75th Anniversary

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the Church's Welfare Program.  What an incredible organization.  In celebration, our ward took a Saturday afternoon and cleaned up part of a local cemetery that the city has abandoned.  We weren't sure how much we would get done, but finished the section you can see from the street.  When we got there, you could barely see the headstones and many of them were knocked over.

All of us had bright yellow shirts on representing who we were--members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We had people honking as they drove by giving us thumbs up...and one man stopped to express how much he admired what we were doing.  When asked what he could do to help us, someone mentioned that we needed more water.  When he returned, not only did he bring tons of  water bottles, but he brought boxes of juice, cinnamon rolls, boxes of donut holes, and much more! It was cool to see first hand how truly inspiring giving service is.

The missionaries and the men of the ward picked up a lot of knocked over headstones.  There were also little mice running around everywhere and I picked one up with my glove to show Oliver. Kade is pretty embarrassed of this picture of me below but he couldn't help but laugh. He said the bishop showed it in a slideshow in Sunday School at church yesterday, great!

Rachel and I tried to get a normal picture of Michelle, but every time the picture was about to take she would turn her head thinking she was so funny.  Finally I gave up and told them to make a funny face for Michelle's sake.  Guess what she did in the funny face picture....yep.  Smiled nice and big. If she wants to smell my armpits after working in a graveyard pulling weeds, raking, and moving wood piles... she can be my guest :)

We had a great day and made a lot of progress.  It was fun to watch the transition of something that looked so horrible and run down, turn to something presentable. I am grateful that I was able to be apart of it, and am excited for the days when Kade doesn't have to live in the library and can come too!