Sun. Oct. 14, 2018

Canadian Thanksgiving

We had a great Canadian Thanksgiving day on Monday and hope that all of you did as well.  We invited 4 other couples to share a Thanksgiving dinner with us and some others invited us to celebrate with them so we combined forces and ended up with a dinner of 23 people.  Of course, our little place couldn't accomodate everyone so we booked the conference room in the FM main building and had a great time together.  Among some of our guests was Rick MacGregor and his wife and assistant, Fred .  He is a member of the Community of Christ that attends our prayer meeting every morning and he is a Canadian (born and raised in Ontario). Here are the couple of pictures that we took:

Our week has been normal with our working each day on our various projects.  Sis. Howard & I finished the painting in the temple missionary housing.  They are all gone for the 3 months that the temple is closed so it was easier to get into the places and do the touch-ups that were requested.  Jim has finished the fence around Wilford Woodruff place and it looks great !!   We had mission training on Wed. evening and it was all about using the correct name for the church in our communications with others.  On Fri. evening, we had a dinner with our MTC group.  These are a group of 6 couples that came out to the mission from the MTC at approximately the same time.  One couple , Elder & Sis. Childers have been asked to feed the mission presidents and general authorities that come next week for the Mission Presidents seminar that they are having in Nauvoo and they wanted to try out a meal on us that they plan on feeding the dignitaries.  It was delicious !!  It will be an interesting week having the majority of the 12 Apostles here as well as the mission presidents. We will fill you in on that later...when we know more. 

Saturday was spent  doing Nauvoo on the Road in a little town called Bentonsport, Iowa.  It is located about an hour away to the north west of Nauvoo.  It is in the middle of Amish country and is very rural with alot of history.  It is on the banks of the DeMoine River and was a major port for shipping in it's day.  I'm including a picture of Jim & I on the bridge...it is only used as a walking bridge now.

As you can see, the river is very high.  We have had 3 days of rain and it is getting cold here , as well.  The Mississippi river is super high and we can see flooding in some of the towns near the river.  Also, when we go to Nauvoo on the Road, we dress in period costumes (like we wear when we serve at the historic sites)

This is the central pavilion where they had us set up our displays.  A live band was playing in it and although the music was good, it made it challenging to have conversations with people.  Oh well...it was still a fun time.  Next, I am including a picture of a young girl because.....all of a sudden I heard a girl behind me calling ARVILLA (trying to locate her friend)  I was startled at the name and watched to see who it belonged to.   When she appeared, I walked up to them and had a fun conversation with them.  They stopped by later in the day, as well.  I haven't heard of anyone else besides my mother and my granddaughter with this name so it caught my attention.

She seemed like a very nice young lady.....fitting for her name...she was surprised, as well, that there were other people with the same name.

That's about it for our week.  We had stake conference today and really enjoyed and appreciated the messages that were given.  Hope that you all have a great week !  Love you