The Work Goes On!

Our big transfer is just one week away, and guess what?  We are nearly ready for it!  Glen has gotten all of the housing needed for the new missionaries, and miracle upon miracle, this time more of the members here were able to house the missionaries. He only had to sign contracts for two apartments! It made it so much easier for Glen, but he still had to take care of the logistics of getting the mattresses and dressers and sometimes desks to the members' homes who were housing the missionaries.  But the thousands of dollars that it will save the Church will be awesome, plus the missionaries seem to do much better when they are staying with members than when they are in an apartment.  He should have all the areas ready by the end of the week, which is a very big deal since this was only a five week transfer.  And I was able to get all of my files and notebooks ready for them, so we're pretty excited!  We were also able to organize the shed a little better with all of our apartment supplies--there's still a lot of work to do out there, but at least we made quite a dent in it.  It was so cold at the beginning of the week that we couldn't work outside, but it warmed up enough by the end of the week that we could do a little work.

It was crazy because two different sisters in our ward told me this week that their nephews opened their calls and learned that they were both called to the Nevada Las Vegas West mission!  We haven't received their missionary recommendations here yet, but maybe we will this Tuesday.  Both of these sisters were pretty excited that their nephews were coming here.  We are too!

Once a month we have staff meeting at the office with our staff and Pres. and Sis. Black.  We went to dinner at the Olive Garden after our staff meeting and had fun with the Danas, the Conders, and the Blacks.

  

On Tuesday night I went to our ward's Relief Society meeting.  A sister from China who is a convert to the church and married an American, Sister Deng Jones, spoke first on how important the Relief Society sisterhood was to her conversion and her fellowship afterward.  The spirit was so strong as she bore such a powerful testimony of "We really are each other's sisters and we need each other."  Then there were several sisters who did a cooking demonstration of food from their native country--Japan, Argentina,  two from Mexico and one from Polynesia.  The food was so yummy and it was so fun to be together.  I stayed much later than I expected to because I was so tired, but it was so fun!

On Wednesday night we had another Girls' Night Out and this time it was held at our condo.  We had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner and laughed and chatted and then played chicken foot Dominos.  I love these sisters from the Employment Center!  They are so faithful and so much fun!  Seated clockwise are Sister Black, Sis. Young, Sis. Anderton (she is going home in a week and so this night was planned in her honor), Sis. Macdonald, Sis. Clark (a brand new sister who just arrived the day before our party--and she is so awesome) and Sis. Splain.   We had such a great time!

On Wednesday we also received in the mail these valentines from David and Juliann and Brandon and Lindsey.  We also got M&M's with peanuts and Almond Joy's from David and Juliann--our favorite treats!  We were SO excited to get these in the mail!  Thank you thank you, you guys! We loved it--it made our day!  We had a fun Valentine's Day.  I had put chocolate Valentine candy in our candy box at the office and all the missionaries scarfed them down.  

We also got these Valentine treats from the stake Relief Society presidency who was preparing the luncheon for the zone conference that was held.  Since I stayed at the office that day, the president sent these back with Elder Conder for Glen and I.  Is that so thoughtful?  I am so amazed at how sweet people are.

And can you believe this?  The Lone Mountain zone leaders, Elder Peacock and Elder Vieira (pictured on the very right) took this picture at their zone meeting and then had it framed and brought it to me for Valentine's Day!  They're so adorable!  It really meant a lot to me.

On Friday we were able to go to dinner with Tyler and Amy McMillan and their cute little son, Camden.  They were here in Las Vegas for some job training for Tyler and it was so fun to see them and get to spend some time with them!

Elder Lopez and Elder Butler, the Lakes zone leaders, invited us to one of the three baptisms that they held on Saturday.  We were able to go see Marcel be baptized and it was a wonderful service.  They sure are good missionaries!  Elder Lopez goes home at the next transfer--in a week!

After the baptism, we went up to Spring Mountain Ranch, which is a state park.  We took a nice hike and even found a small lake, which was quite pretty.  This place is known for its wild burros, so I was pretty excited when I was able to see two of them!  Glen was driving so he wasn't able to see them, but he saw them when we first got to Las Vegas.  It was so nice to be out in the open air!  We actually took a four mile run earlier in the day and it was quite glorious to be out in the sunshine.