Wood cutting service project

Recently our mission president asked if we could help with an elder who was in our district. Elder Brandt was having a hard adjustment. He has such a good heart, but was having some trouble adjusting to mission life. He asked if we had any service projects we could involve him in.  Elder Mahaffey knew that a man in our Monday night Institute class (Walter Svenson) lived on a large acreage and had cut down a lot of trees, but needed it cut and split. He, like many of us, is getting older and it gets harder and harder to do such physical work. So, we got Elder Brandt and his very tall companion, Elder Prawitt, our district leader, to come and help cut and split the wood.

Since we knew that physical exercise is good for what ails you... Bro. Svenson had them cut the wood with the chain saw, but split it by hand. It was a LARGE amount of work.

However, they worked so hard, that they broke several wedges and ax heads! Whoa !

Then, just as they were through for the day, guess what started to happen...???

Still, the Elders had a good time playing on all of Brother Svenson's tractors:

Even with four men working for 4-5 hours, they didn't nearly finish the huge stack of wood. So, the next week, when the Svensons were gone working at the Family History Center, Elder Mahaffey and I called Earl Bridson (Elder's Quorum Pres.) and Gerry Mazerrolle (2nd Counselor in the Bishopric) and we rented a Log-Splitter, and finished the work as a surprise to the Svensons.

The men split while I stacked. Here is our finished work. It was fun to do something in secret for a family who usually does things for everyone else!