LOVIN' CHICAGO!

  
The MTC was unbelievable, every one needs to experience it.  If every ward member had that same experience we wouldn't need missionaries. While it made for some very long days (since we opted to come home every night), we still loved it and those returned missionaries that taught us.


A HUGE thanks to our family members who helped with our move, we would have never had made it without them!

We've been here for almost 3 weeks and we are loving it.  As many of you know who have followed our trek with our  "RIG"  (16' Penske Rental Truck, and trailer towing our Toyota RAV4), it was a REAL EXPERIENCE getting here. 1,600 miles across Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois to an apartment we'd only seen a couple of pictures of it on the Internet.

Luckily, the apartment which is on the 29th floor was nice (with INCREDIBLE VIEWS of the city), men showed up to help me unload the truck and RAV4, and everything fit into the apartment.

We are supporting the Lake Shore 1st Ward and a Single's Branch (that includes the entire stake). They are two brand new wards that were just split off from two other wards.  Most of their leaders (Bishop, Counselors, etc.) are all brand new with NO experience.

We don't have a church building to meet in so we meet in an Elementary School (Newberry).  Sacrament meeting is in the Auditorium while all our other meetings are in small class rooms.  

90% of the ward is made up of young yuppies in the 25-30 year old range.  Most have high powered, high paying jobs in order to afford the apartments they are living in.

 

Each Sunday we walk a couple of blocks up to the Subway, take the "Red Line" north one stop and then walk another 4 blocks to the school for our meetings.

Speaking of walking, we try to walk to all of our appointments and meetings since parking is so bad and EXPENSIVE.  After about 6pm, it's almost impossible to find a parking place on the street and if you do, it costs $5.00 for a couple of hours, plus you'll still probably have to walk several blocks to get to your meeting.  If you can't find a spot and have to use a parking garage, it will cost around $17 an hour (or more).  We done so much walking that my feet have blisters all over them.

The ward and branch have us working on Prospective Elders, Inactives, and part member families.  Plus the Bishop of the ward asked us to head up an "Empty Nester's FHE."  We've invited about 8 couples and it will start on Monday, the 22nd.  We'll start out in our apartment and see if they want to continue meeting here or move it around to other members.

We are working with a Sister who has MS and is confined to a wheel chair.  I need to go over and get her computer and printer to work for her.  She has no family in town so we have invited her to have Thanksgiving with us.

We are also working with a member from Mexico (very heavy Spanish accent), who had a stroke 20 years ago, to get him ready to go to the temple.  I think it will be a lot of work since he has a hard time distinguishing between the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church.  All his family is Catholic, but we'll work with him to bring him up to speed and then give him the temple prep classes.

Our view out our living room and bedroom is fantastic, especially at night.  We can see the Sears and Trump Towers as well as a small bit of Lake Michigan.  At night, Heidi likes to come in and sit on the couch with all the lights out and just gaze at the lights of the city.  It's unbelievable to think all the apartment buildings out there have hundreds, if not thousands of people in them and all are in our ward's boundaries.

So far the weather has been great.  In fact they turned off the air conditioner in our building in October because it's usually cold, but it's been in the 70's and we've been hot.  Haven't had to use our heat yet, but I'm SURE WE WILL.