Our December in Florida

This is a wide road for the communities.  It has a curb!!  ....and a double yellow line!

The speed limit is 25 MPH.

This is Turkey Vulture sunning himself. He stayed there for quite a time.

This bird was also sunning himself until she just got too close.

She sure got close though didn't she? ... one post away.

This lady has her Christmas hat on.

It's a baseball cap with little presents attached to it.

Sunset

Sisters Conference

These are all the sisters in the mission.

Sister Summerhays is in the middle at the back in red.

I thought the shaping of this tree was unusual!!!  

I've seen a few of them done like this.

Thanks to the Hornbergers!!!! 

 We now have a little Christmas tree.

More fun streets!

The GPS says "Pink Apartments Road"

I didn't see any pink apartments though.

Sandhill Cranes

They come in anywhere.

Christmas decorating in Florida

Christmas

I thought the kids might like the Christmas train.

The Grinch to greet you at the door!!  Funny eh?

President Summerhays gave all the Sisters a beautiful rose at the Sisters Conference.

He loves us all.

Sister Summerhays said ,

"The sisters are always so clean and pure."

Michael wanted me to take pictures of some of the churches here.

They are on every block it seems and some of them are really beautiful.

The Confederate Flag

The colours in the trees here are nicer than in Alberta.  

At least there are more colours than yellow!!!

I think this was a First Baptist church.

This says,  "God's Church, Back to the Word Ministries

The Greatest Gift:  Jesus

I'm not sure if it's a church or a store.

This Christmas tree is floating in a lake.  

I'm sure it is lit up at night.

Here's another road that is the same size, very narrow.

You can see the speed limit on this road is 45 MPH. 

These little roads can be as fast as 55 or 60 MPH.

....not in Calgary!!

I'm trying to take Christmas lights pictures and Elder Draper is not cooperating!!

This is on a bush in our front yard.  Soon these bushes will be covered in flowers.

This is called a Camelia Bush.

This is before the sun is up in the morning.

You can see the mist in the air.

The lake is a perfect reflecting pool this morning.

This is the moon by the First Presbyterian Church steeple.

I thought this was beautiful!!!

The sun is up just high enough that it caught the steeple.

Sunrise just outside our house during our morning walk.

These banana trees got killed in the cold weather.

We won't get any bananas this year.

When you take a bunch of bananas off a tree stalk then that stalk won't grow anymore bananas.

The tree has to grow another stalk.

These trees will come up from the ground next year and get this big again.

For Zone District Meeting we did some carolling.  

Our meeting was in the afternoon this day so we could carol in the evening.

We had lots of fun.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it except for one Baptist fellow.

He liked it until he read our name tags.  Oh well.  

Hopefully we did some good.

Here we are all lined up ready to sing.

On the left is Elder Rhodes and then Elder Talbot.

They are both coming to our house Christmas morning for Breakfast.

Nice Christmas decorations at this house.

We carolled here.

There are tons of these spiral trees here.

It has blinking lights on it.

We got home and this is what was on our house.

We seem to have lots of little frogs visit us.

This bird is so cute.

He hopped right up here to get his picture taken.

This is a White Ibis.

I sent pictures of some of these birds previously.

A Baptism!!!!!

This young man, Kevin, was baptized Dec 19th.

His mom didn't really like him taking the lessons at first.

She's warming up now.  Can you see her big smile?

Elders Talbot and Elder Navarrette are on the ends.  

They taught him but the Elder in white found him.

I think the mother is going to start taking the lessons.

These are Spanish missionaries.

Lake Hamilton Ward Christmas Party - Miracles Happen

I'm sorry I never took any pictures.  We had a wonderful turn out for the ward and friends.  We had some of our investigators there too.  The food was fabulous and a little different than we are used to having for a big turkey dinner in Calgary.  Everything was good.

Before we ate we decided to stand at the door where the food was so we could greet everyone as they went in to get their food. This way we could meet more people from the ward.  We haven't met all of them yet but thought that this would be a great introduction.  The bishop had given us some names of people to see.  Some of these people we have not found at home yet were at the party so we were able to meet them.  It was a very good first contact and they all welcomed us to come to their homes to visit them.

This is just to show us all that the Lord is in charge of everything and He can send the Spirit where it needs to be even if we aren't the best.  The program was a little lacking in my opinion.  Of course that would be me, right?  One of my least favourite Christmas songs is "The 12 Days of Christmas".  We sang it with different words.  Here it is:
On the first day of Christmas - a new baby in the family.  (Now you try to fit that in!  They never could             get it.)
On the second day of Christmas - 2 new missionaries (I guess that was us.)
On the third day of Christmas - 3 hour talks
On the fourth day of Christmas - 4 standard works
On the fifth day of Christmas - 5 new callings
On the sixth day of Christmas - 6 service projects
On the seventh day of Christmas - 7 days of fasting
On the eighth day of Christmas - 8 pot luck dinners
On the ninth day of Christmas - 9 committee meetings
On the tenth day of Christmas - 10 minutes late
On the eleventh day of Christmas - 11 Young Women giggling
On the twelfth day of Christmas - 12 Boy Scouts teasing

One fellow in the ward who is a marvellous member missionary, he and his wife brought a couple with them.  They were very nice people.  They were easy to talk to and seemed to really enjoy themselves.  During the program, he looked over at them and they had tears rolling down their faces.  They had been touched by the Spirit and wanted to learn more about the church.

The Lord can use us all to do His work if just try to do something.  It doesn't have to be top notch but with everyone coming and participating, being happy to be together, the Spirit can be there for the Lord to touch people's hearts.

This same man has made a commitment to himself to give each set of about 4 missionaries a family a month to teach.  That's four families a month for him to find.  He is good on his word too.  Last week at church he came to the elders in our ward and asked if they'd be interested in a family of 32.  Are you kidding???  The Elders were so excited!!!  Many of the people that we visit that are not active and haven't been for a long while know this man well.  He visits everyone, I think.  We are thankful for him. He is a small and quite a quiet man but he is not afraid to bring up the church and the gospel to people he associates with.

I hope I can be like that.  I'll have to do a lot of changing in my personality.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were all like that??

I love this work!!!  I love visiting the people and I am amazed at how much love I feel for them as I meet them.  As we visit my focus is totally on them and their needs and I'm trying to think of ways that we can help them so they will return to full activity in the church.  There are so many blessings to be had if we do what we should.  My heart aches for those who are trying to live without the Lord's blessings, even knowing that they need all the blessings they can get.  They just don't realize all that there is that the Lord can do for us.  Hopefully we will be able to help people receive the blessings of the temple.

Better go now.  Love you all!!!  Thanks for all your support!!

Elder/Sister Draper

More Pictures from Haines City

I thought we'd try to take some pictures of the Christmas decorations.

Some of the houses are so beautifully decorated.  

This house has quite a big snow scene which is funny on green grass.

This is another beautiful house.  We only took a picture of the middle section.  

There is more decoration on both sides of the photo.

The lights go on and off, there is music playing and there are patterns that come up in the lights flashing.

It is quite a scene!

This is a rose in someone's front garden.  

There were lots so even though it's a little chilly here, you can see that it's not TOO chilly.

We are driving down this red dirt road.  Some of the roads here are like this in between the orchards.

The roads are red but as soon as you get into the orchard the sand turns to grey.  

Those are orange trees that have been picked already.

We came to a lake and went down to the edge to see all the birds.

They are spectacular!!

I want to get a book about birds so we can identify them.

They are all so different and colorful.

You can see a couple of these birds squawking away as they run along the grass.

I thought the color on this bird was pretty.  You can see the green in the feathers. 

In the sun they really stand out.

I wish that I had taken this picture a couple of seconds later.

He stretched out his wings to take off.

Boy, was he beautiful!!!  He had a huge wing span.

These birds were so plentiful in the reeds.

Beautiful shades of brown.

How about the color on this guy?  I like his lovely beak!!

There were tons of these little fellows.

This guy is taking a bath and is making such a noise with his splashing.

He really put on a show for us.

Here he is still bathing and splashing.

Can you see how dry his feathers are right after his bath?

He quit splashing and tucked in his wings.  

He's using his beak to tuck in his feathers after his bath.

I wish I could remember the name of this bird.

Sister Summerhays has a book about birds that I looked through.

What a beautiful beak!!!

Another sort of a duck but with turquoise feathers this time.  

He was beautiful.

I couldn't believe the nose on this little guy.  Actually he's quite big.

He looks a little like the elephant man I think.

Can you see his feathers trying to grow out of his neck?

The whole flock of these birds were gathered around in the parking area.

Someone threw a piece of bread out to them.  They clamoured to get the bread.

I think I'd be worried about get clipped by one of those beaks.

Here's the guy in the front showing us his catch.  

He got one of the pieces of bread.

This is a common sight right now in the orchards.

These trucks line up on the roads and this is how they transport the oranges.

That is a lot of citrus!!!

Some of the houses here are the brightest colors.

I thought I'd take pictures of some of them as we see them.

Doesn't this blossom look like a bottle brush to you?

I haven't seen a blossom like this before.

This is a picture of the whole tree.

Neat, eh?

Some people decorate their outside trees but not with lights.  

This is one of the ways they do it.

Ornaments on the tree.

We've seen many garages that have this big garage door and we were wondering what it was for.

Now we know!!

Just a the corner where we turn off the main road to our house is a carpet store.

These hang outside all day.  

I thought the little girls might like the Tinkerbell carpet.

This is one of our fabulous Elders.  Elder Wright.

It's early Sunday morning and we picked them up for our early meeting.

He was in a hurry!

I'm not sure what this is but it looks like a seed pod of some kind.

It's on a palm tree of some sort. 

I thought it was amazing.

You can see how large this palm tree is by the size of our car.

It is so thick through the trunk and at the roots.

I can see how you'd never get through things in the jungle.

Here are the trunks and roots.

This is a picture of me with Melissa.  

She is one of our friends here that we are helping.

You can see that she isn't in very good health.

She is trying to get her son baptized and go to the temple herself in the next while.

She is so good to the missionaries.

One of the cooler nights she called to see if we had enough blankets.

So thoughtful!!

When the night is going to freeze the fruit they water the trees so that they have ice freeze on them.

When they freeze it causes the air to warm up a little to save the fruit.

You can see the icicles on the trees here early in the morning... about 6:45 am

We came home tonight with a visitor on our step.  

It's cold out so I hope he finds a warm spot to rest.

I guess he's cold-blooded so it doesn't really matter, right?

In our sun room I'm writing about who we saw today and who we need to see tomorrow.

There is a lot of record keeping going on here.

I thought my grandchildren would like this tree.  

There are many like it.

Wouldn't it be fun to climb?

You can really get up high in this type of tree.

It is a huge Oak Tree.

The acorns for this oak are about the size of a large green pea.

Amazing!!!

We love the sites but we especially love the people we are meeting and sharing the gospel with.  

We hope we can continue to lift people and strengthen them.

Where would we be without the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

I'm so grateful for the Savior.  I know He is our Redeemer and our King.