Dear Family,
I hope you are all doing
well. Again, I love hearing from you. I had to call two of you this
week, and it was nice to see your faces on FaceTime. Of course Shoshauna
stuck out her tongue. She always does that. And I was able to see
most of the Cleggs reclining on a Saturday afternoon and viewed their two
birds. I didn’t know they had birds. Evidently they roam freely
around the house. I understand they also drop some items as they
roam. Only in the Clegg house do you have free-range animals
And I wanted to say
something about Heather’s newest book, on one of the Salem Witches. As
you all know she is one of your gggg grandmothers. But what I thought was
neat was that Dana is the model for the book cover. She is a model for
her gggg grandmother. How neat is that
As you all probably know
I’m a worrier. I always worry that something will go wrong or not turn
out. Your father is better at either not worrying, or hiding his
worries. Most of the worries I have in Izmir involve the church.
Most of the time I worry that no one will show up. As you know we had 3
in attendance in our first meeting many months ago. I learned at that
meeting that we needed to provide “treats” after the meeting. So for many
months I’ve provided some edibles after church.
We’ve been on our mission for nearly 18 months now, and today I
felt a huge surge of gratitude for “movement” in the church here. Today
every seat was filled in church! That means there were 20 people in the
room. And there were 13 tuned into skype. I’d forgotten my
I-phone…. A very critical part of our services. I left it charging in the
apartment. But I was able to get dad’s I-phone to do the music.
Something I never could have done earlier. I didn’t have enough banana
nut cookies. I’d brought 24 which would have been plenty for a smaller
group. So I hand-passed them around so everyone could get one. (I
have to do that with the elders around). One of the members brought a few
cookies, and I also brought nuts and oranges, so we had enough treats.
We had a guest speaker
from the Ukraine. He mentioned how important it was to recognize that we
are children of God. One of the members taught SS. The new RS
president came with her new baby. We looked almost like a real church group.
Dad got a new counselor. His other one was deported. And for a
moment I stopped worrying about the church here. It seems that it is on
the move. Of the 20 there, 6 were non-members. They all seemed warm
and interested. So, the sun is shining brightly here now. I will
have to bake more cookies. Something I couldn’t do a few months
ago. I’ve made a little progress.
We invited the elders and the Ukranian for Sunday dinner. I
didn’t really have a clue what I’d feed them, but I did have some
ingredients. I made a sweet and sour chicken thing over rice. I
thought it was rather tasty, though no one commented on it.
So, we’ll soldier on for a few more months. Your dad is
really the better soldierer but I’m learning how to bake again, and it seems to
help out here and there.
I love you all,
Mother
No comments:
Post a Comment