Sunday, August 31, 2014

Hello from Pikeville, Tennessee.  This is my kitchen here in our little blue house on Birchwood Street.  Believe me, it looks bigger than it is.  No dishwasher, and no garbage disposal. If you dirty 3 dishes, it looks full.  But it seems that I have been doing a lot of cooking in it lately.  Last week the Elders invited a family to our house for dinner.  They have four children, plus them, plus the Elders and us.  Table space is at a premium, but we did it! It was a zoo.
     The next day I prepared dinner for a couple who just had a new baby. Their other child is just 10 1/2 months old.  They are so southern.  Sometimes I have a little trouble understanding her with her southern accent.  He is young and probably has more guns than anyone should ever have (especially with 2 small children).

This is a picture of our attempts to help Roberta move.  She is standing behind the red truck.  You can't tell it in this picture, but it was pouring rain. Fortunately most of the furniture was on the trailer and we were just finishing that and putting on the tarp. The tarp pretty well covered the two mattresses, but everything else got real wet. We then followed the truck up the mountain road and unloaded it into another trailer.  I'm not sure the new one was that much of an improvement, but she was happy.  (Darryl says it was)

This is William Sapp. He is 67 years old and lives way up the mountain in a pretty remote area. He used to be a carpet layer, and has worked all over the world.  He is pretty convinced that sometime terrorists are going to attack --so he is prepared. He lives in that small trailer while he builds his little house (behind the trailer).He has two arm chairs, a kitchen chair and a small table in his cabin.  He is really doing good work on that cabin, all by himself. The walls are thick and he will be secure.  He sees the green woods (in the picture) outside his back door.



In the mornings we get up early and walk around the corner and through the cemetery.  This is one of the gravestones up there that I found unusual.  Betty Lou obviously has not died yet because there is no death date, but I guess she wanted a stylish photograph on the stone.  I love the feather boa and the white gloved hands.  Her husband is deceased, but he does look happy.  I guess he likes the white boa too.

As part of our mission, we go out and locate people whose names are on the church records, but they have not been seen for awhile.  Sometimes they have moved, so we document that.  Last week we went with the Relief Society President (the Women's organization) to visit this couple.  They are Willie and Veronica Jane Warren. He is 87 and she is 71 years old. He has been fighting breast cancer and is on morphine and another very strong drug, thus they don't get out much.  She has a flu bug right now, so she talked with us through the screen while we sat on the porch.  They are a delightful couple who carry preparedness to the hilt.  She has been bottling every type of food known to man.  She showed us the bottles of chicken and turkey she cooked then bottled in jars.  They have vegetables, fruit and beans. They were sharing recipes with the RS Pres for their  'tomato gravy' over rice, and swamp cabbage soup.  We learned of a new corn bread made with fine ground corn meal, hot water and a little flour...rolled and fried in the frying pan.  That sounds like pioneer food to me. But if there is a disaster, I know who has all the food.

This last week we were at the Cumberland County Fair (in Crossville). This is our booth. You see in front, Elder Hansen ready to hand out some of the free popcorn we had.  Sisters McDonald and Hess are behind him. Elder Stratling is in the back. We also handed out CTR balloons to the kids, cold bottled water and freezer pops. We were there from 4pm to about 9pm each night (except Fri. when Elder Dunn and I took the night off and stayed in Pikesville.)

On our way home from the fair we had
some excitement!

We had stopped at the Kroger store before leaving Crossville, so we were hurrying along to be home in time for Elders Stradling and Hansen's curfew at 9:30pm.  A car pulled in front of us on the highway and soon he was weaving back and forth across the centerline.  Elder Stradling frantically started calling 911 to report a drunken driver.....just as the call dropped, and as the driver went around a curve, he ran off the side of the road.  We stopped, the Elders ran to see if he was okay.  He was feeling no pain....but was trying to push down on the gas pedal to go.  Another guy stopped, and distracted him while the Elder's called 911 again.  Soon we had an ambulance (not needed), and 6 cop cars (Highway Patrol and Cumberland Co. Sheriff). They had been trying to track this guy for quite a while because of another call they received.  Needless to say he was on his way to jail....inasmuch as this was his 6th DUI.  The funny part was how excited the Elders were.  This made their day! I guess they don't have enough excitement. They kept thanking me for stopping at the store because if we hadn't we would have missed it.

This is Elder Shiner.  He is one cool guy.  I so admire him because he is a great missionary and to top it off he has a great sense of humor.  But most of all, he has a stutter. Can you imagine the courage it takes to go out on a mission to talk with people about the Gospel when you have a stutter.  He manages it very well, and it only gets troublesome when he is nervous. One day we drove him around while he tried to find some long-lost relatives his mother had searched out while doing her genealogy. He met one couple that I think really enjoyed him, although they were not the relatives he sought.  Elder Shiner....you are one great example!

Well, I will end with my personal achievement this week.  I gave myself a pedicure!  Well, you can see that I am no competition to Valerie.....as my toe bleeds.  But I did it.  AND... I got up my courage and went to Cost Cutters and got a $9.00 hair cut.  I kept asking everyone where they got their hair cut, and they all told me they cut it themselves.  Well, I wasn't going to do that.  It was getting long and way too curly so I took a deep breath and went to Cost Cutters in Crossville.  It came out okay and I lived through it.

One more thing.  Elder Dunn found another tractor.  A 1936 Restored John Deere - model G.  It was in the truck pulling contest at the fair.

We are enjoying our mission here in Pikeville.  It has been raining alot, so it is really green.  We don't have that southern accent yet, but we are beginning to understand others who do have it.
We think of you all often.

















1 comment:

  1. So many interesting people and situations! Or maybe you are just really good at writing about what you see. Probably both . . . .

    ReplyDelete