The second area Matthew went for his mission is Escada. We haven’t spoken to him since he got there but he posted a few pictures. It is about 3-4 hours from Recife, much closer than the 11 hours Salgueiro was. It will be more humid but in the 80’s most of the time, not 100+. I don’t know his new companion’s name yet, but I know he is Brazilian and doesn’t speak any English.
Meeting in Recife to meet their new companions and head to their new areas.View from apartment in Escada
Right before he transferred to his new area he went to a Christmas celebration in Recife. Lots of missionaries came to have a fun day together. They played basketball, soccer, socialized, and ate lots of good food. Matthew said they did a little shopping and even listened to ‘non churchy’ Christmas music. Matthew loves music-including church music- they are not supposed to listen to anything besides approved church music. Not listening to his music has been hard for him, he has mentioned several times that he misses it a lot. When I hear music that I know he liked it reminds me of him singing it when he was home and it makes me miss him a lot too. I appreciate his mission president and his wife making a big effort to make a special day for them. This is Matthew’s first Christmas away from home (a lot of the missionaries first Christmas away). I am glad that they have a chance to have fun and enjoy the Christmas season together.
The second day of his trip to Recife they all went to the Recife temple together. Matthew hadn’t been to that temple yet. He said it was really beautiful. Whenever they get all the missionaries together they hand out any packages that have come since the last time they were together. We mailed one to Matthew with a private courier for Christmas…it wasn’t there. We found out a week later that it got taken to Sao Paulo (a four hour plane ride south) and is there with two other peoples Christmas packages. So frustrating. It seems like things not working the way they are supposed to happens a lot lately. At least it has been found and hopefully will make its way to Matthew at some point. He loved getting together with all the missionaries and seeing friends he made at the MTC. He loves the organized sports, he misses that a lot too.
This is a picture of Matthew’s package from Sao Paulo…labeled Recife 🤦♀️
Allison’s wrestling season has started! Her first tournament was the Spring Hill Invitational. She did awesome! She took 2nd place for the varsity 135 weight. She was disappointed that she didn’t win but she looked really good. I could already see improvement from last year. Ryan and I enjoy watching her.
Allison waiting for the championship match to start.
Her first dual was against Pittsburg. She did great at that one too. I don’t watch her wrestle through the camera because I want to see it in real life so sometimes my camera doesn’t follow her like I think I am . I was also sitting pretty close so I had to move the camera a lot more to keep her in frame.
Her second tournament was in Douglas Kansas which is a few hours away. It was during the week so Ryan and I weren’t able to go. She won her first match and then lost her second and third. Maybe her dad and I are better luck than she thinks we are. 😜 Hopefully we won’t miss any more meets this season. She is hoping to make it to State this year. She is putting in the work, hopefully it pays off!
Matthew stayed in Salgueiro for two transfers. That is 12 weeks. He seemed to like it a lot and enjoyed his time there. He got there in September and left about mid December. That is the hot season for Salguerio, it is a dry heat and was above 100 most of the days he was there. He didn’t have any air conditioning the first half, then they had a room unit installed and they had air conditioning in their bedroom the last half. He baptized a young man named Enzo and a few of his friends and were teaching his mom when he left. These are the last of the few pictures Matthew sent of Salgueiro before he left.
I bought a set of bells many years ago with the hope that we would have a little family bell group. It didn’t really come to fruition the way I originally envisioned it but every few months or so someone pulls them out and they play a song for something. I love it. A few weeks ago it was Jovee, Emilee and Ethan that remembered them and gave us a performance.
Each missionary that goes on a mission has a plaque made with their picture and scripture of their choice and their mission on it. It hangs in the church on a wall while they are gone and they get it when they get home. Matthew’s had arrived and was hanging on the wall when I checked a few weeks ago.
Matthew stayed in Salgueiro when his mission had transfers a few weeks ago. Every six weeks they shift people around. Sometimes you stay in the same area for a few transfers sometimes you go to a new place. One of the four missionaries left and they got a new Elder from California. So Matthew is now the second newest missionary in the apartment instead of the newest. He seems to be getting into his stride. The older two left for a few days to some meetings so Matthew was ‘in charge’. He was pretty excited. He hasn’t gotten to decide what he is doing for a few months now, so he loved being the one making all the decisions for a few days. Where he is at right now there aren’t any other missionaries around besides the four of them so on P-Days they don’t really have a lot to do. That means that we get to talk to him a lot more. It won’t always be that way so I will enjoy it while it lasts. Another thing he was really excited about last time we talked is that they just got an air conditioner installed in their apartment. It is just big enough for their bedroom so they moved all their desks into their bedroom too so they can be in the air conditioning as much as possible when they are home. He says he sleeps so much better now.
He has been teaching a few people. One of them is a 12 year old boy that really wants to get baptized. His parents weren’t sure about it but after a few weeks they changed their minds and let him do it. His name is Enzo, and he is the first person Matthew baptized on his mission. He was pretty excited about it. He said he is a really cool kid.
Last week on their P-Day they went to the store to get some groceries and the store had set up their Christmas decorations. They ended up getting a small tree for their apartment. I mailed his Christmas package through a courier service a few weeks ago and they should be getting it to him at the beginning of December. It is a few small gifts and mostly some of his favorite treats. I also sent a few small decorations for them to hang up. I am glad they found a little tree to make their place feel like Christmas.
Here are more baptism pictures from Salgueiro that Matthew added to his photo album this week.
Ryan traveled a lot this Fall for work. He was in Omaha, Wichita, Vegas, Lake of the Ozarks, Branson, and Denver. He works hard for us. He gets to do some fun stuff when he travels too. When he was in Denver one of his clients took him to the Chiefs and Broncos game. The Chiefs unfortunately did not win.
Our church had the Relief Society Christmas dinner. They like to do it in November because December is always pretty busy. It was a nice dinner and they asked us to dress up as fancy as we wanted too. They also invited the teenage girls to come. Allison had a wrestling practice so she didn’t come but Emilee came with me. She dressed up by putting her hair up. 😜
Emilee became an official teenager this year! She decided to have a sleep over with her friends to celebrate. They came over and had pizza for dinner. She had cupcakes and we sang to her and opened presents. Emilee wanted to do a craft with them so after dinner we loaded up in the car and went to Hobby Lobby. They each had a frame and picked out little things to decorate the frames with. Once everyone picked out their stuff we stopped by Andy’s Ice cream on the way home. They decorated their frames and we took a picture of everyone together for them to put in their frames. Then they watched a movie, painted their nails and stayed up late talking. Emilee requested her dad make cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next morning. It was a pretty successful birthday party.
We went to K-Machos for dinner on Monday, which was her actual birthday. She loves her some K-Machos chips and queso with chicken nachos. After dinner we went to Grandmas. Instead of a cake she wanted donuts, and grandma had some brownies that we ate with them. Emilee loves sweets so she managed to get as many different ones over the weekend as she could. While we were at grandmas, Matthew called so we face timed with him while we sang happy birthday and she blew out her candles and she talked with him for a few minutes…that is why I didn’t get any pictures of the blowing out candles…we were using my phone to talk to him on. I will do better next time. But we did celebrate and have a fun night. Dad and I gave her a bow and arrow for her birthday. She went to a church activity and they shot some bows. Ever since then she has been saying she wants to get one so she can practice.
It was a fun weekend celebrating our Emilee. We are very happy that she is a part of our family and we love her a ton!! Happy 13th birthday Emilee!
It was a pretty quiet Halloween for me this year. Ryan was out of town for a work trip. Allison invited a friend over to hangout. They watched a movie and ate pizza. Emilee went trick or treating with her friend Harriet. They dressed up as skeletons. When they were all done she had 14 pounds of candy.
I snuck a piece of pizza from the girls and then decided to set up my Christmas tree. We have a big tree and it takes a lot of work to get it set up so I wanted to make sure that it was up long enough to enjoy it. So we have had all our Thanksgiving decorations and our Christmas tree this year. It is pretty and makes me happy.
My lovely sisters and I decided it was time for another trip together. It was a little last minute. We started talking about it at the beginning of September and we went mid October. We decided to go for easy travel for all of us to get there. We settled on Breckenridge Colorado. It was a direct short flight for all of us to Denver.
On my way to Denver
We arrived Thursday morning. We got a rental car and headed to Breckenridge, which was about 2 hours away. We stopped and had lunch a little outside Denver on our way. When we got to Breckenridge we walked around and explored the down town/main street area for a few hours until our place was ready for check in. We stayed in a little apartment two streets away from main street. It was a perfect place. It had one bedroom with a king and twin bed in it so we could all sleep in the same room and stay up talking as late as we wanted. We got a few snacks and some breakfast food at the grocery store. The rest of our meals we found cool restaurants in town.
Nestled in the crotch of the troll.
It is officially the off season in Breckenridge in October. There were still a good amount of people around but it was not crowded at all. We did a couple different hikes. Breck’s elevation is 9600. Olathe is 900. The first hike we went on was 10500. My mid 40’s self struggled a bit with the elevation, which has never been an issue before. I also think I was starting to get a cold but I know I am not as out of shape as I felt when we were hiking. It was I can walk, or I can talk, I can’t do both. I bought a hat I thought had bears on it but Sherri pointed out later, and was correct, it wasn’t bears- it was dinosaurs! LOL! On the last hike we decided to cross the river and walk back on the other side instead of the same side. I thought for sure one of us was going to slip and totally fall it (probably me) but we all made it safely and were just wet from the middle of our calves down for the last 30 minutes or so. There was still some orange and red Fall leaves, some ice starting to form in the rivers. It was definitely chilly or just plain cold in the evenings but it was beautiful. Fresh crisp mountain air. We even had a few snowflakes one of the days. DeAnna is usually the one that has a list of activities for us to choose from. We picked several of her hikes, and one of the days we went to a Paint and Fire place to let our creative selves enjoy a few hours of crafting. I painted some pottery, DeAnna did a mosaic, and Sherri painted a canvas.
After our hike THROUGH the river, DeAnna wore this lovely look to pick up dinner one night because her shoes were still wet. She didn’t think anyone would notice…but they sure did.
We tried a local pizza place, breakfast place, and burger place. They were all great food. The vibe is pretty fun. It looks just like a old western mountain village in a film would but it isn’t old. It is new and clean and well kept.
We almost tried out the hot tub but only the outdoor one was open and we weren’t filling walking to and from the hot tub in 40 degree weather. We played games and talked for hours at our place. One card game DeAnna and I fixed Sherri’s hand to finally bring the game to an end while she was in the restroom. We didn’t change any outcomes, just hurried it along. Sherri wasn’t going to win so she switched her strategy to sabotaging whoever was winning and while we were having fun, it was getting a little long. We stayed until Sunday late afternoon. It was awesome. I love my sisters and I love hanging out with them. It makes me sad that we don’t live closer.
We checked out Sunday and DeAnna found us a church to go to. It was in Golden Colorado. When we were younger we lived in Colorado and went to a building in Golden that was just down the road from the Coors beer factory. This building fit that description. It didn’t look familiar to me (it was 5th grade for me) Its hard to be sure what memories I have are from what place because we moved so often but it could have been the building 30ish years ago I was taking a picture of with the primary on the front lawn after the primary program. After church we grabbed lunch and then went to the airport. We waited with Sherri at her gate until she left, then I waited with DeAnna at hers until she left, then I caught my flight. It was a great weekend. I loved every minute of it!
