The Work..... and then some.

 Table set in our Apt

Thanksgiving.... 
It was strange having Thanksgiving Dinner without being surrounded by family.  I remember recent years where we had 40 family and friends in our home for dinner.  Here in Chicago, we invited a few inactive prospective Elders who were unmarried and Terry (a Sister with no family in town) who is in a wheelchair because of her MS. Of course we also invited the full-time missionaries.  All of the prospective Elders backed out (not feeling well), so it was just Terry, who we are helping to re-activate, and the full-time Elders.  

Thanksgiving Pies

Those that cancelled missed out on the usual GREAT meal and the associated six different kinds of pies.  The Elders couldn't believe the options they had for desert. But I could and I enjoyed everyone (well except for the coconut cream and pecan) so did the doormen who we took some food down to enjoy.

It sounds like our kids back home enjoyed their Thanksgiving without us and some got to try their hand at making some of Sister Beck's famous rolls and pies.  See... we KNEW they could do it.

We continue to work with Ben Ortiz, who is from Mexico and was once in the Catholic Seminary to become a priest.  His whole family, many who are now also in the U.S., are still all Catholic, however Ben has been a member since the early 80's.  About 20 years ago, Ben suffered a serious stroke that put him in a wheelchair with Doctors telling him he'd never walk again.  He proved them wrong.  While it is very difficult for him to walk (his whole one side doesn't work well), he does and walks to church every Sunday.  We continue working with him to prepare him to go to the temple.  Sister Beck likes to walk to Ben's home (it's 3 miles round trip), so I thought I would show you what that walk looks like.... well for now at least.  These pictures are from some warmer weather, the forecast is for 6 inches of snow and extremely cold air tomorrow.

This is looking down our street, Dearborn.  We are at 1111 North and Ben's home is at 1600 Orchard.  So we head out north on Dearborn, we have to go 5 blocks North and about 10 blocks West.

This is a common intersection we would walk through, streets are fairly wide, you just have to watch out for buses and taxis, neither one of them stop for ANYTHING!

Almost there.... The streets where we live are pretty safe both day AND night.  It's not unusual to find ourselves walking late at night, sometimes home from meetings, other times to get some late night exercise in.

Finally, we get to Ben's house, here on the right.  It is housing for Senior Disabled individuals.  It's not a bad place and Ben seems to like it.  In our lesson today, Ben told us about his Patriarchal Blessing that he received back in April 2002.  He said his blessing kept telling him, he needed to "GET TO THE TEMPLE."  We are excited for him.

As far as our Sister with MS, Terry, she is currently in a rehab facility and we visit her a couple of times a week.  Along with all her other issues, she also has trouble with her sight, so the Bishop is getting her one of those extremely LARGE print Book of Mormon.  We also are going to give her the Book of Mormon on CD. That way she can either read or listen and won't have an excuse NOT to.  We need to get her back to church so she can prepare for the temple.

Finally, we had a small miracle this past week.  We had taken our full-time Elders to their Zone Meeting because it would have taken them over an hour to bike there.  After, it was past lunch so we decided to take them to lunch.  Sister Beck said, okay Elder Beck, where are we eating, I said, "5 Guys, Burgers & Fries."  I started heading to one I knew of and the Elders said there was one closer, so we turned around and went to that one.  We found a parking space right in front of it (which is almost a miracle itself). While ordering, the man behind the counter saw Sister Beck's name tag (the only one showing because of our heavy coats).  He got all excited and asked if we were Mormon's.  Sister Beck replied, "Yes we are."  He exclaimed he was too!  Sister Beck said we hadn't seen him out at church and he said he hadn't gone in a long time but wanted to now that he had a family.  So we got his name and number and told him we'd hook him up.  We were the only ones he waited on the whole time we were there.  The miracle? In a city (counting suburbs) of 9 million people, we select a place to eat that has a member in it who hadn't been to church (but was looking for one) for many years, we selected his restaurant, he happened to be waiting on us and he saw Sister Beck's name tag.  Believe me, it WAS a miracle.