Today it snowed all day. It started at 7am and it's still snowing. Probably about 6 or 8 inches so far. Not a great lot but for here it's a pretty good amount. It's also getting cold. Suppose to be about -10 tomorrow night and with wind chill, more like -20. The wind really cuts you like a knife! Really!

We have been quite the detectives lately, finding the hiding, the obscure, the illusive. No one gets by us! Even got a door slammed in our face the other day, although it was not a really forceful slam. Have not gotten lice or been dog-bit yet. Guess we've been lucky!

Here are some beautiful pictures from some of our drives to visit people:

We love the people, the town, the weather even. People are so nice here, all over. The thrift store (which we frequent often, finding decorating supplies and "new" clothes for me), the Walmart employees (of which we know about six, from our ward), and even the clergy from the other churches that we've come in contact with. (Elder White was asked to sing at two other churches and we went in his support, of course). Just love it here. Just love the work we're doing here. Love our mission!!

So happy for the Warners, turning in their papers for a mission! They sound really excited. Sounds like they are going to be doing about the same thing we are; member and leadership support. They will be so good. I wonder who else will be going. Keep me informed, Amy, of who is going from our ward or the other wards in Ramona. I'm sure some of those young people will be going since the age has been lowered. We hear Annalyse Franco is going to Brazil! A couple in our ward here just got called to New York. 

I'm sending a few pictures from some of our p-day jaunts. I'll label them so you'll know where they were taken. This last week was a little... boring I guess. Lots and lots of miles and miles of fields of grain, or stubble actually, with a little "old" snow. But we saw a HUGE flock, or flocks, of geese, Canadian geese. And a really unusual variety of duck. I'll send pics. We went to a river, Marias River and Tiber Lake above it. The lakes around here, and most of the rivers, are all frozen and white with snow. 

Elder White is playing the piano right in back of me, belting love songs he's written (probably against the missionary rules!), and for breaking up with girlfriends, etc. He's expecting me to listen.... Can't concentrate anymore.

Okay, I'll write again next week. Going to try and write once a week. We love you all! Miss you too. Happy Birthday Howard and me and Adrian!

Love, Mom (and Dad)

I took these pictures especially for Howard. Isn't this a creative use of hubcaps? Only in Havre!

 

Bohemian Waxwings! Right outside our window.

. Driving through Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

Missouri River

 

Near the Missouri River 

Fresno Lake, near Havre, with ice fishermen.

The Milk River, on the other side of the dam.

Canadian geese

Marias River

Tiber Reservoir, above the Marias River of previous picture




Ducks on the river.

 
Common Goldeneye

I love snowflakes!!

Havre in November

We are working hard. It's fun but hard at the same time. We are still visiting the less-actives, visiting the Indians on the reservation, helping people where ever we can and driving the young Elders around (they have a truck but very limited mileage). We were in Great Falls last weekend. Took six Elders with us to a Mission meeting.

Last Monday (P-Day) we went to Chief Joseph's Battlefield Memorial.

It's just south of Chinook which is about 20 miles from here. 

 He's famous for his quote:

 "I will fight no more forever".

It was sad walking around the battlefield and thinking about what happened there. Very disturbing story of the white man taking from the Indians. 

This is the battlefield.

An old barn south of Chanook.

Here are some pictures of Havre in November:

An old church on the way to Canada that we've stopped at a couple of times to take pictures.

 

I like this cute house. It's not ours.



We wondered why they named it the Milk River... until we saw it like this.

The weather is unpredictable. This is what I wrote in my journal about a week ago:

"All day yesterday it didn't get any higher than 27 degrees. Then last night it started to get warmer and by 10:30 pm it was 36. This morning at 6:30 it was 41! About 10:30 this morning it started to sleet and now in the afternoon it's 34 and snowing on and off. Such weird weather here. But it's interesting and actually kind of fun. Granddaddy would have loved it, always checking temps and measuring rain or in this case snow. He even had fun doing that in Southern California where there is no weather!"

We are still looking forward to the really cold weather, they say in January. We just pile on the clothes and go on out. 

Don't have any idea what the -20 or -30 will feel like!

 

 

Thanksgiving at Sister Wood's house. She cooks just like Grandmommy. We went with the young Elders who can be pretty entertaining sometimes. They insist we are their mom and dad. So you have two new siblings. Elder While knows all the kids' and grandkids' names.
 He says he's been "stalking" my calendar that has all the b-days on it. 

This is a quilt made by the Jacobsen Family back in 1978. The kids (Erin, Amy, Ivy, Adam and Cammy) drew Thanksgiving pictures and Mom pieced it all together. 34 years later Amy found it in the attic and Ivy finished off the border, backing and quilting. They sent it to us for a Thanksgiving reminder that they love and miss us. It was our first ever Thanksgiving without family around! 

So...that's the latest from Havre, Montana. 
Love, 
Elder and Sister Jacobsen
Mom and Dad
Gram and Granddad.

Montana Clouds

Havre, Montana-We're here.

So we're here in Havre and have been for a couple of weeks. Seemed like it took forever to get settled and also settling in the two Elders in the basement (who, by the way, are very nice and quite interesting young men). We like the house. Well, at least I do. Dad/Dennie hates the fact it doesn't have a shower in our bathroom. Also the fact that the bathroom is across the kitchen from our bedroom and not in our room. Guess we're spoiled. We do have a huge walk-in closet in our bedroom that use to be a room. No, not quite as big as yours Leah! I'm sending some pics of the house. The members here have been so good to donate all the furnishings for us and the Elders. We have everything we need now except for a few things like night stands and a few more chairs. Nothing essential. 

Like I said we took a long time to set up housekeeping but last week we got around to some missionary work, or re-activating work. We met several people, visiting and people dropping by with donations, and then Sunday we met a bunch more. So many that it's really hard to remember who's who. We're both equally bad at names. Dad's a little better with face recognition and I think I'm a little better at directions around town. (And I have to remind him at every blind intersection, of which there are many.) 

The landscape around here is beautiful. It's kind of amazing that I like it since I'm not too fond of the desert. Well, I do like the desert if there are mountains, mesas or wildflowers. But around here the landscape's very wide and as they say, it's big sky country. Right around here there are some rolling hills and odd coulees (washes or gullies, we've learned). So it's not really desert, although there aren't too many trees, aside from the towns. We also have the Milk River which is crazy winding, crooked. Look it up on the internet. The trees are all turning but the leaves are falling fast, with the wind. It's not cold yet. In fact we're sometimes surprised when we go outside in the morning because it's warmer outside than in. 

Havre is a big railroad town. I'll send pictures of that too. I love the sound of the train whistles. We're just about the right distance away for it to be a good sound. Not so close that it jars us awake at night! We drove down by the railyard (don't know if that's the right word but it sounds like it might be? Or train yard?) today and I love the sound of the coupling of the cars and just the train sounds. 

Accross the tracks is North Havre. We visited an Indian woman named Red Elk over there Sunday. We went there last week but she was not home but her boyfriend, Roasting Stick, was. Yes, interesting names! So far we've met several Indians and they are really nice. Guess we are going to be meeting a lot more of them since we'll be helping a couple who've been called on a service mission to try and re-activate the Indians on the Rocky Boy Reservation. There are over 100 on the membership rolls for Havre. This couple, the Quinns, have a 4,000 acre organic wheat farm in Big Sandy and they grow Kamut, an ancient variety of wheat. He goes all over the world finding markets for it and land to grow it on in other countries. He says he can't keep up with the demand in places like Italy and around that area. Very nice people. 

So far we just love the people here. But I still miss Harlowton. This is more big city, although it's population is only around 9300. 

I don't want this too be too long so I'll quit for now and send the pictures. 

We love you all. Write if you can. Thanks, Krause girls, and Shelbo kids, for writing!!  Oh, and Cally for writing me an email!!! Am I forgetting anyone? Of course some of you older ones have emailed and thanks for that, too.

Love, Mom and Dad, Brother and Sister Jacobsen, Dennie and Becky

Greeting from Big Sky Country

So here we are in Montana. 

You can see why it's called Big Sky Country...

Typical scenery here in Montana.

 

The Billings Montana Temple

Our house in Havre is not ready for us yet. They had to wait for the renters to move out around the first of October. So they sent us to Harlowton, MT, a small town in the central part of the state until that time. Population is a little under 1,000 and I feel like we've met everyone!! Just kidding, but we have worked hard and met a ton of people here. I just love this little town and it's going to be so hard to leave! 

We live in a really old "craftsman" style stone house. It's quite comfortable and we love it. 

Here's the house we are staying in right now.

We're right next door to the Branch President and his wife. 

You can see their house in this picture, but ours isn't visible. 

The chapel is a modular building that was built in '67, with a chapel, three classrooms and a kitchen. There were around 35 or 40 people there last Sunday but that's with three visiting families. Very few kids here and lots and lots of older folks. 

We volunteer in the local nursing home and go to visit with the seniors at the senior center at lunchtime. We also have to young Elders living with us. They are great guys and we have had some fun together. We drive them wherever they have to go that is too far to walk. They've tracted practically the whole town! A lot of the members live out in the boondocks, though. 

The Branch President has asked Dennie to kind of clean up the Branch records 

so we've been trying to contact everyone to do that. 

Our major job is with the less-actives, meeting them and inviting them to church. 

The land consists of rolling hills and huge flat fields. This is mostly ranching country and the two largest ranches in the area are owned by the Church, Winnecook and Muir. 

Winnecook Ranch one of the two Church Ranches.
Can't see the ranch very well but I thought it was pretty. 

The managers at both are LDS. Very nice people. We've also met other ranch owners and ranch hands and Elder Jacobsen went on a "cattle drive", although it was in a truck pulling a trailer load of heifers to the stockyard, haha! But he's loving this whole ranch scene, seeing as we wanted to do that kind of thing before all the kiddos started coming along.

Headed to the MTC by Ivy (with blurb from Mom)

Since the missionary couple is pretty busy, I thought I'd blog a little bit for them about the beginning of their adventure.

They were pretty excited to enter the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo, UT.

Ethan and our family (Skinners) got to see them off.

There weren't even any tears! I think everyone was just too excited for them. 

Gram isn't short....






This is the only way they could hug Ian, to sandwich him between them. Even then getting a real hug out of him was hard, but they didn't let go til he gave a squeeze. 

And this is the best one I have of them in front of the MTC. 

.

LOVE you, Elder and Sister Jacobsen!


Here's a little blurb from Mom (Sister Jacobsen) about their experience at the MTC:

"We spent a week in the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo, UT, and it was a wonderful experience. We had such great teachers and for the weekly devotional we had Erich W. Kopischke, a General Authority of the Church from Germany. Ethan had several district or zone meetings with him when he was AP (Assistant to the President) in Croatia and really liked him. His wife spoke too and she was so funny with her German accent and the stories she told of life in the US, since their move to Spanish Fork, a couple of months ago. Anyway, it was a wonderful experience, one we'll always remember and love."