Week 51

A sister in the branch often gives us eggs from her chickens.  Every time we open a carton we're just struck by how pretty the eggs are.  Two different types of chickens so two different shades of brown.

And delicious, too

Wednesday we went to visit the home study seminary class in Rosepine, so we drove there from Oakdale (after the prison) rather than drive all the way home then drive a long way south again.  That got us there quite early, so we tried to take the Haunted Jail House tour in Deridder (the town just south of Rosepine).  We were a little too late, but just looking at it from the outside is kind of eerie.  It's now closed until after Halloween to have a haunted house spectacular. We may have to go just to get a good scare!

Actually looks haunted!

Next door to the jail is a doll museum with over 3300 dolls that all belonged to one woman in Deridder.  The woman also repaired dolls.  Soldiers at nearby Fort Polk learned about her and started bringing her dolls from their overseas assignments.  Wouldn't want all these in our house, but pretty interesting.

Some were in amazing clothes

While driving around the countryside before seminary we saw this vine covered mailbox and street sign.  Welcome to rural America!

Things grow pretty fast around these parts

A couple of months ago the Young Women's President in Alexandria (who was one of Nora's students at BYU) asked us to give a youth fireside in the ward about accessing the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  The fireside was last evening, with 15 youth in attendance.  We really enjoyed being with them and hope they learned some things that will be helpful to them.

Alexandria Ward Youth

Temperatures were in the high 90s all week--it is often still 90 degrees at 8 pm.  Summer just keeps going.

Two milestones:  On Tuesday we celebrated the one year mark on our mission.  On September 18, 1919, Verdell Lawrence Nyland was born--Nora's father would be 100 years old this week!