Hello Everyone!
I have been feeling for some time that I needed to start sending out a monthly newsletter again. For the most of you, the newsletter is probably old news, but I will still send it out. I hope you will enjoy it. I have not been good for several years at this, but the Lord, knowing my weakness has made it easy for me. I have two visiting teaching routes now, one is in-person and the other is a writing route. I type my letters each month to my sisters and this gives me a pretty good start on my newsletter. What a blessing in disguise.
The month of May has been very nice weather-wise. I know probably most of the state of MI is tired of rain, but I love rain! I am glad this storm came during the week however as we do a lot of outdoor things on Saturday and the storms on Saturday really threw us off since we don’t have time to do it any other day of the week. Our grass sure got tall. Hahaha
We moved into the new building on Mother’s Day, May 9th. It is very pretty and it’s so nice to be able to meet in our own building that is planned for our use. I wish that some of the building was larger, the chapel area for instance, but it is sufficient for our use at this time. On Mother’s Day they handed out beautiful carnations-my favorite flower. I’m not really sure why it’s my favorite, but I think partially because they last so long. I also think it might be in part because my Dad used to work for a company called Carnation when I was young and I just associated the two somehow. The Open House will be June 9th. I believe it starts at 6pm. I know we’ll be going by 7pm though. I sure hope you are able to make it. I’d love to meet you and get to know you a little bit. There will be refreshments of course and I believe a short program and then a self-guided tour of the building. Each organization is doing something special for the event.
We planted our garden, but nothing is really growing yet, probably due to the temperatures still being too low. I sure hope the seeds are still going to be good because we spent a lot of time planting. My husband loves gardening and as a result he planted about ½ acre or so of seeds and a few small plants (raspberries and strawberries). I think all told we spent 20 work hours doing the planting, not something I wish to do again anytime soon.
We bought chickens too. One set is about a month older than the other set. We are now working on building a chicken coop. The difficulty we have been having is that we aren’t sure how we want to design it. In addition to that we haven’t had much chance to sit and talk about how to design it either. I told my husband, Andrew, that we need to build it over Memorial Day weekend since he’ll be off on Monday as well as Saturday and now I’m really hoping for good weather that weekend so we can get a lot of work done on the coop. The bigger chickens are in a pen now, but that’s not going to last forever. We are going to start introducing the second bunch with the first one and hope all goes well. A friend of ours introduced a new chicken to his coop and it literally killed the entire group because of a disease that he didn’t know the new chicken had. That scares me a little, but ours all came from the same source, so I hope they will all be OK. One of the chickens has a bottom beak which is crooked, but it’s still OK so far. The others are starting to peck at it though (I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl) so we may have to kill it off sooner than we had planned. We got both egg-laying and meat-producing chickens. I hope it’s one of the meat kind, though I have no idea how to tell about that either.
May 15th and 16th was Stake Conference. The adult session was wonderful on Saturday and I actually was able to spend some time reading while Andrew was attending the Priesthood session prior to that. That was a nice treat. The overall theme of the Conference was to be prepared. I can add my personal testimony to the value of doing just that. We are trying to prepare in temporal and spiritual matters for if you aren’t prepared in both areas I feel strongly that it won’t matter much when hard times come along, which they always do.
Andrew is serving as Young Men’s president and the Scoutmaster, for those who don’t already know that. He is working diligently at getting everything organized so that he can move forward. Scouts had become very haphazard and he is trying to get it all back on track. He has a lot of online training to get done, which he needs to do before Scout camp in July. I try to help where I can. I helped him create a calendar (our small branch doesn’t see a need to have one), I helped him get folders together for his Quorum presidents and a few more things that are kind of difficult to explain. I have spent quite a bit of time helping him. I think he is now ready to move ahead mostly. He is also still serving as Physical Facilities Representative, which included both moves in the last six months that the Branch made, the cleaning of the building, the scheduling of the building and also the security of the building (making sure it’s locked each night). He is a little busy with all of that. I help where I can.
I spent a couple of days trying to organize the Young Women stuff. I am 1st counselor, but I know that if I don’t do it, nobody will. The president works full-time and is very busy with that and her family, the 2nd counselor is working and going to school and the secretary has become inactive. Now that I have all the filing-type organization done I will take it all to the building and organize the cupboard that we have.
Megan is busy with her life. Next Monday, the 24th, will be her final concert for this year. She is pretty excited about it. I hope she does well. She really enjoys it very much. She is ready for school to be over, but sadly school here does not get out until June 10th, so she has a little longer to go. I feel badly for her since she has been going for so long, but she has had two month-long breaks (one when we moved and another for the funeral trip) so I think she’ll survive just fine. She will be taking a break from piano and flute during the summer as her flute gets turned into the school for cleaning and maintenance and her piano teacher will be gone a huge portion of the summer. She will keep busy I’m sure with all those chickens (22), a garden, a basketball hoop, friends, and of course Church activities. She also just found out that at some point her class is going to be taped for a Nickelodean show, though she doesn’t know what it’s going to be called nor does she know when it will be on. The school sponsored a week about cyber-bullying and apparently they are going to be doing something in regards to that. If we ever find out what it’ll be called and when it’ll be on, I’ll let you know.
I’m leaving in part of my Visiting Teaching message this month. The talk is by Elder James B. Martino and is titled “All Things Work Together for Good”. Elder Martino began by telling a cute story of a little boy trying to learn to hit a baseball. After three tremendous swings that resulted in no bat contact whatever he was disheartened for a short few seconds, then his face lit up and he said “What a pitcher!”
Just like this little boy, we all have adversity. Of course most of our adversity isn’t nearly so easy to overcome. Some struggle with health, others with financial concerns. Some have family that they worry about for various reasons. Oftentimes we have multiple types of adversity at the same time, but we all have one commonality, we all have the agency to choose our attitude in regards to the adversity we face. If we choose to be grumpy and feel that nobody can help us regardless of the trial, then that is the reality we choose for ourselves. However, if we will have the faith to choose to turn to our Savior and our Father in Heaven we will be blessed with the strength and knowledge needed to endure, and usually overcome, any adversity in our lives. The Savior suffered for our sins, He suffered for our weaknesses and imperfections. He knows intimately how we feel when nobody else can. He is waiting for us to turn to Him and make that Atonement a power for good in our lives. I leave that witness with you in His holy name, even Jesus Christ, Amen.
