Week 15
Another busy week.  I've mentioned several times that the activities committee comes up with so many great activities for FHE, but I don't know if I stated that there is always a 10 minute lesson before the "fun" begins.  The lessons are generally really well thought out and presented.  This week the game was Human Hungry Hippos and it was crazy.  Four teams try to capture as many balloons as possible--one person per team is on a cart holding a basket and ready to grab balloons, the rest push that person into the balloons then pull the cart back with a rope, and repeat until all the balloons are gone. The team with the most balloons after several rounds wins.

Human Hungry Hippos

For Soup Tuesday we had a chili bar--"and the crowd went wild."  The YSAs like any soup we make them (after all, free food is free food), but they really had fun putting whatever toppings they wanted on the chili, and many commented on how good it was.  May have to repeat this one soon.

Every week the sisters have a booth for about an hour or two near the student union, and they have found some investigators that way.  We went over to see how they were doing this week (it was an incredibly windy day, so kind of a challenge for them) and we went into the union for a few minutes.  This transparent piano suspended from a huge frame has been "hanging around" all year to celebrate something (not sure what), so just thought it made an interesting picture:

And it plays when you push the button

The wind howled all day and all night long--it was warm, but kind of icky being out in the strong wind.  We actually got up to 82 degrees this week.  That just seems wrong for February! Next week the highs should be in the 50s and 60s, and the lows are still in the 30s, but the daffodils have started blooming.

This week's highlight came on Saturday.  In an early blog post I said that on our very first week in Stillwater I discovered that a young woman here is the daughter of my very good friend from Kansas City days.  Well, Heidi received her endowment in the temple on Saturday, and she asked me to be an escort, along with her mother.  I had been her mother's escort in the Mesa temple about 25 years ago!  I hadn't seen her mom, Paula, in over 20 years, so it was a wonderful reunion in addition to the opportunity to be with Heidi.

A glorious day with Paula and Heidi

We just got back from ward prayer--that is held every Sunday night at the institute.  There is a short lesson/thought, then ward members tell whoever is praying the names/situations of those they would like remembered in the prayer.  Then everyone kneels, and the person offering the prayer (referring to the list) gives a heartfelt prayer, including everyone who was mentioned.  It's really a neat experience to be part of that.