I was going to take some pictures of the employment office this past week but forgot to, so no pictures this week, just boring text.

I mentioned in a previous post about the English as a Second Language classes that the Church holds twice a week. There are 3 missionary couples that will be leaving soon, one in April, one in May and one in July. Velyn and I feel strongly that we should volunteer to help teach these classes, so we went to the class on Thursday night and spoke to the supervisor.  He was very appreciative of our offer so we will start this coming Tuesday night with the English 1 class. Since I speak Spanish, the English 1 class would allow me to work with those people that do not speak English yet. Getting them started and feeling comfortable in class is important, and then mostly English will be spoken. We have already met some very nice people who are dedicated to learning English and are excited to help then learn. 

This past week I started having some serious issues with my computer. For some reason, when I opened Firefox, it started filling up my memory until the computer would shut down.  I had to delete Firefox and start using Chrome.  The first person from Apple support said that i just had to much data and that I needed to delete some files. So I started doing this. I guess the fact that I have over 45,000 emails still in my computer could cause some issues.  Anyway, I started from the oldest data and found a ton of old pictures that I have just kept moving from old computers to the new one. Some of these pictures are very dear to me and remind me of the good times I had while growing up. The following picture is of my Grampa Bryan and Gramma Dessie and their whole family, while I was only about 2 years old.

My Grampa is 4th from the right and my Gramma is right in front of him. My Dad is second from the right and my mom is in front of him. The cute boy on my mom's lap is me. The house in the background is the ranch house that I grew up in. 

It was a common thing to have get togethers like this. It was so much fun to have cousins that were close to my age. 

I was finally brave enough this past week to start driving to the employment office without my Google Maps. When you use GPS all the time, you don't remember the way all that well so I decided it was about time to learn the route without it. I was able to do it. When growing up, I wanted to be an elevator operator, which they had back then, but I changed my mind because I was afraid that I couldn't learn the route. 

Our oldest daughter Sarah, and her son Lu are going to be visiting us the end of March, so we thought we would make a practice run to the Houston Hobby airport. I think all 7 million people in Houston had the same idea.  I could not believe the traffic. Almost every vehicle was low on signal light fluid so they would just cut in front of you without signaling. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get to the airport and back. Now that I have done it once, I'm sure I can cut at least 5 minutes off the trip next time.

Velyn has been working with a very nice lady the last 2 weeks. She is 77 years old and has to re-enter the work force. She gave most of her money to her daughter to buy a house and had been living with her. One day she came to her and told her she had 24 hours to get out of the house. So she left and came to Houston because she had some in-laws here that were willing to let her live with them until she could earn enough money to rent her own apartment. She is such a nice lady. It is hard to imagine that her own daughter could do that to her. Velyn has become a good friend to her which has already made a big difference in her life. She is going to start working at Deseret Industries while she looks for a better paying job, and Velyn is helping her to tailor her resume to some jobs that she is interested in. 

We did some practice interviews with some of the young people that are working at Deseret Industries and are about through with their job training and ready to leave. It was really an eye opener for us, in seeing what a difficult time they had during the interview because of mental handicaps. The program that Deseret Industries has is truly remarkable in the way that it helps these people prepare for jobs that they would be capable of performing once they leave Deseret Industries. The mental disabilities that these young people have has resulted in them being very mellow in their personality, and they have sweet dispositions. It is a humbling experience to be around them, and even though they know they have a disability, they still have the desire to better themselves.