Cooper, Kerry & Jamee

Dear Family and Friends, I forgot to mention the transfer we had last week. Our district really got changed. The sisters who were serving the Young Single Adults both left the district. One went home and the other went to her original mission in Jamaica. So we received two new sisters to cover that area.  One of them, Sister Hubbard, is from Aberdeen. For those of you not part of our immediate family, Aberdeen is a little farming town in southeast Idaho.  The  Cooper  family lived there for a few years back in the 1950s. It's also close to Rockland where Mom lived for several years. Sister Hubbard's family has been there about seven years. It's a small world. We also got two new sisters to take over an area where the elders had been working. We now have six sisters and four elders, not counting us. Of the ten missionaries serving from our district, eight are from Utah, one from Idaho and one from Arizona. Utah just keeps pumping them out. We didn't have FHE this week...

Dear Family and Friends. We had our FHE last Monday and our new convert, Alex, taught the lesson on Adam and Eve and the Fall.  He did a great job in spite of some of the far out comments and theories some of the older men had.  We have a couple of brothers that like to go off on tangents at times.  I have come up with a signal that we need to reel it in a bit.  I go through the motion of a casting a fishing line and reeling in the discussion.  They usually get the idea.  Tuesday we cooked dinner for the Young Single Adults again after a short break.  We saw a recipe for a Mexican Cornbread Casserole online and decided to try it out on the students. It turned out okay.  The kids seemed to like it and ate one pan full and a little of the second pan. We had watermelon and cantaloupe and ice cream for dessert. Over all it was a pretty good meal. We only have two meals left to prepare because they are having an off-site activity in a couple of weeks. ...

Dear Family and Friends, One thing I think we forgot to mention in past letters is a successful quit smoking program we did for a lady named Leighann. She has smoked since she was a teenager and was starting to have some serious health issues.  Her doctor actually recommended the church's program. We don't know how the doctor  heard of us, but she told Leighann that our program works.  The sisters did most of the teaching with Mom and I joining in when appropriate. It was the first one we have been involved with and it is pretty amazing. As of a few days ago, she had not smoked for three weeks. Her whole family  is grateful. On Monday we drove down to Elkins, West Virginia to have lunch with the Hepworth's.  They are leaving for home tomorrow. It was a beautiful ride down and we had a good visit and a good Chinese buffet.  The buffet was better than the one we have here in Oakland, but we won't be driving and hour and a half to eat there. The Hepworths are ...

Dear Family and Friends, We'll start with the reason we are sending this just a little bit late.  As you know, this is a long 4th of July weekend so we had a lot of visitors at church today. Mom taught the youth Sunday School lesson this week and had at least 18 kids in her class, none from our branch. Some of those visitors included Mom's cousin Valerie Wride and her family.  We have probably mentioned this in an earlier letter, but Valerie's son Adam owns a cabin on Deep Creek Lake.  So Valerie invited us to dinner yesterday.  It is such a beautiful setting. The cabin is 40-50 feet from the lake and is surrounded by trees.  They said that their handyman came by last week to do some work and a bear crawled into his truck.  He had a Burger King sack with some food in it and some pizza bites.  The bear ate the pizza bites but left the Burger King sack alone. What do bears know that we don't?  We also saw a bear off to the side of the road on our wa...

Dear Family and Friends, This letter is going to be short and sweet.  We are getting packed up to travel with Kristy and her family to Washington D.C. in the morning.  The Capson family got here Friday evening. We had dinner and a nice visit with them at their Airbnb. It is in a beautiful setting in the woods just 15-20 minutes away from our apartment.  Saturday morning we took them breakfast and then we went to downtown Oakland to look at some of their shops.  On the way to downtown we went to Candyland where they sell a large variety of bulk candy.  The kids each got to spend $5 on candy. I think that was one of the highlights for the kids. We went to the 3rd Street Diner just down the street from us.  It has good food for a good price.  TJ said they were the best pancakes in the world.  They decided to go to an alpaca farm after lunch but when we got there they said it was only open by appointment .  We went to the Deep Creek Lake State Pa...

Dear Friends and Family, Last week I forgot to tell you about Morgan. Morgan has been a member of the church since 1975.  He was pretty active for a while but quit coming to church many years ago.  His excuse was he didn't feel comfortable around a lot of people. Early on we decided to visit him and invite him to activities and church.  He did come to the Christmas party, but that was the last time he came to the church.  We told our new sister missionaries about him and they paid him a visit and emphasized the importance of taking the sacrament at church.  He came to Sacrament Meeting last week, came to FHE on Monday and came to Sacrament Meeting again today.  He said he realized he needed the branch and the branch needed him.  He said he will be coming to FHE tomorrow and is excited that we have it each week. I told  him I wanted to hear his baptism story and he invited us to visit him at his home to tell us his story. We were able to join with ...