Bill

This guy made our day. He was baptized in August. Has poor health but has been seriously looking for a job and coming in daily. this morning someone gave us a lead for a tax realted job that we thought would be just right for him. Mike (aka Bp. Dohm) suggested that we look into it. It looked good but Bill didn't have any suit jacket or suits or ties or probably button shirts to wear and his hair was to his shoulders. It was recently cut from being almost waist lenght and he gave it to "locks of love". He just has a glow about him.

Jerry called the friends who run CCC (Community Christian Concern) and arranged for them to get him something to wear for his interview. We give them lots of cases of food and they give food and clothes to the needy. they screen them like we do too.

Bill went off to the CCC. After lunch he came back in with a huge smile and was wearing this suit, shirt and tie. His hair to his shoulders and a big fake diamond earring in his left ear. Mike took one look and said. OK,today is the day for the haircut. He called a sister in the ward and she was ready to cut hair so he took him there for them each to have a haircut. this lady gives free hairacuts to anyone who needs them and goes to the prison and rest homes to serve in that way.

He came back with an even bigger smile and had also taken out the earring at Mike's suggestion and was happy to do it.

He went off to the interview and called in just a little while to say that the position had already been filled but had a good talk with the guy in charge and left his name and application.

He is pumped and we are excited for him and the huge difference it has made in him. He said "wow, I have had so many blessings today that I just can't believe it. I feel like a million bucks!

some days are quiet and not much happening but today was popping all day. God knows and cares for every one of his children.

bill told me his story and a fantastic story of his son. that is for another time.

Saturday night and sunday was the Gulfport Stake Conference with Yoshihiko Kikuchi of the first quorum of the seventy. He was wonderful. His spirit is so strong and he speaks with great wisdom and conviction. He told of the atonement of the Savior and his last days in a very personal and sacred manner. WE all felt closer to the Savior through his eyes. He stressed that husbands should treat their wives with more courtesy and always open the car door for them and respect them. Wives are not a possession they are daughters of God. Women must learn to let their husbands give them this respect and learn to be ladies and stay in the car as long as it takes. We heard some funny stories about that too if you can imagine. He talked about tithing by taking a bite from an apple and illustrating the bite seaction as being stingy with God. He spoke of the great blessings that temples are and how sacred they are and what a privilege it is to be able to go there and even for a child to touch it. He told of his little grandson touching it and being so thrilled and singing "I Love to See The Temple"

Eld K is a fine singer and he sung to us as well and had the stake , mission and temple Presidents and counselors stand and sing "As I Have Loved You. but it was Elder K in the mike and he brought tears to our eyes.

Tuesday night we went to the Baton Rouge Temple and he was in the session with our ward. there were 32 people from our ward there. 40 in the session. That included the temple Pres, Elder K and 3 other stake Presidents. We got to shake his had and introduce ourselves. We had the Stake Pres. wife give him a DVE of Donna Carson from us since he visited her and asked that a book be written about the service. He thanked us for the DVD and we told him that his visit meant a lot to Donna.

Afterward we went with the Earnharts (Missionaries) to eat at "Copeland's" they specialize in Cheesecake. sis E and I split one. It is the best thing I ever tasted. It was a white chocolate and macadamia nut cheesecake. MMMM heavenly. we didn't get home until 12:30 AM but it was a day well spent.

Tue morning we attended the career workshop taught by Marguerite Garcia and Bp. Dohm. we enjoyed avery minute of it. It was really helpful to us to get to know the class members better too.

this is an award that was presented to the church and to Mike Dohm (our director and Bishop)from the Employment services and Bishop's Storehouse. Our center is where all the great Mormon Helping Hands came from and where all the donations of food and supplies from the church were distributed. There was a nice article in the church News about it and I "just happened" to find it in my brief case after we recieved our call. It was published in Feb. 2006. I don't believe in coincidences. I had to take a special picture of this award that was presented by the Slidell Fire Department. It is really neat. This aid given by the church to the victims of Katrina (almost everyone in a huge area here) changed the feelings of most of the people here toward the Church and we are now finally recognized as Christians and good people in the community by almost everyone.

I havae been trying to download the pictures of our apartment and Employment center but it is very very slow. we just installed the AT&T internet service. I am trying to be patient. How long can 3 pictures take? Maybe 10 minutes or so it looks like that it took. the apartment is nice but on the third floor. We are handling that OK. Jerry does all the heavy hauling of things but we think about what we buy and remember that it has to go all the way up here.

On Dec. 4th we toured temple square at night to see the lights and all the beautiful things. then on Dec. 5th we had the blesssing of taking Michelle to the temple for her endowments. what a special day that was. We are so proud of Michelle,. she is so capable and loved the temple. she is a pure vessel. She cares for her mother and does a great job. Her siblings are so supportive too. We got to have a nice visit with them that evening. After the temple we went to Chuck A Rama for dinner and took Michelle and Evelyn, Kendall and Todd and his fiance' Beverly , Lois and golden were there and De and Mary met us there too. It was a great day! The temple square was awesome to say the least. Before dark we went to the 10th floor of the Jos. Smith Mem. bldg and had a very luxurioius, decidant meal at the "Roof". It was fabulous. Yeah, costly too but oh well, it was almost our "last supper". Mary and De served us the real "last supper " before our mission and Kendall was able to be there too. It was great to spend that time with him. I didn't take enough pictures at the gathereings. Just caught up in the moment and spaced it!

MTC

Here we are at the MTC. What a great place. We are pointing to New Orleans on the map. The bkie riders are outside the buildings and the group are the welfare missionaries who are assigned to employment like us. One couple is going to Indonesia one to the Phillipines and one to Nashville Tennessee area whith a mission more like ours. We took all of our training together. They are amazing people and we enjoyed them, the Thompsons,from Utah, Lukes from Pheonix and Kinneys from New Jersey.

Mission

these pictures are from our visit to Welfare Square. the pictures of the starving girl who is 8 years old are the before and only 6 months after she began taking a supplement that is made at Welfare Square. It is cooked up like a cereal and is called ATMIT. It is just basically powedered milk enriched, oatmeal flour and a little sugar and salt for taste. This product can save a childs life. It has saved thousands of children and only takes about $10.00 to do so. The product they were using in Africa was no longer available because they lost their goats to draught and they were using goat milk. They asked the wefare center if they could make something so BYU did the research and came up with the formula. You can save lives by donating your money to Humanitarian Services and even better, go on a humanitarian mission.--The cheese is made and trimmed and the trimmings go to the Cathoic church along with the lunch meat and bread for a huge sandwich program they have where they will give anyone who asks a sandwich there at the "Church of madeline" I think it is called. Anyway, the Church from Welfare Square works closelly with the Catholics to feed the poor on this project. Welfare square smells like fresh bread and they served us fresh bread and peanut butter and jam and cheese at the end of our instruction there. Yum.

Date Nut Pudding

Make a Smilebox recipe

Grand Canyon

This is so huge and amazing. what a place. We loved seeing it. the following poast is of Bryce Canyon. It is such a fabulous "up close " look. Wow! the angels must have had a great time creating these wonders.

Fabulous Rock Formations

This one is called the "Poodle"

this is called the Natural Bridge but is really an arch. awesome to see.
We stopped by Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon on our way home from Tucson. what a great works and miracles of nature they are.

the call

We are really excited and happy about our call to New Orleans (the Jackson Mississippi mission. We are not sure what we will be doing but we think since we are assigned to "employment resources" that Jerry will be helping people find construction jobs. Where else do they need a construction guru more than New Orleans. I think I will be in the office working with people. I am quite certain that we will be working with people in our ward or branch where we will attend. That will be a great experience.

It will be like going to a foriegn country. Laura C tells me that her brother went there and he called it an international mission. There will be lots of diversification for sure.

I have been reading about the hurricane Katrina that devestated New Orleans 4 years ago. I hope it goes well and fast or I will miss all of my family too much. We will miss weddings, ordinations, birthdays and holidays but I know each one of our family will be blessed because we will be praying for each one individually as we do now.

We enter MTC on Dec. 7 09 and will be driving our car to LA we will probably recieve extra training after the original 5 days in the MTC. There is special welfare training so I am guessing that we will get that.

I think I will be able to wear the nice clothes I have been making. I think I will be there two winters and indoors in air conditioning in the summer.

IT is going to be a great next two months visiting folks and preparing, getting shots and replacing the windsheild of our car and whatever else we need.

As you can see by the pictures, I was really surprised when I saw where we are going. I never thought of the south. My Grandpa Brown went on three mission to the Southern States mission. It took in all of the southern states. I don't know if he served in LA but he probably did at some time. I will read his journals againand find out. He may have been up there tweeking it for us. *U*

Mission picture

Here is the picture we are putting on our missiona application. I wish I had curled myhair first but I think it is too late now. The application is ready for the Stake President as near as we know so we might be having interviews soon.

Here we are, ready to go

Yes, ready to go on a mission. Atleast we hope that some day in about two or three weeks all of our forms will be filled out and we can wait some more to find out where we will get to serve. WE took these pictures of each other but now have learned that our picture needs to be of us together im missionary attire so nest Sunday I will put on a gray or navy jacket to look as much like a missionary as I can and we will do this again with the tripod or a real person on the button.

Yummy Chicken Salad

Hi Pam,
Here are the recipes you asked for, Enjoy.

Make a Smilebox recipe

Bread recipe

Make a Smilebox recipe

Come on over for a barbeque

Guess who came to Visit

Allison, Marshall, Marcella, Madeline, Rachelle, Anna Belle

Craftroom

I have worked really hard but the craftroom looks so neat and inviting. I wanted you to see it. It is missing all the plastic drawers of rubber stamps and scrap paper. they can be stored in a closet sometime when we move.

Comments

God's Protective Care

This is our 2009 Camry. We were driving to boise on March 6th. We had just gone over the summit between Pendleton and LeGrande when we looked up and realized that there were three trucks stopped in front of us. The road was ice with water on top. they had tried to scrap it but just took off the gravel. Jerry slammed on the brakes to no avail. WE just kept going. Just before we were to crash into the back of the truck and as I said "Heavely Father" the next thing I knew we were going between the left truck and the concrete median. There actually was not room for us but Jerry took the o nly daylight he could see and drove as close to the concrete as possible actually up on the curved edge of it as my side was being chinked off the the truck with it's two trailers. the lights, hubcap and doors were trashed but we were not even jarred. We didn't even loose our drink from their cups.!!! Jerry got cell service and called the police, they came and didn't give him a citation because of the road conditions. the woman with two kids up front had gone into a spin so the trucks stopped. they must have had more space than us to come to a stop. We clipped her mirror off and got her front bumper as it was sticking out. No one was hurt. She had no drivers license or insurance. She got tickets.

I just felt like God was opening a corridor for us to get through. After the police were done, Jerry pulled off the lights and put them in the trunk and pulled the fender off of the tire and we drove 200 miles to Meridian. we got to the repair shop just before they closed. Estimate to get it fixed is $8,400. and three weeks. Thank goodness for insurance. It will pay for the woman's car too. Even though we really did not cause the accident we are responsible because we hit them. Our insurance will fix her car too.I don't think the truck got more than a few scratches.

You can see that Jerry's side didn't hardly get a dent. That is because of the curved concrete. Whew!

It sure makes me feel the love and care God has for us and that He is not ready for us to go home yet! We have more to do. We are so grateful. I can't count how many thankyou prayers I have said over this.

livingroom

We are going to really miss this place

It is almost 4200 square feet counting the walk our basement. Two storage rooms. fruit trees and roses in the yard and other mature plants. Huge extra sturdy deck for parties and nice climate for them. Nice area up the down the street form elementary school but not too close. view of both bridges from the deck.

For Sale

Our Home

Our home sweet home

This week

We just got home from a short trip to Boise. It was great toa visit the kids and take one 4-wheeler, 1 picnic table and a computer desk and get them out of our hair. We had a fun family Home Evening. I showed them my mothers scrapbook of clippings that I have recently restored by assembling them into one huge album of 12x12 sheet protectors. she was really very well know and made quite a stir with her writing. I left the camera in the truck and didn't take any pictures.