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.

.

Imagine his surprise!

I got a parking ticket.  You have to use quarters here when you "plug" the meter. That's the short version. The cool part to this story is, when I came out of City Hall there was a bear in the tree right there in downtown Duluth.  So it evened out, didn't it?.  Bad=parking ticket  Good=seeing a bear in downtown Duluth.  And he stayed in the tree.

This is right after they sang "Happy Birthday" to me.
As you can see, no cake.

We are taking one last picture with Elder Damron before he goes home to Arizona.  We will miss him. He was an awesome missionary! We commemorated his leaving by having lunch at Grandma's Restaurant.

We drove up to Thunder Bay, Canada where we visited an Institute class, and a seminary class, a new seminary teacher and the Elder's apartment.  And then we took them to breakfast at the Java Hut.  But we didn't take pictures because it was too rainy.

Then we packed up and went to see Pelican Lake and spend a few days there at a place called Breezy Point.  It really lived up to its name!  Very breezy and rainy.  This is called the "lake area" which is kind of funny in a state of 10,000 lakes.  (There are actually 11,842 lakes bigger than 10 acres in size.)    We took this photo near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  It is even smaller if you drive another hour North. 

 Wade and Patti Newton came and played some Hand and Foot with us.  As you can see, Patti and I had no luck.  It was pretty sad.  Wade, however, is having a pretty good time.

.Ron has been stopping to look at aluminum trailers for months and months.  So he found one for sale and bought it.  Now, I don't know what he will stop to look at now!  But I am comforted knowing I can take all my stuff back to Idaho in 6 months

We went to a Minnesota fish fry at the Conservation Club.  These are the guys frying the fish.  It was excellent!

Pelican Lake, calm and peaceful.  This was just the one afternoon.  The rest of the time there were whitecaps!

I am going to add some pictures that have not happened in Minnesota but have an impact on our lives anyway.  

3rd place in the Pinewood Derby.  Miss you Sean!

THESE PEOPLE ARE COMING HERE TOMORROW!!!

 Mother's day in Utah with Nanalee, Ashlee, Megan, Angela, Afton and Gloria

Here and there!

 The Northern Lakes Second Harvest Food Bank had a big fundraiser called "The Empty Bowl". People from the community, including artists and schoolkids, made ceramic bowls and donated them.  Hundreds! Restaurants donated soup and bread. On the Empty Bowl day, people came to the old Train Depot and each paid $20.00; then they could choose a bowl and have a bowl of soup and bread.  Some of the beautiful art bowls were sold at a silent auction for a lot more than $20. There were lots of volunteers including missionaries!  A great community event.

 We went to Brookfield, Illinois to meet baby Vance .  He is a cutie and it was fun to see the new parents (Scott and Jessica) "parent" him,  He has reddish hair!? 

 This is how we watch a hockey game on TV with sleep deprived parents!  Everyone sound asleep!

We drove all the way to Bismarck, ND(!) for our Seminary and Institute training. In this photo are other senior missionaries who do what we do in Bismarck, Fargo, Rush City, MT, Pierre, SD, and Rapid City, SD.  We learned a lot and broke our diets--a WHOLE table full of snacks!

   I am writing their names so I will remember them:  Brimhall, Metallo, Pearson, Gent, Forsgren and our trainers Troy Matheson and Mark MacDonald.

And THEN, we went to Fargo, ND to a young single adult conference where Elder Stratton taught a workshop on personal finances.  Do you want to know the lesson?  It is:  1) Plan - you are in charge of your finances,  2)  Get a education that will earn you good money.  3)  Invest money so your money can earn money instead of only your time earning money.  4)  Give 10%.  5) Retirement/long-term savings 10%.  6)  Reserve savings 10%  and live on the rest.  Wasn't that interesting?  Well not so much.  But pretty important.

We were home for just 2 nights, then we drove south to visit seminary classes in Pine City, North Branch and Wyoming (the MN town).  Such awesome classes and we took no pics.  But we did find a few fun things to do.  One day we went to Taylor Falls, on the St. Croix river, which divides Minnesota from Wisconsin here.  There is an outdoor sculpture garden with such interesting sculptures, I don't know if they all qualify as art but the artist sure had a good time with his heavy equipment and acres of land.  I will share some of the ones I thought were strange/interesting/artistic.

Yes, this really is a  house, suspended in the air.  Very Oz'ian.

These are lifesize because they used to be alive.

A big cage full of round rocks.  I should have added something for scale but the bigger rocks are bigger than the size of your exercise ball.  so this sculpture is pretty big. And the next one is too.

Lifejacket totem

This one is called Lizard Lounge.

Then on to St. Paul where we met up with other senior missionaries for a conference. It's possible you are confused by our two groups of friends (senior missionaries).  This group in St. Paul are all senior missionaries serving in Minnesota and NONE of them have anything to do with Seminaries and Institutes.  We are lucky to have two groups to associate with.  Such awesome people!

Names: Forbes, Arringtons, Thompsons, Grafs, Soelbergs, Morrisons, Becks and Marzos and Strattons

One of our activities was going to the Minneapolis Museum of Art.  There was a special display there where local florists came in and chose a piece of art and then made a floral sculpture to match the art.  It was fascinating.  I will just post a few.

 Some seemed obvious and others... not so much.

This is Haylee.  She is in my (Ron's) Sunday School class.  She was explaining why she didn't get a hello text from me.  Evidently she had maxed out on her Data Plan.  Then she said "If my GPA was as high as my data usage, I'd have it made for life."  No truer words ever spoken.

And here is a scenery picture.  See, no ice and snow?  And we have some leaves on the trees.  Must be Spring!