Category: Festivals

I am not doing a good job of keeping you updated on what we are doing. It has been busy with the start of a new semester…preparing lessons and baking and more baking. I would welcome any treat ideas you have sweet, savory or gluten free. 

During the summer we taught a class in the south stake and Elder and Sister Bailey taught a class in the OKC stake. We are not teaching the class in the south stake this semester, Brother Valletta our S&I coordinator (CES employee) is teaching that class (29 students), but we will visit often and will sub for him sometimes. 

The Bailey’s are teaching the Wednesday night Book of Mormon class here in Edmond and they had 23 students. They also take lunch on Tuesdays to the class at the OU health Science Center. We plan to trade off with them in the future so we can visit this class. We teach a Tuesday night New Testament class in Edmond and we have 20 students registered for that class. We also teach a Book of Mormon class in Shawnee with 4 students. We visited that ward today and met some more potential students. We will work on praying them there. Shawnee is about 50 miles from here, each way. One of the interesting things we learned was that two of our students work for “The Tribe.” That’s exactly how they said it. The tribe is the Pottawatamie Indian tribe. There are many different Indian tribes here in Oklahoma and from what our students tell us they are very wealthy. The casinos are always run by the tribes. One girl works at the preschool and one of the young men works as a bagger at the tribe’s grocery store. 

Tuesday, we will be teaching for Brother Valletta at the Stillwater institute next to the Oklahoma State University campus. He is going to court to finalize the adoption of his youngest son. So we are definitely staying busy. We also go to the temple once a week. It’s only a 30 minute drive from here.

This week besides our missionary activities and attending the temple we finally made it to POP’s on Historic Route 66. It’s an interesting place, it’s a gas station, convenience store, burger joint. They have a huge bottle of pop out front and we hear that at night it’s lit up with neon. We’ll have to check it out.

Here’s the 66 foot tall pop bottle and the front of the convenience store/burger place:
They are famous for stocking 600 hundred different kinds of soda from all over the world. (EXCEPT, the one I was looking for, Shikuwasa, from Okinawa). Although, I did see a few Japanese sodas, none that I recognized. Andrew and Leigh…They did have Cheerwine. Every bottle is $2.19. Here are our selections, both root beer: We also had burgers with fries and onion rings followed by this dessert, an apple pie-ish thing topped with ice cream, whipped cream, caramel sauce and cherries. It was huge and yummy:   They have cartons to fill with your favorites, which we did not do. At $2.19 each, that’s a pricey 6 pack. However, 6 packs were flying out the door. All the windows across the front and back of the shop are lined with bottles of pop.
Then yesterday after our visit to the temple we drove to Choctaw to this: Yes, we know it’s still August, obviously those who live in Choctaw know something about when to hold Octoberfest that the rest of the world has missed. We went mainly to eat and it’s a good thing since the main attraction seemed to be drinking beer. We had water!
Our meal, bratwurst on a pretzel bun and smoked pork chops smothered in sauerkraut with red cabbage. We also had potato pancakes with applesauce:

We listened to two bands, the first played polka type music and the second played Cajun??? There were even a few people dancing.
The decor:

Today on our way back from Shawnee took Route 66 again and got to see the Round Barn in Arcadia, it’s just a little east of Pop’s. It was built in 1898.
Okay, so there you have our week. We love you all and miss you!