Off To A New Adventure

So, we sent in our paperwork for a 4th adventure with Farmland Reserve, and sure enough, they wanted us back!  We were set apart to serve at the Rex Ranch in Nebraska and sent to the MTC. (Missionary Training Center)

The MTC was thoroughly enjoyable and we felt the Spirit of Missionary work there.

We took two days to drive to Nebraska, spending a day with the Gabels, whom we knew from our Florida mission.   Using our heads, we stopped in Scottsbluff to do some grocery shopping before driving the final two hours to our new assignment. Yup, it's a two hour drive to do any significant shopping...much less to find a variety of places to stop and eat.  So much for a date night to.....anywhere!

This is the road to the Ranch office and to our new home.

We are living in half of the basement of the Ranch Controller's house.  They won't be moving in for two weeks, so we are doing some badly needed repairs before they come....like replacing a moldy windowsill, putting vinyl plank flooring in the kitchen/laundry room, repainting two existing decks, and building a third deck off the laundry room.  (Not to mention repainting entry doors and door frames.)

This is our front door.  Come inside and we'll show you around!  The window to the right is in our kitchen, but the windows to the left of the door belong to the upstairs tenants.

Room #1  The kitchen is a decent size and has more storage than we originally thought.

We had no place to use as an office/computer station, so Bruce built this desk out of dismantled desk parts we found in the Ranch Office garage. He's pretty handy to have around!  He's wearing his winter coat because the past two days have been pretty cold and incredibly windy.

This is our dining area.  It also serves as our study area, our lounging area, our guest reception area, and my computer area.  Notice the picture of the Savior on the wall.  Our first priority was to hang this picture in a prominent place where we could focus on why we are here and who our life should always be centered around.

Room #2 .  The bathroom is small but works!  It's almost big enough for two people to occupy at the same time....but not really.  Bruce is going to build a little stand-up shelf between the toilet and sink to add a little storage space....again, out of scraps from the original desk.

Room #3 .   The bedroom is a good size, and the bed is high enough off the ground that extra storage is available for boxes stashed underneath.

The bedroom also serves as our laundry room.  How convenient to be able to take clothes out of the dryer and hang them right up.  I can also roll up Bruce's socks and chuck them right into his drawer!

The ranch provides a truck for us to drive, as well as an equipment trailer that we can tow with us and there is another shop for us to use, over an hour away.  Our truck is a 2007 Chevy Silverado.

The first order of every day is to walk through our house and pick up any dead, and not-so-dead bugs that are on the floors, blinds or walls. You might say our house is "bugged".

Our nearest neighbors live right outside our door. 

A breach in the electric fence allows the cows to come right up to our front door to "greener pastures".  A herdsman will remedy that soon, but Bruce jokes that our resident landscapers are all around us mowing the grass and fertilizing at the same time.

Speaking of cows.  The other day when the cows were in our yard I was directing Bruce while he was pulling the truck full of lumber and flooring boxes into the garage and I stepped into an enormous cow pie that the trespassers had left behind.....both feet were affected.  Bruce thought he was doing me a favor and covered the cow pie with sand.  Well the next day, I was hopping into the truck to run a mercy errand when I stepped into the same cow pie...with different shoes on....but only one foot was affected.

Obviously the county does not collect garbage out here, so we burn the burnables and haul the non-burnables into a nearby town (15 minutes away), to a dumpster.  Even though we had only been here four and a half days, we had enough burnable garbage to fill the burn cage, due to the 20 boxes that the vinyl planking came in, and the moldy windowsill that we removed.  With the persistent wind blowing to fan the fire, it took no time at all to burn everything down to ashes. Yes, I had a hose nearby just in case of an emergency. Note the flames blowing outside the cage! We hadn't thought of buying marshmallows while shopping!

We went to church on Sunday at our small branch building (45 minutes away), and met a lot of wonderful people.  There were about 32 in attendance, but six of the people were other missionaries that will be living on the other end of the ranch and attending a bigger branch over there.  We get the feeling that we might have the opportunity to give a few Sunday talks while here.  The chapel is inside the first door on the left and is about the size of a standard Relief Society room.  The restrooms are both 1-seaters. It's quaint and small, but the Spirit there was powerful!

That's it for now.  We are happy to be here and have met some very friendly people.  We spent one afternoon driving through the small towns and visited with clerks in two of the Farm Supply Stores.  They recognized by our badges who we were and what we were about, so their reception was great.  We are grateful that all the missionaries who have been out here have been warm and friendly.

We miss our friends and family (and convenient shopping), but are glad to be here helping others. So long until next time.

Only a Couple of Weeks Left in England

A lot has happened the past two months.  I will try to be concise and yet informative. We are sad to be leaving England, as we have loved the work, the scenery and the people, but we are anxious to see our family and friends once again.

Rapeseed fields were everywhere

April was an amazing month as the countryside exploded in color as the fields of rapeseed blossomed in golden splendor.  There were acres and more acres of bright yellow fields which took our breaths away.  This was followed with blooming flowers of all kinds in May. Our own Gamsey Woods were filled with a carpet of glorious bluebells.

Poppies and peonies in front yard

Bluebells in Gamsey Woods, which is in our yard

I don't usually get this excited about flowers, but we had a very long winter, so new splashes of color were good.

Our own roses

During this time Jill and two of her daughters visited, and we had many choice experiences with them.

Inside the cathedral in Ely

We were also able to visit with our granddaughter Abbie, who was in London on a 6-week study abroad program with BYU.  We spent part of an afternoon with her after attending the temple in London, and enjoyed seeing her flat.  Driving in London is a real treat.  It took us 2 1/2 hours to drive the 40 miles from the temple to Abbie's flat. The concept of I-15 cutting into the heart of the city is non-existent here, and traffic tends to be terrible.  By the time we finally took her to lunch, we were ALL starving.

Our work load continues to increase as we are racing against deadlines where certain houses need to be completed for new tenants.  We have been killing mould on walls and ceilings, painting, fixing pipes, leveling ground with a spring harrow and rakes,  planting grass, mowing a TON of existing grass, and installing mailboxes, to mention a few of our projects.  Of course, there are always unexpected snags in the work which need to be resolved before we can move on, but we keep working as fast as we can.  One such snag occurred when Bruce was replacing some floorboards but hit some hidden water pipes with three screws.  Not good, but fixable.

The big news in May was the Royal Wedding.  No, we did not join the thousands throughout the country who watched the events at various royal palaces on big screen TV's.  We spent the day with a small group of saints and our guide touring the Benbow Farm and pond, where thousands of United Brethren were converted and baptized by Wilford Woodruff.  We also were able to visit another church built in 1859 from the stones and plans of William Tyndale's church on the same location where he heard the call to translate the Bible into English in 1523.  Although martyred in 1536 he wrote, "But the word of the Lord endureth forever."  Side trips to the Roman Baths and Stonehenge made the trip even more enjoyable, especially with our guide.  I won't mention the rented van that suddenly broke down with a broken crankshaft pulley in the middle of nowhere....just part of the experience that makes for a great journal entry.

William Tyndale church

This is my "Windy Day" hairdo at Stonehenge

On the local front, Bruce and I were able to participate in early morning Seminary for two days, and gave eulogies at the "Funeral for the Nephite Nation", which was quite fun.  We recently did our Ministering by having a summer barbecue (it was actually quite chilly and windy with temps in the low 50's), and then played Rounders with the kids, which we plan to teach our grandkids at our upcoming family reunion.
I have been working with the Young Women on a couple of Polynesian dances for a fundraising Luau, as well as teaching them  some hand chime numbers that we will be performing in a couple of weeks.  These are all new experiences for the Young Women (the girls couldn't even say the word Luau), and they have been having a lot of fun learning new skills.

Some roadsigns that caught our eye recently were "No Fly Tipping", and "Watch for Elderly People", which we interpreted as Watch for Elderly Pickpockets.

No, you don't have to blindfold your cats.  This means that there are no reflectors in the middle of the road.

This is what I learned in choir about reading music:  a crotchet is a quarter of a semi-breve (or a quarter note and a whole note), a quaver is half a crotchet (figure it out), a minim is 2 crotchets, and watch out for  semiquavers because they are really quick to sing (sixteenth notes).  What language are they speaking?  This place is delightful and we will miss it.   If you really want to get technical, they also have a demi-semi-quaver, and a hemi-demi-semi-quaver note, but you don't see them very often.

Can you name the notes.  There are some crotchets and quavers.

The experiences we have had here have reconfirmed our feelings that it was not "chance" that we have been serving in England for the past year.  We have retraced the steps of our ancestors and felt of their faith, dedication to the Gospel, and sacrifices.   This has made our lives richer and brought us closer to them.

                                                Good bye England.  We will miss you!

Time Goes Marching On

March came in like a frozen lion and went out as a drenched lamb.  The amount of rain we had hampered some of our outside jobs, but there was still plenty to do.  At the first of the month there was water damage in two of the larger homes we service from frozen pipes, and at the end of the month we had water damage in our own flat from an exploding washing machine.  Naturally, all three of these homes experienced the leaks on the top floors, so the two bigger homes had parts of the ceiling that collapsed, but our leak just made a waterfall through a light fixture downstairs.  We pulled out a lot of soggy carpets in March!

Yup, this is my laundry "room", but now it's all patched, painted and pretty!

This is the dryer in the living room.  A bit inconvenient until the laundry space was repaired, but it worked!  A bit awkward when the Visiting Teachers dropped by.

One tender mercy this month was an answer to prayer that can only be classed as a miracle.  Bruce had been working for many months to research, find, arrange, and expedite the delivery of a mower deck that was only available from the states.  This required negotiations with our farm manager, the seller in the states, the shippers and the receiving company in England.  After completing all the paperwork, the shipment was in limbo for awhile,  sitting at a shipping dock in Chicago because of a matter that was unforseen, and seemed unsolvable without a lot more money and time involved.  After diligent fasting and prayer, Bruce received an email stating that the shipment was moving forward.  The agent stated that he could not explain how that happened, as it was a most unusual occurrence.  The Lord is indeed involved in the matters of our lives and service.

Enough about work for now, the highlight of the month was more family visits from our daughter Melinda and her daughter Ella, who live in Arizona, and from Marcie's family from Indiana.

In high school Melinda had been an exchange student in Germany, so while she was in Europe she wanted to go back to the Hamburg area to see her host family, her old home, school, and other familiar sights.  So Ella and I accompanied her on this excursion for 2 days. 

We had a great time, saw some beautiful sights, attended an evening fireside at the church, and ate some amazing food!

    We are on the roof of a Cathedral in Ely, England, after climbing LOTS of small winding stairs.

Marcie and Melinda's visits overlapped by 3 days, so we were sleeping and feeding twelve people in our tiny flat!  It was cozy and wonderful!  Marcie had served her mission in the Manchester area, so her family traveled all over the northern areas of England, including a piece of Scotland and Wales.

Unfortunately, I didn't catch a picture of their entire family, because the day we went to London, Gwen and Claire stayed behind with Aunt Melinda (and they had a GREAT TIME!) So this is Marcie with 3/4 of her family, and cousin Ella.  

                             Jason was a great help in getting us on the right underground trains!

   This is the exact location where Melinda had her picture taken years ago when she was visiting from Germany with her school class, and where Bruce and I had our picture taken for our Christmas Cards this past year.

We were hanging out with a Roman Dude outside the Tower of London

We loved having the time to spend with family!

One of our historical excursions took Bruce and I to a castle/fortress in Lincoln.  This picture is looking down on an old prison within the walls of the castle.  The rounded section is the prison church, which is the only remaining original prison church in the country, and was quite unique.

  This shows the cubicles that the prisons would have been sitting in.  There was absolutely no interaction with anyone.  Their view was totally restricted so they could only see the preacher.

I got a first hand glimpse of four peacocks this month, while I was within four feet of them.  Actually I was feeding them bread crumbs.  Three were pea hens, then the peacock came around and started strutting his stuff.  It was beautiful.

This is the backside of a fully fanned peacock.  The little white feathers are very fluffy.

The month ended with us feeding three young missionaries, and I happened to serve roast a'la FLOOR!  The oven door is so low that I am doubled over to extract the contents of the oven, and the roasting pan happened to bounce off the door, tipping everything on the floor...roast, grease and gravy drippings.  The missionaries didn't seem to mind, so the dinner went on...after mopping up the grease.

For those who know us well, we couldn't let April Fools pass by without a little fun, so we spread some "joy" (wooden joy) around the ward.  We had some funny results!

Conference was amazing, and we are moving forward with faith and confidence.