Branch Christmas Party

We had another busy week. We received another load of mattresses at the mission office.  An 18 wheeler drives up and the driver drops off loads the mattresses. It is the office staff's job to move them from the parking lot to the basement of the office. Luckily another Sr. Elder came by to help the men and I (Barbara) dodged mattress duty again. These will be delivered to new apartments and to existing apartments where mattresses need to be replaced. The mattress with cars came off the bunk bed in the mission office basement. I'm not sure why it was in the picture. Jason said it's for the " Jr". elders. 

We got a new van for the mission assistants. It took 3 days of going to the dealer before the Halvorsen's got it picked up. Then it needed a trailer hitch put on for a bike rack on the back, so Jason was the lucky one who got to finally bring it to the office, because the Halvorsen's were off setting up a new apartment.

This picture is of the cute sister missionaries. It was red day (they dress in matching colors for District meeting) and they were sweet enough to pose in front of the office tree.

My job is forwarding the mail. The perks of doing all that mail, is that  I see cute letters like this. The Santa is hand drawn on the envelope. Someone is loved!

Tuesday night at 6:00 and Wednesday night at 7:30 we got to go teach with the missionaries. We taught twin sisters Jamella and Jameela. Jameela has a 1 year old daughter, who loves to entertain us. They live in an apartment building that used to be a big high school.  Jamella is planning to be baptized in January.  They were taking a bus to Chicago to stay with their mother for Christmas. Teaching the gospel is always a highlight for us.

Next comes our branch pictures. Wednesday night at 6:00 we went to the church to help set up for the Christmas party. We have one room that switches from chapel to multi-purpose room. We could set up 8 tables in it. Different ladies decorated a table. We had long tables with food set up in the Relief Society room.

Saturday night was our party. You can see that the room was packed. We ended up setting up more tables in the foyer and some ate in the Relief Society room. We had over 100 in attendance. President Russell invited them all to come to church the next day so they could make us a ward.  However, On Sunday we had a small crowd. It seems that lots of people were home sick with colds and flu. Santa even made an appearance at our party.

Sister Russell (who is the Branch presidents wife standing at the podium) was in charge of the party  and she did an amazing job.  She is an amazing woman. She plays the piano for us to sing. Then she sang a solo. She brought all the table cloths and other decorations and cooked all the ham and rolls. Then stayed to the last to clean up and take everything home to wash. The Russell's live about 40 miles from the branch building. There was a thunderstorm and tornado alert that night and we barely got home. We had to stop in the road at one point as we couldn't see a thing, because of the windblown rain.   Luckily we could take back roads. The Russell's had to get home on the freeway, so we were worried about them. But of course, they were back again on Sunday. She played the piano again, sang another solo. Then she Taught a Sunday School class and taught Relief Society- because the teacher was sick. Love those people!

On Saturday morning, we picked up 2 members at 8:00 am and headed to the temple. The Hiatt's picked up 1 and met us there.  It was stake temple day and our time to do  baptisms was 9:00 am. It was a great experience. We take the people who are new members. President Russell met us there and he did the baptizing. We stopped at McDonald's for breakfast on the way home.

Sunday we fed the missionaries. We brought them to our house and had pizza. Monday we are having a big Christmas conference, so all the missionaries will be in Louisville. The ones who live more than an hour away will come in tonight and stay overnight with other missionaries, in the office or mission home, etc. We are having the Thaxton's a Sr. couple from Olney, Ill. stay with us, so we are trying out our new air mattress.
Jason and I are hoping to make it to the conference tomorrow. We need to hang out at the office so we get all the Christmas mail that is delivered and then we take it to the conference to distribute.  We already have a room full of stuff to take over. The conference is at a stake center about 30 minutes from the office. 

We are grateful to each of you for your thoughtfulness and love and wish you a wonderful Christmas.