Just GO!

Water seeping from the rocky hillsides
 freezes into into ice sculptures.

Ice in the harbor in Grand Marais, MN.

High Falls, Pigeon River, near Grand Portage

High Falls, Pigeon River, near Grand Portage

On the North Shore of Lake Superior,
between Grand Marais and the Canadian border.

Ice inside the window of our apartment.
The saying around here is: "There's no bad weather, only bad clothes."

Since our return to Duluth, from our holiday travels to Boise and Chicago, this is what we've done:

3 Saturday morning breakfasts with the Elders and Sisters

1 new teacher trained

1 in-service meeting

1 trip to Canada where we were detained until they thoroughly checked on us.  Is it the Idaho plates?

7 trips to the health club

1 trip to the foot doctor--no more boot!!

2 mornings at the food bank packing potatoes and carrots

1 trip to the temple and a seminary training meeting in Minneapolis

3 institute classes in 2 cities

4 seminary classes taught in Duluth

1 visit to a seminary class in Thunder Bay, Canada

1 visit to a Institute class in Thunder Bay

1 baptism attended

1 wedding attended

1 screening of the feature film "Meet The Mormons"

We are having such a great experience on our mission.  We are being challenged with new experiences.  There is joy that comes from missionary work, meeting the new people, being challenged in in-service meetings, giving talks, teaching classes, getting our reports in, and feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost.  We LOVE the young missionaries and we LOVE the Minnesotans.

We are only a little bit in love with the ice, snow and wind.  

Last week in our studying we were reading from Doctrine & Covenants 114.  It is written to David W. Patten and says he should, "settle up all his business as soon as he possibly can, and make a disposition of his merchandise, that he may perform a mission unto me next spring in company with others, even twelve including himself, to testify of my name and bear glad tidings unto all the world." Doesn't that sort of apply to you and me?  

Those of us who are in the "senior" category are told the same thing, right?  Settle up our business affairs, dispose of our merchandise and go perform a mission.  From my perspective, you should go. It's true that you bring some physical limitations with you and maybe limitations in other areas, and you are nervous about the unknown and insecure of your abilities, but just GO. You will love it, you will be useful and productive, and you will feel relevant. And the people you will meet and serve, will love you back!  Just GO.

-really-

We are just all over the place!

December 20, we attended Sean's baptism in Boise. He was baptized and confirmed by his grandpa. We are so happy we were able to be there.  Darcy and Tom and family drove up from Ogden and we had a good group of family there.  Annie planned an elegant refreshment table.  Creighton gave a talk on baptism and I gave a talk about the Holy Ghost.  It was well attended from the ward and also by friends Annie works with.

 

Then we celebrated Christmas with Darcy, Tom, Brady, Creighton, Bennett and Annie and Sean.

 








Creighton got a batman costume from Annie.


The boys got yoda hats from Darcy.




 And, I don't know how they got so old! and tall!

Tom and Darcy, et all went south to Utah and we went North to McCall

 and had Christmas at the cabin!

                                         Lunch at Lardo's

Sean wrote several notes to Santa including one that said, "Ho! Ho!" spelled out in marshmallows.

  

 

And after Boise, we went to Chicago to spend some of Christmastime with Scott and Jessica (and the nugget).  We played lots of cards and ate lots of treats.

 

 

We spent a day with the Middletons.  Mary Ellen and I are planning a houseboat vacation in this picture. We discovered that we have the same down coat from Costco in the very same color!!     Twins!                                                    



We are so blessed to be able to spend the Christmas season with so many loved ones, including family and  missionaries and old and new friends.  We covered a lot of miles and had a great time!  We still have 12 months to go on our mission and now that we are back in Duluth, we are anxious to have more missionary and seminary experiences.  Oh, and it's cold!

Have a wonderful 2015!

Missionary/Christmas/seminary activities

We were in charge of the entertainment at the Carlton Branch Christmas party. We recruited the missionaries! So we had a missionary chorus and we called them the Carlton Carolers and they liked the name.

On December 6 we planned a stake seminary youth activity. The first thing they did was divide into teams and each team had stewardship of a long string that was tied to a "flagpole"  They all had to work together to raise the ensign. Interesting teamwork strategies.




Then the teams were sent out to find word strips that would spell out a scripture mastery. They were given a bag of candy, after reciting the scripture from memory. Then they went to various tables in the the building where they found missionaries and had to negotiate a price for the word strip they wanted in exchange for whatever number of candies they agreed on. Then they raced back to the gym to tape the wordstrips onto the poster board with the right reference on it. It was rowdy and fun! They got to keep candy at the end and so did the missionaries.



Earlier that day when the missionaries got to our apartment for Saturday breakfast they found a big mound of candy on the table and we asked them to put candies in the white bags so they could be used for money at the activity. That's when Elder Schmidt asked, "Elder Stratton, are we your elves?"





We visited seminary classes in Pine City and 2 in North Branch.

 Zone conference!

All the missionaries wore ugly Christmas sweaters and these elders, serving in the Virginia Ward, had the ugliest, light up, tinsel hung sweaters of all!!! The red hat has a gingerbread house on the top!

 And we had a Young Single Adult sleepover in our living room.! They made a tent to sleep in and then we had so much fun playing games and laughing. 

 This is Josie, Monica, Erica, Amanda and Lisa.

I forgot to tell you all something that happened to us on our visits.  We stayed in a motel in Northbranch and from there we visited a class in Pine City, one in Northbranch and one in Chisago.  One of our nights there, we saw the elders in Walmart and took them to dinner at Taco Bell. (are we high class, or what?)  The 2nd night, we went to Perkins for dinner.  We stayed talking after we finished eating.  When we got up to pay the bill, the waitress told us that someone had already paid our bill.  They weren't there any more, but they said that their kids knew us.  Wasn't that nice?