2014-10-14,15,16

This week has been wonderful!  We finally had time to personally be able to talk with three zones of our mission.  We honestly have the most incredible missionaries!  It is humbling to talk with them.  Many of them have sacrificed a lot to be there.  Some are there without ANY support from their family, some with being discouraged by their family.  Yet they are there doing the best they can to serve the Lord and be faithful to Him.  Some have not received a letter or email for 7 months! (And I feel bad if my son writes me a day late!)  Yet, it is never in a complaining way they tell me about it.  It is only when I ask them directly when the last time was they heard from their parents.  Then, they assure me that it is all right....that they are ok and it's not a problem.  Oh, how I love those missionaries!

So, while President Ostler was interviewing, Sister Ostler got to teach them about nutrition.  We talked about the conference talk about having confidence before God.  One of the things he mentioned was that our confidence before God can be increased as we take better care of our physical bodies.  When the body isn't healthy and strong, it affects the spirit.
Sometimes on our missions, we get so focused on the spiritual that we think we don't need to take care of the physical.

We did a survey of what missionaries had eaten for the last three meals.  Then we counted how many they had eaten in each of the five food groups. 
It was pretty amazing!  We discovered that a lot of missionaries are eating a lot of grains (rice) and protein (meat).  It was pretty fun hearing what people had been eating.  I think they will all eat more carefully the day before we have interviews next time.  :)

Hopefully we all learned how to better plan our meals so they are balanced and healthy.  Angel gave us some great tips on how to find less expensive fruit and vegetables.

Angel really helped out by teaching the missionaries how to cook Chicken Curry and Angel's Ulam. There are some amazingly talented cooks in our mission!

Just look at all those healthy vegetables!

Caleb had a dress up day at school where you dressed up as a movie character.  He was Wesley or The Dread Pirate Roberts.  I'm sure he scared his carpool driver when he got picked up that morning!  The sisters enjoyed his costume and were nice enough to pose with him when he got home.

      Asking President final questions before leaving for work.

Sisters in the kitchen!  Ahhh, what a delicious smell we had during interviews!  Everyone got to eat some too!

    Don't these sisters have the biggest smiles!

    Look Mom!  I can cook Chicken Curry!!!! I'll make some for you when I   get home!

After hours and hours of shopping for size 13 shoes all over Manila, Elder Theler mentioned to a brother at church that he was having a hard time finding large shoes in a place where most people have small feet.  The brother was able to be an answer to prayer and assisted him in getting wonderful new shoes to replace the ones that this hard-working elder had worn out!  Angels do look out for our elders...senior angels and ward angels.

     Ah, the joy of new shoes!

             
                   Topped off with yummy brownies!

     What an amazing group of elders!

   After evaluating how well they had eaten the previous 24 hours, they played a game where they had 2 minutes to "fix their dinner" by choosing what food pictures they put on their plates.  Then we re-evaluated how balanced those meals were.

    The sisters were by far the most patient waiting for Sister Ostler to finish
    talking with all the elders.  President and Sister Ostler feel like the   
    luckiest people in the world to be able to spend a whole day with such
    enthusiastic, loving and faithful elders and sisters!