News for the week of January 10, 2018

Hello everyone!

Hope you all are managing to stay warm and toasty in this frigid weather. Throw another log on the fire, push that furnace button up a notch, get your blanket and wrap up in it, drink another cup of hot chocolate, and thank the Lord you have the wood, the furnace, the blanket, and the hot chocolate!

I sure was wishing that I had a fire to throw a log on because our furnace decided that the frigid weather was too much to deal with and quit working. It took a couple of days to get it fixed, but we did okay without it. We had a couple of heaters to plug in and piled lots of quilts on the bed. We have a fireplace but I had put a board covering over it a few years ago when grandson Emmett was overly interested in it. Now I'm not sure about building another fire in it until it is checked out for safety.

We decided it brought back lots of memories of the first few years we were married. The first several years we lived in a couple of different houses that didn't have insulation or running water. When the wind blew you could see the curtains move just a little bit, and sometimes when you got up in the morning the water bucket might be frozen. We got running water after a couple of years but heated with wood for twenty years, and I still prefer wood heat over any other kind. Now that is nothing new to people my age or older I am sure, but I sure appreciate our warm house we live in now. And I have good memories of living in those houses also, and wouldn't change a thing about those times even if I could.

We also have some fantastic neighbors. When they found out our furnace was not working we had offers from several of our neighbors to come stay with them or even use their house while they weren't there until our furnace was fixed. I appreciate and love the people of this community so much. We live in one of the best places in the world if I do say so myself.

Our neighbor, Sam Day, who owns a house over the Union Flat direction is tearing his old log barn down. Helen Maggard told me a little about the history of the barn. She said it was built during a barn raising when some homesteaders lived there around 1903. She said that neighbors and people from all over the area came to work on it. When they were taking the barn apart they found a log with several names on it. Most were brothers and sisters of Burl's dad. Willard, Emily, Cindy, and also the name Troy, who was Melba Austin and Tommy Johnson's dad. Those names were added many years after the barn was built of course but it is so fun to find memories of the past like that and imagine what they did in past times.

Ed and Leona Hunsaker's son, Ron and wife Sheila and their daughter Trinity left this week to move to Nicaragua where they will be missionaries. Ron and Sheila have lived in Ava for many years. It sounds so exciting and a little scary also to leave everything and everyone that is familiar and embrace a new and different culture. It takes special people to do that, I believe. Our best wishes and prayers go with them as they obey this call on their lives.

New Mansion Church was called off last Sunday because of the forecast of bad weather coming in right about the time church would start. It proved to be the right decision as it started raining and freezing right at church time. It really got slick on the roads around here for awhile.

Susan Mooney messaged me and told me they had pictures at the gift shop of my grandkids sitting on Santa's lap. I am looking forward to seeing them and seeing if they caught one of Makenna when she gave Santa a big wink after she told him what she wanted for Christmas.

Call, text, facebook message or e-mail me with news if you have any. My landline number is 796-2651. My cell phone is 294-3280. I am Karen Case on facebook, message me or add me as a friend, and my e-mail is karencase.55@gmail.com.

Stay warm and happy!