Thanksgiving in Georgia

New Duds

New coat

Somehow the weather turned chilly.  Doug was threatening to wear his exercise jacket and his gloves, so we decided a new coat was in order.  What do you think of his pick?

This has been an interesting week.  School has been out, and many are out of town.  We are trying to stick with regular lesson/reading  appointments as much as we can.

We knew things would be a little crazy though, so we volunteered to take our turn cleaning the ward building.  It is a demanding assignment.  They only assign one family at a time.  We did have a young man volunteer to help us vacume.  That made a big difference to how much time it took.  We were a little afraid we wouldn't meet all the specifications.  They are trying for a 'never needs cleaning' goal, like the temple.

Grief and Bereavement
A newly activated member,  and her family is dealing with the death of her 30 year old son by suicide.   This has been so devastating to the family and all of us, as you can all understand.  He did not come back to church like many family members did after years away, and there is another brother, a divorced father and some in-laws who are not members.  We have been with the family as much as we can, trying to lend support in any way we can think of, with the inspiration of the Spirit.  We know this family and respect the way they are trying to meet their life challenges.  Losing a loved one is difficult in any circumstances, but there is so much more pain and suffering to have him go in this way.

The sister in the purple dress standing next to me in our temple photo (last blog) is the Mom, and her son behind her is the oldest child trying to take care of everyone.  They are grateful for having just come from the temple the day before - recognizing that the spirit of comfort and peace that they felt there will eventually return, at least in some measure, but for now everything is bleak wherever they turn.

Sharing our Bounty
We decided that we needed to do something so we would not miss all of you so much.  We found that lots of people we visit would not have family around them for Thanksgiving.  At first we thought we would invite them to our house, but realizing that most don't get out much if at all, we decided to take Thanksgiving dinner to them.  It has been fun to make pies and cook a turkey with dressing as usual.

The dish-up

Meals ready to go
The best part was surprising them with a home-cooked dinner and a short visit.  We were even more grateful for all of you and the resources we have, as we later had our own delicious, but noticeably quiet, Thanksgiving Feast.

Hearing Dilemmas
See that face!  Doug has been without his hearing aid for three weeks now, and it hadn't been functioning well long before that.  He had it checked here, but it still did not help him hear any better.  He finally boxed it up and impulsively, (I thought), sent it back to the audiologist in Hyde Park, which turned out to be the right thing to do.  The audiologist cleaned it and reset all the levels according to his hearing records and said he was sending it back to us.  But . . . no hearing aid for yet another Sunday.

It has made us so grateful for this device.  Even a little better hearing helps so much in conversation and in participation in meetings etc.  You would all be surprised at how quiet Doug has become, because he can't hear accurately to respond.  He is a good sport about it all, and is able to laugh off most hearing glitches, so we are still functioning in our assignment.  We know that if a person has been prepared to feel the spirit, that can still happen in spite of our inadequacies.