Ward Conference Week

We’ve had warm weather this week. The crocuses are blooming and we even have a few daffodils showing their yellow heads. Our peach tree is starting to green. Silly tree. Doesn’t it know that we’ll have another cold snap and all its blossoms with die off?  It does this every year. The pear tree is much wiser. It waits until the frost chances are over before blossoming out.

Tuesday I drove to Ava for their Relief Society Birthday celebration and spoke to them on the Oil in Your Lamp program and ways to receive inspiration and revelation.  Then Wednesday I took a sister to a Dr. appointment. While she was there I visited a sister in the nursing home. Then in the afternoon we went visiting teaching.

Thursday we worked a little in the morning. Adam’s house went vacant and there was a problem in the bathroom floor. It turned out the toilet had been leaking and damaged the floor. So Tom cut away the bad parts and patched it and then put down vinyl planking.

In the afternoon we drove to St. Louis to go to the temple. Our plan was to do one session Thursday evening and two on Friday and then come home. We stopped at Trader Joe’s, checked into the hotel, had dinner and headed to the temple. Hmmm. The parking lot was nearly empty. Ugh!  They were closed for cleaning?  How did we not know that?

It must have been inspiration that had me put in the HMDI cord—so we could watch Netflix on the TV from the computer. Thursday, we thought about sightseeing in St. Louis, but it was a drizzly day. So we drove home a by a scenic route. We went through little towns, stopped at a used furniture store, and a little place for lunch and got home about 3pm.

We had been wanting to do in Roger Jr. and Roger III. The roosters were wearing out our hens. But we had to be home in the evening, after they went in to roost. So Friday night we did the deed. We killed, plucked, and eviscerated them. I pressure cooked one that night. The other went into the frig. With older chickens, you need to pressure cook them to get them tender.

Saturday Tom went back to Adam’s house to continue the project. I drove to Mountain View—about 1 hr. 30 min. to go to their Relief Society Celebration and speak. We really have lovely ladies in our stake. They are genuine and down-to-earth.  

The next day was to be Ward Conference. So Tom—who had been mulling over his talk for weeks—finally had to sit down and put it on paper. He was also kind enough to make brownies that I was supposed to bring for the lunch. I worked on my training and read the RS lesson. My first counselor was to give the lesson… but with all the rain, she was concerned she might not be able to cross her low-water bridges from house to road.

My secretary asked if she could spend the night, since they live 1.5 hours away. So I invited her and her daughter for dinner… which meant I had to cook. We did have a delightful visit. And we worked on dividing up the invitations I’d picked up on Friday. They were invitations that needed to go to the wards and branches in the stake announcing our stake relief society spring event.

I also wanted to make journals of Miracles, Blessings, and Tender Mercies for each sister. So while my secretary divided and sorted, I glued different fabrics onto composition books and glued the invitation onto the front of them. One of the sisters in our ward is an artist and a graphic designer and she created the invitations. They are bright and cheerful.

Here is a sample of the front of the invitation glued onto a journal.

Today went well. Tom spoke about family history and hastening the work. The choir sang the song that has been in my head for weeks. The RS lesson was great—my counselor was able to get out. We had a nice lunch and went to visit afterwards. We saw two sisters I hadn’t seen for a while and had nice visits.

And now I’m home writing letters and blogs. Here was the view from our living room window into the front yard. If you look closely, you can see three deer in our yard.