December Zone Conference and Flat Stanley

The Christmas Zone Conference was tremendous. After inspiring talks by the President and Sister Edwards we dismissed to the primary room where we were divided into twos and given a large clump of modeling clay. Our assignment was to make a nativity scene from the clay. You can see a picture of the one that mom and I made. Some of the ones the elders made were really quite good. They were then put on display all together out in the foyer and at the end of the conference we left them there for the wards to look at when they came on Sunday. The last hour of the zone conference consisted of skits done by districts. Each district was to do a skit on whatever them they wanted involving entertainment. You can see some of the ones that were our favorites--Hans and Franz, rock and roll singers and one where they dressed as sisters. It has really gotten to be snowy here and we are including a picture taken from our deck and also one including Oscar and Louie out enjoying the snow together. Things continue to go well for our mission. We had one baptism in December, and it was a surprise. Sister Marcia Reyes was baptized by one of the elders in our branch, Elder Hefner. It is quite a story. Sister Reyes' son, Miguel, was a member of the branch and a convert of a couple of years. Sister Reyes started coming to branch functions once in awhile to check out where her son was going. She especially liked to come to our Break the Fast dinners after the three hour block on Sunday. Well, her son left on a mission a few months ago and is serving as a missionary in the California Riverside mission. Sister Reyes kept coming to the branch every once in awhile and finally started taking missionary discussions. She decided to get baptized around the first part of December and was actually baptized on Dec 30, something that brought great joy to the member of the branch and, we know, especially to her son. The made for a great finish of the year 2007. We received a letter from Anne Schill earlier which contained a white cut out man called Flat Stanley. Our assignment from Anne was to have him attend what we were doing with our lives and then write a story about it. We took Flat Stanley to the branch and introduced him to all of the things we do there. He went to class with us, he played games, he had some pizza and he met the branch members. You can see, mom made Flat Stanley into a missionary and dressed him up with crayons to fit right in with us. Dad and Mom.