Lemon Heads

January 29, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

The week went quickly. I need to send this email soon so Sister Sarah will have news from us this week. Here is an update on the Alvarez family. We had a lovely dinner with Terri(Alvarez)Reese and her husband and sons. They are all very musical and they gave us a mini concert. Cameron even showed David how to play the drums. We had a zone conference in Hanford and during lunch break the sister who went with us to visit Annette (the Alvarez mother) was there and she gave us the RS manual for the year and the new Daughters book to take to Annette. We dropped the book off and called that night. Annette thanked us and said she was already reading them. The last thing is on Saturday we were invited to celebrate birthdays in January for Manny Alvarez, Gaile Sheffer and Mike Powell. The Powells arranged for us to play the CD for Manny and his wife who is a nonmember. Manny asked for a copy. We have visited with four of the six family members now. Annette and Terri say they will see what can be done to meet with Deborah and Michelle.

So many miracles. We had a call last night from Heath Miller saying he is going to be baptized on the 12^th of February. His is a young man who has been wanting to be baptized for some time now but his mother would not give him permission. For our part we have prayed and fasted with him and we met with his mother at his request to explain some of the gospel to her. We could tell that her heart was softening. It was truly a miracle. He was so excited. I asked him if he had given her a hug and he said, Yes, but my hug was big then hers."

We heard from a family in the 1^st ward that there was a family in the 6^th ward who grew huge palmelows the size of watermelons (huge grapefruit). Elder Sheffer called and left a message saying he wanted to see one. At the baptism the next day Brother Montierth gave us four LEMONS the size of our heads. They were not palmelows. I said, "Lemon heads are my favorite candy but this is ridiculous."

We are learning so much and doing so many wonderful things. It is hard to keep track of it all. We are praying for you all and we were thankful to have Eldeane call us at six in the morning and tell us she was not dead. We were also grateful that we didn't receive the text from Dean telling us that she had died. Dean we forgive you. We hope you are out of hiding by the time we get back from our mission. I will explain, Dean received a text from a cousin about an aunt passing away and he forwarded the text to let other family members know but don't add the cousin's name, so the text read, Mom past away at 4:30am. Most people thought he was texting about his own mother.

We hope you enjoy the pictures.

Elder and Sister Sheffer

PS We went to the church vineyard to prune grapes. This vineyard supplies all of the raisins for the welfare and humanitarian needs of the church.