5 October 2018 - Friday

5 October 2018 - Friday

We are so excited for General Conference tomorrow!  Our feeling, this morning, was that we might be released to return home with the weather forecasts that we were seeing.  However, our mission president did not see the same forecasts, and did not seem to appreciate our concern for snow forecasted for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  Even today we saw these clouds looming over the mission;

We saw mid 30 degree temperatures this morning as we headed to the Homestead

Mom and I spoke with him, and he was a little short with us suggesting that we seemed to be campaigning to go home.  Our response was no, but we were concerned with the weather forecast for snow, and traveling through the Teton Mountains, that we had to cross, to get back to Rigby.  But we told him we were on board staying next week if we were needed.  He said there was work for us and that he didn't see the forecasts being as severe as we were thinking.  As we left his office and began our assignments, within fifteen minutes it was snowing.  

Our assignments were to climb up on the Barn roof and cover the swamp coolers, check the propane tanks to see what they registered for propane usage, and to burn a fire pit near the hay-bales that many of you saw this summer.  As we were measuring the propane tanks, the temperature dropped colder, and colder;

Mr Rain Poncho-man checking the propane gauges!  See Devil's Gate? 

Then we went to start the fire since I was not comfortable climbing up on the Barn roof.  This safety officer saw no need to climb up on a metal roof while it was raining.  Here are some action pictures of burning a trash pile of wood, and debris, that have collected for over a year;

I doused the pile with some gasoline

After about two minutes I was able to get the flame going.

I kept feeding the fire with miscellaneous wood pieces.

There is the fire-boy feeding the fire - looks like I was in the fire here!

This fire burned for over eight hours.  I let the gasoline sit for about five minutes before lighting a section near the couches.  It was during the starting of the fire that we got the snow flakes coming down.  And to avoid any concerns, the gas did not explode at any time.  It was a slow creeping of the fire that eventually caught the wood pieces, I had thrown on, catch fire.  It spread very slowly in the wind that picked up.  I could not stand closer than ten feet on the front side of the fire as the flames really got going.  It was an awesome fire!  

This was about 9:30am this morning.  As we left the Visitors' Center at 4:15pm, it was still going!  We had the split assignment to serve on the work crew from 9:00am until noon.  And then we changed clothes and worked the Visitors' Center from noon to 4:00pm.  The sun finally came out around 3:00pm and boy did it feel good!  We had visitors all afternoon, and even had a group come in right at closing that had lots of questions for their trek this summer.

Tomorrow we have no assignments except to help with the potato bar for the missionaries and the mission presidents family.  There are about 14 missionaries, and about 18 family members that will eat together between the afternoon session and the women's broadcast.  We are excited!  And we are grateful to be serving here all the way through our October 16th release date!