Classes are still going at KUB

With six weeks left for our mission, we just wanted to let everyone know that things are still going well. Here is a shot of our combined Thursday noon class with both YSA's, Stake adults, and younger folks. We just finished a nice lunch around the table, and are getting ready for a lesson last Thursday, May 29. Everyone was having such a good time and had such a great lunch, it was a challenge for me to switch us into the lesson for the day which was on the Postmortal spirit world. Everyone continued to laugh a lot and have a good time, which was the funniest discussion of "death" that anyone could imagine. That's one of the challenges of having a nice lunch before hand is getting people ready and in the mood to switch to a more serious discussion. We precede it with singing a hymn, and that usually does the trick, but this week everyone was off the wall with having fun. Elder Grandpa

Lindsey's Baptism

Well, on the same day as McKay received his mission call, we had the privilege in Kalamazoo
of having a baptism. It started out as MaryAnn would call it, an "Indiana Jones" experience.
I was supposed to meet the young elders at the Stake Center at 4 PM to fill the font, and go through a last minute check list to be sure we were ready. They were to bring the key to the chapel, the font, etc. Well, I waited for an hour and a half and they finally showed up at 5:30, with the baptism scheduled to go at 6. They had been eating dinner at a member's house and lost track of the time. Next, there was little hot water in the heater at the SC so we had to fill the font very closely in order to not have it ice cold. As I watched the water rising a fraction of an inch every few minutes, I was trying to guess how deep it would be by the time the baptism would get underway. Then when we got their keys and checked in the cabinet for baptismal clothes we discovered that it was empty! No clothes in sight. We got on the phone trying to find out where the clothes had went. Finally, someone from the Stake came with a master key and we started searching other cabinets. We finally found the clothes. Next, we couldn't find anyting to fit Lindsey. She is very short and everything was a larger size. I was about ready to look for some scissors in order to make a pair fit her, but finally we found a children's baptism jump suit and had her take that. The baptismal service got started only 15 minutes late, so we really lucked out. With all that going on it ended up only a short delay. The service went great with super talks from all on the program. We handed out very nice programs, compliments of Jeff getting them and mailing programs to us with the picture of Christ's baptism on the cover. The font filled finally, and Lindsey was baptized. It was a super spiritual meeting, with most of the branch members there. After the baptism service which lasted about 45 minutes, we gathered at the home of one of the branch presidency members for a barbecue. We had the usual super fun gathering with the branch members, had a great meal and then went in the living room and roared with laughter as branch members played Wii boxing on the TV. Today we had her confirmation at Sac. Meeting which went well also, with a great circle of missionaries and young branch members. We then met for another dinner at someone's house afterwards and, as usual, it has been party, party, party at KUB. Here are some pictures. Elder Dad

Elder McKay Britsch called to serve in...

the South Korea, Seoul West Mission.
He enters the MTC September 10, 2008.
Congratulations, McKay.

P.S. Grandpa Schill won the guessing.

P-Day at Tulip Gardens in Holland, MI

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!! I hope you have had a great day. Now that I am a mother, I appreciate even more how much you did and do for me. Amen to wanting a clean house for Mother's day. I think you are amazing! I love you! Love, Julie
P.S. Happy Mother's Day to all of you :)

Sending you a Lindsey E-mail Blog

I thought I would share with you the kind of e-mails that Lindsey likes to send to us
using her punctuation. Today started out a sunny and warm day:), but by afternoon it was
raining:(. We had a great turn out at Institute where we discussed the Oath and Covenant
of the Priesthood :) We had great comments and discussion:) but at this evening's missionary
prep class we had only one show up:( Mom is making a great pasta salad to take to our zone
conference tomorrow :>) It will be good to see some of the weird missionaries that we have served with :<) :+) =) and :} . Anyway, just wanted to let you know what is cool punctuation in Kalamazoo, Michigan:<{. Dad

Snake!!!

Hi you all

Mom wanted me to tell you all about a little adventure I had the other day. I still can't believe I was brave enough to do it. Well, I was putting back our trash cans at the side of our house and I looked down and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I saw a 2 foot SNAKE on the ground right by our house. What worried me more is that the snake had a triangular head so I thought it might be poisonous. I froze and wasn't sure what to do. It was sureal and I still couldn't believe I was standing a couple of feet from this gross, gross snake. Anyway, I was trying to decide what to do. I thought I would call animal control, but I was afraid to let it out of my sight for too long. I had to get rid of it, because I feared it would either get into the house or bite one of the kids. So, I decided to attack it myself and I went into the garage quickly to grab a hoe. With all m y courage. I decided to wack it behind the head. As soon as I did that, I wasn't sure if it would lunge at me, but it just stuck up its neck and hissed. I quickly began wacking it with the hoe (about 20 times) to make sure it was dead. After it was over, I was in shock.

I asked a neighbor to come over and look at it and he did and said he thought it was a copperhead. Our backyard is very wooded and has a lot of leaves on the ground. My neighbor said that was the perfect spot for a snake like that. I didn't know this, but after I looked the snake up on the internet and confirmed that it was a copperhead I read that they live in wooded areas around the U.S. and are the 2nd most poisonous snake in the U.S. YIKES.

I hate to think of what would have happened if it the kids had been playing in the backyard and had gotten bit. I don't want to go in my backyard anymore because of this copperhead and the HUGE banana spider we found last year. We are living in the wild down here in Texas!

Madagascar Pics

There was a little confusion with my family when I said I started up our blog--I am using the blogspot blog (the Jen link on this site), not the wordpress blog we originally started with.

There are probably 100 pictures from Brinnan and Steve's trip on our site, but I wanted to post one of my favorites here. I just thought it was too cute!