Thanksgiving

Saturday, November 30, 2013

We hope that your Thanksgiving Holiday was rich and enjoyable and you were able to enjoy it with people you love. We had a very interesting Thanksgiving. The army is pretty strict with the soldiers in training and the past few years we were told that they were not allowed off the post during the Thanksgiving Holiday. We were given to understand  from the Chaplains that this year they would be allowed to visit a private home for dinner if they were not in Black Phase. Black Phase is the first phase when they come into the program and is extremely restrictive. With this in mind, we had invited and were planning on having eight soldiers at our apartment for dinner. Our daughter Lori came down to help with dinner and enjoy the day with us so she brought a folding table and some folding chairs. We bought food for 11 of us and figured out how we would fit everyone in. The day before Thanksgiving, three of the guys let us know that they had other plans and would not make it. That was fine as we were now down to a comfortable five soldiers and three of us. As we began preparations Thursday morning, about three hours prior to dinner, I received a call from one of the soldiers informing me that their sergeant had advised them that none of them would be allowed off post for the day. We were really disappointed for the soldiers. We had a very quiet Thanksgiving with just Lori, RoLayne, and I. We had plenty of left overs.

The rest of the week was fairly routine as it was a short week and we were preparing for our big Thanksgiving feast. After Thanksgiving dinner, Lori convinced RoLayne to go to Walmart with her for the early Black Friday specials that started at 6:00PM. They left at about 4:30 and came home about 9:00PM. I guess that was an interesting experience. Sorry I missed it.........not.

I am going to include a few pictures we have taken during the past couple of weeks. The first is a picture of all our zone missionaries taken at the recent mission conference with Elder Johnson and President Killpack. The couples on our row left to right are: Heningers, Elder and Sister Paul V. Johnson (Seventy), President and Sister Killpack (Mission President), President and Sister Raehl (Mission Presidency), and Elder and Sister Tanner (Senior Couple in Douglas)

The next picture was taken from a lookout point on Fort Huachuca, looking over part of the post in the foreground and town of Sierra Vista in the background. Sierra Vista is a fairly small city of about 45,000 residents.

Final picture is of some of the soldiers marching in the Veteran’s day parade. Veteran's day is really a big deal here as you might imagine. They love their soldiers.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Today was a really good day. We had 4 new soldiers show up for meetings today. They added an energy that was really welcome. They are all return missionaries, 3 men and one woman. We are really excited to have them as a part of the group until about May of next year. The testimony meeting was really inspiring, they are such a wonderful group of young men and women. The army is really lucky to have them. RoLayne and Sister Kovacs fixed two large crock pots of soup and two large texas sheet cakes. Before you knew it, the soup and most of the cakes were GONE. They really seem to appreciate the meals and the time to socialize. 

We have a relatively busy week this week. We have been asked to inspect the missionary apartments, so that will be on our schedule this week. When we met with the mission president, he told us we would soon also be assigned to do vehicle inspections as well, so we look forward to that. I hope all of you have a busy and fruitful week. We miss you but would not want to be anywhere else.