles and home. As we neared The Dalles we stopped at an Indian town, Celilo the we visited a less active sister and her non member husband. We left a special Christmas message and made an appointment for a follow up visit.
When we finally got home about 6:30 pm we remembered that we had another appointment, so we got our projector and headed to the S family that we were teaching. We showed the power point presentation on the birth of Christ to them. They were so glad that we came over and shared the Christmas story with them. They have an 8 year old daughter who was recently baptized and she loved seeing the pictures of baby Jesus.

December 20th, Thursday.
After our morning studies we went out in the afternoon to make visits to a couple of families that we were working with. We visited AG a single mom who is making a comeback. She has been out to church for three Sundays in a row. She is following through on her commitment to read the Book of Mormon. Since we started visiting her about 6 weeks ago her countenance has changed and she is so much happier. It is so great to see the gospel change people's life for the better. We also visited this other couple, she is a fairly new convert and her husband is a member becoming active in the church. We had a great visit with them. They are making progress too. We had a discussion about the birth of our Savior and what we could give him for Christmas. We then went home to dinner. I had a special RS meeting in the evening so Don went out with the Elders for the evening. The RS social was a University Graduation and a Red Carpet event for those who fulfilled goals throughout the year. It was so good to hear the small and simple things sisters did to improve their daily life. I was beat when I got home and the Elders had a sleepover at our home because on Friday we were going to go to Vancouver, Washington for a Christmas Conference for the west side of the mission.


December 21st, Friday.
I was up at 5 am. and prepared an egg and bacon breakfast for everyone. Then after we were all ready we left for Vancouver. We stopped in Hood River to pick up Elder's Carr and Heldt.  We arrived at our destination at 8:30 am. and we were really blessed with the weather because the gorge can be treacherous at this time of the year. In the morning we had a great lesson on a few of the gifts we receive from the Savior. They had a huge box with presents that had numbered tags. Different companionship's went up and choose a box and opened it and read what gift they had received. The gifts were The Doctrine of Christ, Gift of the Holy Ghost, Plan of Happiness, the Gift of Angels, the Gift of Agency, the Gift of Assurance that this is Christ's work, the Gift of the Temple Endowment. Each gift was expounded on and it made you feel so grateful for the special gifts we receive from Christ and these are only a few the list could go on but these were the ones we talked about. We were served a Christmas feast by the ward and each missionary was given a carved manager.

After the luncheon they showed the missionaries a movie. This year it was Brave. It was a time for the missionaries to kick back a little during this Christmas season. We headed home about 4:30 pm. It rained most of the way home and I was so glad to make it home safely.

December 22nd Saturday
We had a 9 am meeting with the 1st ward Mission leader.  When we got home we studied and had lunch.  We got a late start for the afternoon. We didn't have any appointments so we just knocked on doors. We found that some people had moved and others weren't home. We don't usually call ahead for an appointment when it is our first visit, so we aren't always lucky. In the evening the community put on the Messiah. don and I went to it and I just loved it. I love the music anyway but it was done in this historical catholic church and the building was ornate and beautiful. The choir sang magnificently and the solos were wonderful. After there were refreshments and we visited with several members that were there also.

December 23rd Sunday
Even though church was as long as usual from 7:30 am-4 pm it was so enjoyable because they had Christmas Sacrament meeting. The talks are always so wonderful and getting to sing so many Christmas Carols makes the meeting so spiritual. All the classes revolved around the birth of Jesus Christ too. After the last meeting there was a linger longer and Christmas cookies and milk was served. Everyone stood around and fellow-shipped for about 45 minutes. We felt all warm and cozy feeling and a part of the ward because we now can remember quite a few of the members names and have gotten to know them as well.
We were invited to dinner by Sister Royer, she is the Primary president. her parents were also at her home for dinner and they are our age and Don and him hit it off talking about music. We had a very enjoyable evening but I was glad when we were finally home and could relax a little.

December 10-16 2012

Monday was not much of a p-day for me because I spent the day preparing a power point slide show for the cottage meeting we were having on Thursday 13th. I had an old power point that I updated but for some reason the songs would not play. Kimberly had helped me figure out what to do but I had to finish it up and I am very slow at these things.
We had a dinner appointment at the Wolf's and we had such an enjoyable time with them. After dinner the power went out in the area but we sat and talked by light of our cell phones. They are a neat couple and I hope we get to spend more time with them in the future.

Tuesday during our walk we stopped at St. Vincent de Paul to look for some kind of nativity. I didn't care if we didn't have a Christmas tree but I wanted a Nativity. We found only one but I like ii so we purchased it.

After  our studying we head to Sister P's house for another lesson. We had already taught her 3 lessons but I felt inspired that we should teach her a message about Christ's birth that I had read in the Ensign. Don agreed so that was our plan. We also took her a gift of an extra large print triple combination so see could read the scriptures and be more of a part of the lessons. After went over the article with her I asked Don to read 3 Nephi chapter 1. Then he talked about the Book of Mormon and explained how we got it and how it is a record of ancient prophets from the Americas. She was fascinated with it. She has been out for the past 3 Sundays so we are pretty excited because she is on the right path. The Holy Ghost is really working with her.
After we had lunch we went out and saw four other members and gave Christmas messages to them. It was a really productive day. In the evening the Elders came over and played a few games of sequence with us. It was our last evening with Elder Dunkley.

Elders Solomon, Dunkley, and our first zone leaders Elders Boswell and Petersen

Our Zone - Elder Dunkley, Solomon and Gaylor on top

Elders Petersen, Boswell, Carr, Ottley, and Heldt

Elder Peterson is Elder Solomon's new companion

 Wednesday was transfer day and Elder Dunkley was being transferred to Vancouver. This was really hard on me as we had become very close to him. One of our zone leaders is being transferred too, Elder Boswell.  It is so special to see these young men pull into the stake center and hug one another and catch up with each other. Sister Cole was there with her food table and she had homemade cinnamon rolls, fruit crackers and of course makings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for them.

                                   .

 After the transfer Brother Steward took our zone out to lunch to Spooky's. It is a pizza and sandwich restaurant. They make delicious hamburgers. It is a good time to bond with each other and a nice time for the new Elders to the area. We had a good time together.

Elder Peterson, Carr, Solomon and Don

Elder Ottley, Gaylor and  Brother Steward

After lunch we went out and made some visits. We revisited the H's they are on the fence of coming back. We hope we can help them make that big step to come out to church. The weather here is still pretty nice. When we got here someone told us that roses still bloomed in December. So I took a few pictures of flowers that are still out.

Thursday was our 3rd cottage meeting so the day was a preparation day. We cleaned and baked and did the finalization on the power point presentation. We had 15 people attend and in that group we had an investigator, 2 less actives and a brother that can't get out to church on Sunday because he has a job where he works every Sunday. After the presentation everyone stayed around for refreshments and fellow-shipped for another hour. Don and I were on a high with all the comments about the evening. After everyone left the Elders helped us clean up and we had time to play one game of sequence. 

 Friday Don spent the day with the Elders. While he was gone  Sister Cantrell visited me. Her daughter raises chickens and each week they give us a dozen fresh eggs. While she was here at our home I showed her our cozy home. We went out to the garage and she showed me some Christmas decorations and told me she'd take an old wreath we found home with her to spruce it up for us. How thoughtful that was. We had such a nice visit.

Saturday we had a meeting with the Dalles 1st ward mission leader Brother McDowell. After the meeting the 4 of us made a couple of visits together and then we came home and had a district meeting. Elder Peterson lead us in a discussion on the Elder Pieper talk at the mission tour. We did some role playing and I think Don and I are understanding how to implement the teachings into our teaching. After we had lunch together, Don and I headed out for some visits.

We had a wonderful experience. We stopped at this one house to looking for a brother and there was a lady sitting on the porch. So Don asked her about the guy and she said she was living in that apartment. I Shook hands with her and introduced myself and told her we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  and would she like to know more about our church. She said that she was a member but her health had been so bad that she hadn't been to church in a long time. We made plans to see her again and we found out she had nothing to do for Christmas so Don invited her to our home for the day. I know the Lord wanted us to find this Sister, there are no coincidences in this life.

We revisited a Brother W and invited him to a few upcoming events and he gave Don a bicycle. Now he has some other form of exercise to do as long as the weather holds. 

The rest of the day was very productive too. We went to Dallesport in Washington just across the river from us. We visited with three more sisters and asked them to attend church with us next Sunday and they all agreed to come. We had such good visits with these sisters and we left them with a Christmas message about coming onto Christ. Two sisters we visited gave me special gifts one a painting she had done and the other a beautiful silver rose necklace. They were so generous. 

It had started to snow while we were on the road so we took our time getting home because they have so few lights here to light the roads and it is so dark. What an exciting day for us.  In the evening Sister Cantrell called and said she had a small fresh Christmas tree for us and would bring it to church on Sunday. She is so good to us.

Maybe we'll have time to decorate this tomorrow on our P-day

Sunday we started once again at 7:30 but it took us a little time to get to church because the snow had stuck to the ground. by the time we came home from church the roads were free of snow and it was raining out. I have to say the time really goes by fast. We are enjoying this so much. I'm so glad we decided to come on a mission!!!!!

December 3-9, 2012
It was p-day but all I did was go grocery shopping because I was totally beat after that. Don went on a hike with the Elders for the afternoon so I had time to rest.

Here are the Elders before the hike. 

Elders Ottley, Gaylor, Heldt, Carr, Dunkley, & Solomon

In the afternoon I prepared a FHE for a group of Seniors that meet every other week together. It is a neat group. They started this group when there was only one ward in the Dalles and it started over 20 years ago. So most of the group is in their late 70's and 80's. When the ward split they decided to keep this group together. There are about 20 Seniors that belong to the group. Anyway I prepared a Christmas questionnaire that Walter Kindt shared with us years ago. I also chose some quotes on Christmas that expressed the true meaning of Christmas to close the lesson with.  All went well and we were invited to join the group for FHE every other week.

Tuesday we had a lot of organizing to do. Now that we are teaching several families and making visits we just had to fill out forms so we could now what we taught to who. We did get out to visit a couple of people too.

Wednesday we traveled to a zone conference in Vancouver, Washington on the "Doctrine of Christ"

We learned that the doctrine of Christ is Faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end.  The part I really liked was that this doctrine is what we really live on a daily basis. We have faith in Christ and we repent and then on Sunday we partake of the sacrament to renew our covenants and be cleansed again from our sins. As we do this week by week we are enduring to the end. It seems so simple. It was a powerful meeting and I went away so excited about the gospel and teaching it to others so that they could share this joy I have.

Thursday the Dalles Elders,  Don and I went to Hood River for interviews with President Greer and a Zone meeting. Our interview went well. Each time we meet with them we understand our responsibility much better. We are not like the Elders and we don't have the same responsibilities as the Elders. We are to organize the way it works for us and we are to set our own pace and just keep moving forward. I mentioned that Kim was coming down for the weekend and that I felt guilty that we wouldn't be out visiting less actives and they told us that when our kids come visit we are parents and not missionaries. That was such a comfort to me. Our zone meeting lasted till 1 pm. so when we go back to the Dalles we had a dinner appointment with an investigator. S. had a special Christmas dinner for us and the Elders. She is an artist and gave Don a picture of an owl she had  drawn and a cut mini bag she made for me. After the dinner we taught her the Restoration lesson. She has been coming out to church for a couple of months and is progressing. 

 Kimberly and Tony arrived in town late Thursday. Tony had to work from our home on Friday so Kim and I went shopping for cookie ingredients because we planned on baking on Saturday. When Tony finished work we all headed to Goldendale for their Nativity display. This was so wonderful. They had three rooms of displays from different areas of the world. The rooms were decorated professionally. Each display was breathtaking. The refreshments were also in three different areas of the cultural hall each area had food from that area of the country. We all enjoyed it. 

Then we headed to the Dalles 1st ward Christmas dinner. We had fun eating and singing and watching the program they had planned.

Saturday while Don was gone to a meeting Tony and Kimberly and I went to Staples to look for a computer for Don. They told us the one we wanted might be on the truck later in the afternoon so we came home and started baking. We made 6 different Christmas treats, 5 cookies and some peppermint bark. It took us most of the day. Tony picked up the computer with Kimberly while I did the clean up. Tony set it all up for Don and he ruined the surprise when he walked into the room before Tony was done but he was pretty surprised anyway. In the evening we went to the Dalles 2nd ward Christmas dinner. The part I liked best was the kids performing the nativity. It was so cute. When we got home Olivia opened a few little gifts I got her for church on Sundays. She is such a doll we really enjoyed having her here with us. After she was asleep the four of us played our favorite game sequence. 

Tony and Kimberly left Sunday morning as we went to our ward and spent the day at church. When we got home on Sunday we were exhausted but so happy we got to see Kimberly and her family.

November 26-December 2

Monday P-days are always a welcome day after the long Sunday we spend at church, but they do seem to go by fast. In the evening we visited the S.family. They have a really sweet daughter and we enjoy teaching them.

Tuesday and Wednesday we did a lot of door knocking and found only a couple of people home. We met the M-family. they have some health issues and can't make it out to church right now but they welcomed us and were glad we brought a message. We met a Sister S and she is so busy in the community and she makes baby afghans and crocheted friendship hats. She gave Don and  each a hat.
Mine is multi-colored and Dons is plain navy.

Thursday I spent the day preparing for our 2nd cottage meeting. I saw this article on line in the church news about the righteous principles of the book "A Christmas Carol" So a week ago I checked out the book from the library and read it again. Then I did some research and on Thursday I tied up the loose ends. That story is so wonderful because it was written as a Carol singing the praises of the Savior and what his atonement does for us. Scrooge learned he had made mistakes in his life and then he is shown his past present and future Christmas' in which he recognizes his faults, feels sorrow for them and then tries to make up for his shortcomings. It is a story of redemption. I got so many positive comment about my presentation. It made me so happy.We had an investigator there and a couple less actives, It was a good evening even though I was coming down with the flu.

Friday & Saturday Don went out with the Elders because i was just to sick to go anywhere. I had a respiratory flu and the runny nose and cough were full blown. I spent the two days resting and trying to get well. Sunday I managed to go to the morning meeting but by noon I was bushed and I was starting to cough a lot so I went home.

November 19-25
Monday p-day - After our study time we went to Hood River. Don and the missionaries from our zone were going to hike up Dog Mountain. I went shopping at Walmart and headed back to The Dalles. The guys were gone from 12:30 to 6 pm when they got back to our house drenched but victorious in their climb. It was not a nice, it rained all day. When they got to our house we feed them dinner and sent them home.
We had an evening appointment to teach the second discussion. The family followed through and read their scriptures together. We invited them to come to church on Sunday with us. We hope they will come.

Tuesday morning we finally had a district meeting. Elder Dunkley is our district leader and his companion is Elder Solomon.

They came to our house for the meeting. We went over our daily planner and the area book. Then we discussed some of the things we learned at the mission tour conference. We did some role playing too. Ater the meeting Don and I did our companion study and headed out for the day. In the evening we revisited a sister, MC, and had the nicest meeting with her. She wants to be active but needs a lot of encouragement. We taught her a lesson on the Book of Mormon and we invited her to read some each day. She agreed and when we followed through with a call she was keeping her commitment.

Wednesday just flew by as we knocked on doors and met a few more new friends.

Thanksgiving Thursday Don and the Elders went to participate in a turkey bowl the 2nd ward was having. While he was gone I started on my Christmas cards. In the afternoon we went to a members home for dinner with the Elders. We had the traditional Thanksgiving meal and we had some great conversation, they have a great library and he knows a  lot about Lewis and Clark and Don is obsessed with them so he was pretty excited to have someone who shares his interest. When we went home the Elders dropped by and played a couple of games of sequence with us.

Friday we studied quite a bit and then we went out but no one seemed to be home. We finally stopped at a members house and visited with them. The day was our first wash where we found no one to visit.

Saturday we went to Wamic to visit some members out in the boonies. One of the brothers we visited has had some wonderful healing miracles in his life. We had a good visit with him. We also visited 3 active families out that way because they don't usually get visitors.  It is a family of 3 generations of Cantrell,s. We visited with Idonna first she is the Grandma and had gone on a mission with her husband to Nigeria and she had some wonderful stories that she shared with us. We visited Annelie the granddaughter who is 35. She gives us a dozen eggs every week because she has a few hens and she is so generous to remember us. Our final visit  was to Brother and Sister Cantrell.  They welcomed us and as it was near dinner invited us to stay and we had such a good time visiting with them and getting to know them better.

Sunday we had a really great talk on gratitude, by Sister Ketchum. It was about the power of gratitude and how she had commitment to begin a 30-day exercise in expressing thanks.   She put together a notebook just for that purpose and every day she took some quiet time and wrote down ten things for which she was grateful.  She continued to do that every day for 30 days, writing down ten new things that she was thankful for each and every day. She said that after a few days, it gets little harder, you have to think, you have to look a little more closely at your situation in order to keep that list of 10 per day growing.  This forces you to recognize God’s hand in the small things, the minutiae that make up most of our days.  You begin to appreciate some of those little things that happened:  the driver who let you into the flow of traffic;  the laughter you shared with a friend; the deliciousness of a freshly picked apple; a little bird enjoying the feeder you hung in a tree.  This exercise can be a powerful reminder of the multitude of things we all have to be grateful for. I want to try this exercise myself.

 I want to say a few words about our gospel principles teacher. She is one of the best teachers I have ever had. After being in the church for 30+ years she makes the basic doctrine exciting. The spirit is so strong in her class, I look forward to her class each week.  After the meeting we had a sister MM,  for dinner and we taught her a discussion. I feel a strong bond with this sister and I love her so.

It was another good week for us!

Week of November 11-18
P-days seem to go by faster than any other day of the week. There is laundry and grocery shopping cleaning etc. Even on Mondays we have our personal and companion study and planning for the week so we really only have the afternoon to get things done. I'm still not familiar with the stores so it takes me about 2 hours to get my shopping done. I went to a tailor today because my zipper wouldn't work. It only cost me $3 because only the zipper pull was broke and she put on new one. That was a sweet surprise. Don went golfing with a member while I did the shopping. I did enjoy doing this by myself.
We had a teaching appointment in the evening that went very well and we made another appointment  to come back in a week.

Tuesday we got out late because we had to do so much planning and lesson preparations. We met with a family where the woman had recently joined the church and her husband was being activated. We had a good meeting and will be going back to teach them the first discussions.

Wednesday we had a special Mission Tour in Vancouver Washington. Elder Pieper of the seventy came and spoke with us. He was so dynamic and gave us so much to think about. Even though we were in meetings most of the day (except for lunch) the day went really fast because.  The spirit was so strong and he was such a powerful speaker. When you leave a meeting like this you are so excited to be a missionary and have the opportunity to share the gospel with others. It is exciting to be here.

Well Don and I decided to have cottage meetings. These are an informal get together in which we invite a few members and some less actives and we do a presentation. This Thursday was our first. The day was spent in preparation. I cleaned and baked and prepared a message on gratitude while don who had the main topic prepared his part. We had about 10 people show up and Don did such a wonderful job giving insight to the book "Pilgrims Courage". He shared what it was really like for the pilgrims. People were generous with their comments about the evening. I felt it was good because we had a less active there and it was a good chance for her to meet and feel comfortable around the members

Friday and Saturday we were out knocking on doors. We didn't find to many people home but we did find someone who wants the missionaries to teach them and we did find a few people home to talk with. Sunday always is a long day. I get up about 5:30am. so I can get my personal study in before we go to church. I read my scriptures and a conference talk. After church we were invited to Bishop Mullen's for dinner. There was a less active family there for us to meet too.  The dinner was nice and I was asked to give a special message. I gave a message on being grateful. I asked everyone how they would feel if they only had the things that they gave gratitude the night before in their prayers. It gave everyone something to think about. I have to say I got that message from a post by Brittany

When we finally got home I was so exhausted.