October 13th through October 19th

October 13^th through October 19^th:  Monday, I spent most of the day cooking Chinese food for a presidency dinner at our house.  I cooked 5 different dishes.  The favorite was Spicy Chicken with Broccoli in Peanut Sauce.  We had the three members of the presidency and their wives over for dinner.   Half way through the meal,  Sister Madsen knocked on the door with some crepes and we invited them to join us.  They had just gotten home and luckily hadn’t had dinner.  Or course, we had enough food for an entire zone of missionaries, not just the Pres. and his wife. 

Dinner L to R Sister Serrano, Pres. Serrano, Pres. Atkinson, Sister Atkinson, me, Sister Pena, and Pres. Pena

Tuesday, I sent out a letter to all the Bishops, Stake Presidents and Area Seventies thanking them for all the calls requesting visits to the temple and telling them we were now full for the rest of the year.  I hope I have not over booked.  Some weeks we have upwards of 19 buses coming.  Past experience tells us this will end up a few less, but it is still a lot of buses.  This coming week for example, we have 14 coming.  There is such a special Spirit in the temple when it is full and the energy is palpable.  The rest of the week was kind of slow.  We had cancellations on Thursday and Friday, but still mom worked 12 ½ hours Friday.  One of the secretaries didn't show up for her shift.  I went home about 3:00pm and cooked dinner and about 6:00pm Pres. Atkinson knocked on the door and told me I was needed back over at the temple to help someone in English.  I took mom some dinner and we got home at 8:30pm.  Saturday, 4 buses arrived at 6:00am and we had a great morning.  I got everyone in the temple and then I was able to do sealing sessions until the next group arrived at 10:00am.  After they got in, I continued with more sealings.  We went to Walmart in the afternoon and bought a big pumpkin.   We have been looking for canned pumpkin for months and we decided that if we were going to have pumpkin pie and pumpkin chocolate chips cookies, we had better make our own puree.  We baked the pumpkin and then pureed 22 cups of pumpkin filling.  We froze most of it but on Sunday mom made a batch of cookies and cupcakes.  Yum! 

Making pumpkin puree.  It was a lot of work.

Sunday, we went back to El Bosque ward and spoke in sacrament meeting.  It was fun to talk, teach and testify of the truthfulness of the doctrine of the temple.  Mom’s Spanish continues to improve and is really getting good.  She only has a few notes and just talks. 

This lady has only been a member for 6 months and she spoke with us in sacrament meeting.

We get three new missionaries this week, a couple from the states and a sister from Mexico City.  We are having a lot of rain and there is an advisory from the state department saying that there is a tropical storm in the pacific and we could get between 6 and 12 inches of rain.  It rained all day Saturday and on and off Sunday.  Still we are not complaining the weather here is beautiful.