Stories from Ruth # 38

Do not expect much from me this week I am exhausted. Our ward just had a 5k and we woke up early to go help with the breakfast and then ran. Yes, I actually ran half of it. This week we visited a lot of members, dropped by a lot of less active members, and did a lot of finding.

We called Harvey to see how he was doing and ended up having a plan of salvation lesson. He was really interested in the spirit world and the resurrection. For someone without much of a religious background it seemed to be familiar to him. It was kind of cool. He is surprisingly mature for his age. Even before we met him he had decided that alcohol was not a good thing and did not drink it. I am really happy to be teaching someone that has a desire to learn.

We met our neighbor Anthony who we have decided is the nicest Englishman ever, and he is genuine.
We had a lesson with this one guy who met with missionaries in the 80's. He understood a lot of the gospel already and wants to continue learning. Sadly we had to refer him to the elders in Southend, but we hope all goes well. 

Remember how I always say I can't speak Spanish? Well, I still can't, but my lovely companion is patient with me and is teaching me how to say "Si quieres bautizarte te compramos torta de walmart." Just kidding! I am learning how to say "Soy una misionera de la iglesia de JesusCristo de los santos de los ultimos dias e Yo se que el libro de Mormon es verdadero." Although I do not personally speak Spanish, the Lord has blessed me to be able to generally understand Spanish when others speak about the gospel. I think it is a wonderful blessing, especially since we keep running into people who speak Spanish.

This Week at Our House #21 Car Repair and Doctors Week

Wow! What a week! I had to bring the van in twice because two things were wrong. The battery was bad and the starter was dying. They had me fix the battery first to see if the starter was not getting enough power. That worked for about a day and then the starter was only clicking into gear about every other time we turned the key, so we took it back and replaced the starter. Additionally, Rachel had to be seen by a doctor for an ear infection that she is still struggling with and Joseph and Anya saw a dentist. It was week! I am hoping this next one will be better.

1. John continues to work hard. He had a bad cold and didn't feel well the whole week, but still worked a lot. He did not put his first game up for sale yet. I believe he decided to add unlockable levels first.
2. I am struggling. I would appreciate prayers from anyone who reads this. We need John to get a job, even if it doesn't pay well. We can get along on a little.
3. Ruth said this to me this week, "This week I have truly come to recognize how often God answers our prayers and how often we do not recognize it. I am grateful that sometimes he waits to answer until the time is right. It is on God's timing that he answers prayers." I appreciate her faith. She is half way through her mission.
4. My mother in law's Bishop approached her and said their ward would help Kate on her mission. We needed that. I think that is an answer to Kate's prayers.
5. Johnny has been such a big help this week. We all rely on him so much. When I was pregnant with him the Holy Ghost whispered to me that I was pregnant with a baby that was better than me, better than my husband, and better than my two other kids. We all know the truthfulness of that. He is everything good and always has been.
6. Sam relies on Adam to carry him around and play with him a lot. I love that Adam will just do it. I think Sam and Adam will have a good relationship when they are older. One of the blessings of having a large family is teens caring for babies.
7. Rachel's ear infection is still a problem. I am almost certain I will need to bring her back to a doctor. With the ear pain, Rachel has been taking baths to help relieve the pressure and Kate has allowed her to bring the ducks into the tub. Rachel's really liked that. Because Rachel has not been able to sleep with the ear pain, John spent a night up with her. They searched through Netflix and Rachel said that Netflix is like dumpster diving. Most of the movies are really trash, while rarely there will be a treasure.
8. Anya had to do a lot more chores this week since Rachel has been out of commission. She has done a good job taking care of things, but then today she woke up not feeling too well.
9. Joseph spent the week mostly outside. He and Adam love to climb our sycamore tree, they catch fire flies at dark, and play tag. I am happy to have such a nice place for them to play.
10. Joshua loves his chicken a lot. He wants to hold it all day. Thankfully, his chicken is growing and seems healthy still.
11. Arwen drew a picture of her and Kate and said it was "Funny, silly, Kate."
12. Susan has been telling her primary teacher that her name is Lila and her primary teacher has been very confused because there is not a Lila on the roll.
13. Samuel got into a fire ants nest and has bites all over his feet and up and down his legs. The poor baby. He loves to be outside a lot, but is too young to understand what fire ants nests are.

Pictures

Stories from Ruth #37

Ruth has officially finished half her mission!!

This week I have truly come to recognize how often God answers our prayers and how often we do not recognize it. I am grateful that sometimes he waits to answer until the time is right. It is on God's timing that he answers prayers.

There is a recent convert here who has not been able to come to church and she was close friends with many of the members but they can never seem to see her. When I was with Sister Georgieva we visited her and we love her. She told us about her little boy and asked us if we knew where she could get graham crackers. We of course did not, but I prayed for them and felt prompted that we would find them. Three months later I had found nothing. However, this Thursday we went to Sister Lallyette's house and her daughter gave me cinnamon gum. Yes! Then she pulled out a new box of graham crackers and gave them to me. We were going to see Clara the next day so I texted her that we had found graham crackers. Well she told us the next day that ten minutes before the text her little boy had been praying to have smores with graham crackers. At first to her it seemed silly, but then she received her answer. God does answers prayers especially the prayers of children.
I also prayed for people to message us and two individual people texted us and told us they could meet! Yeah!

We met some Jehovah's Witnesses in the park and all they wanted to do was argue, so I pulled out 2

Nephi 29:7-12 and read it to them. They all stopped for a moment and were quiet. Then the main man who wanted to argue asked me to hand it to him. I complied. He read it again verse by verse and after each line exclaimed that it was true. He then handed it back and changed his argument to disagree with something else. To me it was a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. He could not argue with the word of God, for he cannot deny it.
Harvey came with us to a dinner appointment on Monday and it was a lot of fun. We taught a lesson about families and how to come closer to each other through the gospel and everyone got really involved.

The greatest miracle to me of all happened this morning. We had a lesson at the chapel with Harvey and Sister Lallyette. We talked to him more about who God is, because if we do not know that God is our father in heaven and is not some ambient force, then it is hard to pray. Then we discussed receiving and recognizing answers to prayers and the importance of keeping the commandments. He felt that everything we said was good. He reads, prays, and every time he meets with us he feels that it is good. We explained more about how the Holy Ghost speaks to us and who he is. After all this we invited him to be baptized and he agreed. I was so happy. He truly is seeking to know who God is and is willing to commit and to live all the commandments in order to receive his answer. I know that he will be blessed and I know that I am so blessed to be a part of this. I am grateful to be teaching him. He is seeking after truth.

 

This Week at Our House # 20

Because we are continuing school to a lesser extent through the summer, we decided to start our summer schedule this week. It was nice to have less to do. I wanted to get my garden finished this week, but the rain prevented that. I did however, get the second set of corn in and the rows ready for a third set that I will plant in two weeks.

1. John continues to work hard to start his business. Kate helped him a lot with art work for his website and then did a lot of the designing of it on Saturday. I think he will have his first game up on the app store this week. I may be saying so too early though. He continues to apply for jobs daily as well.
2. Sometimes I am in love with my life and my big happy family and sometimes I feel so discouraged about life. Sometimes, it just feels like more than I can handle. We have had to rely on family and church to help us and now our car is having trouble and again, we will have to rely on other people to help us get that fixed. It wouldn't start when we got out of church today and we live an hour drive away. We prayed together and the car started. We made it home and then it would not start again. It looks like this week will be car repair week and hopefully no towing.
3. Ruth was very excited to be staying in Chelmsford. She has investigators that she loves and she fits in well with the ward members. It is unusual for her mission president to keep someone in an area for more than 2 transfers, so she feels quite blessed.
4. Kate has become a really good gourmet cook. I think I am a good cook, but Kate has helped bring our meals up a step or 2 in the past year. She now makes really good Chicago style deep dish pizza.
5. Johnny's computer has been having trouble, so he has not gotten as much work in on his game as he would like. But, when he can, he really works hard, and often 10 hours or more in a day. John will tell him it is okay to quit.
6. Adam is still working on math for the summer. Our algebra one math book is really more algebra one and two, but I have found that having more of the algebra two stuff down helps a lot with understanding geometry. So while Adam is well past anything he would have been taught in public school math for 7th grade, I am continuing him on through the summer.
7. I allowed Rachel to lie next to me in bed this week after the little kids have gone to bed and watch Forensic Files. She is starting to get some older kid privileges and I know she loves it.
8. Anya loves Beatrix Potter. She read all of her books to Arwen when they went to bed at night, and now she is coming to me and reading her favorite ones. 
9. As soon as I asked Joseph to help in the garden, he took off at a fast sprint. I made him come back and help. Once he gets started, he seems to like it quite well. Joseph planted all of our corn this time around. I put the holes in, but he put the seeds in and covered them up. 
10. Whenever I go to work in my garden, Josh comes out with his chicken. The chicken forages for worms and bugs and Josh talks to me a lot. I really love that my kids come out with me and spend time with me while I work.
11. Arwen loves the chickens and ducks. She wants to hold them and snuggle them all day long. Then she prayers for them to survive her love.
12. John told Arwen to say her prayers. Susan then started telling Arwen what to say and Arwen said exactly what Susan said. Susan began Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and then continued to name all of our chickens and then requested that they do not die. (We have 7 chicks).
13. Sam has been carrying around a duplo golden treasure chest, 3 pencils, and a little cardboard box for two days. The treasure chest, he just seems to like. The little box seems to be his personal laptop. He uses the three pencils to write on his little box. It is pretty cute. He sits up like anyone with a laptop and looks like he is working. John asked him if he was holding his laptop and Sam closed it in just the same way people close a laptop, and then looked important.

Pictures

Stories from Ruth #36

 

Against all odds I am pulling up a permanent residence here in Chelmsford. My new companion will be Sister Lezano which is kind of cool since she sat with me when the prophet came. Presjdent must have just looked at us and said "oh, those two are going to be companions."

Well I am excited but next transfer is going to be crazy. The only person staying in my district is Elder Schönemeier. The Maldon elders are getting whitewashed by Elder Smith who was the AP when I started my mission.

I am excited to stay. Honestly I love Chelmsford. Also it's one of the nicest areas in the mission which surprises me. To be honest I thought I would mostly serve in small, ghetto towns, but I am not complaining. The members here are amazing and so are the people we are teaching.

Harvey brings me hope that there are people who want to change. He is so sincere in his desire to

learn and to live the commandments. This week we taught him word of wisdom which he struggled to understand when the elders taught him. He used to drink green tea everyday with three tea bags inside. When we taught him this time we focused on why we keep the word of wisdom and how as we keep it we are better able to receive revelation from God. We showed him a video of a testimony from a missionary we knew and their struggle with green tea and he loved it. He committed to start living the word of wisdom and I know as he does it will be easier for him to receive revelation from God, because every commandment we do not keep estranges us from God. 

Every sin is also addictive and when our minds our clouded by sin it is hard to recognize answers from a still small voice. We also met him with Chloe, a recent convert from the other ward, he asked her a lot of questions about how it had helped her in her life. Then she testified of the sabbath day and to our joy he came on Sunday! Sister Strate and I were so happy! It is amazing because we can see how much happier he is already.

 

Ruth loves her little blender because she loves smoothies

On Thursday Sister Strate and I were directed to go to a certain street and there tract this certain area. Most of the houses were empty besides one guy who was atheist and never wanted to know God. Then after about ten or so houses a little Indian woman opens the door. We told her that we were missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and she invited us in. That was the first time I have ever been invited in so I was a bit confused. We went in and sat down and taught her about the whole restoration and read some of the Book of Mormon with her. She loved it and said that she would tell her husband. The whole time while we were teaching her she was smiling. When we taught her about the apostasy and because of it there are so many different ways to baptize although in Ephesians it says one lord, one faith, and one baptism, she got excited because she always wondered why there were. We are going to visit her again on Wednesday. It was a miracle from the Lord.

This Week at Our House # 19 We Skype with Ruth

The highlight of this week happened today when we skyped with Ruth. She is looking beautiful, happy, and healthy, so I am satisfied. I loved talking to her and hearing her voice. All of the kids were so excited and had little things they wanted to say. The earlier parts of the week were average home school with a lot of gardening and yard work thrown in.

1. John continues to work hard on starting his business. He's developing games and starting a website to promote them. He continues to have Johnny and Adam work alondside him learning how to program and develope their own games and now he has Kate working on the art for his website. 
2. I have colorado potato beetles attacking my potatoes, so I have spent hours in the garden squishing and killing beetles. I think I am winning since my plants still look healthy. I heard that they can take out an entire crop in 2 weeks and that they have grown resistant to most pesticides both organic and industrial. I am pleased with the rest of my garden. I have lots of baby plants sprouting. The corn, onions, watermelon, honeydew, and yellow summer squash all began sprouting this week. I will plant another set of corn on Saturday, so we get corn twice. I started to see if I can get some sweet potato slips so we can grow sweet potatoes, but I may have started that too late. Anyway, I am enjoying being outdoors so much, and having the kids there playing or helping.
3. Ruth is looking as beautiful as ever. Maybe even prettier than she used to. She has one investigator that really wants to know truth, and that has made her mission so far.
4. Kate always worries about her ducklings, whether they are too hot, or too cold or eating the right or wrong things. It's cute. I think I know what she will be like as a first time mom. Kate was so excited about talking to Ruth that she forgot it was mother's day. She even walked through the stores wondering why their were roses and things out everywhere. Now she is sitting in bed feeling depressed because she is no longer talking to Ruth.
5. Johnny has been the most helpful person trying to make sure I have a good mother's day. 
6. Josh named his chick "cutie pecky". Adam nicknamed Josh's chick, "hecky pecky" and it has stuck for everyone except Josh. Adam is my main garden helper. He comes out whenever I am out and waters and weeds and digs. He was the one who helped me figure out how to set up a temporary chicken run so we could move the chicks outside without having to run to the store first. And he will probably be the one to help me paint the deck and repair the room in the next few weeks.
7. Rachel read 10 books over two weeks and I let the kids get food treats for each book that they read between my grocery shopping trips. Rachel choose simply orange juice and the best cut of steak that the store sold. She has refined tastes and big ambitions.
8. Anya has been writing lots of poems and little rhymes and is just doing a great job with them everyday. She recited a couple to Ruth.
9. Joseph has been wearing his favorite fleece superman pajamas while we have been having 90 degree weather. I asked him why and he said because when he wears these pajamas he is never cold.
10. When I finally got to cleaning and organizing the garage, I was able to make the play area I had planned on making. The kids have loved it spent lots of time there. Joshua has spent hours there since I used his birthday money to get him some play dough and he has loved it. 
11. John was watching youtube videos of blue whales with Josh and Arwen and Arwen said, "It looks like a giant cucumber!" I thought that was an accurate description. Josh felt insulted for the blue whales.
12. John has always used this plastic dinosaur to tease the girls by having the dinosaur say lovey-sappy things to them. John calls it the "romatisaurus". He got Suzy to shout out, "I am not Lila!" by having the romantisaurus say things like, "I love you, my lovely Lila." But now the the romantisaurus is sleeping, Suzy is back to saying she is "Wiwa."
13. Sam is 18 months now!!! He won't go to nursery anytime soon, though. John and I were gone for three hours this week getting our temple recommends and Sam cried the whole time, even though he was home and had all of his siblings.

Pictures

We had this old fashioned plain doing tricks in the air over our house.

Our play area in the garage and the kids enjoying playdough with their playdough toys that have been in storage for two years.

Our temporary outdoor chicken run. We plan to build a wooden frame to connect it to, so it can be moved around the yard.