Apple Butter Stirrin’ Festival, Messy Art, Birthdays and Soap Making Week of 10-1-2017

The Apple Butter Stirrin’ Festival, the next biggest event in Coshocton outside of the county fair happened this weekend in Roscoe Village!  You pay a $5 entrance fee, which allows you to go into any of the living museum buildings (normally a $10 ticket) and see all of the craft vendors, all of the food booths and hear the blue grass live music.  It was a fun afternoon, and we go to meet people and mingle in the community. We have been her long enough that we now are meeting “friends” that we have met before and getting to visit with them even more, which is so fun! It was busy with lots of people and we even got to stir some apple butter cooking in big pots on the street!

Earlier Saturday morning we had a branch council planning meeting for 2018 and Sister Pearce and Paul and I provided a little breakfast and we got lots of things planned for next year.  Calendar items, budget and Sacrament Meeting themes!

We have a very fun friend named Susie who is learning so much about the church!  She said that she feels like she is looking through a window at us members and wants what we have, so our gospel discussions with her are fabulous! We often have her and Rain for lunch and we talk and talk and talk!  She attends our personal finance class and is now arranging her work schedule so she can attend institute now too!  Wahoo! She attended a  great class we had in Relief Society about making your own cleaning products but we needed a demonstration. So Susan, Rain and Sister Blanchard went to the Welkers this week to learn how to make some laundry soap made from Borax, washing soda and Zote soap.  We had to grate, melt, cook and whip the soap, but it is wonderful and sooooo inexpensive!  It is about 1.5 cents per load!!! This big jar cost about $1.75 to make! Thanks to Welkers!

Sister Blanchard was also invited by the Chamber of Commerce to help plan an industry tour to local manufacturing companies, which both of us will go to on Halloween with 125 high school students.  Sister Blanchard helped put on many of these when she worked for Granite School District, so this will be right up her alley!

We were invited again to the Welkers for Tyler’s 10^th birthday party, which was a fun evening. Also this week were several birthdays of members of the branch, and for each of the birthdays we take a little frostedfcupcake in a cute box and a birthday card and wish them happy birthday. 

It helps us get into homes of even those who might not want to attend church or have a gospel discussion, but welcome a little birthday remembrance from the branch.

We got to deliver some items to the Troyer family, one of the Amish families that joined the church in our stake several years ago.  This beautiful white home is the home they owned before they joined the church.  They had a very successful bakery business in part of the home, but after joining the church, they lost their business because their neighbors shunned them. So the beautiful home is for sale and the family moved into something smaller close by. These three Amish- now LDS families are amazing members of the church!

Of course we did a bunch more cooking this week.  Two different lunch dates, two different treats for our classes, salad and veggies for a birthday dinner and, here are two big pans of enchiladas that we made for church tomorrow, along with a big cookie sheet of brownies and a giant tossed salad. President and Sister Stratford are coming to speak in our ward tomorrow and so we are putting on a linger longer, which will be fun!!

We do a lot of community volunteer work, and we were invited to help in Warsaw with an after school project called Messy Art.  They have taken art out of the elementary schools and so three mothers got together and decided to get donations from the community and have an after-school art program for (they thought) about 20 kids.  Well 60 kids signed up, so they asked us if we could help, and we went and helped with teaching the color wheel, finger painting and chalk art.  We realized after signing up that the three kids (we only have three) in our Primary attend that school, so it was fun to see them and their mom!

A sad this this week is that our daughter Heather’s mother in law passed away.  Barbara Wihongi has been a widow for about 35 years and she had lived with Heather and Scott for the past 8 years. She has lead a remarkable life raising 7 children as a single mother.  Scott was 8 which his dad passed away.  She so enjoyed her 35 grandchildren and several great grandchildren. She passed away from cancer very quickly. She will be greatly missed but the thought of her being reunited with her sweetheart is such a happy thought! 

Buckeyes