Here we are, almost through January already! I can't say I mind too much since that means we are getting closer to spring. This week was fairly busy again. Last Saturday I did do the sewing class as planned. Three girls came, and all three finished their skirts. The girls who had finished really wanted to wear their skirts, so they all wore them on Sunday to church.
We took a photo with all the girls, not just the ones who were wearing new skirts, but all but four of the girls in the picture are wearing a skirt that they made. The two girls on either end in the back row didn't come to the class and the two girls who haven't finished their skirts yet are also in the back row...third from the right and third from the left. Everyone else is wearing a new skirt that she made herself. It was really fun to see all the finished skirts! One other girl who finished her skirt on Saturday wasn't there on Sunday...she had a family event. Here is a picture of her trying on the skirt when she finished it.
We're going to have another Sunday after the other girls have finished when we have them all wear their skirts so we can take another picture. I was always too busy during the classes to take any pictures, but some of the other leaders took some pictures and sent them to me, so here are some of those (most taken the first week (December 3rd), when the girls were cutting out their skirt pieces):
The tracing paper I purchased to make patterns for the pockets came with a paper mustache for some reason, so I was trying it on! 😂
Two girls finished the third class (January 7th) and then these four girls finished on January 14th:
This is me helping one of the girls on January 14th:
I did get a chance to talk to the mom of the girl who missed all the classes, and she is going to come to my house sometime so I can help her make her skirt. We just need to figure out a day that will work. It will probably only take a few hours since I'll be able to focus on one skirt the entire time.
Okay, so enough about the sewing class! I am really happy that we did it because it was a lot of fun and the girls got a lot of satisfaction out of it. I can't remember what else I did last Saturday except that I finished reading Grandma Gatewood's Walk. I read quite a bit of it last Friday evening so I was nearly finished by Saturday. I really enjoyed it, overall.
On Sunday I had a class presidency meeting before church and a short ministering interview after church. Frank left church after Sacrament Meeting because he wasn't feeling well...his blood sugar was off and he needed to eat something and lie down for a while. I can't remember if I mentioned it last week, but Seth blessed the sacrament for the first time that Sunday (the 15th) and then blessed it again last Sunday (the 22nd). He did a great job...spoke slowly and clearly.
I had a dentist appointment on Monday...I had to get a small cavity filled. Other than that, it was a normal Monday with laundry, grocery shopping, and vacuuming, plus family night in the evening.
Our ward had a youth baptism trip on Tuesday evening. It was kind of late for a school night, but that's the only time we could get an appointment. The seminary teacher agreed to excuse all the youth who went to the temple from seminary the next morning, which was nice because we didn't get to bed until 11:00 pm and we really needed that extra hour of sleep! We ended up having 10 youth attend and 9 adults. Frank works so close to the temple that he decided to meet us there. Instead of coming home from work, he got some dinner and then went to the temple to do some initiatories before meeting us when we arrived. I was able to ride down to the temple with one of the other leaders (and several youth and one of the moms who came) so I was able to ride home with Frank, which was nice. Seth and his friend Henry, who both became priests this month, were able to do all the baptisms. They did a good job. Seth had to redo one of the baptisms several times because the boy who was proxy kept stiffening up so he couldn't get him all the way under, but they finally got it right. Seth didn't get flustered at all, which I thought was pretty remarkable. The mom of one of the girls who came along is blind so I ended up helping her get around the whole evening. She wanted to do something to help, so they had her hand the towels to each youth as they came out of the font. My job was to get the towels from the shelf and hand them to her. It was nice to sit there the whole time and see all the baptisms and feel the spirit that was there, and this mom said afterwards how much she enjoyed it so I'm glad she was able to come. Frank was helping with confirmations. The temple matron talked to our group before we began and I really liked what she said. She talked about the Willie and Martin handcart companies and how they got caught in a terrible snowstorm and the snow literally stopped them from being able to move forward and they had to be rescued by others. Then she told the youth that many people in the spirit world have been stopped in their progress--they can't go any further--so the youth are their rescuers as they are proxies for these people so that they can be baptized and continue to move forward. It was a great evening, even though we were really tired by the time we got home. This is our whole group except one of the men (he took the picture):
On Wednesday I went to the library to return a couple of books and I picked up a new one that I had on hold. It's called We Need to Talk...it's a nonfiction book about communication. My ministering sister mentioned she read it recently and enjoyed it and it sounded interesting to me so I decided to read it too. I haven't read much yet, but it has been pretty interesting so far. We got a little bit of snow on Wednesday. It never really stuck, other than just a dusting on the ground, but it was pretty when it was coming down.
(Kind of hard to see in the photo, but those white spots are snowflakes!) By later in the day, the snow turned to rain and it rained the rest of the day. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and as usual we enjoyed visiting with them and we played some Wii sports together too. Jared is feeling better than he was...he feels like he is healing much better from surgery this time and a lot of his GI issues are a lot better than they were. He still has some joint pain and back pain and he needs to follow up on that, along with getting his liver checked too. But it's nice to see him feeling better than he was. Jessie started school this week...she is taking some classes at the local community college to get a certificate to be a surgical assistant. She ended up quitting her job because they weren't training her very well, plus she found out she could start school a lot sooner than she anticipated. Jared had two job interviews this week, both of which went really well so hopefully he will have a job soon. He is thinking he may go back to school...this fall, if he can work it out in time. He's thinking about going into radiology.
On Thursday I did some service...helped a family in our ward who are going through their storage units and trying to condense what they have down enough so that they will only have one storage unit instead of three. It was kind of difficult to help since I can't make decisions for them about what to keep and what to donate or throw away, but I did go through 5 or 6 boxes of things in the couple of hours that I was there. It was cold and very windy yesterday and I was outside the whole time so I didn't enjoy that much but I did enjoy talking with them and with the other helpers who were there. They still have a LOT of work to do...must be so overwhelming. This is a reminder to me that I should be very selective about what I decide to keep! My back and shoulders hurt a little bit last night but they are feeling better today.
Today I had a YW presidency meeting. Originally, we were going to meet in person and go through our YW closet while we talked but the YW president has been sick all week (she wasn't able to go to the temple with us either) so she wasn't up to doing that today. We had an online meeting instead, and it was very long because we haven't had a meeting in over a month, The YW president's husband actually has Covid but she tested negative (and her daughter who is sick tested negative too). They were all sick at Christmas time and two of her daughters had Covid then, so it's been kind of crazy for them! We've actually had a lot of Covid going around our ward the last couple of months, with many of the youth in our ward getting it. Hopefully everyone will be healthy again soon.
In my little bit of free time this week, I've been listening to an audio book about receiving revelation which has been really good so far. I also watched a documentary about Pearl Harbor, which is even more meaningful for me now that I've visited there.
We had a really beautiful sunrise on Tuesday. It kept changing every few minutes and was beautiful in a different way. I took a ton of pictures (and wasn't even able to get some of the prettiest parts of it because I was driving) so I will finish up this week's post with some of those sunrise photos.
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