Creative Outlets

I was looking around the Institute today and realized I have been on a creative bent the last few weeks (well, early September, but who's counting?)  One of my responsibilities or I should say, one of the things I have included in my job description is bulletin boards.  After April Conference we did a bulletin board on favorite quotes from all of the talks.  It was a kind of evolving board because we posted the quotes the week we discussed the talks in our Teachings of the Living Prophets class.  We had just completed the board when we realized it was time to make a board with our theme "Because of Him".  What to do?  We moved the conference board (just in time for October Conference and new quotes) to the doors of our storage closet.  We lost a few of our quotes when the sister missionaries raided pictures for a prophet campaign they are doing with the elders up on campus.

Conference quotes

The missionaries have really stepped up their visibility and exposure on campus.  They are teaching several students they have met besides helping us to find members that hadn't "found" us yet.  They have been inviting people to watch conference at the Institute on Saturday.  Neil and I will be making doughnuts and later on between sessions we will serve Taco Salad.

New set of scriptures from the Elders

We have had two baptisms in the last month and
so that has helped our YSA Branch and our

Missionary Campus Boards

enrollment at the Institute.  One of the things that has been so gratifying is that both young men have been so excited about doing family history, but they have had to wait to do baptisms because the Houston Temple was closed all of September and just reopened on Tuesday. Matt Mills went with the Sister Missionaries, who taught him, to do baptisms for 17 of his own ancestors.  One of the names was for his Great Grandfather.  It is so wonderful to see the excitement of discovering Family Search!

But, I digress.  (I should admit that I spend much of my time digressing from my plans and intentions for the day whether I am at the apartment or at the Institute.)  Back to bulletin boards. . .
As I was doing Fall cleaning at the Institute and putting away donated fabric, etc. I came upon a gold fabric  and also some upholstery samples that I thought would look nice as a backing for our main bulletin board.  I also had two beautiful, yet simple frames I brought from home with pictures from our son, Bob's wedding.  I replaced those pictures - sorry, Bob and Mary - one with one of my favorite pictures of the Savior and the other with the words "Because of Him".  Voila!  A new bulletin board was born.  One of the originally unplanned things that happened was mounting the wordstrips 3-D with the phrases in white on black(what happens in our lives Because of Him)

Placing the fabrics and Pictures

Finished Board - Better in Real Life

Holding @ 48 Students - Keep Praying!

Not content to end my creative run, someone suggested we make a thermometer to track enrollment since we are aiming for at least 50 students.  I also had some donated spools of red and white ribbon.
One day I was walking to the Institute and started noticing license plates both in our apartment complex and in the student parking lots.  I realized that the majority of our students are from Texas.  Neil's sister, Gail, had left her map of Texas with us when she visited in August.  I have actually run out of wall space and official boards, so my final effort is on the side white board next to the thermometer.  I made little flags for students to write their name and home city.  I put Zion on our flag and was planning to put it northwest of the state of Texas, but I lost my nerve and put it on Huntsville. . . because after all, Zion isn't a place but a state of "being".

A few out of staters off to the side and top, but most aren't from too far away.