S is for. . .

S is for Service.

Today (really yesterday since this post is late) Jake and I went to the Cannery.  Our church (we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) puts an emphasis on lots of things but going to the Cannery helps us with is being prepared for emergencies and serving others.

One way to be prepared is to have food stored in your home for times when you can’t get to the store (bad weather, bad health etc), don’t have money (lost a job) or something else happens. At the Cannery, we can put dry goods in big cans and most of the food will keep for 25 years. We canned flour, sugar, wheat, beans, rice, fruit drink mix and lots of other things.  It takes several people to work all the stations. Two to fill up the cans, one to put the oxygen pack in, one to run the canning machine (it seals the lid on), and two to put all the cans in boxes for us to take home. We also needed one or two to be gophers (go for another bag of oatmeal, go check if there is any rice, etc, etc). Not everyone who buys the food can go to the Cannery (that's where the service comes in!)

It is fun and I love looking at the pile of boxes and seeing what we have accomplished at the end of our appointment. If you want to know more about being prepared go here. Not only does the food keep a long time the prices are VERY reasonable.

For  a great post about going to the Cannery from someone who had never been click here. There are lots of pictures too!

Check back later to see what the Sunday Thought is and tomorrow to see what T is for. . .

Happy Veterans Day

Today is Veteran’s Day. My grandfather was a Marine during World War 2. He never talked about his experiences during that time. My dad got his journal after he passed away. While he was alive my grandfather was a man of few words. His journal was the same. There weren’t a lot of details. Grandfather was on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.

Jake’s brother was in the Army and in Kosovo during that conflict. His uncle was career military. We have a gentleman in our neighborhood that was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge during World War 2. We have many people around us who are serving or have served our country.

I am grateful to them all. They are willing to put their lives on the line often in faraway places to protect our country and help fight tyranny around the world. Their families live in foreign places or have their loved one gone for LONG periods of time.

To all the veterans: Thank you!!!! To their families: Thank you!!!!

What is going on?

As part of my daily routine I check the page views on each of our profiles. I check to see if the number of views is up (YAY!) and what parts of the profiles are getting looked at the most.  So far, there have been a pretty predictable number of views on each profile.

There have been times when the LDS profile (see it here) has few or no views for days :(. Until this week.  Suddenly our profile is getting 50-75 hits per day (some days even 100). This is new and exciting. I hope this means someone is interested and maybe looking many times?

We are still considering which new picture to use for our profile. Please give your opinion! (See the choices here )

Jake has been very busy this week helping to finish up the Eagle Scout project he worked on in July. They are getting together tonight to finish everything up. He helped make some bookshelves that will go to a local school. The teachers I know can always use more bookshelves!

Eagle Project

Jake is helping with an Eagle Project today. A Boy Scout in our Ward (church congregation) wants to turn this:

 

into this:

for a local school for his project. Jake likes to build things and so he was asked to help.  He got all his tools and clamps ready. Having the right tools makes the project so much easier! 

Helping at the Food Bank

Jake and I went to help at the Second Harvest Food Bank yesterday with some members of our church. We sorted hygiene products for them. They had boxes of donated items that we had to sort; all the toothbrushes, shampoo, soap, shaving cream, razors and toothpaste were together and need to be in separate boxes. Anything else we found in the boxes went into another box to go somewhere else.  We also had to mark through the bar code and pull off any papers that were taped on.

From what I understand Wal-Mart donates lots of items, the volunteers sort them and then those who need them can come to the food bank and “shop”.  It wasn’t hard work but there were some decisions to be made.  Some packages were completely open. We had to look and see if the items were used or just open. At first a lot of things were deemed no good but as our time went on we started thinking in a different way. If you had no soap would your really care if the package was ripped? If you had no toothpaste would you care that the box was crushed?

I know by the end we were doing a much better job.  I am glad we went and hope we can go again. Now that I know what to do and how things work it will go better.

Jake and I picked up the missionaries and another fellow from our church. One of the missionaries had be to the Food Bank and helped a lot so he really knew what to do and we were able to ask him questions when the main person in charge was not available.  It took us a long time to get to the food bank and a long time to get home mostly because of picking everyone up.  Jake and I have the missionaries over for dinner once a month and Jake helps them out as often as he can. I didn’t know the other gentleman very well but he was very nice and was able to get us quickly to his house from the food bank (it is REALLY easy to get lost downtown!)

Thanks for reading!

Terri