Week of September 5 - 11

This week started off celebrating Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer. It is also a day to celebrate the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made for our country. The week ended remembering all of those who tragically lost their lives fifteen years ago on 9-ll. It was also a day to celebrate our granddaughter's, Chloe, 18th birthday.











We left the office for a couple hours on Labor Day to attend a barbeque at Hermana Medina's house. It was a perfect day for a picnic under the shade of a tree in her yard with her children and other ward members.









Early Tuesday morning, even before the crack of dawn, we were out in the garden along with the Balls helping Don plant the fall and winter crops. Those are snow peas along the trellis.

Tuesday at our weekly meeting, President Layton said, "We are fighting a war. The adversary is very active." He told us he was going to issue a challenge to all the missionaries to read the Book of Mormon in 65 days. He said the Book of Mormon was translated in 85 days, but the actual translating was done in 65 of those 85 days because of things that were going on. We are joining in the challenge. As we read, he suggested we look for and underline doctrines of Christ like faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost

Wednesday night we ate at the Nation's (he is the High Priest Group Leader and she was just released a few months ago from seven years as the Stake Relief Society President) house along with the Spanish elders in our ward. The next evening we joined in the monthly potluck dinner at the clubhouse for the residents here at Scenic River Villas.    FYI: we have yet to see a scenic river anywhere around here.

On Friday morning we went with the Balls for a tour at South Valley Farms. SVF is an affiliate of the church in their farm lands program. They have 38,000 acres planted with 3.6 million almond trees in about ten varieties. It was so interesting to see the whole process and what they do. It is harvest time so we got to see the machines shake the trees for about six seconds and all the almonds fall to the ground. In about a week a sweeper machine sweeps them to the center of the aisle. Then a vacuum type machine comes and picks them all up. Then they are transported to the plant where they are put in huge stacks until they are processed. They go through many different shaking, blowing, and pounding stages to clean all the husks, dirt, rocks, and twigs off them and finally the shells. They sell most of their product overseas to places like Japan and China. It is quite an operation. I don't think I will ever look at an almond the same again!

                      

Saturday, on our "P Day" we went to Wasco for their 49th annual Rose Festival. Wasco is a small town about thirty miles northwest of Bakersfield where 55% of the roses grown in the United States are grown there. They had a fun parade and their lst annual car show in the park after. James loved that! There were even two blue '58 Chevy Impala's, but they were not as nice as ours. Then we took a bus tour out to the huge rose fields. The roses were so colorful and amazing!

I made two fleece blankets for Project Linus. The Community Make-A-Blanket day was the same day as the Rose Festival, so I just made them at home. James was so kind to model them.

THE LORD LOVES YOU AND SO DO WE!