Micheal Purcell

Elder Garrett has been meeting with Michael about going on a mission.  He is 18 and plans to go but he is a little nervous about it.  Who isn't!!  Elder Garrett has been meeting with him for the mission prep class.  He graduated from high school this past spring.  He, of course was the only Mormon in his High School.  He said when friends wanted him to do things contrary to gospel principles he encouraged them to do the things he believed in.  He said most of the time it worked!  Elder Garrett asked him to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting.  He had never given a talk in Sacrament Meeting before!  He was a little nervous and asked Elder Garrett to help him.  Elder Garrett did help him some and he gave an amazing talk!  He even spoke for about 25 minutes!  Watch out mission field.  Here comes a great missionary!!!  He plans to have his paper work in by March. 

Mr. Fix-It Has Been Busy

Elder Garrett has been busy just helping people with problems.  On four occasions he has had to go help someone who was having car problems.  Two of them have been at night and it is even colder at night!  I felt sorry for him when he had to put on all those layers of clothing and get out in the cold.    My job has been much easier!  He has helped someone fix their dog house, someone fix a window and various projects around the church building.  I found some projects in our pictures that we did a while back and I never did post that I thought were pretty interesting.

When we were fixing things and cleaning up the apartment I thought that I would shampoo these chairs.  Then I had a better idea.  We went to the store.

We bought these and a nice piece of upholstery fabric at Walmart for $10.00.  It was actually big enough to recover about six chairs so I thought that was an excellent price for up here

This is the finished project after covering these cushions and putting two new coats of stain on the chairs.  Looks like new!!!

We were cleaning the Relief Society closet out one day and this board was in there.  It was about three times wider than this and had all these hooks in it.  Apparently it had been used years ago with home made numbers on it for the hymns.  We were going to throw it out when Mr. Fix-it had another idea!  He would make himself a tie rack and put it on the back of the door to help the over crowed condition in the closet.  He sawed it off and put all the hooks in one row.

These are the over crowded conditions in our one closet

Now Mr. Fix-it has a place for all his ties and belts without having them jammed in the closet and falling all the time!!

Mr. Fix-it has another great idea.  When we were listening to something on the iPad sometimes we could hardly hear it.  So Mr. Fix-it would cup his hand around the back and you could hear it much better.  So he had this idea.  He cut a slit in the cup and we hook it around the speaker.  It really works!!!!

This is a commentary Mr. Fix-it wrote about his invention.  It is quite lengthy, if you don't have much time!

 Commentary continued.

This is Mr. Fix-it taking a picture in the mirror to show how his new invention works!!  Not that we are hard of hearing or anything like that!!!  He actually spent a little while on the foam cup getting the cut just right!

Belated Christmas

Thought this was worth sharing!!  Our oldest daughter mailed us a Christmas package on December 12th.  It just arrived today.  Unbelievable that it took over 20 days to get here.  It could have gotten here sooner by truck!!!  Anyway, loved this note from the 16 year old!

 Great Christmas card from Amelia!  We love you guys!

Celebrating the New Year in Yellowknife

We decided that we would have a branch New Years Eve Party.  We only have seven teenagers  so decided to have the party for the whole branch. 

We planned to do the shopping on Saturday for the party.  Bro. Bellis had a slight heart attack and Elder Garrett spent most of Saturday at the hospital.  So Monday morning first thing we headed to Walmart.  Only 3 boxes of party favors left, we took two.  Only 2 big bags of balloons left, we took one.  We made a piñata and blew up lots of balloons.  Sis Milnes (RS president) and her two kid helped us decorate.

 

Apparently Elder Garrett and I can make a pretty strong piñata.  After everyone having several turns it was not budging.  I had made piñata s before with starch but couldn't find that anywhere up here so decided to use glue!  Bad idea!  I looked it up on the internet later and found out that you can make a simple paste with water and flour!  Should have looked it up first!!  We had fun though!  Finally one of the men it several, several times and busted it.

Even the teenage guys couldn't bust this.  We even had them try several times without the blindfold!  It was a good disco ball though!!

Everyone was pleased with the results of the disco ball!!!

We shared lots of good snacks and nibbled all evening long!!

This is Sophie, the youngest participant at the party.  She kept the party going by passing the hats and horns around.  We played Chutes and Ladders with her.  She won a cake in the musical cake walk game.

We played balloon badminton.  We also had a contest to see how many times you could bounce your balloon on your stick held paper plate.  The winner bounced it 146 times!!!

We played lots of games.  One game was pining a famous person on your back and you had to guess it.  Each person wrote a New Years resolution or goal down and we guessed who wrote them.  We played musical chairs cakewalk.  Sis. Milnes had made 3 cakes.  The young people really enjoyed this.  We also played some card games.  The night went by quickly.

Some people were getting a little tired as the night went on!!

Did a lot of visiting!!!

Getting ready for the countdown!!  Only ten seconds to go!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

CELEBRATING!!!!!!!

Popping all the balloons and clean-up.  Everyone helped with the clean up and we were done with everything in about ten minutes.  A fun time was had by all.  Even Sis. Greenwood, who is Sophie's mother said it was the best New Years Eve party she had ever been to!!  Thanks everyone!!!

Christmas in Yellowknife

Thought this Nativity was just perfect.

The Christmas decorations here are all very colorful.  These tree are along a city park and some office buildings.  All the trees are decorated with these colorful lights.  There are trees in the median on Main Street and they all have colorful lights in them.

This is an office building on Main Street.  It has colorful lights all around.

More fancy Christmas decorations.

Office building on Main Street.

Still cold in Yellowknife.  Yesterday we were out and it was -17 F.  It was really cold.  Today when we were out it was -2 F.  We were amazed at the difference.  We didn't feel nearly as cold even though it is still cold!!  Been cold for three months, only three more to go!!  We had about five inches of snow a couple of weeks ago at one time.  Elder Garrett cleaned off the back porch and steps.  Right after he finished it started snowing again.  I told him it was snowing again and he said "I don't even care!!"  Guess we're getting used to it!!!

This is Bro. & Sis. Bellis.  If you remember from previous post he is the Priesthood Leader here.  He has worked with Elder Garrett a lot and they are fast friends. Christmas Eve was their 43rd wedding anniversary.  They invited us over for lunch.  We had fish stew (a first for us), home made rolls and cherry cheese cake.  As you can imagine they eat a lot of fish up here.  We had a great time with them playing games after eating.  When we went home we found the movie "Charly" on the iPad and watched it.  It was really good!

Sister Garrett with Brother and Sister Bellis Christmas Eve.

We received lots of Christmas gifts.  These are just the edible ones!!!  I think we have enough snacks for a few months!  If you check that out, there are five boxes of chocolates!!  We both got a journal, Christmas ornaments, a souvenir plate and a souvenir thermometer. We received gift cards from the local grocery store totaling $250.00!  What a great gift for missionaries, we feel very blessed indeed!

We received this ornament for our Christmas tree.  Thought it was perfect!  I also got the book by Pres. Uchtdorf "Forget Me Not."

We spent Christmas morning face-timing with some of our kids and grandkids.  Then we fixed dinner for this couple that just moved here about three weeks ago.  This is David and Claudette Pruner.  He is an air traffic controller and he had to work until 3:00 so we had dinner at 5:00 and they stayed for a few hours just visiting.  They are from Edmonton and they even think it is really, really cold up here!

Elder Garrett with David and Claudette Pruner.