October Extras...

These are a few random items from the month of October 2013.

Sunday, October 20th, Claude asked me to speak with him at the Beaumont Ward Spanish Sacrament Meeting. Claude is a High Councilor at Church. He is asked to speak in the different wards (congregations) on the third Sunday of the month several times during a year. He is to ask someone to speak with him. In September I spoke in the Singles Branch with him.  This time we would speak to the Spanish speaking members of our church. However, we do not speak Spanish ourselves. Hmmm...

I had already been to an 8am meeting at our ward (congregation). Then stayed for the 3 hour block of meetings. Then hurried over to our building on Sir Barton in Lexington, Kentucky to speak in their meeting. 

As I walked the halls, I had the warmest feeling. There are little windows in the classroom doors. Inside each room was a teacher with a class of people listening and participating.  Then I reflected on all the teaching and participating that had happened from the 8am meeting through our three hour blocks of meetings.  Then I thought about Claude and me preparing our talks to teach again.

It felt so good to know we are all striving so hard to be sure the word of the Lord is taught and shared and experienced by so many people.

Since Claude and I do not speak Spanish, we each prepared our talks and typed them up. Claude forwarded them via eMail to the person who would translate for us.  When we gave our talks we read a bit and then the translator would say in Spanish what we read. He had diligently printed our talks and made notes to help him with translating some portions.  Now, I do know some things in Spanish.  In my talk I had the word 'work' in there several times. I know the Spanish word for 'work' is 'trabajo'.  I kept listening for 'trabajo' and not hearing it. I finally paused in my talk and turned to the man and told him I knew the word 'trabajo' means work and I was not hearing it. He assured me there is another word for 'work' and he was using it. We both grinned.

It was a sweet experience to top that good feeling I had as I walked through the hallways and realized all the effort going on in this world-wide Church to teach and train.  Then to realized it really doesn't matter what language, the words can be heard and the truth and be felt in all languages.  Just a neat moment in time for me.

Saturday, October 26th, was the Stake Primary Special Needs Activity.  This is held twice a year and provides a chance for the families with special needs childen to be strengthened and have voice to their concerns and their joys. The first hour the parents meet as a group to have a group session. A person leads and directs the discussion so it stays productive and all are invited and encouraged to share their questions and experiences so that each comes away with tools to help them. The leaders of the Primary axillary were invited to send a representative to gather information to help them in their callings with the special needs children. I'm sure this will be expanded to now include the Young Men/Young Women auxiliaries as well as many of the children this activity was originally organized to support are now entering their teen years and transitioning to the YM/YW programs. While the parents are in this session, volunteers are helping the special needs children enjoy games and activities. The second hour is lunch for the parents in one area and lunch for the children with their auxiliary leaders in another area.

This was a most productive activity and well worth the time to attend and the time used to prepare and execute the event by the stake Primary leaders.

Wednesday, October 30th, Claude and I went to the Scott County Library for free training on using our Kindle Fire's.  Love that free training.  It was a good time and we learned a few things we did not know. We have an excellent library here.  They gave me the advertisement for training going on in Sadieville for computers during November that would be free for the public. I was able to come home and add that to the City of Sadieville and the Friends of Sadieville Facebook pages I maintain.

Halloween was to have been Thursday, October 31st.  Alas, we had the forecast for bad storms that evening with exceptionally high winds, potential for hail, etc.  The exit began when I heard from Andie that Louisville was looking at postponing trick-or-treating until Friday so no one was out in the storm.  She let me know they canceled it for Oldham County as well, which is where they live. Then Claude started getting phone calls as the Mayor of Sadieville. It seems Georgetown had postponed trick-or-treating until Friday for the very same reason. What would Sadieville do?  Well, we postponed it also.  The Fayette Mall in Lexington stayed open and all the stores did trick-or-treating on Halloween. The Kentucky Horse Park was also open on Halloween so the kids could go there and be indoors to enjoy Halloween festivities. The end result was we did have wind and rain.  Then Friday we had the most trick-or-treaters ever on Eagle Bend.  I cracked up at my friend who moved here from Michigan.  She was appalled at the postponing. She exclaimed, "We did trick-or-treating in blizzards in Michigan. What is a little rain?"  It was the first time in my 63 years I have ever heard of postponing trick-or-treating.  My belief, shared with my dear hubby, is it all comes down to our litigious society.  Someone was sure to sue the city, any city, because their child got hurt because they went trick-or-treating in a storm. Not their fault for choosing to take them out in a storm.  Andie voiced the opinion that we just didn't need to be that greedy about getting all that candy for our children. Goodness.  I reflected back to my kids and buying them each a bag of their favorite candy then hiding in the basement Halloween night and watching movies together and eating our own candy that was safe.  That was great fun and we totally enjoyed it.  It was an interesting feeling for Halloween this year.