In-laws, Out-laws and Visiting Teachers

Jamie and I are visiting teaching partners.  We have been visiting the same two ladies for quite a while now.  Today the lesson was on Family History, so we started to talk to one of our ladies about that and she said her late husband was Oneida Indian....this perked up Jamie's ears as her cousins are 1/2 Oneida.  Julia mentioned that her husband was from Oneida, WI.  So of course, Jamie and I were very interested because my sister-in-law Kim was from Wisconsin and they were also Oneida Indians.  Well, it turns out that Kim, my sister-in-law went to BYU and did cornhusk dolls with Julia's sister-in-law and they knew each  other here and in Wisconsin.  Then Julia's late husband's aunt is Kim's visiting teaching lady.  What a small world...
A sample of Kim's beaded picture frames is shown below.  For some reason the pictures wouldn't go in the right direction.  Sorry...Kim's Cornhusk dolls are on the bottom. Here is her link: http://arts.state.wi.us/static/folkdir/nishimoto1.htm

These pics would not turn.  Don't know why. 

Prayer-Try It, It works!

Last week I went with my parents and Tyson to the German concert.  On the drive home, Tyson mentioned how he was looking forward to the Motab choir concert with David Archuleta.  We had been lucky enough to get tickets.  No sooner had he said that then my cell phone rang.  It was Jamie.  She had called to give me the news that she had lost the Concert tickets....Great...  But I thought, there is still time to find them, it was 5-6 days away still.  So she looked and looked with no luck and I think she basically gave up on looking.  I told her to pray and said I would, too.  I don't know if she did or not.  But I did. 

About the same time, I lost some papers.  I went to work thinking they were in my office, no.  I thought, I must not have looked well enough at home, no, I still couldn't find them.    So it went for a few days.  I was frustrated but not too badly, because with some effort, I would be able to gather the information on the papers again.  It was just so bothersome.  But the tickets couldn't be replaced. 

Monday at about 3:00 am I woke up...my very first thought was the papers are in the hall closet on top of some recipe books.  I was too tired to get up and check so I didn't, but then my next thought was, if only I would know where to have Jamie look for the tickets.  Instantly a weird thought came to my mind.  It was to tell Jamie to look in her holiday decoration bins.  Strange thought.  But OK, I would tell her.  In the morning when I got up I went straight to the closet.  Lo and behold...yes, my papers were exactly there.  OK, I thought, I will tell Jamie to look in her holiday bins.

After work, I had to drop a check off to Jamie.  She wasn't there, only Tyson.  I gave him the check and said, Ty, tell your mom to look in her holiday bins.  He said he would and did so.  Later that evening, I walked Logan home from our home and by then Jamie was there and I mentioned to her about the bins.  She sounded like she wouldn't be doing that and she had pretty much given up on the fact of finding the tickets.  So I went home.  Nothing more I could do about it.

In the morning as she took the kids to school, Tyson asked her to check the bins.  So she agreed, OK, she would do that.  She did.  Guess what? Need I say more?  Say your prayers and have some faith.  Someone up there really is watching out for you.

Christmas Luncheon

Here we are on the way to the Church Office Building.  We stopped for a Photo-op and we asked a passer-by to take a pic of the four of us.  We are from left to right, Gerda Bals, Sylvie Pysnak, Sonja, and Barbara Bell.  We are standing next to the Tabernacle and in front of the big nativity.  We were anxiously awaiting our 15 meatballs and shrimp luncheon, but were disapointed in not getting them this year...:( Oh well, so we had ham and chicken nuggets or something like that.  It was OK, but not as good as years past.  We have always enjoyed our luncheons and kind of joke about some of our past ones where Heidi sat on the food which was on a chair, we all spill on each other and get all messy and etc. etc.  This year, no fatalities.  But afterwards we all had to go to Human Resources to do some paperwork and of course, for the second time, the program was not working.  However, somehow after about 1 hour of trying, they got it up and going again.  Since it took so long, we called Ruth, our boss, and I said, that we had all decided to do a little shopping after the luncheon since it was such a nice day.  We would be back later when we were done.  Ruth said we were all fired.  So we gave the phone to Annette, the human resource person, who said to Ruth, she was re-hiring all of us.  It was kind of funny, helped to relieve a little stress to have a good laugh once in a while.



Memories From Long Ago or It's a Small, Small World

Today was our employee and missionary luncheon at the Church Office Bldg.  We have a devotional speaker who is usually one of the church authorities, as was the case today.  Our International floor was sitting together on one table.  On my table was our missionary Hans Arndt.  I told the others about a little story from long ago that Elder Arndt had told me and my coworkers told me, "You need to put that on your blog for safe keeping".  And so here I am doing that.
Here is the little story.  My dad, Heinz Hoeke grew up in Freiberg, Sachsen and shortly after the war worked at a printshop there.  About that time Hans Arndt's family in Berlin sent him to live with friends in Freiberg.  He stayed right across the street from my dad and in fact at the relatives of my dad's, the Henkels.  Hans told me one day that my father's mother asked him to take a warm lunch to my dad at his place of work.  Now after all these years he came to work as a missionary at the Library and got to know me and reacquainted himself with my dad who also comes to the Library to do private research for clients.  It is a really small world and you never know when you will run into people that you knew from so long ago...I think it is really cool!

Grandma, I'm Your Neighbor!



Well, being that it is Sunday, it is normal for the grandkids to come over for lunch after church.  Today was such a day.  Logan spotted a container of Piroulines on the counter that were going to be a little gift.

Logan asked, "Grandma, I'm hungry. Can I have one of these?"

I said, "Sorry, Logan, they are for the neighbors."

His reply, "Grandma, I am your neighbor!"

Camera at Church

OK, so I had to take a picture of my cute grandson, Ty at church.  I have always got a camera there because I am supposed to photograph the ladies for the Relief Society Directory.  Well, OK, he won't be in the Directory, but what the heck. 

Here's his class waiting to go in to the Primary meeting area.