Happenings

Kay and I had the missionaries over this week (our social life). they texted me a few hours before to see if they could bring an extra missionary to dinner. It was the Mission President. so we had them over to our Storage unit/house. I had a hard time finding drinking glasses for everyone. Not one matched. I made soup bowls the day before and vegetable chowder and Kay decided to rotisserie 2 chickens so they were fed pretty well. We went out for “team-ups”. The two district leaders went with the mission President and we went with Elder Savage. We first visited the neighbors who are just coming out more to church and surprise surprise we went to visit one of my ladies I was assigned to visit teach. Shayla has been inactive for quite some time but when she asked “who is it” and heard “missionaries” she got herself together and answered the door. I chatted her up finding she was married to a Muslim who is at Oxford University in Medical school and they have one daughter together and she has two older kids. Humm Shayla is living in North Omaha in an old house with her grandma. go figure.




Thursday his renter from Denver said his furnace went out so Kay authorized a service company to go over who called to say to replace a motor it would be $800. The next morning we were off with a furnace in the truck driving to Denver. We drove 8 hours, picked up some car parts, installed a new furnace (my job was to keep Kay company) in the crawl space under the house with the spiders and dirt/sand floor. I could stand up if I made sure there were no pipes above my head. Kay made me a nice chair on a overturned 5 gallon bucket with a cinderblock on it.



Oh, I was at church and one of the bishopric members asked to speak to me. he tried to talk to me last week but we ran out right after church. last week they had a Relief society calling but they changed it this week to counselor in the Primary. I asked if I could observe this week and they said yes and did I want to do music time in a few minutes so… I did music time, for my first time ever. New things happening all the time.

new adventure

I am on my new adventure.  Kay and I are living in Omaha Nebraska for a few months in his low income apartments.  I have people living in my home in Utah taking care of things there.  I had my phone number transfered so if you need to call, use my Utah home phone number.

We drove out to Omaha mid January just in time to go to Ethan's baptism.  Ethan is my oldest (8years old) grandson.  My parents, who are serving an LDS mission in the ManhattanTemple had a break so they flew out to Omaha for the occasion.  We put them up in our apartment the first night, showed them some Mormon history sites in the area and went to Ethan's basketball game.  

the baptism was at 4PM at their church.  grandpas gave talks, I lead the music and the other two grandmas said the prayers.  It was nice.

the weather started getting bad as we were leaving the baptism so we decided to stay overnight on Saturday night at Rachael's (30 min away).  the other two grandparents had the bedrooms so Kay and I slept on a mattress in the partially finished basement where the 3 older kids were sleeping.  They were all ready asleep.    We ended up staying on.  Church was canceled but one ward had a late sacrament meeting we attended.

Monday My parents, Rachael's 4 kids and I went to the zoo. Rachael stayed home with the baby.  Omaha has a great Zoo!  Dad and I went and talked to the internship people about Janell and her application. We went out to dinner at Olive Garden with the whole family that evening and Kay and I finally left Rachael's on Tuesday when I took my parents to the airport.  It was fun having them here to see where we live and what Kay is doing here.

Where do I live?  In North Omaha in a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 of the bedrooms being used for storage and 1/3 of the living room being used as an office/storage/tool shed.  it used to be 2/3 but I have been working on that.  We have old tiled flooring which is why I let Kay weld his snow plow blade he keeps on his 4wd truck in the living room.  Sparks flew everywhere and except for catching a towel on fire, It worked.

No live mice this trip.  I guess the 30 blocks of poison and traps I put out in November finally scared them off!

Sunday we had normal church.  the missionaries passed out their dinner schedule.  I signed up for  2 dinner appointments and noticed they were free Wednesday.  I was busy  but my week changed.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were snow emergency days.  It snowed and the wind blew and the schools were closed.  Windchill was -25 so I took the advice of the news and stayed home.  Monday I made a huge batch of cookie dough.   Tuesday I looked at my food supply and decided I have everything to make lasagna except the noodles so I found a recipe using uncooked noodles and used spaghetti.  It made a lot.  Kay said it was OK but didn't want to eat 12 servings so whatahyagonna do?

I called the missionaries.  they still didn't have an appointment and were excited to come soooooo, I made 2 loaves of french bread, got out some shrimp and some vegetables.  It was a success.  3 missionaries polished off the lasagna, loved the shrimp and gobbled up the homemade bread.  I sent home the leftovers with them.   My friend made an easy dessert so I decided to try it.  I used small corelle bowls but you are supposed to use raimken bowls.  Mine worked great.

recipe:
cookie batter to equal 2 cookies (the size of 2 walnuts)
press in the bottom of a small bowl
bake in oven until barely krisped on the edges and soft in the middle, about 10 min @ 350 degrees
remove from oven, let cool 10 min.
when ready to serve, scoop some vanilla ice cream in the center and serve!  yummy

After dinner Kay and I went to an appointment with the missionaries but we were stood up.  We'll try again some other time.  I guess the temperature will be up tomorrow.

cruise Tahiti #5

We got on the cruise and decided this is the way to see Tahiti.  We had stops at Rangiroa, Huahinie Riatea, Bora Bora for 2 days and back to Moorea.  We snorkled, visited a Perl farm and bought pearls in Ranhiroa, in Huahinie we snorkeled, we took a feed the sharks and sting rays tour with a float snorkle trip and we rented electric bikes for a trip around the island and 2 snorkle stops where the backs of my legs are fried.  I am living on OTC pain killers.  We have loved our friends on this small Princess cruise.  Only 725 passengers. In Bora Bora the locals spent the day following the wake of our shuttle.  Look no hands!

Tahiti #4

Kay asked Garline if there was someone who could take him fishing.  She said her son Rongo would love to on Wednesday.  She let Kay borrow Rongo’s spear and he practiced in the evening.   Kay has a spear gun but hasn’t used it as it is not clear in any of our waters.  Garline  picked us up at 2PM. and drove us up the bay to a public dock.  Rongo had a friend come who speaks English in the home with his Hawaiian mother.  The interpreter, His 10 year old sister told me she didn’t have internet at their house, because they didn’t have electricity.  Kay and the boys snorkeled from 2-5:30PM catching about 20 little fish with their spear guns.

Kay asked to keep the gun and got up early on Thursday catching 3 medium size fish. We ate 4 different kinds of fish for breakfast, and gave the spear gun and a fish to Garline’s mother-in-law who worked at our resort, before catching our ferry from Moorea to Papaete to catch our cruise ship.  (anyone who knows Kay knows this was the highlight of his trip.)

We walked from the ferry straight to the cruise ship and ate lunch then walked 20 min in 90% humidity and 90 degrees to the Papaete Mormon Temple. We met the office couple, Bowmans from Oregon.  They took us to the mission office after we got a good look at the temple.

Tahiti #3

Monday we got a board Dr. Poole’s dolphin watch with 2 other couples and 30 minutes in the engine failed so we had to limp back to the dock on the emergency small engine.  We rented a car and circled the island stopping at belvedere   look out and a black pearl shop where Kay chose pearls for his daughters. We walked to the fish marked and bought Mahi-mahi The ward Primary President took us to her family’s pineapple plantation and we picked pineapple and mangos.  We stopped at the area authority’s house and he happened to be home.  He filled us up on fruits. Garline showed Kay the sticks they use to get the mangos off the trees. we stopped at the pineapple processing plant  and saw trucks lined up for their drop off. These are what they call Tahitian Christmas trees, they only bloom in December.

Tahiti #2

Today was Sunday.  We knew there was a Mormon Church in the tiny town of Pao Pao Moorea so we went for a walk  Saturday night looking for it.  We quickly found it on the main road right after a bend in the road about 2 minutes walk from our hotel. 

9AM we walked in and were warmly welcomed in French.  They gave us a hand written paper with the song book page numbers listed so we wouldn’t get lost.  Songs were sung in French and then Tahitian.  The sacrament meeting overflowed to the hallway where chairs were neatly lined up in rows but we were ushered into the main building to sit next to another visiting couple from Denver.  The wife was a member and husband wasn’t.

After the fast and Testimony meeting the other couple went home and I requested to go to Primary so Kay tagged along.  First I went to the 4/5 year old class and then to Sharing time.  In between meetings I gave the Primary President 2 sets of 6 piece felt nativities and she had the children put the pieces on the tree in the corner.  When the children were singing she asked if I could take letters they wrote to  President Monson last week to him. I said sure and offered to take a picture of the Primary.  I made sure they knew I would not be able to see President Monson but I would make sure they got to him.  The Primary President (left front) got the nursery children for the picture too.

That evening  at 4:45PM the Primary President knocked on our door with her mother-in-law who works at our hotel and asked if we would like a ride to the First Presidency Christmas devotional on the other side of the island (15 minutes).  We said sure and enjoyed a few words we heard in English… Grinch, I know my Redeemer lives…  Never have we been so thankful for  the music which is literally half of the meeting.  We enjoyed the car ride.  The primary President took English in school and lived for 6 months in Hawaii a long time ago.  A member that just went through the temple last week for the first time invited us to have a tour of a pineapple plantation on Tuesday.  See were blessed to be able to go to church.

Dear Ethan, Sean and Jenna Tahiti#1

Grandpa and I are in Tahiti.  Find it on your map at home. Our airplane flight over the Pacific ocean was 9 hours.  We had an overnight flight  and arrived in Fa aa  Tahiti at 5 in the morning.  We were greeted at the airport by 2 men playing the ukulele. We collected our luggage and took a bus to our ferry boat.  The ferry boat took 30 minutes and we arrived on the island of Moorea. Everyone wanted us to take a taxi to our hotel for about 30 dollars but we asked around and found a bus, actually a big diesel truck with an attached box with benches, where we paid 3 dollars each and they took us to our hotel.  Our hotel is in Cooks Bay.   We walked to a grocery store.  food is very expensive here.  1 dozen eggs are 4 dollars.  a package of cookies like we have at home are 4 dollars.  this is about 4X what we pay. Luckily we found baguettes (bread) for 50 cents,. Pineapples and bananas are the same price as US on sale so that was our first meal.  Bread, a whole pineapple and bananas.  they told us to buy our water because the water is only good for coffee We have a kitchen and boiled our water, put it in the fridge and that is our water.  We’ll let you know if we get sick.