Sunday: The
Yazzie family wasn’t at sacrament meeting this week – maybe our wonderful visit
scared them off. We will have to follow
up to see what’s up. We enjoy sitting
with the Jimmy Payne family when we visit Kirtland 3rd Ward (their
meeting block starts at 1pm this year). Dinner/breakfast was waiting for us when we
got back to Farmington. The Paynes had
invited the Allen family (he is Bishop
of Farmington 6th Ward which meets in the same building as 8th
Ward) as the mother was in Canada attending her grandmother’s funeral. We enjoyed getting acquainted with their cute
family.
Monday: It
was a busy day in the office preparing for Zone Conference week. The APs needed to use the computer in our
corner of the office so we found other tasks to work on. Elder Hunt spent a good part of the day
training Elder Combs on phone business, which he will now be in charge of. Towards the end of the day Sister Batt came
in with a couple of documents that she wanted to have scanned so she could put
them on a jump drive. She is such a cute
and sweet lady, everyone is always happy for a chance to do something for
her. All of the zones in our area
(Farmington, Bloomfield, and Durango) will meet Tuesday in Bloomfield. The zones in the Gallup area (Gallup, Chinle)
will meet in Gallup on Wednesday, and the zones in the Flagstaff area
(Flagstaff, Holbrook/Winslow, Page/Tuba City) will meet in Flagstaff on
Thursday. The James have a team of
vehicle inspectors who check all the missionary vehicles out in the parking lot
while the missionaries are inside being taught by Pres. and Sister Batt and the
APS.
Tuesday: It
was a quiet day in the office with Elder and Sister James gone to zone
conference and no missionaries coming in for whatever reason (usually to check
the mail). Sister James has a
substantial hearing loss that is getting worse so when she is there we try to
really tone things down so she can hear the phone calls that come in to her (as
if we are both loud and boisterous characters!). One day she had Elder James ask me to turn my
music down (which was already WAY down) so I don’t even use my ipod/dock when
she is there any more because it causes static and confusion for her with her
hearing aids. So Tuesday was “Turn up
the music day!” for us (my collection of
orchestrated church hymns). Elder Hunt
worked on the week’s Key Indicator reort.
We took
Maren with us to Chile’s for dinner – the food was good, but the place was
CHILLY! I was supposed to have a NO-CARB
meal (pre-PET scan orders), so had steak with broccoli and instead of a baked
potato I had grilled fajita veggies.
Wednesday:
I was scheduled to be at the San Juan Regional Medical Center at 8:45 am
for my PET Scan. After the scan I went
over to the Oncology Center for a blood draw. I wasn’t supposed to eat before my PET Scan so
we went to IHOP afterwards to reward ourselves for being good, compliant
customers. Their strawberry crepes were
as tasty as their menu said they would be and Elder Hunt’s nuts/grain pancakes
with hot apple/cinnamon compote was really yummy. We will have to go back there again!
Thursday:
Our plan was to head out early on a little road trip to the south, but
Elder Hunt had a bad night and wasn’t feeling well in the morning. George came over and gave him a blessing and
he started perking right away. We had an
appointment to meet with Brother Hooee in Zuni to look at a place that can
house missionaries the first week in February.
Presently, our missionaries who service that area live in Ramah, which
is about a 30 mile commute one way. We
left Farmington about 11 am and our
first stop was Sheep Springs. The couple
who had been living in the trailer there next to the chapel left in November
and President Batt wants to put elders in that trailer. We took two new twin beds with us to trade
them out – but to our surprise we found twin beds already in the trailer. The trailer appeared to be in tip-top shape
and eagerly waiting for someone to come live there.
Our next stop
was Zuni, which is on the Zuni reservation.
Zuni is just what its name implies, a historic Zuni village with many
curio shops and trading posts. Next to
the chapel there is a little bakery that is owned and operated by a member of
the Zuni branch. They mix their bread by
hand and bake it in an outdoor clay oven.
We bought a loaf of fresh bread and being still warm, it tasted really
good. The label said the ingredients
were white flour, lard, yeast, and salt.
Ummmmm! They make turn-overs on Friday each week and our next trip to
Zuni is on Friday, Feb. 1. Brother Hooee said he will try to have his place
ready by then.
Our next stop
was in Gallup to visit with the Slades who are helping us find a place for
elders in Ft. Wingate. Brother Slade
grew up in Holbrook and is three years older than Elder Hunt. We got there while Sister Slade was preparing
supper, so they invited us to stay and join them. We had a delightful visit. They invited us to stay and watch the BYU
football game with them, but we declined the invitation so we could be home
before the snow began to fly. We got
home about 10 pm.
Friday: We
woke up to snow and freezing cold with the wind blowing. It
was good to have five baptisms to enter and a couple of referrals to take care
of. During the afternoon a couple of
Farmington elders came in saying their dishes, silverware, and pots and pans
were really bad. We took them at their
word so went to the AP garage and picked out some decent dishes &
silverware & mixing bowls, then went to Walmart to get some cooking pans
for them. It was about 5 when we went by
the library so stopped to see if Maren wanted a ride home. From the library we went to the missionaries’
place which is in the basement of a members’ home. I was the first one headed down the icy
steps, holding on to the handrail for dear life. About five steps from the bottom I slipped
and went down, still holding the rail. I
whacked my right shin and right elbow pretty hard, but picked myself up and
went inside to deliver our goods. (As
John Hancock would say, “No good deed goes unpunished!”) We dropped Maren off at her place and came
straight home – I cranked my bed warmer up to HI and had Elder Hunt bring me an
ice pack and I was down for the count.
Saturday: I
spent a good part of the day with my right leg propped up. At noon we went with
Maren to lunch at Cruzan’s, a little Mexican food place that someone gave her a
gift certificate for at Christmas. The
food was good and so was the company. After
Elder Hunt brought me home and got me tucked in, he went out to purchase a snow
shovel for the mission office and also a little fold-up shovel to remove ice
from stairs. He then went to remove that
slippery ice from those slippery stairs.
For
Christmas Joanne gave George a note saying that it was for a week’s vacation to
an undisclosed destination (we were never told where that was to be!). This is their week to that place and Joanne’s
sister Sandy will stay with the boys. We
hope it’s not in a place where the winter storms are hitting this week. We have really had a siege of cold weather
since Christmas. I’m extremely grateful
for a warm coat, gloves, scarf, and hand warmers.
I’m extremely grateful for the warmth that the gospel
brings into our homes and our lives.
We loved calling Holly on her 12th birthday yesterday. Her birthday wish was to be able to go to the temple for the first time to do baptisms. Duane and Lari and Stacey went with her made helped to make that wish come true. Don't we all love that Holly girl!
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