Hand turkeys and service

December 1, 2014

It's December! That means everyone else finally gets on board with me about celebrating Christmas :) I'm already enjoying the lights that are starting to go up. Definitely more Christmas cheer than last year.

In other news, everyone decided that a week off from school for Thanksgiving was a great reason to go on vacation. So not a lot of appointments. BUT that meant we had the opportunity to make over 50 hand turkeys and deliver them. My wrist started cramping on the last batch. Each time we would deliver them, Sister Davidson and I would take a moment to play Cinderella's glass slipper and figure out whose hand it was. This was also when we discovered that Sister Davidson has one hitchhikers thumb, and one not.

Thanksgiving Day was fun. We delivered hand turkeys in the morning, and then learned that our planned Thanksgiving "dinner" was actually at 2:30. Then afterwards we stopped by a less active member's house to pick up some turkey, because he had injected and deep fried it. I was going to say just like my daddy does, but then I learned today that he no longer does that... (This year Troy still injected but then smoked the turkey. It tasted just as good but clean-up was easier so he may never go back to deep frying.) Well anyway, the turkey was delicious, but it turned out we were invited for the whole meal, so we got Thanksgiving dinner #2. We got dessert to go though. And then we went over to a non-member's house who invited us to pick up some pie, and we ended up eating pie with all of them while they ate dinner. And then we got Thanksgiving dinner #3 to go. So...I'm surprised I didn't explode. That was all back to back by the way. Member to less active member to non-member. So a pretty awesome Thanksgiving.

Saturday. I'm going to include a tidbit from my letter to my Mission President:

"I have a confession: We did 10 hours of service in one day. And this is how it happened:
A member of our ward works for the city and was in charge of running the Silver Jubilee Dinner for Yucaipa's Winterfest. It was a big dinner and program with all the big wigs of Yucaipa to celebrate 25 years of cityhood. We said we could come help set up at 10am. We planned to stay for about 11/2 hours. Our planned amount of time ran out, and looking around, there were not enough volunteers for the amount that needed to get done, in the amount of time left. So we stayed a little longer. We worked through lunch. Then it became crunch time, so we worked a little harder. The people really in charge came and expressed their thanks. We were going to leave for dinner, and they said we could just eat there (it was being catered by some of the best small businesses in town). So while waiting for food, we became impromptu line greeters, and got to talk to many of the people at dinner. This was all done in proselyting clothes, with our tags on. We would tell them we were from the LDS church, and they would express their thanks. Then after dinner, we were asked to hand out goody bags. I gave one to the mayor. And then we helped clean up. And that is how we ended up in a 10 hour service project."

Other good things that came from this: 1) Sister Davidson and I got to know one of the other volunteers there, a twenty-year old girl who goes to the University of Redlands. Apparently she had never talked to missionaries before. Now she knows that we are (fairly) normal. 2) One of the establishments catering was Angus McGurdy's, which is owned by an on and off active member, and we got to chat with him quite a bit during clean up. He also said that all us missionaries that helped could come in for lunch today and get a free meal. 3) I got one of the goody bags, which included a limited edition coin commemorating the 25th anniversary of Yucaipa's cityhood.

Sunday we both woke up exhausted and sore. I had this kink in my back from whipping out 200 goblets of ice in about 10 minutes. That was during super crunch time. I would pull the goblet out of the box and hand it to Sister Davidson who would put ice in it, who would then hand it to another volunteer who would put it on the table for the elders to grab and put on the tables. I was doing fine until I started going through the boxes and they kept getting lower and lower until I was squatting and my calves were burning and my back aching but there was no time to rest. It was a thrill. I also got glitter all over my face and clothes from decorating a bunch of trees. It was fun though when people would ask us things like they thought we knew what was going on. Good times Saturday was.

Sunday morning I prayed for a miracle. And at 8:50pm I saw one when a less active member we've been working with for a long time and always refuses to pray out loud...prayed. He actually volunteered to say the closing prayer. My jaw almost hit the floor.

So that was this week! I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season. Stay safe putting up lights. Don't get in fights at the store buying presents. Check out christmas.mormon.org (that's the He is the Gift initiative, right?)

Love ya!

Sister Tanner

Sometimes, the animals like to enter our little house and make themselves at home.

Also, and you can add this to my letter,

This week the Palmers made the wonderful decision to give Roxy back to the breeder. She may have been cute the first week, but she has continued to wreak havoc ever since. The last straw was, she figured out how to jump into the chicken enclosure and terrorize them. She does not listen to correction. She has done many $$ worth of damage. She's not even fun to pet. So I was only a teensy bit sad to see her go. Apparently the same was said for the Palmer children. One cried for about 5 minutes, and then not another word was said about her.