Week 66

We had our district of missionaries come to breakfast Christmas morning--it was fun to start the day that way.

Merry Christmas with the Alexandria District

We had a relaxing day talking to family and eating a nice little dinner. Later in the day we went to the park for a walk--this may be our last warm Christmas (it reached 70 degrees) and we wanted to take advantage of it.  After walking, we drove around a few neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights.

Christmas day walk in the park; posing in front of live oak trees--they never lose their leaves

Thursday we had a good lesson/visit with our Pollock prisoner--it's always dicey whether or not the prison will be on lockdown when we go.  Luckily not this week.

On Friday afternoon we drove to Baton Rouge to attend the temple--we did sessions Friday evening and Saturday morning.  The pictures of flowers below were taken on the temple grounds.  Beautiful roses, camellias, azaleas, snap dragons, pansies, and several other types in full bloom. 

December 28th in the South

Week 65

The weather tops this week's news.  On Monday afternoon we had lightning, thunder, and very heavy rain in our part of town.  Just five miles from our apartment, however, a tornado was causing havoc.  It cut a 60 mile swath from Rosepine up through Pineville.  When it hit in Alexandria it did a lot of damage (it was later classified as an EF3 --winds up to 165 miles per hour), but no one was killed or injured.  News programs just show a shot of a very limited area.  Driving though it the next day, it was hard to believe the widespread damage on both sides of state highway 28 and fields just full of debris.

The FedEx building on the bottom

Gas station

A church/private school

The ball field

On Tuesday we visited several folks in Marksville, then trained the new seminary teacher in the branch.  She had been the teacher before, but there have been no students for about two years.  The interesting thing about that visit was her husband, who is not a member of the Church.  He has Cajun roots in this area going back to the 1700s.  We've met him several times and had heard that he was a Cajun musician, but we'd never heard him play and sing.  He gave us a private concert, and it was fun.  The first picture is of him when he was young and performing with a group.  After that are two videos--the first is Silent Night in English with a Cajun slant and the second is Silent Night in Cajun French. 

He's the one in the air

Friday we had the Christmas Zone Conference in Baton Rouge.  Since it's a long drive, we took four elders with us to save them mileage.  Three zones attended this final conference (there had already been two conferences, each with three zones).  As always it was a wonderful and uplifting day.  One fun highlight was as we were finishing lunch, Santa came to visit.  President Varner makes a fabulous Santa!

The three zones--next to Santa is the Varner's son who had open heart surgery 5 weeks ago

The Alexandria District

Coordinating outfits--on purpose????

After the conference was officially over we got to watch the movie The Fighting Preacher.  It's based on the true story of Willard Bean, at one time the middle-weight world boxing champion, and his wife.  They were called to serve a mission in Palmyra, NY at the Joseph Smith home in 1915.  They were released from their mission in 1939!  A marvelous heartwarming story.  All the missionaries  loved it and it was a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

Well, if Willard Bean was the fighting preacher, Wendell Kerr is the baking preacher.  He spent most of yesterday baking cookies (and our little freezer was full of cookies he baked the previous week).  In the last two weeks he baked 54 dozen cookies.  We packed three different kinds in plastic bags and put those into cute Christmas bags (18 cookies per bag)--one for every family in our branch.  During the week we delivered bags to less active folks and took the rest to church today.  Everybody loves Elder Kerr's cookies, and it was fun to distribute them. 

One of the YSAs we've enjoyed the entire time we've been here got married in the Houston Temple on Wednesday.  Yesterday was a ring ceremony and dinner/reception for them.  She's lived here most of her life, and he's an Army engineer stationed at Fort Polk.  His next post is in Missouri at the first of the year--they'll be missed here.

Happy couple, with flower girls and ring bearer

In a tiny branch there's no such thing as a "ward choir" so we didn't have the traditional Christmas choir program today.  Instead, we were the speakers.  We missed hearing the Christmas music, but we enjoyed thinking and speaking about what Christmas means. 

Week 64

Kind of a quiet week.   On Wednesday the Religious Services secretary at Oakdale called to say there weren't any services that day due to a staff special event.  The next day we drove up to Pollock, only to learn that due to a special function the prisoners were on lockdown until 4 pm.  Not only do we miss our fellows when we don't see them, every one of them has told us our hour together is the best part of their week, and we feel so bad when they have to miss it.  We have a video-conference with the Golds and two Seminary and Institute Area Coordinators every Thursday--but that was cancelled as well.  A week of cancellations.

We visited the early morning seminary class in Natchitoches Tuesday and the last institute class in Leesville on Thursday night.  Another semester comes to a close.  Coming home from Leesville we had frequent glimpses of the last full moon of the decade.

The Tuesday before transfers the Greens generally have all the missionaries over for a wonderful Cajun meal.  However, Sister Green has been ill, so this week her daughter and her husband had us all over.  These people can cook!

Normally District Council is on Wednesday, so we can only attend for a short time before heading to Oakdale.  Because of transfers this week, it was held on Friday.  The good news is that we have another companionship added to our district--sisters are opening the Pineville area.  It's in the Alexandria ward, so they'll have a set of elders and a set of sisters working there.  That brings our district to eight young missionaries and us.  We love their dedication and enthusiasm.

Natchitoches goes all out for Christmas (this year makes 93 years of celebrating). Starting about Thanksgiving there is a fabulous light display along the Cane River, and they look so pretty reflected in the river (pictures and notes from last year talk about it).  Every Saturday there is a fireworks display as well. On Saturday we met up with the Golds, the senior couple in Rustin, to eat dinner and enjoy the festivities.  Our appetizer plate had alligator, fried green tomatoes, shrimp, mini meat pies, and a crab cake.

The Golds and the Kerrs eating shrimp/crab/crawfish macaroni and cheese,
 catfish strips, and a Central Louisiana specialty, meat pies

 In the early evening on festival Saturdays, Front Street is closed to vehicles and becomes a wonderful pedestrian mall.  Walking along, I saw what I was sure was snow flakes on a parked truck.  Knowing that's highly unlikely in Louisiana, I looked up and saw a snow making machine spewing snow flakes over the street.  There were several along the street, and it was fun to watch little kids trying to catch the flakes.  (It reached 80 degrees today, and snow happens very rarely here.)

The crowd and the bridge over the Cane River

 At 5:30 pm there was a lighted boat parade--they don't show well here, but it was fun to watch.

The fabulous fireworks display started at 7:00 pm.  It really was wonderful and we loved watching it.

Today was the last Sunday School class of the year (and I guess of the decade, as well).  I have loved teaching the New Testament this year, and am very excited to be teaching the Book of Mormon next year.  The Come Follow Me program is inspired, and using it is a great blessing to individuals and families.

Week 63

A little more prison news--one of our favorite inmates was sent to a deportation facility (he's from Honduras) just a few hours before we got to Oakdale this week.  He is the sweetest man, and we'll really miss him.  At Pollock the next day, we were just finishing up our lesson with the inmate there when they called a lockdown until two missing inmates could be located.  We were there an extra 90 minutes beyond our hour!  We are learning so much about prison life, and nothing we learn makes us want to break the law and go in permanently.

Thursday night we drove to Vidalia, LA, right on the Mississippi River and just across the bridge from Natchez, MS.  On Friday morning we went first to The Towers, a mansion that has tours all through the year, but has a special Jeweled Christmas Tour in December.  Taking pictures inside isn't allowed, but here is a website showing one of the most amazing and over the top tours we've taken.  Jeweled Christmas

The woman has THOUSANDS of pieces of costume jewelry which she incorporates into at least four 12-foot trees, a couple of 8-foot trees, and many 2- or 3-foot trees.  Every square inch of space (mantles, tables, banisters) is covered in "jewels"--many from movie sets or designers who create jewelry for the rich and famous.  I truly cannot begin to describe this experience.

At The Towers--those harnesses are jeweled!

Next we went to Magnolia Hall, but the garden club that owns and maintains that mansion was having its annual Christmas fundraising luncheon, so no tours were available.  Fortunately, a member of the Church is in that garden club and saw us.  She invited us to join the party.  We decided to go see another home then come back to Magnolia.

 The other house is called The House at Ellicott Hill.  Ellicott is the person who established the dividing line between Spanish and French territory right on this hill, though he never lived in the house later built there.  What was interesting about this house is the lack of grandeur--it predated all the antebellum mansions by many years.  It was built in 1798 and served as a mercantile (and later a surgery) downstairs and home upstairs.

House at Ellicott Hill

Cotton spinning wheel and guns--the bottom one was taken out of a tree that had grown around it

An all-in-one lavatory cabinet

Sewing cabinet and fly catcher--sugar water in chamber attracted them, arsenic in other killed them off

When we went back to Magnolia Hall to (for a price) eat lunch we had such a good time.  We were treated like long lost friends and enjoyed good food with delightful people in an incredible antebellum mansion.  Southern hospitality is a real thing!!  Even though no tour happened, we could wander around the beautiful downstairs rooms where the buffet was served and seating was available.  Pretty grand!

Brownstones were becoming popular in Boston, so the rich southerners used the same color

With our new friends--man on the right was one of the tour guides at the Jewel Tower 

If these homes were not old enough, we went to some Indian mounds.  The second largest in the country, Emerald Mound, is just a few miles outside Natchez.  (Interestingly, when we were courting, Kerby took me to the largest in the country--Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, IL.)

At the base of a mound covering eight acres

On the top of the mound, with another mound going higher still

From there we drove to the other side of Natchez to the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians.  It was another early site (700 AD) for religious and ceremonial activities--three of these mounds were still being used when European colonists came to the area in the 1700s.

Quite an educational and fun day in Natchez.

Saturday evening was an inter-faith Christmas celebration at the ward in Alexandria.  It was lovely to sing so many Christmas hymns and get into the spirit of the season.

Today was the Primary sacrament meeting program.  We have 11 Primary children--six boys and five girls.  They did a very nice job despite being dependent on our programmable piano and Gospel Library on a phone for music.  After church we had a Linger Longer with three kinds of gumbo, rice, cornbread, and pie.  One of our sisters is from northern LA, and gumbo is entirely different up there.  She wanted to make sure I tasted that kind of gumbo (the only true gumbo) before leaving LA.  It is different--contains okra, tomatoes, lots of chicken, and file (ground sassafras leaves which flavor and thicken it).  Very tasty.

After visiting a couple of sisters who have been ill (one is still in the hospital), we called it a day and came home to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  So grateful for this time of year.

Week 62

Our mission district has six young elders (and us).  We had them all over for an early Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday afternoon--we had cranberry pork loin instead of turkey, but otherwise pretty traditional.  After dinner we went scouting out apartments in Alexandria to get ready for another set of young missionaries who will arrive at the next transfer.

On Wednesday another of our inmates who hasn't joined us for a long time came back to the group.  It was good to see him again and we had a really good discussion.

Now, buckle your seat belt, here come a zillion pictures of our Thanksgiving break.  On Thursday we went down to Baton Rouge.  We started the day at Houmas House--a lovely sugar cane plantation house.  It was one of the most interesting plantation tours we've had.  The Houmas Indians originally had all the land, and the French bought huge parcels for ridiculously small amounts of guns, powder, and jewelry. 

Christmas decorations in the live oak trees

A limb of an 850 year old live oak tree

Bottom: mural of sugar cane on the walls in entry way, Top: a clock once owned by Marie Antoinette
and a 65-pound silver sculpture of Abe Lincoln by Mount Rushmore sculptor (not original to plantation house--most wouldn't be excited about Lincoln; the current owner picked it up at an auction)

Christmas decorations and, bottom, the Jacksons--a senior couple we ran into on the tour

Various sights

We had our adequate, not great, dinner at a cafeteria.  That evening we went to see the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  It's not a children's movie, but a wonderful story based on an incident in the life of Mr. Rogers and a reporter.

After watching the reconstruction process for over a year, we finally got to attend the Baton Rouge Temple on Friday morning.  It was simply beautiful and so lovely to have a temple much closer to us than Dallas or Houston.

While touring the Houmas House, we saw a large poster advertising the Whitney Plantation, the only plantation tour dedicated to the history of enslaved people.  So on Friday afternoon that's where we went.  Fascinating!!  In the brochure a quote from National Geographic says, "The plantation every American should visit."  We agree.

The visitors' center has a lot of information about slavery throughout the world and the transatlantic slave trade.

Unfortunately, Voltaire's statement is true

Life on a sugar cane plantation was far more difficult than on a cotton plantation.  If you were an enslaved person on a cotton plantation, the worst thing you could hear from your master is that you were going to be "sold down the river."  That meant you were being sold to a sugar cane plantation, and the average life expectancy on those was 10 years--regardless of how old you were when you started.  A 10 year old could expect to be dead at 20, and a 20 year old would be dead by 30. 

The slaves had to be baptized Catholic, but received no benefits of church membership.  After emancipation almost the first thing many freed people did was become Baptist and built a church.  This is the first stop on the tour--the Baptist church.

Inside the church and in various places throughout the plantation were wonderful clay statues of children.  They are based on actual photographs of children born into slavery.  They stand about 3 feet high, and were at once charming and haunting.  The artist is Woodrow Nash. Pardon the large number of pictures (there were many more statues), but they had a huge impact on us.

Much of the information presented throughout the plantation and museum was based on oral histories recorded on WPA projects of people who had been children and teens when emancipated--the only  people who had lived in slavery still alive during the Great Depression.  Also, records, bills of sale, and so on found on the plantation when the current owner bought it, as well as academic research went into creating this history.

The following plaques are just a few of the many remembering slaves at Whitney Plantation over the years.  Many of the people were enslaved in Africa and brought to America.  The first thing that happened to them was taking away their names and giving them English or French names.  Also, their actual birthplaces were generally lumped into huge regions, so they lost their actual place of origin as well. 

Wall of Honor

Allees Gwendolyn Mildo Hall Memorial to 107,000 slaves in Louisiana.  Our superb tour guide.

Memorial to the 22,000 enslaved children who died in Louisiana before the age of three

Slave cabins--each side housing up to 10 people

Bottom:  Sugar cane, cane boiling pots
Top:  Slave cabins, holding cages for the slave auctions

The detached kitchen--the cook was always treated well.
 She could poison the whole family if she got mad!

The big house--built by enslaved men

 In addition to taking the slave's original name and birthplace away, the system kept enslaved people illiterate and uneducated, divided families, and tried to create divisions in groups.  All worked to keep people subservient.  A slave could be beaten just for possessing paper and pencil even if he couldn't read. 

Prior to the African slaves, indentured servants from Europe came to work the fields, but most of them didn't live long enough to be free. 

Most Southerners didn't own slaves--only about 2% ever did, and most of those had only one or two (cook/maid and butler).  The other 1% were the holders of hundreds of slaves, and all their decisions about the purchase, selling, and treatment of their human "property" were purely economic.   Greed has caused, and continues to cause, incredible suffering in the world.  This tour was remarkable and so educational. 
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"Returning the Chains"