Our Mission to Palmyra

Dearest Children, Grandchildren, Family and Friends, What a week this has been! “Bittersweet” is just not adequate to describe my feelings. My Missionary Sisters and I have marveled how we can be laughing one minute and then crying the next….and not always in sadness. The Spirit has been very close to us as we have done things “for the last time”. I cannot begin to tell you how much I have loved being on this mission and how sad I am that it is ending. And yet, as I was talking to one of my Sisters, we were marveling at how we were both feeling the “tug” of home. We decided that it was Heavenly Father’s way of helping us through the goodbyes. Our first Goodbyes were on Monday. We had our last 6-month-missionary-only shift at the Temple. One of the other local couples who are shift coordinators came to take our responsibilities during preparation meeting so that we could all be together. It was so sweet!! The Spirit was strong and the tears were close to the surface! We ...

Dear family and friends Grandma and I are sitting here listening to the rain as we start our last Sabbath day in Zion's Camp and starting our blogs because it is going to be a busy day and we won't have lots of time tonight except to finish them. Actually, the rain and pre-dawn darkness fit the mood of melancholy. We have been saying good by all week and the emotions are quite full and now we get to say good-bye to our branch. Grandma and I have written notes to our friends and that has made it even more plain we are leaving and leaving part of our hearts behind. When you serve with all your heart you leave a piece of it with everyone you serve. That is the hallmark of Christ like service because he feels that way towards each of us because of His sacrifice. The Spirit was present in the Temple in the gift of administration in figuring out how our small crew could be in several places at one time in order to serve the patrons. All week we had many more patrons than expected...

When President Colbert asked me to share the things I have learned on my mission, I chuckled a bit and asked how many hours I had to speak. He told me he could cancel the rest of the block but I assured him I would condense it. I will share just some of those lessons. First of all, though I want to share something that happened just after General Conference. Dream During Conference, one of the things that I was praying for was what we should do now that our mission was ending. Where did the Lord want us to go from here? I didn’t get any clear cut answers although I got lots of inspiration about my life. On Sunday night, after Conference had ended, I went to sleep and dreamed a dream in which I was going out with the sister missionaries. There were many things in the dream that I won’t share here but will tell what applies to my talk today. In the dream, we were meeting people in a station of some kind and I stopped to talk to a little family. What was interesting, was tha...

Dearest Children, Grandchildren, Family and Friends!! We are at the end of a very long day so I am going to give you a quick blog. Great Grandma asked if I could share my talk so I will put that in on Tuesday, maybe, and send it out. For right now, I will share this week. Monday was good at the temple and in the afternoon we went to see how maple syrup was made.  Dad is sharing that with pics....really cool. Tuesday we got a lot done.  We had to organize our underneath bins because another missionary couple didn't have room for some of their things....they are going home early on Tuesday...and we offered to let them use one of our bins.  We got all our regular stuff done and organized and did some things to prepare to go home....so sad....but exciting also because we are anxious to see all of you!!! Wednesday I worked in the office in the morning and got to know a sister that I haven't worked with before.  She told me her conversion story.  She grew up...