29 Dec 2014 - 4 Jan 2015 MinhaFamilia,NewYearsEve,Puzzle,MLSTraining

The rain continued Sunday evening and Monday morning!  The rain kept the crowds down at the grocery store and we were home by 10:30am!

Monday afternoon and evening, I met with some members with their Minha Familia booklets.  During the week I had input their information on FamilySearch, which has included family stories.  This week I also finished a couple of other member histories which we had started to compile during our Family History lessons earlier in the year.

After Staff Meeting on Tuesday, we did some training with the Kimballs. It was the end of the month, and that means Baptismal Fichas!   So far for December I had only received 40 fichas.  When I heard at Staff Meeting that the total number of baptisms was over 100, I knew I had lots of work ahead!  I trained Sister Kimball on the CDE system we use for inputting fichas and she caught on very fast.  I will finish up for December and then Sister Kimball will take over beginning January 2015.

On New Year’s Eve we spent part of the evening beginning to go through our things, deciding what stays and what we pack up to take home!   We planned to have banana splits for our special New Year’s Eve snack.  Before banana splits, Richard said he had an activity – a treasure hunt for me!  I feel like I am very blessed to have my thoughtful husband who thinks up fun things to do together.  I remember when I tried to put together a treasure hunt and how frustrating it was for me.  I had tried to organize it before I put out the clues.  He explained that he just plans it as he goes!  Guess in treasure hunts, you can be too organized!  I followed the clues - “go to where there used to be hot water” “got to where you can see a saw” “get some vitamins” “go to where you see the sunset” “go where you get cool” “go where the mosquitos cannot go” “go where skyping happens” “go where it is super cool” “go where hot water lives” “go to the Christmas tree.”   The Christmas tree held the treasure: a paper with the number 9134!  Then to solve that, I could only ask “Yes” and “No” questions (like the game 20 questions) to determine the significance of the number.  Well, the number is our cabin number on the cruise we’ll be taking after our mission!  It is a balcony cabin – we didn’t want to be down where you can’t see anything!

When midnight came, the city was aglow with little colored rockets arching through the air over all of the surrounding neighborhoods.  People were launching fireworks off apartment balconies and rooftops.  The sizzles, pops and bangs of the fireworks were accompanied by joyful sounds of celebration!  Now and then a bigger colorful firework would explode. The display lasted about 20 minutes before the activity died down a little.  It was an amazing sight!  Happy New Year 2015!  

Took some time to put together a puzzle - a holiday tradition I don't want to give up.  The title of this puzzle was "Three's a crowd" but, since I put it together over the Christmas New Year's season I like the title "We Three Kings" - these are King Penguins!

Richard has been working many hours on the MLS (Member and Leader Services) training for Saturday.  MLS is the software which wards and branches of the Church use to keep records of membership and finances.  On Thursday evening I suggested he practice the presentation by saying it to me.  Then he said, “I don’t like this training!  They won’t be able to follow it!”  He asked me to word-crunch it (down-size it) and make it flow better.  Working together a couple of hours before dinner and then a couple of hours after dinner, we felt we were on the right track to make it a good presentation.

On Saturday morning, MLS training happened!!!  It started a little late, as we had trouble getting the projector to cooperate, the training went very well.  We had prepared a PowerPoint for the overview part, and then we went to the test system to show the functionality of the system.  There were 30 in attendance and all 7 branches in the District were represented, some having all of their branch presidency and branch clerks in attendance.  They asked good questions and the experienced branch clerks helped Richard explain some of the answers.

After the meeting, the brethren helped move a stack of Distribution materials to the top floor of the chapel "bucket brigade" style.

We’re both feeling the stress of getting the last things accomplished.  The 2014 Mission History is coming along slowly.  Then there is training, packing, and cleaning.  When I tried to explain to a member on Sunday that we’d be finishing our mission in a couple of weeks, he expressed “What a pity!”  We have come to know and love so many people here and it will be difficult to say “Good-bye.”

There were a total of 101 people baptized in December 2014.  Included in these numbers are 29 families!