Week 9 from Palmyra

My dearest Family and Friends,

This has been a great week!  Busy...but then most of them are.  It is such a joy to serve in the temple.  We have been getting patrons from all over, especially youth, from Utah, Georgia, Idaho, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, even a couple from Hawaii. It is so wonderful to be all united in wanting to do the work of the Lord.

I love Mondays at the Temple because it is just the 6-month missionaries who work that long single shift.  We are getting so close and we love each other so much.  Last Monday, we were in charge of the refreshments at FHE with two other couples....sooooo glad our turn in over.  I stressed over it! Brother Moray's fourth presentation on the temple was just as good as the other three.  Dad spear-headed getting a thank-you gift for him - a history of the early Christian church in Britain.  Right up Brother Moray's alley.

Tuesday was a beautiful day and we got lots done around our little house.  At one point I was sitting looking out the window up at the Hill Cumorah and I felt such an overwhelming feeling of peace and safety here.  The thought occurred to me that this is sacred ground.  We have to leave this beautiful place for a month while the Pageant people are here and I don't think ANY of us want to go.  The place we are going has few trees and the grass is mostly weeds.  This will be our "Rocky Ridge" as some of us have named it.  We will endure!!!

Wednesday was another lovely day at the Temple and on Thursday we went to the Mendon Church sites.  These are not public places and missionaries can only go when the missionary couples who live there are able to take them.  We feel very blessed that we could go.  Our first stop was the John Young Farm (Dad told about that) and then we took off across the fields to see the place where Brigham Young had his mill and home.  Back then, the creek was dammed up to form a pond.  This is where he was baptized along with Heber C. Kimball, his good friend.  Nothing is still standing there. We then went to the Tomlinson Inn where Samuel Smith met Phineas Young to give him a Book of Mormon.  Dad has told a lot of that history. What was so touching to me was that we just happened to run into the caretaker of the Inn who let us come in.  He spoke to us and told us that there were no coincidences.  He firmly believed that we were there for a reason and that we should petition the Lord to find out that reason.  He told us the history of the events that happened in that Inn and said that there were no coincidences then either.  The Lord knew where to find His servants when He needed them.  The caretaker bore a powerful testimony of the things that had happened there.  He reminded us that because of their willingness to follow the commandments of the Lord, we were there, standing in that room.  We have the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ and we are helping others, on both sides of the veil, receive those blessings.  As we left I reflected that in all of the sites around here and in all of the things that we talk about, it is usually about Joseph Smith and we sometimes forget that there were other great men, other seekers of truth, who had their beginnings in this same area and who joined with the Prophet to bring about this great latter-day work.  I am so humbled by that and have an even greater desire to serve the Lord with my whole heart and soul.  Another thing that I thought about was the Mendon may have been a tiny place without much importance in a worldly sense but the Lord knew where it was and he knew where to find his servants.  That is a great lesson for us.  The Lord knows us, knows where to find us and knows what we need to do in our lives.  We just need to trust in that!

Friday and Saturday were busy, busy temple days and today was a great day at our branch.  We have another girl, Abby, in our class who is staying the summer with her dad.  She and Kalista really hit it off so it will be fun to have them together.  It's always fun to learn with another person.  We had a lesson on the Priesthood and mainly spent the whole time answering questions that they had.  Both girls have only a rudimentary knowledge of the Gospel so we are teaching pretty basic things.  The Spirit was so strong, though.  If the girls don't learn anything else, I hope they learn how much their Father in Heaven loves them!!  After the meetings we had a Father's Day Linger Longer that was really fun.  We are really coming to love our little branch.  Next week we will be working with an investigator with her genealogy.  She is going to be baptized soon.  We also visited Sister Patricia again and left her with a message and the Sacrament.  It feels so good to serve, even though we are both very, very tired.  The only sad part about today was not being to be at Will's baptism.  We are so proud of him for his decision to follow Jesus Christ.

I love you all so much.  Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in my life!!!!
Mom/Grandma/Sandy

Ice Cream after lunch

 Elder Jones, our guide

 The foundation of the John Smith house was build around this stump

 Site of the Brigham Young house, mill, pond and baptism

 My amazing companion

 The mill creek

 All of us at the John Young home

 All of us at the Baptism site

 The rock foundation of the Tomlinson Inn

The Tomlinson cemetery