The By-Ways Along the Way During Apartment Inspections

We spent a few days visiting our zone's apartments (as well as Prairie Grove)....and here are some of the photos I took along the way...

Don't want to miss a good Church sign....

And randomly, we found a James road sign which matched the Scarlett one we found a month or so ago.  Not sure how it lucked out for Scott's two kids to both have road signs in NW Arkansas, but it was fun for them.

I had heard about the Cherokee Prairie Natural Area so after doing the inspection in Greenwood, we headed up to find it.

This is a national forest service area protected to keep the natural prairieland of the area.  It is a wonderful spot to watch the changes in the wildflowers.  July isn't the best time for that, but we did see a few even in the heat.

How the land existed before we (meaning humans) came to live here.....

And flowers are always a bonus....

On our way home, we saw a sign for a dock on the Arkansas river so we decided to try it out.  

As a result, I got to fill one of my Arkansas bucket list items--to actually touch the water of the Arkansas River.

I love the sound of the river and the waves bumping the shore...not the ocean, but a pleasant sound nonetheless.

This is the picnic areas along the river at this point.

Loves the ivy growing up this tree along the river bank....

And a stump---the stories this stump could tell about the generations it grew here. I wondered if it had fallen during the storms this summer which led to it being cut the rest of the way down.

It is awesome to have a slower paced life ---when it isn't busy which also happens--and we can enjoy the beauties of the world around us.
 

Our 2nd To Last Round of Apartment Inspections

Wednesday morning, July 17th, Jena went to work on our signs for the missionaries.  With the hot weather, we decided to base our notes on water--

Watermelon is great on a hot day...

But don't forget the source of Living Water!

We gave each set of missionaries a small watermelon and some bottles of water as their treat.

The posters included some quotes related to Jesus Christ and water.

Photo moment with the Ft. Smith Hermanas and Sisters....oh, how we love these cute sisters

Hermana Beagley, Sister Witt, Sister Cherrington, Hermana Gray

It is great to visit these sweet missionaries and to spend a few moments with them in the places they live.  Overall, they do a great job in cleaning their apartments for inspections.
 

YSA Family Night

We choose to do a movie for the Branch Family Night in July.  And thanks to a random conversation with Sister Ellis, we heard about the movie "Escape from Germany".  Deseret Book had a special streaming offer where we could show it to a group of 25 for $50.  It is a the story of the missionaries getting out of Germany prior to the invasion of Poland by Germany.  It was excellent and makes me want to read more about that time period of the Church.  What made it even more fun was that one of our Elders, Elder Keller, is the great nephew of the Elder who was assigned the tasks to gather the missionaries and get them over the border to safety.  The missionaries couldn't watch the movie but he posted some pictures of his great Uncle to share with the YSA.  Highly recommend this movie.

We told them to bring their own chairs or blankets to sit on and this is what we got...young adults spread out all over.  We had 24 in attendance which is awesome for our group.

The Iconic Chicken Truck

It is not fun to see these poor live chickens being transported down the highways and freeways of Arkansas. Probably pretty scary for them......