Halloween

 

Our friends’ house in La Salle

      

       Here’s a quick update on our mission.  We are doing great here and loving serving in the Ottawa Ward.  We have gotten much busier as we have made more connections with the people in the ward and the community.  It’s not always obvious that we are making a difference, but we are friends with everyone we know in the ward and all we can do is love each of them individually.

 

We have done some fun things this last while.  We went with many of the other senior missionaries to see Wicked at the Nederlander Theater in downtown Chicago. There was a fire at this theater in 1903 in which many people died.  We have many safety features in theaters today because of that fire.  We helped out another senior missionary couple at a haunted house sponsored by the Hyde Park wards in the south side of Chicago.  The entire church is decorated as a spook alley.  Flyers are passed out in the neighborhood.  It is billed as “No blood and gore, no adult themes, no touching, but very scary.”   We worked as parking lot attendants to manage the large numbers of people coming to the building. When people come out they all said thank you and that it was very scary.   They put on the event for six nights and get about 6,000 people.  From these contacts the missionaries in the wards have hundreds of referrals to follow up.  We have gotten to know many of the other senior missionaries very well.  Each senior missionary brings different skills to very different assignments.  Our assignment is unique because we are in a rural area with no other missionaries assigned to the area.

 

Emily, Steve, Anthony, Alexander and Addison came to visit for a few days.  We spent time doing some fun things in Chicago, including the Science and Industry Museum and a Bears game.  Then they came out to our area to see the sights and meet some of the people.  It has been nice seeing some of the family.  The hardest part of being here is missing our family, but we are able to talk with them regularly and we trust that the Lord will bless them while we are away.  We hope we are setting a good example of missionary service.

 

We love to attend the temple here.  We had the opportunity to attend with a couple that were in our MTC district with us.  They are serving in Wisconsin and the Chicago temple is also their temple, so they drove down and we drove up to meet them.   We also attended the temple with the group of outgoing missionaries.  We picked up two of the sisters that we served with in our zone and took them to the temple. We really do come to love these missionaries.  

 

We hope everything is going well with each of you and your family.  We appreciate all of your prayers for us and our family.

 

Love,

Elder and Sister Curtis

                                        Harvesting soy beans across the road from our duplex.

 

         Lunch with the other senior missionaries before we attended the theater and saw Wicked

                                        At the Nederlander Theater to see Wicked

Wedding for a couple in our ward

                                   First time at an NFL game at Soldier Field.

                                              Our family at Starved Rock State Park

               Parking attendant at the Hyde Park haunted house in the south side of Chicago.

                We took two Sisters we knew and loved to the temple prior to their return home.

We went to the Chicago temple with Elder and Sister Headley, who were in our MTC District and are serving in Wisconsin.

                                                   Halloween house in Ottawa

                                            More skeletons from the same house