The incumbent wins!

Jeremy successfully defended his title as Marana Middle School Speller Extraordinaire! On to district and county...I'm hoping he will study with Alex. Wouldn't that be fun to have two kids at district!

Elaine was honored as the Marana High School Swim Team MVP!

In other news, Obama was reelected.

Halloween

I'm going to try to post some pics from my phone.

Beach Vacay/Revisiting Trauma

We had a great beach vacation. Love San Carlos. Came home to a million voicemail messages, several of which were from a PI asking me to call him regarding a traffic accident I witnessed or was somehow involved in several years ago. Then in the mail was a letter from him asking me to call about the accident on Sweetwater several years ago.

Sigh. Apparently the insurance companies are still battling it out, and I'm the only witness, even though it was my car that was demolished. Fortunately I had written a very detailed account of the whole thing in my journal, so I just read my journal to the PI. He was suitably impressed and amazed that nobody was hurt, etc. Hopefully my earlier (3 years ago) recorded statements taken by the insurance companies can be found so I won't have to record another one. My adrenaline gets flowing every time I have to describe it and answer questions and I remain jittery for an hour or so afterward.

Anyway, here are some beach photos.

My first baby went on her first date last night. Dave had been planning that night for 16 years. We ushered the young man into the office where Dave sat ominously behind the desk continuously cocking and uncocking his shotgun (unloaded, of course) while peppering the boy with questions. Fortunately, this boy knows us well and took it all in stride.

Jill Bellyflops

This tastes like ice milk . . .

I don't pretend to be a gourmet chef. I don't even pretend to be a chef. But I do, on occasion, like to prepare an all out meal rather than heat up the contents of a box from the freezer. So we invited friends over and I decided to prepare a simple pork roast with funeral potatoes and broccoli. Nothing super special, so Dave thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make ice cream.

We used to make ice cream a lot. But we got out of the habit when we moved back to Arizona. It is one of those things that I sit back and let Dave do, not because it is difficult or easy, but because he gets really excited about it. Since living here he has been quite busy and hasn't made much ice cream.

So we go to the store and he looks up a recipe on his phone since we no longer have a recipe memorized. He buys the ingredients and chooses some berries. On the way home (10:30 pm or so) I remind him that we have to cook the mixture first (contains eggs) and then let it cool. Since it will be fast Sunday, he won't get home in time to do it so that responsibility will fall on my shoulders.

Well, I get home from church with most of the kids (only forgot Jeremy but it was okay since he had to collect fast offerings anyway) and plan out the order of operations in the kitchen. I turn the ice cream over to Elaine. Of course we can't figure out online which recipe we are using so Dave texts us the recipe. (Have you ever tried to follow a recipe broken up into several texts?) We think we are so smart by straining the egg and milk mixture before adding it to the sugar and flour in the pot.

Everything seems to be going well but I just can't tell when the mixture is coating the back of a spoon. I have seen this done before, even experienced it, but it isn't happening and the stuff is getting dangerously close to a boil. I glance away for a minute and hear Elaine say, "I think it is ready now". I look back and it is completely curdled. 6 eggs, 6 cups of milk, 2 cups sugar, 3 T flour (or something like that) and 45 minutes gone.

Luckily we had a bunch of leftover rice in the fridge so we now have about 10 cups of super sweet, grainy rice pudding.

I decide we have time to start over, so we do. This time I stir it CONSTANTLY for 30 minutes and decide that is enough. I pour it out into a shallow pan to cool in the fridge with plastic wrap on the top as per the instructions. Yayyy! We are so awesome!

The rest of the meal preparations go smoothly, Dave gets home, our friends arrive (bringing two pies and scotcheroos, by the way.) Dave puts the mixture (with added mashed berries and vanilla) in the ice cream freezer and it gets to work.  An hour later it isn't looking very stiff, but we need to get eating dessert before we have to leave to a fireside.

Everyone is super excited to be eating homemade ice cream at long last! I taste it and think, "this tastes like ice milk". The kids say, "it tastes salty." It dawns on me that the heated mixture didn't call for cream, yet we bought it. So I check the fridge, and there is the cream. I check the texted recipe and see that the cream was supposed to be mixed in after the mixture cooled, at the same time as the vanilla. Oops. Thanks goodness for pies and scotcheroos.

I abdicate all responsibility for ever making ice cream again.

Jeremy's Talk on Missionary Work

      Missionary Work

Hello, for those of you who don't know me my name is Jeremy Parry, and today I've been asked to give a talk about Missionary Work. There's a couple main parts that I thought of, and here they are. 

The first one is that in order to share the gospel with others, you don't have to be on your mission. You can start way before that. In fact, i have had a couple experiences already and obviously, i still have quite a ways to go before my mission. THe first real time i felt like a missionary was last year, in my social studies class. We were asked to share with the class our religious beliefs and so I thought bingo! This is a great opportunity. THe next day when it was my turn I got in front of the class and shared my knowledge of the plan of salvation, and i was kind of nervous going into it. But, once i actually started talking about it and answering questions it became a lot easier and I felt the holy ghost comforting me. 

Another experience I had was also at school, about a month ago.  We were learning about alcohol, and how it was illegal in the early 1900s, when a girl raised her hand and asked the teacher if it was true that mormons couldn't drink alcohol. Then my teacher, who wasn't a member himself answered saying, "Yes, that is true. They also can't have caffeine." After which, he talked about more points that weren't true. So I raised my hand and when the teacher called on me, I cleared up his mistake and told them a little more about the Word of Wisdom and what we believed. I encourage all of you to look for chances to share the gospel and be a missionary. You are never too young to share the gospel.

The second main part to missionary work is building a testimony and obtaining spiritual knowledge. D&C 11:21 says, "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men" What this is telling us is that the first thing we need to do before declaring the gospel is studying it and obtaining knowledge of the gospel. Once we have done that, we shall have the Spirit and power of God unto the convincing of men. If I hadn't known about the Word of Wisdom, or the plan of salvation and studied it beforehand, then I wouldn't have had been able to share what I did with my class. I probably wouldn't have even considered it. I also had and still do have a testimony of the two subjects. Not only is spiritual and gospel knowledge important, testimonies are too. If you don't have a testimony of what you're teaching about, how can you expect them to believe what you're teaching? You can't. Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the quorum of the twelve apostles said this in the April 2008 General conference. "A testimony of the gospel is a personal witness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true."It is important to have a testimony of what you're sharing; it benefits both you and who you are teaching. Once again, to be an effective missionary you must have a testimony, and knowledge of the gospel.

   
The last part is being an example and living the gospel. If you're telling somebody what we believe and  what our morals and standards are and you yourself aren't living up to those standards the chances are that you won't be listened to. A powerful and simple way to be a missionary is just setting an example, and not being afraid to stand alone. At middle school, kids tell bad jokes, swear, and take the Lord's name in vain. By setting a good example early on in the year, and walking away from bad conversations, I was teaching about our standards without saying a word. Towards the end of the year, When I would walk by people they would stop with the bad jokes, the cussing, and even apologize if they did swear. Just by being an example I had taught my friends about what I believed.

Now, I'd like to bear my testimony that i know these things are true, and I know that by simply sharing our testimony with others, and setting a good example that we can really influence others lives. I'd like to say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.