January 31, 2016

We had another great week.  We began our week by having our weekly office meeting.  It was very good.  We finished the day and had a meal that night at the Spencer’s.  We invited the missionaries over and they ate and then gave us the discussion on the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It was a nice evening.  Each missionary can present this lesson a little differently because of the Preach My Gospel and it is good to hear how they present it.  Each is unique, but still gives the same information. 

Sister Merrill, Elder Sevy, Elder Anderson, the Spencer's

We went to a Missionary Leadership meeting on Thursday evening at the Westfall building.  Our new Stake President is really into missionary work (thank heavens!).  He has a great vision of how new converts can be retained.  (it is so sad that we don’t retain enough of our new converts here)  His vision is that the members should be doing the finding.  They all have friends and have lived here long enough that they have family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. that they can approach and have to their homes in order to meet the full-time missionaries and hear the gospel.  When they have friends already, it is easier to feel part of the ward or branch.  They are going to do this with their ward councils and home teaching programs.  I think it sounds wonderful! 

We went to the Temple on Friday night and enjoyed the session.  There were 7 men and 12 women.  It will difficult to go home to over-full Temple sessions—but great!  I would love to see the Palmyra Temple filled for every session, but winter has its draw backs.  However, it was 59 degrees today (Sunday) and all the snow has all but melted.  This Temple is busy in the summer with all the tourists that come to the sacred sites.

Saturday was really fun.  We went over to Batavia to a baptism for a young man in our branch.  That was nice.  Afterward we met 8 other couple missionaries at a restaurant in Batavia and ate and visited.  Two of the couples will be leaving for home soon.  The Jones’s will leave on Monday for Fountain Green, Utah.  They will really be missed.  They have been here 23 months working with the Bath Branch.  The other couple will be going to Georgia.  They have worked in Facilities Management.  We went out to Lamb Dairy afterward with the Spencer’s and Aldrich’s.  They were impressed with that dairy operation too.

Sister Merrill--Did you forget your purse?  Yep!

Look Close, there are lots of geese on the bank of canal.  This is outside the restaurant

We had church today and went to Batavia.  Becca’s friend, Tasha Lowd and her husband were our speakers.  They had a subject I hadn’t heard from the pulpit for sacrament meeting before.  It was ‘family councils’.  They did a great job with the subject and tied in scriptures of councils with the Lord from Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Adam.  Our great example for a family council was a long time ago when we met for the grand council in heaven.  A family council is a good time to plan, budget, encourage, and testify.  I really enjoyed their talks.

After church we went to visit a sister in the branch that hasn’t been out lately.  I talked with her around Christmas time and she told me her husband was having trouble with memory and other age related things and couldn’t attend.  She was still able to come, but hasn’t been out for a while.  I really wanted to go and see how she was doing with all of her responsibilities.  They weren’t home, so we will have to try again next week.  Then we went to Albion to see the Long’s.  Sister Long had to go to the hospital on Thursday night, but was home today.  We went to visit with them for a few minutes and give them a short home teaching message.  She will go in for a colonoscopy in the morning, so a long visit wasn’t practical for us.  (the prep for that procedure requires a little private time)  We came home and I made Weiner schnitzel for us and the Spencer’s.  They thought I was making hotdogs.  Ha! Ha!  Turns out that Weiner schnitzel is chicken fried pork.  It turned out really good!

Funny:  Last week Dennis did our email home and I had already posted the blog when I read his email.  I loved it so much that I decided to put down the cute part here on the blog:

“Yesterday we helped at the new Bishops’ Storehouse, which is across the road from the Hill Cumorah.  The church doesn’t do anything second rate.  It is a very modern and beautiful facility.  I volunteered to stock the freezer which might have been a mistake, but Elder Spencer, who is from Arizona, volunteered, so I thought I could do it too.  It was 20 below 0 and after a couple of minutes Elder Spencer moved to the refrigerator and I was left a lone man in the freezer.  Brrrr!”

We saw this interesting window in Mendon Saturday and had to take a pictures.  There is also a decorated Christmas tree to the right of Skeleton Santa/or Grinch Santa holding the Easter Bunny

Creepy, huh?