Playing Catch-up!!!!!

We can hardly believe the months that have flown by since May, we are so bad at doing this updating of our blog, and apologize for our lack of information on how things have been going for us and our mission.

Since May we have welcomed 8 newly baptised members into the servicemens's group here at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and if all goes well we will have 4 more baptisms next Sunday with 2 more the Sunday after that. We think that the slump is over and we will have more productivity in the coming Fall months. Our attendance has risen to a high of 137 for the summer months so far, and this past Sunday we had 117, which includes about 40 percent being non-members. We love and welcome all the basic trainees and enjoy taking short video's of them to send off to loved ones, we also are still baking and serving around 30 dozen cookies on a monthly basis for our 'linger longer' on the 2nd Sunday of the month.

Once the recruit has graduated they move on to AIT which is Advanced Individual Training, they move on to another post, or if we are lucky, they continue with Ft. Sill and can come to Church to help in teaching classes, etc.

We also have a few officers who come to this post for BOLC which is advanced training for officers ( 2nd LT ). Needless to say the constant turnover is keeping us very busy with contacting families and loved ones as well as sending in reports to Church Headquarters on the status of each member.

We have had several WTC ( Warriors in Transition ) re-entering military after being out for three years of active duty and we hosted the mother of one of the graduates who came to the ceremony for her daughter.

While they were here we went to the Wichita Reserve and to Meers for hamburgers. It was a very quaint place to eat and is famous in this area for the decor (as you can see) and the huge hamburgers they serve.

Here we are waiting to be seated at Meers!!!

Our living room seems to be a rotating motel for the wives and mothers who travel here without a traveling companion, we feel it is safer staying with us than in a motel room by themselves, and many have taken us up on our offer to do so. We enjoy the company and besides we get to see more of the wonderful sights of the area by taking them with us on short excursions. One of the trips we took was to a small Indian Village recreation near a town called Anadarko and I have included some pictures and videos of that trip with this post.

The Caddo Village


Our guide Vannessa Jennings
Inside the museum, authentic artifacts

Our drummer/ singer and Dancer ( he did great in 116 degree heat), this was on Elder Woodbury's birthday July 11.

We leave you with the Indian dancer and drummer/singer, young men that do a good job of keeping part of their culture alive. They also participate in Indian Pow-wows and competitions.

On May 8th 2009 we received a call from Joyce's second son Bart who was returning to Wisconsin from a truck driving trip to Southern California saying that he was going to be in Oklahoma City on Saturday.

We decided to go up and see him and do some sight seeing that we have wanted to do since we arrived in Oklahoma last September .

When we picked Bart up at the truck stop west of downtown Oklahoma City and as we drove through the city we saw signs of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum and decided to go to the memorial.

This is Joyce and Bart as we were entering the memorial from the parking lot across the street.

This video is after you go into the monument itself and looking at the reflecting pond which we subsequently learned was N.W. Fifth Street the street in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

This is the plaza of "The Survivor Tree" and as a I took the video I read the inscriptions that are set out around the fence.

"To the courageous and caring who responded from near and far, we offer our eternal gratitude."

This is "The Survivor Tree" a 90+ year old American Elm which survived the blast that now stands as a profound symbol of human resilience.

MESSAGE

"The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deedly rooted faith sustains us"

The time was well spent going through the museum and spending the day visiting with Bart, especially the day before Mother's Day.

April Showers bring--- May flowers

Here it is the end of April and the showers have begun, the wind has died down enough to call it a nice quiet rainy day. We have had 3 days in a row of rain, rain and more rain. So far, we are not at flood stage by our apartment. Thank goodness.

Here are some more pictures of our little garden on our patio, Bryce is really enthused that everything is starting to green up nicely.

As you can see we have tomatoes growing upside down in the black containers and strawberries in the hanging pouches. These pictures are already old news, we now have blossoms on the tomatoes and the strawberries, and have picked 1 cucumber from the vine. We also have pole beans growing along the fence behind Bryce. Will try and get a current picture for the blog update soon. My camera refuses to download the pictures without a fight each time I try to do so. Hopefully I will win out and get my pictures saved to my computer soon.

Our mission is going well, we had a baptism last Sunday and will have 2 more soon, the lessons are going on every week with many of the battle buddies of our members. Last week Sunday we had over 50 in attendance which surprised us as we had a graduating class of 17 members leaving us the week before, we hoped we would have 35 in attendance and were blessed with more non-members coming to replace the ones leaving. The Lord is sifting and sorting all the time and we are reaping the harvest continually.

On one of the graduation days we recorded the guest speaker, COL Mary Anne Baker and thought her words would inspire you as much as they did us and the graduating class. She was the former commander of the training brigade.

Spring Time 2009

One would think that the Woodbury's never put up any new "stuff" on their website, how could you tell? The lack of postings might be a clue, so here we are in the Springtime trying to make up for lost time.

We did take a drive up to the Wichita's and drove up to the top of Mt. Scott, here is Bryce on the overlook, you can see for miles up there. The Ft. Sill post and Lawton are on the middle and farside on the left. It was a beautiful day for a drive and I took the picture since I do not like heights, you wouldn't get me too close to get this kind of picture.

Let us count the events of the new year, we did have a snowfall here in Oklahoma, we got approximately 1/2 inch of snow, ice combination and then it melted. We did have two "snow-days" when we were kind of sequestered to our apartment, the military post was closed down and schools were closed.

That is what you get when it snows in Oklahoma. No school, no work.

We did get a picture of the snow, as you can see it was not that threatening, however most of the car accidents happened because of inexperienced drivers trying to navigate on the slippery stuff.

Then the warm weather started to beckon to us to start thinking about planting something, it didn't matter what, just something. I should have been warned about the Spring bug, when all the seed catalogs started coming in right after Christmas.

Then my brother Don and his wife Liz sent us a gift of Amarylis which we planted and watched grow with amazement to full bloom.

First we bought some pots and daylilie rhizomes to plant, and they are doing very well, thank you.

Then we were in Sam's Club and saw a garden starter for the patio, it was one of the models that grows plants upside down in a planter. We couldn't resist, here is a picture of Bryce watering our garden in the back patio.

We have had a frost several times now and finally figured out how to protect our garden boxes, we hung a sleeping bag over the clothesline and it did a fine job of saving the few plants that survived the first two frosts.

We just got 50 strawberry plants and 4 hanging pouches, that is our next garden project. "Stay tuned for more" of the story.

Christmas time and end of 2008

One would think that we dropped off the face of the earth after the Thanksgiving holidays, however we did not. We went on to the festivities involved in getting ready for the Christmas holidays. We busied ourselves with preparing a letter to all of our friends and families (at least all those that we could locate addresses for, either snail mail or e-mail). If you did not get a letter, please accept our apology and get us your address as soon as possible (the best way is to send us a Christmas card so we get the hint, OK).

I just could not have a proper Christmas without a tree, so we went to Walmart and bought a little fake one and the trimmings to put on it. We never even considered bringing our decorations with us on this mission. One thing to think about when considering leaving your home for more than a year, I would guess.

This is a picture we took of our window in the front of our apartment, we bought a cling vinyl manger scene and lights to give the window a festive mood. It looked very nice at night all lit up, and made us feel like it was more with the reason for the season.

One evening we drove through the park and took pictures of the Christmas lights and the different displays, it was really neat all the work that different groups put in to make a nice tour for everyone to enjoy. The video we took was impossible to download, so you will not see it at this time, sorry.

On the 13th of December we sang in the Lawton Community Choir at a performance at the McMahon Center, we sang excerpts from "The Messiah". We had a wonderful time rehearsing and preparing for the hour and a half presentation.