Fun Family Home Evening

Someone really needs to teach me how to blog, I wanted labels on pictures, it took me two times to even get these in the right order!! Oh well!!
I have found as your children get older, it is easy to forget to do the fun things that you did when they were younger!! So, we invited the Eisenhauers over to make gingerbread houses for Family Home Evening!!! Hunter wanted to turn this into a competition, thankfully we had no judges available!!! You be the judge!!!
Since I don't know how to label pictures:
House #1 is Bart and Cindy's
House #2 is Bruce and Lorene's
House #3 is Hunter, Rhegan, and Carrie's
And for the finale, some friendly pool!!

More from Mexico

Hey everyone!
So this week was good. Anyways, mom, yes I´m finally starting to like the food. You get used to eating stuff you don´t like, and I´m starting to gag a lot less when I eat hahaha. Thanks for that wonderful trait mom. =) So ya things are going good. We´ve been working super hard and finding lots of new people. The only down side is the majority of the new people we find, end up not being so great. So ya, it´s easy to find people, you just really need the spirit to find the GOOD ones. Something I need to work on. This country is so crazy. I absolutely love it and especially all the amazing people. ALMOST everyone is so nice and accepting. It just blows my mind to see the happiness the members have here. Even though they don´t have much, they see that family is really what´s important, and aren´t so focused on all the wordly things. I definitely count my many many blessings every day and thank the Lord for the oppurtunity to live where we do. Anyways, I´m out of time again, but I hope you all know how much I love you and miss you. I hope you all have a great christmas. Can´t wait to talk to you guys and see how things are goin. O and I´ll send pictures next week. The computer I´m on is super slow so I can´t do it now. Love you guys, talk to you soon!


I just wanted to send you a few pictures of the last week. That´s Miguel the awesome guy we baptized. And the other ones are of "el Guarda". It´s a church owned ranch where people can go to camp and do cool stuff. They had a sweet zip line so that´s the one with the person hitting the net. It hurt really bad to get stopped by that thing. Also the elder in the green jersey is our zone leader Elder Fillerup. He´s awesome. We bought a ton of tacos al pastor to eat there so it was pretty sweet. Also the other one is of our whole zone. It´s from pretty far away but I think it´s ok. You can play Where´s Waldo and search for me. I´m the only good lookin one so it shouldn´t be too hard. = )

"Freedom Isn't Free"

I hope I can adequately express my feelings that I have had this past weekend. Riley returned to the states from Iraq on Dec. 5th, after being deployed for 14 months. Bart and I felt like we should be there for the homecoming celebration!!! Our flight from Atlanta to Savannah was quite a humbling experience for us. After we took off, we were told that when we landed in Savannah we were to remain seated as an Army escort was accompanying the remains of a soldier returning home. I spent the next hour crying for a family who would not see their son alive, knowing that mine was returning safely. On the base where the celebration was to happen, they have planted a tree for each soldier who has lost his or her life in Iraq. Many of the plaques around the trees had the saying "Freedom Isn't Free". Needless to say, I contemplated the meaning of this statement. After a long wait, the soldiers unloaded the buses and marched onto a field where we all sang our National Anthem, as I sang the words and thought about them, I was brought to tears once again for the sacrifices these soldiers and others are making for us, so that we can enjoy this land that we are so blessed to live in and the freedoms that are ours for the partaking. The soldiers then sang a song and we were told to go find our soldier!!! We spent the next couple of days with Riley shopping, meeting his buddies, eating, and watching him sleep!! He hasn't shared many of his experiences in Iraq, I think he didn't want to worry his mother, thank you son, but as he opened up and shared with us this weekend, I thank my Heavenly Father that he protected my son, and I know he was protected. So to Riley and all the other soldiers serving our country, Thank You from the bottom of my heart. "Freedom Isn't Free"!!!

News from Mexico

Hey Everyone!
I can´t tell you how good it was to hear from everyone this week. I´m glad everyone is doing so good. That picture of the fam at the Eagles game killed me a little bit. Also thinking about Thanksgiving dinner is making me miss home a bit right now. Not really, it´s just I would kill for that food right now! = ) They don´t have Thanksgiving here so I didn´t even know when it was. All the missionaries in the district meeting were debating about when it was cuz we really have no clue. Anyways, I´m glad you guys had a good time in Philly and got to see the Zollingers. Those kids are huge. Anyways, ya this week went a bit better than the last. I guess I just have to get used to it a bit more. That first week with the new comp killed me. I have never been so dead in my life. But this past week was better. We´re doing better and getting used to teaching with eachother. That´s probably been the hardest thing, with my first comp he did almost everything, even most the teaching, but now its the exact opposite. It´s amazing how fast you learn when you don´t have someone there to bail you out of dumb things you do. So ya, we´ve just been working like crazy. This last week was the end of the month and we´re always a bit short on money at the end of the month so we walked SO much! My comp got a nice blister so he´s walking a bit slow right now. It´s been kinda difficult to bond with him. He´s not like me at all. But we´ve talked and I think we´ll do better and be more unified this week. He just isn´t very excited and doesn´t like to have very much fun. Kinda boring actually. So it´s just hard to be myself when I´m not lauging all the time. But ya, this week we got all the references from the Open House in the temple, because all the people who aren´t members filled out their address and stuff, and we´ve been visiting all of them and the majority of them are GOLD. The experience they had in the temple really made them realize how awesome and true our church is and they´re all accepting baptismal dates like crazy. So that´s been pretty nice. Umm, what else, nothing I guess. Tell everyone I say hi and I love and miss them. Always remember that this is the Church of Christ. If we´re going to be members of his church we better be ready to face some challenges. What we go through is so small compared to what our Savior did for us. That´s something I heard in a talk by Elder Holland in the MTC and it´s really helped me accept all the hard work. Anyways, I love you all and hope all is well.