Project-A-Palooza

It may seem like I just got done whinging about how much I hated staining our new deck.  Pshaw! I say.  It's been at least 3 weeks...possibly more.  Time to move on.

Besides, Steve is out of town...and if you think I'm not going to take advantage of the opportunity of wowing him with a semi-finished project, you'd be wrong.

My goal for the week is to get the ceiling and walls painted in my livingdiningkitchenhallentry room. Wish me luck.  I'll need it.

Today is all about the prep work.

After looking at about a million shades of gray, I think I'm going with what I used in The Empire Strikes Bath.  I bought a sample size of a different gray, and while it was beautiful, I may as well have gone out and killed me a varmint and dressed in skins because I would have been living in a cave.

I still have a ton of prep work to do - tomorrow I plan on painting the ceiling. Be prepared to hear a lot of whinging...I like painting ceilings only slightly more than I like painting deck railings. 

Hola Elder

Dear Family,

So, this week... man these weeks are flying by so fast. It's hard to keep track of them. The transfer ends next Tuesday.

James is doing rather good. We were able to meet with him once (his busy-ness prevents us from meeting with him more often), and he came to church. Also, he told us that his parents are willing to let him be baptized now, so I guess the only real thing we need to do for that to happen is just to meet with him and talk with his parents about it.

Things with Dawn got... a bit interesting this week. 'Drama' would be the sufficient one-word summary of last Monday's meeting, and then things kind of hit an awkward standstill.... We'll be rebooting soon.

Tito we met with once this week and then we haven't been able to get in touch with him since. We'll be trying by some more, but we're going to refer the LA missionaries to him soon.

On Tuesday I was on exchanges with our fearless district leader, Elder Evans. (Side-note: apparently he knows Nathan from when he was serving with Elder North back in Virginia) He's super good and says that I did a super good job too. Fun times all around.

Wednesday was Halloween, which meant two things: staying inside and doing some deep cleaning in the evening, and interviews with the president (spooky). Anyhow, he directly confirmed the rumor regarding the number of missionaries here, and said it will be happening within the next six months. One thing he emphasized is us setting a very good example for all the new missionaries, and another thing is that this was the 4th or 5th time in a row that he's commented that he thinks my letters to him are funny. Should I consider a career in stand-up? (Answer: no, I'll stick to writing.)

Nobody new this week. In fact, we decided to drop some of the investigators that we've been having very little luck in terms of contacting, so our investigator list looks a little shrunken. Funnily enough though, somebody we dropped drove by us as we were walking and we set up an appointment there. Something tells me the Lord doesn't want us to quite let go some of these people. 

...well, actually there was somebody new this week, but we forgot to set up a return appointment and we'll be handing him off to the singles' ward anyways. He is a very nice young man though. We also had a nice talk with a receptive guy right, Tony, outside his house, though it wasn't a lesson. We'll be trying to get inside his house to teach a lesson.

The frequency of random cars passing-by yelling random things at us has seemed to increase this week. Can't imagine why.

Oh, and also, who will be at home for Thanksgiving? I'm wondering mainly because I was just thinking of sending a bunch of letters to people and what to do there.

Items of interest that I want: a stapler, letters from Danny, a no-bake cookie recipe, and letters from Danny.

Rambunctiously,

Elder West

Hola Elder

Dear Family,

 

I feel like a salmon going upstream, and by that I mean I'm in my original proselyting zone (not the exact same area) and am thus having some serious deja vu at points. I can't say I'm really familiar with the area I'm currently serving in, so it's not that bad (other than the occasional "oh hey I remember driving down this street once"), but driving to the church where district meeting is at was quite bizarre, to say the least ("oh hey there's that intersection... and post office... and grocery store... etc.). Also, I got to see people from all three of my previous wards in the stake during general conference.

 

Anyhow, about the ward and area and such... I'm serving in English (again), so this transfer will mark the year mark of me not being in a Spanish ward. Aesthetically, the northern half of the area is pretty unique: houses and small apartment complexes indiscriminately mingled together, plus the whole "Uptown" area (quite classy looking). With general conference and a relative dearth of dinners, I haven't gotten to see as many of the members of the ward as I would have liked. There was a ward activity on Friday, and the people seem nice enough, but I can't say I remember very many of the faces. On the plus side, our ward mission leader is quite awesome. He used to be part of the stake presidency, and he's very motivated.

Our teaching pool seems pretty good. We have somebody lined up for baptism in a couple weeks: James. He's a nice young man who referred himself to the missionaries a couple weeks back and already knows the church is true. And he wants to go to BYU. You can't get much nicer than that. In addition, we have about 5 or 6 other people that we are teaching, with varying degrees of progress and understanding. Also, something we've decided to do as a companionship is just to man up and plan a little bit of knocking every day. It keeps us from being rusty, and we've seen some interesting things come of it.

 

Also, we're in car again (I'm the driver because Elder Jenson is currently at war with the DMV (long story involving long lines and bayonets)), though judging by the gas prices we'll probably be using our bikes (or walking) quite a bit.

 

Elder Jenson and I get along very well, both in terms of proselyting and personality. Terse and to-the-point describe his contacting and tracting approaches, which works quite well. Teaching-wise we're good at letting each-other have the chance to speak and jumping-in when needed. We're also pretty good with our random conversations together. Out of the nine companions I've had, he is only the second one (well, I guess technically first) thus far with which I can have an intellectually stimulating conversation about BurgerTime.

 

General conference was quite good. One thing I've noticed is that when you're scrambling to take notes that the whole thing seems to go by quite a bit faster.

 

Friendly,

Elder West

I'm Sooooo done.

I thought I'd better post some pictures before I passed out from deck stain inhalation...

All I see when I look at the deck right now is the 50 trillion pickets, 10 billion rails and the 2 million posts that make up the railings on the deck and arbor. Seriously, If I had realized how much work would go into staining these puppies I'm not sure I would have wanted to even start the project.

...pickets, pickets, pickets...

I would like to add a final THANK YOU!!! to all the people who helped put this project together:

Mike Carr (and his crew) for the cement work
Delvin Tapasoa (and crew) for framing the deck
Cory for flying out here from South Carolina and working so hard
Stephanie for letting Cory fly here...
Nathan, Andrew and Danny for giving up some of their summer vacations to help out
Kelly, Tia, Suzanne & Keira for last minute (pre-wedding) heroic help (again...giving up vacation)

and last, but not least-ish in the least...

Steve - for spending every minute he could spare this summer (and more money than we would have liked to spare) on getting this project started AND finished (ish).

Doctor Who Week Part 2

I've been holding off making a classroom reading chart...until now.

I used the New Testament bookmarks from lds.about.com and a google image of the TARDIS.  Cropped the reading chart, pasted over the TARDIS doors, added a white box (for names). And there you go.

I think I'll put them all on a piece of poster board with a heading that reads:

 "Scriptures - bigger on the inside".

Doctor Who Week

Yes, I am the nerdy seminary teacher.  I also happen to have at least 3 students this year who are avid Doctor Who fans.

Brilliant! Fantastic!

That's something I can work with.

This is the goal - getting kids to read their scriptures on a daily basis. I laminated this pic and put it up in my classroom.  It makes me smile.

I created 5 stickers - I give out a new one each day.  The R.E.D. at the top of each one stands for Read Every Day.

It's Autumn Time!

It's pumpkin-pa-looza here at Casa de West this week. That's what happens when you open a big can of pumpkin and need to use it up.

On Wednesday evening I opened the can...and made Petite Pumpkin Spice Donuts (get the recipe here). I glazed them with some cream cheese frosting instead of rolling them in sugar, but otherwise the recipe was the same.  Turned out great - and they stayed nice and moist (unlike 'real' donuts) for when I passed them around in seminary the next morning. The little donut recipe only called for 3/4 cup pumpkin - which left way over half a can. What's a girl to do? Hah! Like that's a problem. I whipped up a batch of Pumpkin Pancakes for Sunday breakfast, that's what.

Don't you just want to gobble them up?

I add blueberries...because I can.  But not to all of them, because Danny is not a fan.  He loves the pancakes 'as is'.  He might love them even better if I threw some chocolate chips in, but why mess with a good thing?

The pancakes with blueberries look a little lumpy after I turn them - but that's because the blueberries haven't finished thawing - which they do pretty quick.

Makes about 12-16 ish.

Would you like the recipe?  Of course you would.

Pumpkin Pancakes

Sift dry ingredients together:
2 cups flour
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger
(If you don't have all the cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger - or you're feeling a bit lazy, substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice)

Mix together wet stuff:
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup canned or pureed pumpkin
1 egg
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Whisk wet stuff and dry stuff together, feel free to add blueberries (frozen or un), chocolate chips or whatever, then cook on a griddle (no hotter than 350') or frying pan the same as you would a regular pancake.

I really like these with blackberry syrup...but alas, I don't have any in the house right now.

Enjoy.