Week 40

Monday morning about 2:15 I woke to the sound of something hitting metal and lots of thunder and lightening.  At 2:30 am the electricity went out.  The worst part about that is that in each set of apartments the storage shed for one apartment holds the access to fire alarms and sprinklers.  Guess who has it for our apartment block!  The shed is accessed through our little patio, but the back wall of the shed is one wall of our bedroom.  When the electricity goes out, that alarm starts its high pitched beeping, which carries through our bedroom wall as if the wall were paper.  So, for two hours the alarm was sounding (and we have no way to turn it off).  Electricity came back at 4:30, then off again at 4:40, then on and off four more times until it finally came on for good.  It was a sleepless 2 1/2 hours!

Later that morning we couldn't believe all the wind damage to trees virtually everywhere in town.  The sound that woke me was tree branches falling on the dumpster one building over from us.  Pretty wild, and it wasn't even a tornado (there was a tornado 11 miles north of us the week before--some members of the Alexandria Ward were without power for almost four days).

Wind damage a building away from us

At least the storm cooled things off a bit--we didn't come home from the Food Bank dripping wet, which we have been doing for several weeks.  The temperatures have been mostly in the 90s for quite some time. With the high humidity, the heat index often "feels like" 100-105 degrees.  The humidity is always higher in the morning (around 90%), and when we walk out of the highly air conditioned gym in the morning, our glasses fog up--the reverse of glasses fogging up when you go inside a warm building on a cold day in Utah.

The marquee at a little building near here says:

          Lord, whatever you're baking outside--it's done!

And speaking of signs, the marquee at the Lutheran church around the corner says:

God's garden--Lettuce be kind; squash gossip; turnip at church

We did the usual things this week--food bank, prison, institute, addiction recovery--plus a couple of things we generally don't do.  One, we cleaned out the shelves in the little kitchen at church.  It doubles as the library and copy center, and no one has cleaned stuff out of the shelves for years.  Bringing order out of chaos always warms the cockles of my heart (Elder Kerr doesn't have his cockles warmed, but he's great at lifting and hauling). That evening, we went with the elders to an appointment with a man who they've been teaching.  The man has come to church several times, and has had a wild, rough, tough, and frankly scary life.  Yet he really has changed a lot and wants to continue to change.  It was great to be with the elders and to share our testimonies of the reality of repentance and forgiveness.

The last new thing was beginning and facilitating the Personal Finance class in our branch this afternoon.  This is one of four different courses offered as part of the Self-reliance Program of the Church.  There were 11 participants, and they really did participate.  It's a 12-week course and we hope everyone hangs in there all 12 weeks.  We meet from 3-5 on Sunday afternoon, so we just pack a lunch and stay in Marksville.  

One thing I don't think I've mentioned also takes place on Sunday.  Our Relief Society President's husband has leukemia.  For the first several months we were here, she could come to Sacrament Meeting and stay for Relief Society.  Then he took a turn for the worse and she would only come for Sacrament Meeting.  A few months ago he got even worse, and she doesn't dare leave him even for an hour.  We began taking the sacrament to him occasionally, but it got to the point it was too difficult for him to sit up that long.  When she started having to miss Sacrament Meeting, we started going almost every Sunday after church for Kerby to give her the sacrament.  It has been a very special and tender event each week to share that ordinance with her.  She's absolutely delightful, and so was he when he could visit a bit.  Mortality is meant to be a test, and it certainly is good at testing patience and faith.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we meet for church in a yellow triple-wide trailer.  It is frankly not terribly attractive, but this row of crape myrtles beside it help considerably.

At least we have pretty trees