Thanksgiving's Looking a Lot Like Christmas!

We are seeing signs of Christmas here - it seems to be what we all look forward to!

Some neighbors in our apartment complex have some unique lights.

We had to include a photo of this beautiful antique Jaguar!

Last week we went looking for an Eddie Bauer store where they were having a sale, and we ended up at this beautiful shopping center - Market Street.

Now we would love to go back at night to see it with all of the lights on!

The highlight for us was this little restaurant that had great food! 

John was happy to have some Crystal hot sauce and the hushpuppies were sooooo good!

                          There was some artwork to make us more home sick for New Orleans!

On Friday night our ward had a Thanksgiving dinner.  They were surprised to learn that we don't usually have a Thanksgiving dinner at church. John said, "We usually have a ward Christmas dinner." They said, "Oh we have that too!" Let's face it, Latino wards are just better at celebrating!

They had a DJ and fun dancing after dinner. When we told them that their parties are way more fun than ours they said, "Everyone says that!" 

I love the idea of families dancing together - there were children, teens and seniors along with a few couples. So much fun!!

We got another set of missionaries assigned to our ward, so now we have two sisters and four elders!

Last weekend was Stake Conference. Our stake president is a news anchor here, and he was such a great speaker. We thought he was a native Spanish speaker, but then he talked about getting a tutor to learn Spanish for his job. We attended the Saturday evening session - it was in English but they had headphones for those needing to hear it in Spanish. And both prayers and one talk were in Spanish - We loved it! Our Mission President spoke about preparing your missionaries for service and I took some notes that I'll share for those of you preparing children or grandchildren for missionary service or just for life!

1) Teach them to work! Missionary work is just that - hard work.

2) Teach them coping skills (that don't include going into their room alone to play video games or watch a movie on their phone).

3) Teach them interpersonal skills - give them opportunities to learn to talk to people face to face with good eye contact. The art of being able to have a conversation is being lost.

4) Let them fail! Resist the urge to rescue them from difficult situations.

5) Teach them ways to resolve conflict (they will need this with their companions)

6) Teach them about their bodies - or the world will. He suggested a video - 

"Chastity, What are the Limits?"

7) Help them develop a Testimony of the Gospel and to learn to recognize the Spirit. He said that many missionaries that come out have never fasted. 

We see the missionaries who struggle, who have not been prepared and it is not fun for them, their companion or the mission presidents! Those who are well prepared usually hit the ground running. They will have hard times too, and learn a lot about themselves, but they have a better chance of having a great experience.

On Sunday we went to the English session in the morning and the Spanish session in the afternoon, which was great because some of the talks were the same so it made it easier to follow in Spanish. The above photo is our little ward choir from our Greens Bayou ward. They did a great job!

In both sessions the stake president asked all of the missionaries to stand up, then he asked us to come to the front and sing, "Called to Serve." It was fun to sing with the young missionaries.

He also had the youth ages 16 - 18 join us. In English there are just two verses, but in Spanish there are four, so the congregation joined in for the last two verses.

This cute family was sitting next to us and they had two cute little boys fighting over Beyblades - it made us homesick for Asher and Liam!

And finally, Elder Davis thought this was a great name for a mulch company!

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! We will be missing our family but are content knowing that we are where we are supposed to be right now. Let's get ready to Light the World!