swim swim swim

Here in Worland at all three elementary schools swimming is part of the curriculum.  Each grade has around 2 weeks of swimming lessons every year.  They bus takes them to the aquatic center during the school day and they swim swim swim!  Yesterday was the last day for Lucy's swimming and I went to watch her and take some pictures.  She loves the water, which is a first for our family, most of us could do without donning a bathing suit and trying not to drown!

Elder Edholm -- week 20

Well my birthday went alright. My companion got two giant packages form his grandma right on his birthday all filled with food, and we´ve been (or mostly him) enjoying that. But a less active gave us cake on my birthday and it´s tradition here on birthdays to wipe frosting on each others noses, and they made us do that so we had fun with that.

But also we have an investigator named Frank, and at first he wasn´t progressing much, but now he has come to church twice, and to baptize people on our mission if they´re adults they have to come to church at least four times, and I think this is a baptismal date we have that will actually happen, which is a huge blessing to us because we have had a lot of baptismal dates fall through.

Also we had a less active come back to church yesterday which was awesome because her two little kids really want to be baptized and we can´t baptize them unless we reactivate the mom, and that was really great to see the mom at church yesterday. But it´s definitely not easy for her to come to church. She has to walk about 25 minutes on really busy streets with three little kids, which really makes her nervous, but I know that her coming to church will strengthen her faith.

Thanks for all of the happy birthday letters and everything!

Jack-O-lanterns and Happy Palmer Birthday

We had our pumpkin carving night and they all turned out cool!

Eric's wide shark mouth on the left, Emma's "sweet pickles" in the center, 

Eric's

It's Palmer's birthday today!  In celebration we ate Costco cake chocolate for breakfast!

Sneak peek at Emma's senior pictures

Elder Edholm -- week 19

Well I had another great week this week. We went on companionship exchanges with the zone leaders, I went with Elder Mejia to his area and my comp stayed in our area with Elder Hodges. Elder Mejia is from Peru, and he knows some English and can understand English, but we just spoke Spanish the whole time. I really learned a lot from him, he´s a great person, and a great missionary. One big thing I learned is that gossip is really big in our zone, and some bad things have been gossiped about Elder Mejia, and we talked about that. I guess we are really quick to judge when we hear gossip before actually learning if it´s true or not because our zone leaders have just gotten destroyed by other missionaries because they were trying to be good leaders. Basically I learned that gossip is pointless and isn´t going to help anybody with anything. Because talking about peoples problems isn´t going to help them fix their problems. We need to know that they are trying to repent and fix things. We each have our own problems that we need to focus on because that is much more important than talking about the problems of others. That hit me very strongly.

Another thing was that I forgot to fast last fast sunday, but was able to yesterday after having gained that insight, and fasting about it just re-emphasized everything I learned, it was really great.

My companion and I are continuing to work hard, but still really aren´t seeing much success. There is this lady that could get reactivated by next week though. She is pretty much the last person we thought would get reactivated because my companion has been in this area for over six months, working with her the whole time, never really seeing anything happen, and right when we were about to give up on her, she came to church, which was a huge shock. But I guess miracles happen everyday.

´Till next week

Orem Public Library Blog Post

I will be writing a few blog posts for the Orem Library which I am VERY excited about.  The Just Browsing Blog is a great resource for good books and good food and all things libraryish!  You should check it out!

Here is my latest one:

OPL Just Browsing Blog

State Marching Band

State Marching Band was this weekend and it started with 5 flag girls sleeping overnight at our house.  They spent the night curling their hair and watching chick flicks.  Andy wanted to join them and before I knew what was happening they were curling his hair!

Saturday morning Andy, Eric, Lucy, and Peter and I drove to Casper to watch them perform.  They did a great job!

Lucy and I took a selfie.  Peter's friend Ellie Durrant is photo bombing us in the background!

Worland Black Thunder Marching Band's Color Guard

Left to Right: Emma, Leighton Kittleman, Saige Winters, Shiloh Winters, Alyssa Decker, Sariah Durrant

Elder Edholm -- week 18

Well first off, sorry if my emails aren´t exactly what you want. It´s just that every time I start writing these emails I forgot everything that happened during the week.

But it´s really cool to hear that mom has been helping out the missionaries, we love it when members say they´re going to help us, and then follow through with it. A lot of times members will tell us that they´re going to leave with us, and that they´ll meet us somewhere, and we wait there for twenty minutes before we decide that they´re not coming.

We finally have an investigator that is coming to church, he came yesterday and I´m pretty confident that he´ll come back. It´s just a longer process for our mission because it´s a rule that to baptize an adult they have to come to church four times. But that´s good because it shows that they´re really ready. I really learned the importance of studying with members. For a long time the president has been stressing doing companionship study with members, and we finally did that yesterday with a couple that´s been members for about 20 years, that´s pretty long for out here. But I gained a lot of insight I wouldn´t have if we didn´t do that study.

Our mission president came to our ward yesterday. He basically told us to start doing those companionship studies with members more because he knows that they work, but we have a really strong ward, and he was really impressed with that, the chaple was filled to the brim. It´s really nice when you´re always doing the right thing. Because I know missionaries that will start being really obedient right before interviews just to tell president that they´ve been being obedient. Which isn´t horrible, they´re still being obedient, but really we´re trying to impress God, not our mission president, or our bishop, or even the prophet because they´re all just men directed by God.

But it´s good to see Andy scoring touchdowns and Lucy being the best volleyball player on her team. Also good to see Peter and Eric still being best friends and having good times together. And I hope that essay went okay for Emma.

´Till next week

Andy's touchdown

Worland vs. Powell.  We lost 7-6, but played the best we have all season!  Andy made the touchdown, a great quarterback run to the goal!

He has 3 games left in the season.  His freshman team is looking a lot better than the first few games.  They are really learning to work together.  We are hoping for a win tomorrow against Lovell!

Go Warriors!

Elder Edholm -- week 17

Well conference weekend was pretty good. I had to watch general conference in Spanish, so I didn´t understand everything, but I understood a good amount. I felt like a huge theme of this conference was just keeping the commandments and obedience, and then I loved how Elder Bednar ended it all. But I didn´t really get to see much of the first session because they tried to play it at our chapel, but we ended up only seeing like 10 minutes of it due to internet problems. That´s ok though because I intend to reread all of them once we get the conference ensign.

So I am staying with my trainer for his last transfer in the mission. We are getting a Dominican in our house which means we can only speak Spanish in our house which should be good because my Spanish will improve a lot, but I´m glad my training is finally over now. We keep having to push our baptismal dates back because our investigators aren´t coming to church, which isn´t good, we need to find some way to fix that.

We got a reference for this one guy. He started going to like a psychiatrist or something, and he referred him to us. He´s super cool, and always follows up on reading assignments, he accepted to being baptized, and hopefully that will stay firm.

Well I´m glad all of you guys are doing good, I pray for each of you guys evryday, and it´s good to hear that Emma went to homecoming, and that Worland beat Cody! And won their homecoming game! Nobody said anything about that, I need details. But how is Peter and Eric doing as well? I´ve really come to appreciate general conference more, I´m glad you guys enjoyed it!

Till next week

-Palmer


Here is a picture of our house:

Here is our kitchen, probably the worst kitchen in the whole world, I'm not even kidding.

Homecoming Dance

Emma went to the Homecoming dance last night.  There were 3 couples in her group and they ate dinner at our house.  I made dinner and decided to go out on a limb and make something I've never made before!  Seared Black Bean Chicken over Crispy Noodles.  It turned out pretty well, a little more spicy than I would have like, but the kids liked it.

Getting ready

Tanner Allen and Emma, Emrie Jolley and Matthew Kelton, Joshua Kelton and Alyssa

They looked great and had a wonderful time!

Conference Weekend

We have Audrey with us for the weekend!  It's been so much fun to have her here for a few days.  We all went to the freshman and varsity football games last night.  Andy played well in the freshman game, but they lost to Cody!  The varsity game was great!  It's been 12 years since Worland has won a Homecoming football game and we did it last night in the last 2 seconds!  Pretty exciting, especially since Cody is one of the top teams in our region.

Here are some random shots of all of us watching conference.  We were missing Palmer and Lauren and Matt!

Eric

Audrey & Emma taking notes

Andy

Lucy Lou

Worland Homecoming parade

Today was the annual Homecoming Parade!  Everyone turns out to watch the 15 minute parade, it's a lot of fun!

The band led the way.  There is Emma on the far right.

Emma is the last one on the right.

The Football team.  Andy is sitting on the edge of the truck second from the left.

Only in Wyoming would this be in a parade!

Spirit week for Homecoming

It's Homecoming here in Worland tomorrow, so each day of the week the kids had a different theme to dress up as they went to school.  Today was character day.  So Emma and Andy embraced Napoleon and Kip.  They look pretty awesome!

Andy looked even better when he borrowed someone's glasses at school.  The littler kids had crazy hair day and so they sprayed their hair blue.