Week Ending November 16, 2013

Sunday my seminary lesson went well. One student turned in a notebook—I’m thrilled. Our talks went well too. I spoke about veterans in the Book of Mormon and the lessons we can learn from them. The branch president taught a lesson on family history during third hour. He had to show several videos on a DVD that wouldn’t play on a DVD player. I took my laptop to play them. I put the clips he needed into a folder so it would be easier to find them. I had to download two of them from lds.org. It was definitely a tender mercy because I have not had much success getting online at the church, but I didn’t have any trouble at all getting on and finding the clips he needed.

After church I worked with one of the counselors to update branch records. We have collected several street addresses for current and former members. Most have just a PO Box number. I wish we could get more street addresses for the branch records. It would make it so much easier to reach out to people.

In the afternoon I worked on getting seminary set up for the new week and did everything I could except closing the old week.

We home taught a family in the evening. The husband has been called to be the Young Men leader in the branch. He is not sure what to do with the boys since he doesn’t have any manuals. I’m sure they’re available online. I hope he encourages the boys to do the “Duty to God” program. It would be a real blessing in their lives.

Veterans' Day Flag Raising at Church Rock, NM

Monday we had agreed to judge the Veterans’ Day parade in Church Rock, so we headed to the chapter house for the 9 AM flag raising ceremony. From there we went to the store and parked across the street so we could see the entries when they came by. The parade was supposed to start at 10 AM. Cars started arriving and parking along the road. By 10:20 there were lots of cars parked but no parade. Finally, we could see the flags waving for the color guard. We got out of the car so we could see all the entries clearly.

Color Guard for Veterans' Day Parade, Church Rock, NM

 
First was the color guard, followed by the Grand Marshall, a two-time Purple Heart recipient in the area. Behind him was the truck carrying Miss Church Rock in native dress. The truck was covered in Indian blankets with flags waving. Miss Church Rock was standing in the back throwing candy to the parade watchers. She asked if we wanted any and threw us some.

The next entry was a truck with patriotic music playing and a tank made of cardboard in the truck bed (very creative). A couple of family members were carrying a banner with the family name on it and walking in front of the truck. Then there was a truck with nothing special but two flags on the front. Following this truck were several more trucks and cars that were pulling off the sidelines to join in.

First Place Entry--Tank in truck (sorry, no picture!)

We waited, thinking there must be more to the parade, but nothing came. We drove to where the parade started just to make sure no one had been left behind, but no one was there either. We drove back to the store and joined the line of cars headed to the chapter house. We were quite surprised that the “parade” consisted of four entries, five if you count the Color Guard, and we did.

Miss Church Rock

The program was very nice, I guess—it was all in Navajo. Ted sat at the table with the veterans in the front of the hall. They introduced all the veterans—in English. Miss Church Rock was the guest speaker. She sang a couple of songs, accompanying herself on a small drum. They presented the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place prizes for the parade—the tank was first, Miss Church Rock was second, and the Color Guard was third. They gave us a small pot as a gift for our services.

Gift for our judging services

Then they served lunch. The kitchen had dished up the plates at the beginning of the program so it was stone-cold 45 minutes later, but it tasted OK. Our table was served right after the veterans. It took forever to serve the people because they kept coming. After it was over, they cut one of the two cakes and served to people who had already thrown their forks in the trash—oh, well. We thanked our friend for the opportunity to be of help. The one bit of the program I understood was the closing prayer in English by our friend. She had offered the opening prayer in Navajo when the assigned person didn’t show up and she frequently prays in Navajo at church, so I was pleased that she did that in English.

Cake commemorating all four branches of service

During the program a veteran got up to talk. He apparently was very entertaining because the people were all smiling and at a couple of points even laughing. I asked the lady sitting next to me what was so funny. He had told a joke. There was an old man who went with his son to a rodeo. He sat and watched all the events without much reaction. When they began setting up the barrels for the barrel race, he got really animated and said, “Now we see the beautiful ladies.”

Church Rock

Home evening was fun. We played Apples to Apples and they really loved it. A young man had brought three big bowls of fruit and some fruit dip. That was wonderful.

Tuesday I was at home all day working on seminary. It seems like that’s all I do any more—either put together a lesson for this week or assignments for next week or grading for last week. I enjoy it, but it does seem like I’m in a rut. I’m having a difficult time organizing the lesson for this week again—there is so much in the chapters that I’d like to cover and no good way to include it all. We are studying the speech King Benjamin gave just prior to his death. It is an amazing, work with so much in it of value.

I called a couple of my students to talk with them about seminary. Their work seemed to indicate they were struggling with seminary. When I spoke with them they both agreed that they were having challenges. We discussed some things they could do to improve their work and their attitudes. I felt like it was well-received.

Wednesday I was finally able to put together some organized thoughts for the lesson this week. We went to the senior center for lunch and had a good visit with the van driver. Most of the people had gone to a casino on an overnight trip so it was practically deserted. He had cooked and served the food.

In the afternoon we drove to Tohlakai for seminary. Two students were already there. We’d received a text message saying another student wouldn’t be there. Her sister came so I had three students. We usually meet in the Primary room and they had set up desks for the students. The desks were all gone this week. President Curtis was interviewing the kids to go to the temple on Saturday. He said the Stake Primary President visited and said to take out the desks. He got us a table which worked great for the three students. It sort of threw me off kilter a bit to have my room totally changed.

After we left there we went straight to the church for our Branch Council meeting. As it turned out, the branch president didn’t arrive for 45 minutes. The missionaries had said he’d be late. I was about to leave when he arrived. The meeting was short. We talked about a few people that we needed to reach out to, but the general talk was that we’d think about it and talk more next time. We had money that needed to be spent before year end so they talked about a party with dinner and games. The date was up in the air at meeting’s end. The discussion turned to the New Year’s Eve party they had asked me to plan. They planned the food and how much we needed. The president’s wife was making notes on what needed to be done, so I think she may be checking into it. When one of the elders said he loved games, it was decided he could do games. Since I was not really part of the discussion, I’m not sure if I’m in charge or not. The only part I really contributed to was saying I had planned to ask one of my former students to do the midnight breakfast.

Thursday was our quilting class. I’m having a difficult time coming up with ideas of what to bring for lunch. One lady always brings cheese puffs and pudding cups and sometimes ice cream. The other never brings anything. So the meal is up to me. Again it was just the three of us. I got all my pieces cut for framing my quilt blocks. I didn’t want to start sewing them yet, but I laid out the blocks on the Relief Society Room floor. I ended up with one quilt 6 X 7 blocks and one 3 X 4 blocks. (When I decided to frame the squares, it added enough to the size that I ended up with extra squares.) I’m using pink to frame the large one. I’m not sure yet what to use for the smaller one. I picked out three or four pieces of fabric to look at later. I had two blocks left over. The smaller quilt is mostly the squares I didn’t want in the larger one, but I think they’ll both be cute.

After I got home I did a few more things for seminary to grade assignments and prepare for class. At 5 PM I began calling the girls. One got on—I’m not sure if she had forgotten or not. A second tried but couldn’t get on so she called in. The third didn’t get on and didn’t call in. She was having technical difficulties when I talked to her. I saw a couple of emails after class asking me to send a new invitation to the meeting. I don’t understand why she didn’t call me. Class went well. I had to read my power point to the one student and I had to write the things she found in the scriptures on the white board, but that wasn’t too bad. I’m just glad she took the initiative to call in.

After I grabbed a quick bite to eat, we headed to institute. The lesson went really well. There was a lot of discussion and some really good thoughts. It appeared that two of the kids might be dating. They are both really cute kids and I think they’d go well together. We had some real fun playing games afterward until Ted felt like we needed to leave before he fell asleep.

Friday at our online teachers’ meeting I made a presentation on one of the features in Webex. I had typed out the instructions and sent them out to everyone. I did a demo, but I set a timer at one minute thinking they’d work quickly. I don’t know what it looks like from the student side, so I’m not sure how much time is needed. It was too short, but it spawned some good discussion about how and when to use it. One of the teachers asked about the report cards in WISE, the grading system. I tried to help her print hers out. She had an old copy the system specialist had sent her so it didn’t agree with what I could see. We finally got hers to work. Another teacher said she’d never been able to print hers, so I made a couple of suggestions and she was able to print hers as well. I’m not sure if any of us learned much except that pop-up blockers keep things from printing, but it was a good discussion.

I spent some time sewing pieces on my quilt blocks. I got two rows completely together; I got three more rows partially done. During the day we had some really bad weather. It hailed really hard at one point. Mostly it rained off and on and the wind was bad. It was a good day to be inside.

Saturday we picked up another couple for the trip to the temple. On the way to Albuquerque I finished some craft projects I was working on. We had to run a few errands including getting the car smog-checked and the registration mailed off. I really enjoyed the temple session. I was quite tired, but I felt like I was able to focus better than some times. Afterward we stopped at a pet store so our friends could buy a tarantula. There is just no accounting for people’s tastes. We did manage to get home before dark and that was a blessing. I’m not sure if Ted would have lasted much longer than he did.

At home I gathered my stuff together for seminary Sunday. I finished doing the bulletin and put all my students’ report cards together for Sunday. That actually was a fairly complex project, but it turned out to come together fairly well. When I couldn’t stay awake any longer I went to bed, figuring I’d be better off reviewing my lesson in the morning.