From all of us to all of you.
From Elder Fortie:
Well it was nice to hear from the family on Christmas. Though I have to say it didn't feel like it was unusual to talk to you all, I felt like I was just calling home to let you know I'd be home late or something like that. But it was nice to hear you all non the less. Christmas sounds like it was crazy as ever. You all seem to need a nap though after your vacation time... haha.
Anyhow, Christmas here was just fine. Nothing terribly eventful. I made about 140 cookies though, and took them around to members and investigators and the like, that was our activity.
We had another 2 baptisms this weekend, and they both went well, one of the sisters at the Visitors center did a special musical number on the violin at the baptism, and she was fantastic! Wow, she's an amazing violinist, I've never heard anything quite like what she was able to do with a violin, she like was able to make it make a sound I'd never before heard out of a violin that was enchanting. It was great. Also we have another wedding this upcoming Saturday, of a man that has wanted to get baptized for 4 years, but the mother of his children refused to marry him, and he didn't want to separate their family, but she has finally agreed to marry him and he is as excited as a fat kid in a candy shop. So that is great news, and his baptism will be the day after his wedding, along with 3 other people I have been teaching. Then the daughter of the man I baptized last week has decided after feeling the spirit at her fathers baptism she is going to get baptized and is also planning her wedding for the up coming week or two so she can get baptized... The Lord is just dumping out blessings on us. I've never done a wedding my entire mission till this transfer and suddenly in one transfer it's looking like I might have 3! Also to see this many people getting baptized is amazing. Baptisms in this mission are hard to come by. The average missionary got about 3-4 baptisms in their entire mission. Yet for some reason the Lord is just bailing out buckets of blessings on us as we have had baptisms several times a week every week for like over a month. It sure aint me doing all the work, cause I hardly get to see my area... he's sure doing something in my area when I'm not there, and whatever he's doing it's working. The stake had 98 baptisms for the year, and 52 of them came from our ward... the other like 10 wards in the stake got the rest together. The stake nor the mission have never had such a year, and I don't know what's going on I just know I like it haha! The work moves forward! Well I think that will do for now. New years Eve we are going to have us a party (yes President Wade told us to, he doesn't want us out on the streets at night here... not to safe) and we're watching Forever strong, and either Ice Age 3, or Up, we shall see. (those are the three that President is letting us choose from) So it should be good times. I'll let you know how weird it is for me to watch a movie... To be honest I don't think it will be to weird, I see weirder stuff on the streets of Oakland every day that much of it I would never plan on seeing in a movie haha. So I think a few G rated kids movie's won't do me in. Such as on Christmas we went down town Oakland and stood on a street corner and sang Christmas carols, we got a couple druggies that came and started to jump on their heads and run out into the streets hooping and hollering along with our singing... while people sat there in piles of garbage smoking weed and listening to us... yup, gotta love 'Oak-town.'But it was nice and we enjoyed singing even if everyone did think we were loonies. We did get one old black guy in a wheel chair with a Santa’s hat (probably homeless from the look of him) that stopped and started to direct us, he was very friendly and pulled out his little voice recorder and started to record us as we sang, and he gave commentary... he was getting very into his directing as well, there was some moments I was afraid he was going to tip his wheel chair as he waved his arms about frantically trying to bring in his imaginary symphony that wouldn't seem to do what he wanted them to. Or as he would wheel past us at full speed then let go of the wheels to direct us as he was traveling past us not looking or steering any more, as he vigorously tried to rally the tenor section together, while people tried to leap out of the way and he narrowly escaped a collision with another homeless man trying to take a nap on a bus stop bench... Then he spun it around and did the same trick coming back the other way yelling for more power from the Alto's as he about took a trip down the subway entrance stair case... He asked who was in charge of this "fine singing group" and everyone kind of looked around like uhm, I dunno, then they all looked at me and said ah... senior zone leader, he is in charge. and pointed to me. " he then proceeded to call me captain for the rest of the proceedings, and would yell things such as. "Step on their toes Cap'm! make em get them high notes!" or "Cap'm, Cap'm we need another rendition of Joy tu the wold!" (spelled wrong on purpose) "the crowd's a sleepin cap'm, get them to make it bounce! Lift um up! LIFT UM UP CAP'M!!! SING!!!" Then as we went to leave he said "you got a card cap'm?" so I gave him a pass along card, and he picked up his voice recorder and began to discourse into it upon how he had met "cap'm" and sang with his choir etc etc. as we wandered off he was going off into his little voice recorder about raising Oakland from the ashes with song." He was a nut, but he was a nice funny and friendly nut! That's just another day in the bay. Hope you got a kick out of that one. Keep on kickin, and smile on!
Love Elder Fortie
From Jennifer:
Um, I know, it’s been a while…again!
Basically life is INSANE! I have an eye infection, two hurt knees, two hurt hips, and, thank heaven I don’t have two backs because that hurts to! Toppled on that I’ve been sick, I have to get all my redoes in before the deadline in one week and I got a new calling! Yah! But I’m still smiling and I just keep reminding myself I have it better then a whole lot of people out in this crazy world, although if the earth didn’t suck, we would all fall off, so it’s a good thing it does!
Well Christmas was great! Traps was just Michelle, Brian and me this year but Brian tied in his doctor skills in by telling us that sleep cycles go in a pattern of 2 hours so since dad went to bed at two thirty he will be in his deepest sleep at four thirty, two hours, Michelle and I just looked at each other and shrugged. So here we are four thirty and I awake to a synchronized “Jenno, it’s time” we hopped out of bed grabbing our flashlights, scissors, screw drivers, and all other tools and opened our unhinged doors feeling relieved that Brian had already took off all the booby traps on those, then we step into the hall and shine our lights towards the stairs and the first words that popped out of my mouth (in a whisper of course) were “holy shnickeys.” There was a floor to ceiling wall of crinkled up paper, do you know what happens when you try and move crinkled paper twice your height? It makes noise, so what do we do? We move it, using teamwork we kept it steady and on it’s side then stashing it into my room, without making noise. Behind that was a king size foam mattress squished between the walls with tubes that had trick-or-treating buckets hanging on it strung between it and a tall cardboard set (pretty sure were the only house in America that has sets lying around our house) after tackling the mattress while holding up the tubes to keep them steady we slid off the buckets and accidentally hit a container that made noise, but not enough to wake up mom and dad. And behind that was a field of wrapping paper and tarps which we handled just the same as the first obstacle, then after a long hour and a half we made it to the tree, looked threw our stockings then in exhaustion marched back up to bed and went again to sleep.
At work the boys and I made REALLY good cookies, which to my surprise was there first time. When I told them what we were doing that day Sam looked at me like I was crazy and said, Jenn we can’t make cookies, you have to be a store person to do that! It made me laugh really hard but much to there surprise we were magic and we made them! Then we ate half the dough and baked the other half, they sat in front of the oven watching them bake the entire time. Then we got them out and decorated them with frosting and sprinkles, the expression on their face was priceless and tasted their first cookie made from home. I encourage you all to not let the little moments in your life slip away, make them into a time you will remember forever, cause that time is in my memories forever. And spend them with someone because if you look back at the best moments in your life, there almost all with someone.
I must be off! Always remember the first part of CHRISTmas, let it be first in your life as well. Love you all!
Jenno Fortie
Not many pictures for Christmas this year - For December pictures click here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kensbestpics/FamilyDecember2009#
Fortie Family Flyer
December 21 – 27, 2009
Dear Family and Friends,
Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, or as the Hawaiians say, mele kalikimaca e haole makahiki hou (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year). Well, as usual, this was one of the busiest weeks of the year. I worked every day but Christmas at Deseret Book and usually didn’t get home until 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. Lots of running around the store sometimes helping 2 or 3 people at a time. It’s hard when you are not used to the store and customers surprise you every so often with a question that you haven’t had yet and you have no idea where that book or gift might be; gets frustrating once and a while. I managed to get a bit of shopping in for Tami, which is hard to do ‘cause she is hard to figure out, but I guess all women are like that (so they say). I got several things at Deseret Book because the older kids wanted stuff from there and I get a discount. It is hard to work at a Deseret Book with a Lion House Pantry in it; too much temptation. They give us good deals on 2 day old pies and they are amazing. I have gained a few pounds always having a pie available in the fridge (can’t let them go to waste).
For Family Home Evening we all (grandpa, grandma, Chad, Alicia, Spencer, Tami, Brian, Michelle, Jennifer and myself) went down to drive through the lights at Thanksgiving Point. The line of cars was like a mile long so it took us a while to get there. Tami and I were in the back seat of grandpa and grandma’s car with Spencer and the other kids were in Chad and Alicia’s car behind us. To keep Spencer from getting bored with the 3 mile an hour drive to the gate I got him out of his car seat and stood him on the floor by me then opened the door so he could see out. He then hung out the window (which gave Alicia, in the car behind us, a heart attack) and waved at people in other cars (there were two lines next to each other) and got to know several people who had fun waving back at him. Just as he was getting tired of that we made it to the lights and enjoyed a nice drive through a fairly large display of lights.
Christmas Eve came and, as usual, we were behind schedule with the whole Christmas thing. I think this is the first year where we are all working and/or going to school and all our schedules are crazy ones so doing things together is like totally not happening very often. I found a few last minute things for gifts before I went to work. Then while I was working at Deseret Book, Repartee Gallery called my house to say that a guy called from Texas and asked if my 20x30 picture that he had ordered of the Idaho Falls Temple had been delivered to his Mother for Christmas. I called them from work and they said they thought they had sent me a purchase order (but I never saw it). Repartee asked if I could get it printed and deliver it right to her today so she would have it for Christmas. Though the store was busy, Deseret Book let me clock out and rush down to Sam’s Club to print the picture (luckily I had it on a flash drive in my pocket) and I then went to Murray to deliver it. I found the little apartment and this little old lady was home so I showed it to her and she absolutely loved it. She said she loved the view from across the river and had often taken walks there. She called her son in Texas to thank him. That was the temple she was sealed to her husband who has long since gone. She was now all alone and would be spending Christmas alone as well. I visited for a few minutes then dashed back to the store to get back to work with the worst crowd of the day and lines half way back to the back wall. It seemed like a long day but we finally closed at 6:00 and I headed home. Tami was working (in the office down stairs) so I had the kids help me wrap each others presents and finally got them to bed a bit after midnight. It had been such a long day that I wasn’t sure how I was going to have the energy to spend a few hours setting traps. I laid down for 15 minutes to get the power nap (I’m not sure it can legally be called a power nap when it is in the middle of the night) then got up and found some fun things (including Halloween decorations – kind of a Nightmare before Christmas theme) and packed the hall and stairs with several small traps. I got to bed at 2:30 and the kids got up at 4:30 to see what lay in store. It took them one and a half hours to get through and they only dropped two things but I had earplugs in and was really out of it so I didn’t hear them. Tami had to work for an hour in the morning so we waited for her before we got up at about 8:30 to open presents. We had fun even though most people knew most of what they were getting. I got a few surprises for the family and I got a surprise from the girls and they enjoyed the feeling that they had something I wouldn’t know about. In fact we talked about how much better the feeling is when we give than when we receive.
There were a few naps in the afternoon and then we went to Curt’s for the family party. Again Tami had to work one hour, she tried to get it off so we waited but it didn’t work so we got there late and she came an hour and a half later. We ate and read stories and grandpa and grandma opened presents. It was a good day.
Saturday Tami was sick and my day was filled with work at DB, taking care of the chores around the house and a quick trip to the store late at night to see what was going down as far as great sales. I did get a seat warmer massager for $14.00. I stayed up until 3:30 to get my talk for Sacrament meeting. I decided that in order to avoid the wandering I tend to do while giving a talk I wrote it out completely. It seemed to work and people said they enjoyed it but it still didn’t feel like it was a great talk.
Sunday afternoon I did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen a bit so we could get dinner then napped for a half hour. I was going to get dinner but Tami dragged herself out of bed long enough to do that. It was good and I was grateful she could help out a bit. Michelle was also sick so Jennifer, who has been sick and still seems to have some infection in her eyes, was the only one who came with me to church. We watched a few Christmas programs and a movie called the Greatest Gift, which was very good, then hit the sack.
Well, must go to work, watch out for those traps in the hall they’ll get ya if you’re not watching.
Bye for now,
Ken and clan
http://picasaweb.google.com/kensbestpics/FamilyDecember2009#
Fortie Family Flyer
December 21 – 27, 2009
Dear Family and Friends,
Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, or as the Hawaiians say, mele kalikimaca e haole makahiki hou (Merry Christmas and Happy New Year). Well, as usual, this was one of the busiest weeks of the year. I worked every day but Christmas at Deseret Book and usually didn’t get home until 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. Lots of running around the store sometimes helping 2 or 3 people at a time. It’s hard when you are not used to the store and customers surprise you every so often with a question that you haven’t had yet and you have no idea where that book or gift might be; gets frustrating once and a while. I managed to get a bit of shopping in for Tami, which is hard to do ‘cause she is hard to figure out, but I guess all women are like that (so they say). I got several things at Deseret Book because the older kids wanted stuff from there and I get a discount. It is hard to work at a Deseret Book with a Lion House Pantry in it; too much temptation. They give us good deals on 2 day old pies and they are amazing. I have gained a few pounds always having a pie available in the fridge (can’t let them go to waste).
For Family Home Evening we all (grandpa, grandma, Chad, Alicia, Spencer, Tami, Brian, Michelle, Jennifer and myself) went down to drive through the lights at Thanksgiving Point. The line of cars was like a mile long so it took us a while to get there. Tami and I were in the back seat of grandpa and grandma’s car with Spencer and the other kids were in Chad and Alicia’s car behind us. To keep Spencer from getting bored with the 3 mile an hour drive to the gate I got him out of his car seat and stood him on the floor by me then opened the door so he could see out. He then hung out the window (which gave Alicia, in the car behind us, a heart attack) and waved at people in other cars (there were two lines next to each other) and got to know several people who had fun waving back at him. Just as he was getting tired of that we made it to the lights and enjoyed a nice drive through a fairly large display of lights.
Christmas Eve came and, as usual, we were behind schedule with the whole Christmas thing. I think this is the first year where we are all working and/or going to school and all our schedules are crazy ones so doing things together is like totally not happening very often. I found a few last minute things for gifts before I went to work. Then while I was working at Deseret Book, Repartee Gallery called my house to say that a guy called from Texas and asked if my 20x30 picture that he had ordered of the Idaho Falls Temple had been delivered to his Mother for Christmas. I called them from work and they said they thought they had sent me a purchase order (but I never saw it). Repartee asked if I could get it printed and deliver it right to her today so she would have it for Christmas. Though the store was busy, Deseret Book let me clock out and rush down to Sam’s Club to print the picture (luckily I had it on a flash drive in my pocket) and I then went to Murray to deliver it. I found the little apartment and this little old lady was home so I showed it to her and she absolutely loved it. She said she loved the view from across the river and had often taken walks there. She called her son in Texas to thank him. That was the temple she was sealed to her husband who has long since gone. She was now all alone and would be spending Christmas alone as well. I visited for a few minutes then dashed back to the store to get back to work with the worst crowd of the day and lines half way back to the back wall. It seemed like a long day but we finally closed at 6:00 and I headed home. Tami was working (in the office down stairs) so I had the kids help me wrap each others presents and finally got them to bed a bit after midnight. It had been such a long day that I wasn’t sure how I was going to have the energy to spend a few hours setting traps. I laid down for 15 minutes to get the power nap (I’m not sure it can legally be called a power nap when it is in the middle of the night) then got up and found some fun things (including Halloween decorations – kind of a Nightmare before Christmas theme) and packed the hall and stairs with several small traps. I got to bed at 2:30 and the kids got up at 4:30 to see what lay in store. It took them one and a half hours to get through and they only dropped two things but I had earplugs in and was really out of it so I didn’t hear them. Tami had to work for an hour in the morning so we waited for her before we got up at about 8:30 to open presents. We had fun even though most people knew most of what they were getting. I got a few surprises for the family and I got a surprise from the girls and they enjoyed the feeling that they had something I wouldn’t know about. In fact we talked about how much better the feeling is when we give than when we receive.
There were a few naps in the afternoon and then we went to Curt’s for the family party. Again Tami had to work one hour, she tried to get it off so we waited but it didn’t work so we got there late and she came an hour and a half later. We ate and read stories and grandpa and grandma opened presents. It was a good day.
Saturday Tami was sick and my day was filled with work at DB, taking care of the chores around the house and a quick trip to the store late at night to see what was going down as far as great sales. I did get a seat warmer massager for $14.00. I stayed up until 3:30 to get my talk for Sacrament meeting. I decided that in order to avoid the wandering I tend to do while giving a talk I wrote it out completely. It seemed to work and people said they enjoyed it but it still didn’t feel like it was a great talk.
Sunday afternoon I did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen a bit so we could get dinner then napped for a half hour. I was going to get dinner but Tami dragged herself out of bed long enough to do that. It was good and I was grateful she could help out a bit. Michelle was also sick so Jennifer, who has been sick and still seems to have some infection in her eyes, was the only one who came with me to church. We watched a few Christmas programs and a movie called the Greatest Gift, which was very good, then hit the sack.
Well, must go to work, watch out for those traps in the hall they’ll get ya if you’re not watching.
Bye for now,
Ken and clan
From Elder Fortie:
Well it was nice to hear from the family on Christmas. Though I have to say it didn't feel like it was unusual to talk to you all, I felt like I was just calling home to let you know I'd be home late or something like that. But it was nice to hear you all non the less. Christmas sounds like it was crazy as ever. You all seem to need a nap though after your vacation time... haha.
Anyhow, Christmas here was just fine. Nothing terribly eventful. I made about 140 cookies though, and took them around to members and investigators and the like, that was our activity.
We had another 2 baptisms this weekend, and they both went well, one of the sisters at the Visitors center did a special musical number on the violin at the baptism, and she was fantastic! Wow, she's an amazing violinist, I've never heard anything quite like what she was able to do with a violin, she like was able to make it make a sound I'd never before heard out of a violin that was enchanting. It was great. Also we have another wedding this upcoming Saturday, of a man that has wanted to get baptized for 4 years, but the mother of his children refused to marry him, and he didn't want to separate their family, but she has finally agreed to marry him and he is as excited as a fat kid in a candy shop. So that is great news, and his baptism will be the day after his wedding, along with 3 other people I have been teaching. Then the daughter of the man I baptized last week has decided after feeling the spirit at her fathers baptism she is going to get baptized and is also planning her wedding for the up coming week or two so she can get baptized... The Lord is just dumping out blessings on us. I've never done a wedding my entire mission till this transfer and suddenly in one transfer it's looking like I might have 3! Also to see this many people getting baptized is amazing. Baptisms in this mission are hard to come by. The average missionary got about 3-4 baptisms in their entire mission. Yet for some reason the Lord is just bailing out buckets of blessings on us as we have had baptisms several times a week every week for like over a month. It sure aint me doing all the work, cause I hardly get to see my area... he's sure doing something in my area when I'm not there, and whatever he's doing it's working. The stake had 98 baptisms for the year, and 52 of them came from our ward... the other like 10 wards in the stake got the rest together. The stake nor the mission have never had such a year, and I don't know what's going on I just know I like it haha! The work moves forward! Well I think that will do for now. New years Eve we are going to have us a party (yes President Wade told us to, he doesn't want us out on the streets at night here... not to safe) and we're watching Forever strong, and either Ice Age 3, or Up, we shall see. (those are the three that President is letting us choose from) So it should be good times. I'll let you know how weird it is for me to watch a movie... To be honest I don't think it will be to weird, I see weirder stuff on the streets of Oakland every day that much of it I would never plan on seeing in a movie haha. So I think a few G rated kids movie's won't do me in. Such as on Christmas we went down town Oakland and stood on a street corner and sang Christmas carols, we got a couple druggies that came and started to jump on their heads and run out into the streets hooping and hollering along with our singing... while people sat there in piles of garbage smoking weed and listening to us... yup, gotta love 'Oak-town.'But it was nice and we enjoyed singing even if everyone did think we were loonies. We did get one old black guy in a wheel chair with a Santa’s hat (probably homeless from the look of him) that stopped and started to direct us, he was very friendly and pulled out his little voice recorder and started to record us as we sang, and he gave commentary... he was getting very into his directing as well, there was some moments I was afraid he was going to tip his wheel chair as he waved his arms about frantically trying to bring in his imaginary symphony that wouldn't seem to do what he wanted them to. Or as he would wheel past us at full speed then let go of the wheels to direct us as he was traveling past us not looking or steering any more, as he vigorously tried to rally the tenor section together, while people tried to leap out of the way and he narrowly escaped a collision with another homeless man trying to take a nap on a bus stop bench... Then he spun it around and did the same trick coming back the other way yelling for more power from the Alto's as he about took a trip down the subway entrance stair case... He asked who was in charge of this "fine singing group" and everyone kind of looked around like uhm, I dunno, then they all looked at me and said ah... senior zone leader, he is in charge. and pointed to me. " he then proceeded to call me captain for the rest of the proceedings, and would yell things such as. "Step on their toes Cap'm! make em get them high notes!" or "Cap'm, Cap'm we need another rendition of Joy tu the wold!" (spelled wrong on purpose) "the crowd's a sleepin cap'm, get them to make it bounce! Lift um up! LIFT UM UP CAP'M!!! SING!!!" Then as we went to leave he said "you got a card cap'm?" so I gave him a pass along card, and he picked up his voice recorder and began to discourse into it upon how he had met "cap'm" and sang with his choir etc etc. as we wandered off he was going off into his little voice recorder about raising Oakland from the ashes with song." He was a nut, but he was a nice funny and friendly nut! That's just another day in the bay. Hope you got a kick out of that one. Keep on kickin, and smile on!
Love Elder Fortie
From Jennifer:
Um, I know, it’s been a while…again!
Basically life is INSANE! I have an eye infection, two hurt knees, two hurt hips, and, thank heaven I don’t have two backs because that hurts to! Toppled on that I’ve been sick, I have to get all my redoes in before the deadline in one week and I got a new calling! Yah! But I’m still smiling and I just keep reminding myself I have it better then a whole lot of people out in this crazy world, although if the earth didn’t suck, we would all fall off, so it’s a good thing it does!
Well Christmas was great! Traps was just Michelle, Brian and me this year but Brian tied in his doctor skills in by telling us that sleep cycles go in a pattern of 2 hours so since dad went to bed at two thirty he will be in his deepest sleep at four thirty, two hours, Michelle and I just looked at each other and shrugged. So here we are four thirty and I awake to a synchronized “Jenno, it’s time” we hopped out of bed grabbing our flashlights, scissors, screw drivers, and all other tools and opened our unhinged doors feeling relieved that Brian had already took off all the booby traps on those, then we step into the hall and shine our lights towards the stairs and the first words that popped out of my mouth (in a whisper of course) were “holy shnickeys.” There was a floor to ceiling wall of crinkled up paper, do you know what happens when you try and move crinkled paper twice your height? It makes noise, so what do we do? We move it, using teamwork we kept it steady and on it’s side then stashing it into my room, without making noise. Behind that was a king size foam mattress squished between the walls with tubes that had trick-or-treating buckets hanging on it strung between it and a tall cardboard set (pretty sure were the only house in America that has sets lying around our house) after tackling the mattress while holding up the tubes to keep them steady we slid off the buckets and accidentally hit a container that made noise, but not enough to wake up mom and dad. And behind that was a field of wrapping paper and tarps which we handled just the same as the first obstacle, then after a long hour and a half we made it to the tree, looked threw our stockings then in exhaustion marched back up to bed and went again to sleep.
At work the boys and I made REALLY good cookies, which to my surprise was there first time. When I told them what we were doing that day Sam looked at me like I was crazy and said, Jenn we can’t make cookies, you have to be a store person to do that! It made me laugh really hard but much to there surprise we were magic and we made them! Then we ate half the dough and baked the other half, they sat in front of the oven watching them bake the entire time. Then we got them out and decorated them with frosting and sprinkles, the expression on their face was priceless and tasted their first cookie made from home. I encourage you all to not let the little moments in your life slip away, make them into a time you will remember forever, cause that time is in my memories forever. And spend them with someone because if you look back at the best moments in your life, there almost all with someone.
I must be off! Always remember the first part of CHRISTmas, let it be first in your life as well. Love you all!
Jenno Fortie
