Week 54: Always Something New

Smiling because of the popcorn?

So it's 11:20 p.m. Sunday night. I'm giving myself 30 minutes to put something on the blog tonight. Here goes.

We're up late because we went to a Fireside down in Olympia tonight. We were again uplifted and inspired by testimonies from six recent converts and music sung by young missionaries. 

We came to the apartment long enough to pop some popcorn and take it over to the mission office where we shared it with the Office Elders and APs. They were there gathering "numbers" and doing their weekly reports. I had to show the Office Elders how to do a mass email to the missionaries.  

A few new things to talk about this week:

Went to the Family History Center at the Stake Center this week--something new. Did a batch of indexing while Elder Hadlock went next door to the YMCA.  While there, someone called the Family History Center wanting to invite some missionaries to Thanksgiving Dinner!  They handed me the phone; how convenient. Anyway this woman (not a member) is having her sister and nephew (members) come for Thanksgiving Dinner. She thought it would be nice to also invite some missionaries to dinner.  The area she lives in happens to be the area our Office Elders (to the right) are assigned to. They'll be delighted for the opportunity! Trouble is, our next transfers are two days before Thanksgiving. One of these Elders will likely be transferred. Oh well, they'll still have the chance to go meet this woman prior. Might be an opportunity to teach?
The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Speaking of mysterious, I've decided that clams are a mysterious creature. One of our neighbors went clam digging and filled a 5 gallon bucket with fresh clams from the beaches of Anderson Island.  I was fascinated to see all these clams with their little "eyes" or whatever sticking out.

We stopped to visit with them just as they were getting ready to cook the clams. We ended up with a bowl of steamed clams -- A real delight for seafood lovers. I decided that maybe I'm not as much of a seafood lover as I thought. I really like clam chowder, but I had a really hard time eating these creatures right out of the shell.

Just wasn't too sure about eating the sum total of all the parts of a clam in one gulp. Even dipped in lots of garlic butter I had a difficult time. Van actually seemed to like them, but we both agreed that the after-taste was terrible. 

A new eating adventure, but I think I'll take clam digging OFF my bucket list. 

Saw something else we have never seen before -- a monkey tree decorated with Halloween pumpkins ornaments. The monkey tree is fascinating in and of itself. The added decorations made it all the more interesting.

Well, my time is about up. I'll just make mention that we were able to go to the temple on Saturday. The weather has been very rainy and the lesson in Priesthood and Relief Society was great.

 The lesson came from a talk called "Living After the Manner of Happiness" given by Jeffrey R. Holland at a devotional at BYU-Idaho in September. There's not time to go into details so I'm just going to add a link to the talk. It was very good:  http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/Transcripts/Devotionals/2014_09_23_holland.htm 

Someone contributed this thought to the lesson:  "What you focus on, you get more of."  I do not want more clams. I will not focus on clams. There are more delightful things to focus on.

Oops, it's 12:20 a.m. Took longer than planned. It's the photo stuff that's a stinker. Better focus on getting to bed.