Sunday, Sept. 23, 2018

Horses = 4 legged missionaries

On the weekends, the horses are put into pasture beside the FM headquarter buildings.  Each Monday morning, as we go to prayer meeting, we see them grazing peacefully.  At 8:00 they are taken back to the barns.  As I left to go to a job on Monday morning at about 7:50, the horses were all lined up at the gate...they knew it was time to go and get their breakfast !  It is really fascinating to watch them.  They go over a mile run up to the barn and turn in and each go to "their" stall for feeding.  I and Sis. Howard decided to find a spot along the route and I took a picture of them as they ran past.  Enjoy!

Also wanted to show you the squeeze that was built by our welder missionary (Elder Dare) to use when they shoe the horses.  Apparently, one of the horses sat on the older wooden one and broke it so he designed and built this.  He also designed and built new feed mangers for the horses (which we had to paint) because the old wooden one broke.  Anything that is wooden (houses, buildings, etc.) eventually rot because of the high humidity so you will see most things are metal or stone around here and even at that, they need to be well maintained in order to remain without rust & rot.
They have an Amish fellow come in and shoe all the horses and he really liked this set-up and will go home and replicate it in his community.

Corn harvest is in full swing around here!  On our way home from getting groceries, we drove into a field and got these pictures of them.  The driver of the combine was an older farmer who had his grandson with him....we are assuming that the father was driving the wagon.  I tried to get a picture of them but they don't show up very well....they waved at us though!

This last picture shows what is left of the cobs after the combine goes by....the kernels are off of the cob and they leave this behind and will plant soybeans in this field next year.  Interesting !
     Friday evening, all of the FM missionaries were invited to the house of a teamster & wife (who works in the sites) for a s'more roast.  They live really close to the river and the backyard had never been mowed.  Our grounds crew came in and mowed and trimmed back the trees.  The sun was going down and it was spectacular !  The picture really doesn't do it justice....the entire sky was red and orange.  Made me think of the sunsets during harvest that we get at home.

The missionary used two cement block and cut off a barrel...filled the bottom 1/3 with gravel and then added charcoal briquettes to build the fire.  It was a great fire to roast marshmellows on !!
    Yesterday, we did Nauvoo On the Road in a little town in Iowa...Blakesburg.  It was a 2.5 hour drive one way but I thought that I would show you some of the pictures.  The first is of a corn pit that the kids play in.  They just lay down a tarp on the ground and build sides like a sandpile and fill it with the corn kernels.  The kids loved it and it was alot cleaner than sand !!   The second is of a little girl whose parents bought this pickle on a stick from a food vendor.  It was gigantic and she was loving it....thought about a few of our grandkids that love dill pickles !

That was our week ....we did alot of work and are still doing well, which we count as a blessing everyday.  Hope you are all doing great, as well.  Love you all !!