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.