Elder Edholm -- week 12 = 3 MONTHS!

Well the storm passed by, and nothing bad happened, we had to stay inside all day, and it rained all

 day, but we were fine, thanks for your guys's prayers. 

Well if I haven't told you about our house we live in a small apartment, I'll send a picture of it next week. 

And just to answer all of mom's questions. We walk pretty much everywhere, but when we need to get

 to another area we hitchhike, usually just ride on the backs of trucks, when we need to get to the capital

 we take buses. And only one ward meets in our church building. I only know three people that know

 English, but I don't like them talking to me in English, sometimes people will say the couple of things

 they know to me in English. I take a shower every day, and it's always cold, a lot of the time we just 

have to fill up a buckets and shower with that because there's no water. And we have a little washing 

machine that you have to fill up manually.

Anyway something else, my companion just got giardia, the parasite, so he's not feeling so hot.

'Till next week

And she's here.....

This is a picture from the news station in the Dominican Republic

Tropical Storm Erika

Hurricane Danny downgraded to a tropical storm and petered out by the time it reached the Dominican Republic.  Now Tropical Storm Erika is almost on top of the DR. In the small island of Dominca 25 people have died because of it already.  (Dominca is not the Dominican Republic, but an island southeast of the DR.)  In the map the DR is just above the red location mark.





It's course is headed straight to southern Florida.  The weather sites I've been looking at are predicting it will become a class 1 hurricane by the time it hits Florida.  But, they were saying similar things about Tropical Storm Danny.  Weather patterns can change quickly.

Elder Edholm -- week 11

Apparently Hurricane danny is supposed to hit us, but I don't know, I keep hearing different answers.

But we got two baptismal dates this week. One from Santo Burito, and another one from this guy
 we just met named Ramoncito. We should be having another one really soon from this girl named
 Norma that we've been teaching for a while. Santo Burito seemed really excited when we asked
him to get baptized, but I don't think he understands that if he wants to get baptized he needs
to come to church.

Anyway my companion is feeling a lot better, and luckily I didn't get sick, but it's eminent that I'm
 gonna get sick on my mission with Dengue, chikunguya, amoebas, or something.

But also it's just really cool where the spirit can lead you sometimes. We were coming home
one day, and we hadn't quite met our goal contacting so I said "you think we should contact
this house" and my companion said "go for it." So we contacted this family and we set a return
 date for them. We came back and we only taught this guy named Ramon who's in his twenties.
Turns out he's a less active that the church didn't even know about! He got baptized a few
years ago and it seems like he wants to start coming back. That was just a really cool experience.

'Till next week

Hurricane Danny

Tropical Storm Danny is turning into Hurricane Danny and headed towards the islands of the Caribbean.

Prayers are headed Palmer's way that he will be safe as well as all the people who live in these islands.

Official first day of school

Today marks the first day of school for my kids!  Yesterday Eric and Andy went to orientation, but today it starts!  Andy had 6:00am football practice, but still managed to come home and shower and be ready on time!  Seminary doesn't start until Monday, so today was a little more relaxed getting everyone up and ready to go.

Getting Peter to do a normal face is always a struggle!  Andy is looking so excited to be taking this picture!

Lucy is trying to get him to smile and it worked!

I hope it a great day for all of them, they looked great as they left this morning!  I had to restrain Lucy, she wanted to leave 45 minutes early to walk to school!  I made her wait and leave 30 minutes before school starts!

Here's to a good school year for my kids!

Back to school thoughts

What has been your favorite thing about your life thus far?  This question popped into my head today.  I think of “moments” that were perfect, most recently being with my children in the temple will be hard to top.  I thought of my own marriage to Brian in the temple and the births of my children.  But as I thought about this question a slightly different version occurred to me, “what in your life would you want repeated again and again?”  Not just a single moment, but a process.  As much as I love my children and love babies I wouldn’t want to go through childbirth and the process of being pregnant again and again.  Being married once is also wonderful, but I don’t need to go through that ceremony with Brian again to make my marriage more meaningful.  I can remember and renew my commitment to him when we do sealings in the temple together and I hope that I have many more times sitting in the temple with all of my children.  Those are definitely times I want repeated.

But those things aren’t what came into my mind.  This last year I was able to stay home and not work.  Peter was in 1st grade and so was in school all day.  I was not home schooling anyone.  I had 7 hours every week day to do whatever I wanted.  This was an indulgent gift.  Some days I got up and did productive things, I played the piano and learned new pieces, I cleaned the house, baked bread, I talked to my friends on the phone, I went out to lunch with my husband, I read a complete book in a day!  Some days I didn’t get out of my pajamas until right before 3:00.  I felt very pampered.  I felt like I was the most spoiled of all people and was in awe that I had this opportunity.  

I’m facing a new school year starting tomorrow and I have been thinking about my 7 hours each day that I will have to myself again.  Despite that wonderful blessing in my life I’m missing quiet time with my children.  I think back to the times I home schooled them.  Some times that went well and other times it didn’t.  My most favorite time, however, was when I would read to them one on one.  I loved that time of the day.  Today I took some time with Peter and Lucy when they were the only ones here and started reading a chapter book to them.  What joy that brings into my life.  To have little bodies sitting next to me listening to a story is a small slice of heaven.  I never tire of it.  

I have thought many times that I would love to have raised my children on a remote farm away from the busyness of life, media, friends, jobs, etc.  I have romanticized the “Little House on the Prairie” life.  How peaceful and joyful it would be to just have my family around me each day.  To teach them about the world and about heaven and about life.  To read to them each night by candlelight as they sat playing with a toy or making something with their hands.  I realize how ridiculous this sounds.  Farm life back then was anything but easy.  I still yearn for my dream at times and at the same time thank the Lord that I don’t always get what I dream for!  I can have a little of that dream each time I sit on the couch and pick up a book and a child sits next to me. 

What in my life would I want repeated again and again?  Reading to my children.  

Elder Edholm -- week 10

Well great news! We finally had church in our chapel in Canastica this week. The church has been under construction for over a year, and it´s really stunted the progress of investigators and stuff, but we had a couple investigators and a lot of less actives come back to church this week, it was awesome.

We haven´t had much time to work this week because Elder Campbell has been pretty sick with some sort of virus, he thinks it might be amoebas. We had a zone conference on thursday and the whole time everything president and the assistants talked about was how to be obedient and keep the pulse of numbers every week. It got me pretty fired up. So my companion and I have a goal to have 10 baptisms and 15 reactivations before he leaves in November, it´s a stretch, but we can do it.

We also figured out why we haven´t had like any water for a while, it´s because the lady living above us is stealing all of our water. But we´re figuring it out.

´Till next week!

-Elder Edholm

Zone conference, Palmer is in the second row from the back the second from the left

Elder Edholm -- week 9

Well, I had another great week as normal. We´re starting to work with the members more which is good. I shared my testimony in sacrament meeting this last Sunday, I was pretty nervous, but it went pretty well.

We keep seeing nasty cockroaches in our house that are as big as my hand. Also there´s this awesome frozen yogurt place we go to a lot where you pick three toppings you want and then they blend that in to your frozen yogurt, it´s the best frozen yogurt I´ve ever had.

We have been with and without water this week, but hopefully it will get better. One huge thing I learned this week is to not ignore the promptings of the Holy Ghost. We were teaching an investigator named Santo Borito, and he´s a super cool guy, and he´s progressing a lot. We were going over the Doctrine of Christ with him in 3 Nephi 11, and I felt the strongest impression to ask him to be baptized because the Doctrine of Christ is baptism. But I didn´t because the natural man came over me. I thought, oh no my companion won´t want me to do that. But in reality the Holy Ghost sends you promptings to guide and direct you because He knows way better than I ever could, so I´m never going to ignore a prompting ever again because I´m pretty sure he would´ve accepted the invitation.

´Till next week

-Palmer

Elder Edholm -- week 8

Tell Eric I can´t wait to play music with him.

But anyway this week has been great, the Spanish is coming really great, I can understand a lot and I can say most of what I need to say. A lot of people are really shocked when I say I´ve only been out for three weeks because they all say my Spanish is really great. I don´t really know why the Lord has blessed me with the gift of tongues so much, but I´m very grateful for it.

So we have this investigator named Yajaira that we´re teaching, she´s part of a different church, but loves to hear from us, and always reads everything we tell her to. But the other day when we were teaching here we gave here a Book of Mormon, and she understood everything about it, and said she´d read 3 Nephi 11. At the end we asked her to pray, and she thanked the Lord for sending us to her, and asked if the Book of Mormon was true and if this was the path she was to take, and she started crying, I could feel the Spirit more than ever. 

So pretty much the whole country is in a water crisis right now. We fasted for rain on Sunday, and it rained some, but we are still in huge need for water. After it rains, you can literally see the water evaporating of the road, and then I just die because it´s so hot, haha.

Well I´ll attach some pictures finally.

Till next week

-Elder Edholm

Palmer somewhere on a P-Day, he didn't say where this was.

Event at Blodedorn

Brian's store, Bloedorn Lumber, and the business right next to him, Frandsen Safety, hosted an event today with bouncy houses, food, and games.  We all went.  It was very warm-upper 90's.  The little kids had a great time in the bouncy houses and eating cotton candy.

Lucy got tired of jumping

Cotton Candy, yum

Mid jump

Peter getting very hot jumping.  He ended up very red and needed water!

There was also a car show with some pretty cool looking cars.  I wanted the 1960 convertible bug!

Snail mail letter from Elder Edholm

We got a letter in the mail today with pictures from Palmer's mission president and a letter he wrote us.  It only took 2 week to get here!  That's great news.  The letters the kids wrote to him when he first left 8 weeks ago haven't made it to him yet, however.  Maybe it's faster coming to us.

Here is his letter and the pictures:

(He wrote this letter before he was assigned his area and his trainer)

Hey everybody, I'm at the transfer chapel right now and I just got interviewed by Presidente y Hermana Knuckols.  They are great people.  I'm going to find out who my trainer is pretty soon as well as my area.  It was pretty hard saying goodbye to my companion as well as Elder Frogley and Elder Koerper.  But I'm going to see Elder Frogley at Utah State and we already planned a road trip to go and visit him in Los Crucas New Mexico after our missions.  But anyway the MTC was great and I loved the Romney's and all of my teacfhers.  Well I love you guys!

Elder Edholm

Palmer and Elder Campbell from Page Arizona, his trainer

Palmer with his mission president and wife, it's a little blurry!