Wed. January 28

I have never, ever had a January go by so quickly. Maybe it's not only because we work hard, but also we have nice days to enjoy the sunshine and run around without coats. I love the variety of weather here in Sherman. We had an ice storm here over the last two days. Ice is hanging from everywhere! We have to basically "crawl" up the stairs to our apartment. Half of the stairs are coated with ice and water. But it beautiful to see it hanging from all of the trees, branches, and shrubbery here in Sherman. This morning our car doors were frozen shut and the car was coated with a thick layer of ice.

Curtis called early this morning to ask us how the ice was here. Evidently they got their share of ice in Austin too. It is funny because people here really do not know what to do in ice. School has been cancelled, and things have been somewhat shut down.

I have had some intestinal blah this past week. It only happens when I eat. So maybe that is a sign for me to stop eating. Anyway we are carrying on. I couldn't have been very sick because when Elder Whiting suggested going to the Olive Garden for "Linner" I jumped at the chance. But it was a great experience. So-o-o-o-o good!!!

We have been working with the Bray family whose family knew Kaye and Rob and family back in the days. Brother Bray was about 5 years old when the accident happened and remembers how upset the community was. Bro. Bray's father worked at the University with Rob and they also knew them in the ward. Bro Bray's father was their Stake President. Loren, (Bro Bray) has a wife who is a non-member. He met her when he was having some feelings of rebelliousness, but has since straightened up his life. His wife has had the missionary lessons several times and still has not been baptized. We have met with her twice and we are just trying to uncover the things we need to teach her and work with her about. They have three children and live in the Sherman 2nd ward, and we love them all.

So Brother Bray is the manager of the Olive Garden here and we are always telling him how we love to go there for there Zuppa Toscana Soup. He says that is about the most popular. Anyway so we went there this afternoon. We didn't see him anywhere, but we were busy talking about our missionary work and plans for the week. The first thing we know they are delivering our salad and breadsticks and soup . . . then here comes Brother Bray with two small bowls of dip for our bread sticks. We thought that was so nice and we did enjoy the dip. It was yummy!!

We ate all the salad, soup and breadsticks we could and got ready to go. The waiter came to bring us the check and said, "This is on the house! We hope you enjoyed your dinner!" Wasn't that such a nice thing to do? We have never had that happen before. It was so nice of him to do that. We called and thanked him. Our tummies were very full of everything.

Our missionary work is going forward. We taught Christi today about Faith, Repentance and Baptism. The young Spanish Elders came also and they helped. They are such sweet Elders. Christy's sister, Joann, was there and she asked if she could have the lessons too! Wow!! When we first started the lesson today, we invited her in and Christy said JoAnn wasn't interested, that she liked her own church. So we said, okay, well you can listen if you want. So she did.

Christy is the live in of a member of the church. We are trying to get them married. So we are teaching her so she can understand that she needs to live the Lord's law of chastity. It is a long story, but we hope she will continue to listen and be baptized. The spirit was strong today. I think we will teach JoAnn separately.

We had our meetings today with both ward missionary committee. We are doing more in the second ward than in the first. But we are trying to open up the 2nd ward because they have not been doing much. There is definitely a lot of potential.

Tomorrow we are meeting with several people and we hope that none of them cancel. We haven't been doing well on Thursday and Fridays. People just get tired and want to be left alone.

I talked to Linda today and she thinks that Grandma is about the same. This could go on for another week, so we will just wait and know that the Lord will have just the right time planned for it.

My stomach is doing flip flops from all the stuff I ate at the Olive Garden today. But darn it, it was worth it. It was so good. Things are going well for us, we are enjoying the people very much. We did find out today that one of the couples that we met with this past week is being investigated for identity theft. One of the counselors in the Bishopric is the captain in the police force. He told us not to go there any more, they were dangerous. They looked pretty innocent to us. Interesting stuff!