June 21, 2009 - Ranelle

The past few weeks have been crammed full of activity and momentous happenings.

Early in the month, our CES supervisor from Virginia spent some time with us on his rounds of supervision. He informed us that we will be having a slight adjustment in our assignment in that our line of supervision will change from the Housing Director to the Institute Director. We will no longer have responsibilities with the Student Living Center and will be spending all of our time with institute responsibilities. We may do more traveling assisting the Institute Director with two of the three stakes for which he is responsible. We'll probably be working more with searching for the young single adults who are not taking advantage of institute and church experiences. We will be meeting with Brother Draut tomorrow to receive further direction. Prior to receiving this news, we had contacted the area CES office in Virginia to let them know we would like to extend our time of service until the end of April 2010, the end of the semester for Michigan State University. Now it seems even more important to spend those extra four months here as CES missionaries.

We've had some wonderful experiences during the last few weeks. On June 12, the senior missionary couples met in Midland, Michigan, where President and Sister Jones hosted lunch, after which we toured the Dow Gardens. These gardens cover 110 acres and were initially developed on the estate of the founder of the Dow Chemical Company. What a lovely day we experienced together, getting acquainted with other couples our age, and seeing such lovely landscape! En route we visited the beautiful little town of Frankenmuth. Patterned after an old German community, we found it immaculate and charming with a lovely covered bridge, shops and parks. We also visited an enormous Christmas store which covers the space of two football fields.

Last week we moved from one end of the hall to an apartment on the other end of the building, necessitated by the gutting of the bathroom in our original apartment. Both apartments are of the same floor plan, but we now view the woods from our living room. This move was made more difficult because the apartment we moved into was not available until late afternoon while the demolition crew moved into our apartment around 9:00 a.m. After a week we are nearly settled in our new quarters. At this point we plan to stay in this apartment until we complete our service here.

Exciting experiences lie ahead. Along with truly rewarding teaching experiences which we are having this summer, we look forward to spending the 4th of July with a couple in the stake who have invited us to their cottage for the holiday. So we will travel to the northern tip of Michigan where we will enjoy celebrating this great holiday watching fireworks over the lake and enjoying the amazing scenery of Michigan. We will get to cross over the five-mile Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula. There will be lots to share when we write again.

We hope you each are enjoying the wonderful summer.

Ranelle