Busy, Brisk, Birthday

This week was such perfect weather.  The days were in the high 70's with cool nights.  I love this fall weather in Philly!  The leaves are beginning to change color or fall off.  This is a terrible photo as I caught Sister Johnstone on the right running into the picture as I took it, but these are some of the cute sisters that were here on Friday for Golden retraining.  What that means is that they are now 5 weeks into their 12 week training so they meet at the Mission office and get trained by the Mission president and his wife and the AP's.  It is our job in the office to feed them lunch.  This is an easy assignment as we always get pizza and then have a salad or fruit.  This time there were 38 to feed, which meant 13 large pizzas.  And they all got eaten.  Luckily I have found a place very closeby that makes decent pizza.  On days like this we get to the mission office very early, as they inevitably have things to give us, problems to solve, or items they need.  The same thing recurrs when they finish for the day.  We have some AWESOME sister missionaries.

After we got all done for the day, we headed to the Wilson's for a night of games.  This is a picture of Evan Wilson and Corry Jones who played football together at Dixie College.  It has been fun to get to know this couple (Evan and Darlene) and do things with both them and the Ballards.

Saturday, September 20 we took a trip to Quakertown where we met up with (left to right) Sisters Simmons, Bischoff and Zeller.  Sister Zeller and Elder Jones share the same birthdate, so he promised her we would come up and take them to lunch.  What a fun trio to enjoy sharing a meal with.  Sister Zeller came out 6 weeks after us.  Sister Jana Bischoff goes home in Feb, I believe.  Sister Simmons just came out this summer.  Her brother died a month before she came to the mission field in his sleep.  Last month her Dad was taking his last Chemo treatment and went into a coma.  He was not expected to live, but a miracle happened and he is slowly regaining his strength, although he is still up at the Huntsman Center.  She has a very good attitude about all of this and is a sincere and determined missionary.  Did I say that we have AWESOME sisters?  We do!

Happy Birthday to Elder L. Corry Jones.  He is a completely wonderful missionary and so well loved by the young missionaries.  No matter how old he gets, he is young at heart and relates very well with these young missionaries.  Monday we are headed on a field trip with 26 Senior Missionaries to Cape May, NJ to see the sights and have lunch.  Just a year ago we were able to go there for the first time and meet Chris and Lindsay Jones for a birthday celebration...