Life is a Gift

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility

to give back by becoming more.

More kind, more patient, more compassionate, more appreciative...

 

 

 A typical day of waiting, waiting and waiting at an apartment complex business office to renew another lease and to learn to be more...patient.  This particular one was located in the Olympia Ward and the sign on the door said, "Back in Five Minutes"...30 minutes later :(

 

After a whole year our own apartment lease was up for renewal.

Since many (not all) of the apartment complexes here in Florida offer incentives when renewing a lease we took full advantage of their offer to clean our carpet. Of course we had to do all of the prep work, but it turned out better than we expected. 

 

 Elder Busath and Sister Conger trying to eat more healthy at the Europa Bistro in Hunter's Creek. Sister Farnbach and I (not pictured) preferred to eat the delicious meaty Greek sandwiches.
 

 

Guess what we found at the Florida Mall?

 

 

 

 Sister Brooks got mail!

I have to admit that I have received many forms of interesting mail while serving in the Mission Office. Loose letters with no envelopes, "man crates" wrapped completely in duct tape,  large plastic Easter eggs filled with candy with numerous stamps affixed all around it, a birthday bouquet of decorated sugar cookies, boxes with one or more of the corners missing, (they have mice at the Post Office who love chocolate) even a St. Patrick's Day package accidentally opened along the way from Idaho to Florida with all of the contents missing, but this one beats them all!  I didn't have the heart to take a chance and have it get lost before it's final destination so we personally delivered it to her apartment and left it on her bed as a surprise.

 

 

The living room

 

 

The kitchen

 



 

 Sister Gordon, aka Vanna White, showing off the headboard we recently received as a donation for our new senior couple

 

 

The master bedroom

 

 

 

 

The bathroom

 

The "before pictures" of the new apartment for the senior couple due the end of June.  It is one of the first times that we have actually had a  few weeks to get an apartment ready for occupancy and the response so far has been wonderful! 

Elders Delgado and Sherwin after helping us empty the trailer loaded with just some of the furnishings for the new senior missionary couple's apartment.

Sorry there aren't more pictures, but it's the first of the month and as a result we have been chained to our desks for much of the week, paying bills, renewing some apartment leases electronically, recording baptisms, preparing monthly reports, finalizing the files for the upcoming arrivals, transfers and departures and basically holding the fort down in the Mission Office so others can hasten the work. Not exactly Kodak moments, but important nonetheless.

Enjoy this gift of life and be happy! We are!

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. 

See you later...