Sea, Surf & Service

So I am trying to get myself on track with keeping this blog better. It's been a busy week. Church was great on Sunday. It was Sister Schexnayder's last Sunday on the mission, so that's a bit sad. She gave a lovely testimony.  We had the Lamprechts in town, as they were visiting and doing interviews with the elders and sisters. We had a mission correlation meeting right after church, and then we went home. We Skyped with the kids at 4:30, and that's always fun! This time we had Hayden and Parker online. Hayden is getting ready to move out of his BYU apartment (Friday) and is staying with some friends for a few nights. He is staying over with Joni and John on Monday, and then he moves into his new apartment at the University of Utah the next day! We are excited for him as he starts law school. Parker is keeping busy with work and running. He took a vacation to Whistler, Canada a little over a week ago, and he had a great time. He hiked and used his new DLSR camera to tak...

Happy American Independence Day! Freedom and independence are really excellent entities to celebrate. I have always known how lucky I feel to be born in the USA, and it has been made even more clear to me over the past year how much I celebrate those qualities of freedom.  I celebrated by baking sugar cookies 'til 1am in the wee hours of July 3rd. We realized that we had nothing to bring to our morning meetings with the young missionaries on July 4th, and thought they might be missing home and need some little way to celebrate...and what is more fun than eating, right? So I ran out the night before, right before the stores close (they all are closed by 8pm; some closed by 6). I bought some extra things I needed to make the cookies. Then I came home to bake them! Baking food items is a bit trickier here! I do have an oven and stove, but they don't work great. The oven bakes about 25 degrees cooler than needed (I am thrilled with my Celsius conversion chart I keep on the fridge)....

Happy Easter!!  I was anticipating that I would be much more faithful in blogging and journaling while on our mission! However, thus far it has not been the case. I have taken thousands of photos, which seems to be the true way I chronicle events, so that is something! Part of my "problem" is that while we have certain things planned each week, we often have things that come up, just as in our normal life. Some are so-called emergencies, and some are not exactly emergencies but are things which need to be addressed. Our days are actually quite full, and by the time we are back home and have prepared/eaten dinner, I am so tired and ready to crash - and I don't find the energy to write!  I'll try to catch up!  Last week on Thursday night was our last temple preparation class which we taught, in a series of 4 classes. We combined several lessons together for most of our classes. We had a record number of people attend - I believe we had 21 altogether! That was fabulous. ...

We started out the week (Monday) by taking the elders grocery shopping at Warehouse, then over to Van Den Tweel. We had considered going snorkeling at Chocogo Resort after this, but for some reason we didn't go. I believe they were sold out by the time we went over there.  We decided to go with all the missionaries over to the Donkey Sanctuary that afternoon, and it was so fun! We had the best time. We went through their cute little gift shop and checked it all out; then went on our way. The sisters drove their car, and we had the elders in the back of our car. We just slowly followed each other. I had brought carrots and some apples, which I thought was a lot - but none of the missionaries brought any food for the donkeys. So I distributed all I had amongst all of us, and wished I/we had brought more! There are over 960 donkeys in the sanctuary. It is basically free-range, and they feed and water the donkeys each day.  Also this week we did lots of work on real estate - we ha...

This week had us with our usual P-day, driving the elders around for groceries. Later in the day we took a little drive down to see if we could spot any nesting flamingos from the road (we couldn't) since this is the time when the moms and dads sit on their nest/egg  and keep it cool waiting for the baby flamingos to hatch. We saw a few random flamingos walking around, but the reserve is far away so as to not have people or things scare them. So we didn't see any flamingos en-masse, darn it! We did run into 4 donkeys, and I even got to feed them some carrots which I remembered to bring! 3 of them were together but they were super easily spooked (and looked a bit raggedy/scruffy); the other donkey was a bit more spruced up and looked like a handsome city donkey - and he came right on up to me when I rolled down my window and stuck the carrot out. He was super cool. :)  It's always a good day when we see donkeys!!  Besides this, it was a big real estate week. We went over t...

What do we do as Senior Missionaries? This is a common question, and one that many people (including us!) have wondered and asked. The answer is - many things! We have filled our days with quite a few things. We mostly try to think "What good can we do today?" Lots of times in our regular lives at home, we want to do good things - but many things seem to get in the way of it. Now that we are full-time missionaries, we can dedicate more time to helping those who need help. Some of the things which we've done include:  Driving young missionaries all around - to appointments, to the grocery store, to church, etc.  They have bikes, but sometimes the distance is too far, and sometimes the rain prohibits them from biking. Also at times they were living too far away to make it to the church and to appointments, to the grocery store, etc.  Baking cakes Studying scriptures and conference talks  Taking loads of photos and sharing them with others Language(s) studies - both...

Welp, here I am again, trying to figure out how to catch up and keep up! We have been keeping so busy here in Bonaire, that it is hard for me to write anything on here/Facebook/Instagram when we are finally back home! I just tend to want to put my feet up and as Elder Ridd likes to say (and I hate to hear) - "take a load off!" Lately it has been quite a load, as my New Year's resolution of losing weight has been a losing battle for me thus far! But every day is a new day, and I guess I'm willing to take that challenge and trial to face/conquer versus other way-harder ones! What have we been up to? I will try to start on our recent 'stuff' and go backwards.  Every Tuesday we have an entire "Mission Devotional" via Zoom, and we Bonairean missionaries usually meet over at our little chapel in Nikiboko. We have prayers, updates, an inspirational message from one or 2 of the missionaries (young and/or senior missionaries) and also a "Spotlight" ...