Week of April 8-14.
The daffodils at the Minnetrista are everywhere! We love to walk there and see spring unfolding before our eyes. Spring weather is crazy. We had one of the infamous midwest rain storms on Wednesday. The worst of it hit right as we were on our drive to Marion to teach Institute. No lake effect - no mountains for the clouds to pass over - just a downpour like heaven's dam broke! The wipers on high cannot keep up. It is wild. We made is safely though. Wednesday morning was Zone Meeting. They are usually held on Fridays, when we have our Munch & Mingle, so we haven't been able to attend many of the Zone Meetings. It was great to be there - to watch the Elders teach, to feel the spirit, and
to see the
The daffodils at the Minnetrista are everywhere! We love to walk there and see spring unfolding before our eyes. Spring weather is crazy. We had one of the infamous midwest rain storms on Wednesday. The worst of it hit right as we were on our drive to Marion to teach Institute. No lake effect - no mountains for the clouds to pass over - just a downpour like heaven's dam broke! The wipers on high cannot keep up. It is wild. We made is safely though. Wednesday morning was Zone Meeting. They are usually held on Fridays, when we have our Munch & Mingle, so we haven't been able to attend many of the Zone Meetings. It was great to be there - to watch the Elders teach, to feel the spirit, and
to see the 
other two senior couples and the Elders (no young sisters in our Zone right now). We love them all! On Tuesday we had game night. It went really well. One girl brought two friends from her dorm, and there were two other non-members in attendance along with a bunch of members and 4 missionaries. It is relaxed and fun and several new ones asked when they could come again. We will have one more Tuesday game night before we leave. Speaking of leaving, we said goodbye this week to one guy going to school at BYU Hawaii and a girl going back to BYU-I. Gary was the teacher for Institute and both M&M lessons this week. He spent hours setting up hyperlinks to have a participatory power point lesson - with the students clicking on their choices. He covered the Church from 1950-1980 under the administration of 4 prophets. He had lots of video clips and cool pictures. For lunches I fixed sloppy joes one day and pita
sandwiches the other. Trying to use up our food supply here, I made three different kinds of refreshment bars for Thursday - lemon, key lime, and pumpkin (rather time consuming!). Friday evening I had a dinner party for the Jacobsons and the Ulrichs.
Afterwards we all went to watch two of our students perform in "Fiddler On the Roof" - a community theater production.
On Saturday we saw the Branch off to the Columbus Temple - after a little birthday celebration for one of our students (I made the cake). We stayed to fulfill a CES assignment - teaching a workshop at the Stake Youth Conference. Our workshop was on studying the scriptures. We presented it 4 times. With Gary doing the other lessons, I did most of the planning for this workshop. Despite a very scratchy voice from a bad cough, Elder Mumford led a mini re-enactment from the Book of Mormon and led them through the study helps. We did a group scripture activity and discussion questions. The youth were great and participated well. We got to eat a nice dinner with them and watch their conference video. We felt the spirit and left better for having been there.
I attended a bridal shower that evening while Gary got some needed extra cough-healing sleep. 
On our morning walk one day we 
saw this field carpeted with little
blue flowers. Less than a week later the same field was green - with only a hint of the blue! How fast things change! Yard grass, that has been brown all winter, is bright green now. It seemed to happen over night! Maybe it's a hint of changes soon to come . . .
