Our stake is having an online seminary class for the first time this year. It includes students from several wards (a few wards still have their daily or home-study classes), and it's been a learning experience for students and the teacher. Things are smoothing out now, and we "attended" the once per week video conference classes this week. There's one Tuesday mornings at 6 am and a repeat of that class Tuesday evening at 7 pm to meet all the kids' schedules. It was pretty fun to see, and technology makes things possible that just couldn't have happened even a few years ago.
Wednesday was my birthday, so we celebrated by going to district council then to the prison (ok--that wasn't the celebration). From the prison we keep driving south to Lake Charles, where we went to a fancy restaurant for dinner (that was the celebration). We had a little over an hour in Lake Charles before going to the restaurant, so we drove by the lake and looked at lots of beautiful, big plantation-style homes on the lake front. The homes were across a street from the lake, but right on the lake, each home had a corresponding boat house. Lots of money in that neighborhood.
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| Plantation-style homes on Sea Shell Drive |
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| And the boat houses |
There is a lovely little park right on part of the lake and we enjoyed a little stroll there.
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| Millennium Park on Lake Charles |
The restaurant was called La Truffe Sauvage (the wild truffle) and had good reviews for its fine dining. It really was very good, and there was a surprise at the end. We normally never tell a restaurant if we're celebrating a birthday or other special occasion, so I was very surprised when our dessert came out with a burning candle on the plate, and a birthday greeting in chocolate on the plate. No singing, clapping, or carrying on, just a lovely message on the plate. The dessert was a delicious chocolate souffle.
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| With my handsome date |
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| Delicious and beautiful |
On Thursday our weekly video conference call with the seminary/institute area coordinators and the other coordinating missionary couple was cancelled because of a meeting, the prison visit was cancelled because of a lock down, and our addiction recovery person texted to say he wasn't coming. That means the only exciting thing in the day was getting our flu shots.
Friday the Golds, the S & I coordinating missionaries in Ruston/Monroe came down and we had lunch together. Then we helped them with a couple of things for the mission assignment. They're a delightful couple from Utah, and they've been here two months.
We thoroughly enjoyed General Conference. We watched the Saturday sessions at home, but today we went down to Marksville to watch at the church. Not many people came, since it can be watched at home, but it was fun to be with those at the building. We even did a little seminary work between sessions with the young woman who was baptized last week. Nothing like General Conference to get a spiritual lift!
I saved the agricultural report for the end this week. Almost half of Louisiana is covered with forest, and logging is a huge industry here (of course only some of the forest is available for logging). We see logging trucks all the time and there are several paper mills as well as lumber yards around.
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| Lumber mill |
The cotton harvest is in full swing. Louisiana isn't even close to Texas in amount of cotton produced, but about 200,000 acres of cotton are grown here. That amounts to 420,000 bales [a unit of measurement], and a bale is 500 pounds. And that amounts to about $270,000,000 in the state's economy.
The machine below is called, appropriately enough, a cotton picker.
It seems to go through the field once to get the harvest, but we're not sure what happens then--quite a bit of cotton is left behind, but we can't tell if it's re-harvested in a second pass or just plowed under. The fields have varying stages of clearing.
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Bottom left not picked yet, bottom right has been harvested
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Cotton is put into modules (about 12-15 bales per module) by a module builder. Each module weighs around 6 thousand pounds.
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| Modules on top, module builder on bottom |
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| Kerby by a module |
As we've mentioned before, the amount, variety, and size of agricultural equipment we see is mind boggling--and very interesting to a couple of city dwellers.
Oh my goodness -- had no idea about all the cotton harvesting. I must be even more sheltered than I thought. Glad things are going well. Those houses on the lake are probably the same price as a house in some of our gated communities here, with no big lawns, lakes, or boat houses. I imagine the upkeep is really expensive -- my mind always goes to "who cleans it?" "how much are those boats and what is the upkeep of the boats and boat houses?" I was born to be a maid, not a wealthy lady. :-) I love the candle all by itself on the plate!! Happy Birthday!!!!
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