Father's Day - NOT

So yes, today is Father's Day - but not in Georgia.  They do not celebrate the day here.  E. Reese made himself some chocolate pancakes for breakfast and the rest of the day will just be a normal Sunday!

I would like to state that I am glad he is the Father of my children and I think he is a great man!  Happy Father's Day E. Reese!

2 trips to the Zoo

Uldis and Maya came to visit us again the 21st of May.  She was finally approved for her visa to Latvia but they had a few days in Tbilisi.  We all went to the zoo!  It was a beautiful calm day and all the animals were active.  There were very few people there.  The peacocks put on the best show. I have a great video of  them shaking, dancing and trying to impress the women - but she just ignored them! (sorry, I couldn't get the video to download)

This is the 'Are You My Mother?' picture!

It was a great day.  The Rhino was out, the leopards were jumping in the water, the ostriches were talking to us at the fence, the hippo was swimming - lots of action!

Then about 2 weeks later it was International Kids Day.  So the primary president really wanted to do something with the kids.  We finally decided to go to the zoo.  It was a blazing hot day and  everyone else in Tbilisi with kids decided they would go to the zoo too!  The kids were not very interested in the animals, they wanted to wait in the long lines to ride the bumper cars!  I love my primary kids - but this was not a fun trip!  I couldn't even get a good group picture because they were all over the place.  We did ride on the big Ferris wheel at the end and that was nice.

Rustavi

We spent some time in May in the near by city of Rustavi.  We went apartment hunting with 2 missionaries and quickly found 2 good missionary apartments.  2 sets of missionaries were moved in and the city of Rustavi was officially opened for the preaching of the gospel.  This is really an exciting event.  We spent a few more days there looking for a good Senior Missionary apartment and finally settled on one.  On June 3rd the first Sacrament Meeting was held there and was attended by 6 missionaries!  We had a great testimony meeting.  They are called a 'group' and one of the missionaries is a 'group leader'.  When the group gets big enough, they will rent a building and become a branch.  It's amazing to be a part of history.

Company!

At the end of May we had all the Senior Missionary Couples from Yerevan, Armenia come and visit us.  It was a vacation for them and fun for us!  After they had lunch at McDonalds (they don't have one in Yerevan), we went to our favorite site - Stonehenge.  They were here for 3 days and 2 nights.  We took them out for Georgian food at our favorite restaurants, saw the sights in Tbilisi and Mtskheta, visited the wooden toy store and had Luca Polar ice cream. We spent one evening sharing testimonies. It doesn't get any better than this.

                              Wait - it does - we took them to see the tie lady at the Bazaar!!!

It was a great time - we love showing off our city!

Puppies

Our bedroom balcony overlooks an old abandoned falling down home.  This morning E. Reese found a little puppy stuck in a hole in the yard in front of the house.  On further investigation, he discovered a momma dog and her 6 puppies living in the house!  I know you are envious of our great view!  There are a lot of wild street dogs here in Tbilisi.

Elder Reese goes for a walk every morning, he has made a few friends along the way.  This is Sam!

This is another mom that he met this morning with her brood!

                                               Don't you just want to take him home?

You've had another Birthday!

Elder Reese had his birthday when we were in Santiquin after Peter's wedding.   Susan gave him his favorite Costco chocolate cake.  When we got home we met with the missionaries at the church and they surprised him with a birthday cake!  It was a good birthday for him!

Here are the Missionaries singing 'Happy Birthday' to him. (Pres and Sis Carter where there too) I think they really missed him while we were gone - they kept hugging him and saying how glad they were to have him back!!!

Kazakhstan

As Humanitarian Missionaries, we donate a lot of wheelchairs to the people of Georgia.  Evidently there is some training involved to be able to fit people properly for a wheelchair.  In order for us to learn how to do this, so that we can train the social workers here in Georgia, we went to a special wheelchair training seminar which happened to be in Kazakhstan!  We went a little early to see some sights and be able to help our good friends the Maxwells get things set up for the event.  We met the Maxwells at the MTC and have maintained a good 'skype' friendship - so this was a treat for us to be able to visit with them in their country.  They  live in the very beautiful, modern capital city of Astana.

We took the elevator in the building behind us up to the ball on top.  What an amazing view!  There are so many interesting shapes to their buildings.  The most amazing thing was that the traffic stopped when we were on the crosswalks!

 This is the proud certified class with the instructors.  We really learned a lot in this training seminar - we have definitely changed our thoughts and attitude on the need to have the beneficiaries properly fitted and trained to use their wheelchairs.

To celebrate the end of the course, we went out to an authentic Kazakhstan restaurant and had the national dish called something like '5 fingers' cause you can eat it with your fingers (although we did use forks).  It is big noodles, potatoes and horse meat.

After dinner the ladies sitting at the table next to us got everyone up and dancing - a good time was had by all!