what happened this week?

I'm realizing I need to keep some kind of journal if I'm going to remember the things that happened each week to write about here.

Yesterday in church, my class did the first Sharing Time class presentation. We have a new Primary presidency as of September or October 2007. Seems the previous presidency didn't do class presentations, and our new president has never served in Primary before so she had a bit of a learning curve. I mentioned the 4th Sunday is class presentation day and offered to do the first one to show how it's done (I did 2 in the Utah Valley Deaf Ward). We talked about the Creation. I had a world and big numbers 1-7 with pictures of what happened each day. My class and I took turns reading the Genesis account, then I had the other children draw pictures and tell which day that picture belonged to. Went pretty well, I think. Our Primary class lesson was about the Tree of Life.

Not too much is happening right now. We're still working on science fair projects. We're on hold with the kitchen project until we get an electrician bid for replacing the lights. So we're going to move on to painting Christie's bedroom. The walls will be light blue, the chair rail will be a darker blue, and then a strip above and below the chair rail of a blue in between the other two. The bed and built-in bookcase will be painted a pink color in the same shade as the walls. My old bedroom furniture (dresser, desk, bedside table) will be painted white with new hardware. Christie wants posters of Disney princesses along with flower garden posters for the walls. I'm going to make a combination bulletin board/magnetic board (alternating squares of cork and metal) if I can find the materials. If not, I'll buy a big bulletin board and paint it and put fabric on it. Should be fun. It'll take a couple of days to do.

JoAnn had some great sales on yarn, so we stocked up. We plan to make hats (using the Knifty Knitter) for a family Christmas service project. We haven't quite decided on a goal yet but we will soon. So we took advantage of the sale to get yarn.

We completed our first home improvement project this weekend. We put some ClosetMaid shelves on the wall above my work table. Now most of my scrapbook stuff is off the table and I have so much more room to work. Now that everything is cleaned up and organized, I've started working on the Disneyland scrapbook again. I've seen some slide show programs on the Internet--I'll play around with posting the scrapbook when it's done. My goal for that is Feb. 14th.

As usual, I also have lots of crafty projects with sewing, cross stitching, etc.

We love reading about your mission on the family blog. It's so fascinating to hear about a country that is so different from our own!

Are you picking up the native language? What do you eat? What are some things that you have to do that are different? For example, Steven's mother washed all produce with a produce wash before eating it. Do you expect to spend your entire mission in the Mdantsane ward? Have you had a chance to do a little sightseeing?

I'm sure we'll have lots more questions. We love you and pray for you daily.

Love,

Merilee