Lots of blessings! - Weeks 44-45: : Holms on the Potomac

We loved riding the Metro!

We rode the Metro to DC with our new friends, Elder and Sister Simmons. She is a great help in the office, and he is the new Area Medical Advisor over six missions, including ours. They are also in our neighborhood!

 

We visited the National Air and Space Museum and gained a new respect for Wilbur and Orville Wright --they were far more than hobbyists who just happened to figure out how to fly. 

The airplane flown by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903, preserved in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

The Wright brothers created the world's first power-driven, heavier than air machine in which man made free, controlled, and sustained flight." Wilbur said, "Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years just so we could discover them!" We believe they  discovered them through God's inspiration (they were Christians), for planes have been used for so much good--including sending missionaries throughout the world to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The rest of the museum shows the amazing domino effect of that first experiment: space flights, satellites, commercial airlines that criss-cross the world, and more.

We went to the National Archives. Photographs are not allowed inside. But we saw the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!!  Did you hear me? We saw the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!!  They are carefully preserved in a room with dim light to protect the ink, which has faded somewhat over 246 years.  What will never fade: the truths they contain and the rights they assert and preserve. We've seen many people from other countries here in the MD / DC area--those documents are "why" they want to come here. And they are WHY we love this "land the free and home of the brave." 

We went to the National Archives and saw the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Today we got to hang out with these sisters at lunch at the D.C. Temple Visitors Center.  Yup, we ARE blessed!

These missionaries are beautiful from the front AND back-- don't you love their fancy, different-colors- curly-locks hair? Maybe it's a special way to braid it.  

It's one of those months when there's little time for reflection and processing. Since I like reflection and processing. . . I'm gonna take some time to spill it out on paper (not really paper--on the computer screen--but you get my drift.) Photos give a visual of what we do and how we feel about it. 

This nifty desk calendar will keep me organized at the office!

Imagine my chagrin when I looked down and saw, "Make sure there's no food in your teeth" written cryptically on one date of my new calendar. 

 

Is a young missionary reminding me that I've had 31 bad hair days in a row? 

"Don't pick your nose today."  (I was so sure no one was looking!) 

The culprit?  That mission nurse who says laughter is the best medicine! I love her, because when life is busy, I tend to feel burdened, lose my sense of humor, not comb my hair, and forget to wear a bra!

This is our wonderful mission nurse, Sister Susan Workman, in the office she shares with her husband, Elder Rodney Workman, who is over housing for our mission. Elder Holm and I used this office for seven months, and it was a dark, dingy hidey hole in the back of our complex. Susan came; she saw; she painted; she added this Amish-built furniture; she conquered. And she won't let us move back there. :(