Saturday, June 13, 2015

A lesson about ticks


Well, you just can't beat the scenery here when the sun comes out!  We took Scott and Jessica to see Split Rock Lighthouse and this photo is sooo good because of Ron's new selfie stick.  (A gift from Annie.) We also took them to Gooseberry Falls and Betty's Pie Shop. (the water in the creeks is brownish because of the iron in it.)


                                                                                              
This is a new thing for Vance.  He recognizes Scott's voice and looks for him.
On Memorial Day we were invited to the Faerbers for crepes. All of us!  Look at all these toppings.  They thought of everything!!


                                
We went down to Minneapolis for a conference of our entire mission.  Minneapolis Minnesota Mission  MMM  We completely filled the chapel.  This picture is just the sisters.


We were invited up to Lake Vermilion to a cabin right on the lake.  It is really is a beautiful lake and huge.  We took a boat ride and saw only half the lake in 1 1/2 hours.  We needed to make sure we had time for Hand and Foot.  (We didn't stay over so don't be thinking that all we do is vacation.)

  We went to a wedding held on the top of a hill overlooking the bay.  Beautiful setting for a wedding!  And it didn't even rain. (there was much discussion of this)  Amanda Bush and Nolan Hauta.

 The young women in the branch held a fundraiser to earn money for camp.  Ron purchased the chance to throw a pie in Haylie's face.  This is the event.

  The elders got I pads!  They are pretty excited.  We will all see how technology will further missionary work.  We get to learn together. So far they have downloaded the scriptures and a calendar and they were working on getting an app that keeps track of their contacts and teaching progress.  They were excited that they have access now to church videos and talks from conference.

We joined with the branch in cleaning up litter along a highway.  Here we are ready to pick up Marlboro wrappers, Budweiser cans and a few pop cans.  It is tick season here and I counted 16 on me!! I had on my wool socks pulled up over the bottom of my pants and I now think that made it easy to cling on.  Ron used duct tape around the bottom of his pants and he didn't find any....so far.  So that's my lesson about ticks for today.
So I found partly buried in the dirt, a glove.  And then another glove and a man's slipper.  I started thinking about Bones where someone finds a partially decomposed corpse at the beginning of every episode. . .
I did eventually find the other slipper but no skeleton.  Lucky for me!!

Sunday was our seminary graduation.  We expected about 80 people and we got about 140.   We are proud to have 23 graduates who finished 4 years of seminary.  I took charge of the program where we had three speakers and some singers and then handed out the diplomas.  Ron took charge of the Scripture Fair.  We asked them to bring something they created that was based on one of the 25 scripture mastery passages.  I have a few photos here.  They were so creative!  The Kahoot! is a game to review some of the things they learned and it works on the phones of the students.  Someone recreated the golden plates.  Ron took photos of his Marathon T-shirts and restated the health advice.There were many more creative activities. Carol was in charge of food and for this many people, she had sandwich fixings and ice cream sundaes that they decorated themselves. I am always so impressed when church members drive 2 or 3 hours to come to meetings. We had 85 students that finished seminary this year.

This past Monday the elders and sisters rode bikes in Lester Park.  It was quite an adventure and involed a lot of mud on clothes and bikes.  They had a wonderful time.  Ron was the only one with blood but he did not have the most mud on him.

Here is a good story about the Book of Mormon: A carpet layer came home from work, ordered a pizza and asked his neighbors if they had anything he could read while he ate his pizza. His neighbors happened to be a couple of missionaries from the church.  They were HAPPY to give him a book to read while eating pizza.  After the pizza he came back to the missionaries to return the book, which he said wasn't all that interesting. 
They asked him, "Did you read it?" 
"Yes" 
 "Did you pray about it before you read?"
"No."  
"Do that"  
He began to read the Book of Mormon on Friday night and was finished by Sunday afternoon with only short breaks for food or sleep.  When he reached the end of the book,  he went back over to talk some more to the missionaries.  A much longer talk.
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