Cool Weather, Cooler Cars, and The Coolest Kids!

 The weather cooled down dramatically over the weekend. The humidity makes things feel a little colder than the temperature so we had to bundle up a bit!
We had a fun experience this week. On Thursday we had the thought to drop by the mission office. We weren't sure why, but it seemed like a good idea. There wasn't much going on but John started talking to the Senior Elder in charge of cars, Elder Cluff about a good auto body place to our car repaired. (we had someone hit and run while we were parked - not too bad but no fun) While they were talking, Sister Cluff, the mission secretary asked me if I speak enough Spanish to be able to make a phone call for her. She had been trying to reach the relief society president for the Spanish ward that was providing lunch for the upcoming zone conference to tell her that the date had been moved up a week. When she finally reached her she found that the relief society president didn't speak any English. I was nervous about calling, because it is much easier to talk to someone in person, but I decided to give it a try! I started out writing out what I would say, and right then our daughter Shauna called. She served a mission in Chile and I knew she would be able to help me know what to say. After getting some help from Shauna, and saying a quick prayer, I took a deep breath and made the call. She was able to understand me, and I was even able to go off script a little bit. The greatest part was that John came up just as I was making the call, so he didn't know that I had gotten help and had written out to what I needed to say, so he was pretty surprised to hear me talking away in Spanish. He said he was thinking, "Boy, she got a lot more help from having a tutor than I did!" It was a small thing but since I have always wanted to learn more Spanish, I felt like it was a little blessing for me!

We attended the Greens Bayou Spanish Ward, a different one from the first Sunday we were here. This is the ward that we served with cleaning out houses in Beaumont. A counselor in the Mission Presidency, Elder Morales and his wife attend this ward, and they had encouraged us to join them. It was nice because they both are bilingual so they were a great help.

It was the Primary Program this Sunday which made it a lot of fun - familiar songs and it seems that children are same the world over! There were confident children, shy children, those that wanted to get a laugh and those that were so tiny they could hardly reach the microphone. I was pretty impressed that they all seemed to have their parts memorized.




The spirit was strong as these sweet children testified of gospel truths with word and song.

I was a little bit more confident introducing myself in Relief Society this time, and John was greatly relieved that they didn't ask him to!

                                                                   

After church on Sunday we went for a walk and there was a car show at a park less than a block from our apartment. The weather was beautiful and it was fun to stroll around and look at cool cars.

Today was our first Zone Conference for the Texas Houston East Mission. It was great to be with a lot of young missionaries and feel of the spirit there!  President and Sister Hewlett did such a great job of teaching - we learned a lot! Then we got to have the delicious luncheon prepared by the Greens Bayou Ward Relief Society - the one I had made phone call about. We love being here and hope that we are contributing enough to the health and well being of these great missionaries!

Maybe one day I'll get better at knowing how to arrange these photos and add text - but until then this will have to do!