Message—28
January 2013
Dear
Family & Friends,
This
message is a day late, but we are not a dollar short. We have been blessed by the Lord with all the
resources we have needed to serve this mission; both in a physical sense and
especially in a spiritual sense.
Heavenly Father has been so good and kind and patient and helpful in
what we have been blessed to accomplish.
Last
Monday we enjoyed a good office staff meeting with President and Sister
Christianson and five senior couples currently serving in the mission office. Since we are training our replacements; there
were four additional missionaries besides the Ellis’s and Servoss’s. Elder and Sister Willyerd are replacing us,
and Sister Allred and Sister Harris are replacing the Servoss’s. The two sisters and the Willyerd's are
learning quickly and will be just fine carrying on in helping the President
with all that needs to be done to keep the missionary work moving forward. Monday evening we enjoyed a family home
evening alone; it was great. Tuesday we
spent the day in the office training; and were able to work on some things at
home in the evening.
Wednesday
we started for the office with sunshine and dry roads; but after we arrived at
the office I needed to go north to Webster to pick up Elder Servoss from a transmission
repair shop. The closer I got to Lake
Ontario the snow started falling; by the time I reached Highway 104, which
parallel’s the lake, there was 5-6 inches of snow and a number of vehicles off
the road and a multiple car accident.
When I first reached the snow I had to stop for a traffic light but the
road was icy and I partially slid into the intersection, but some angels kept
me from hitting another car coming from my left. I safely made it back to the office with
Elder Servoss. We left the office at
about 3:30pm to go to an office complex on Winton Road South to pick up Eric
Levie who had been at this office building doing some work for the company for
which he works. Some of you will
remember Eric was a neighbor to us in Provo for several years when our older
sons were teenagers. Eric and our sons
all worked for Mac Carter. Eric and his
family currently live in Mesa Arizona.
His oldest son Jeff is serving a mission in the New Hampshire Mission
which is just to the North and East of our mission. Jeff will finish his mission next month and
return home to Mesa. We took Eric with
us to the Site Meeting which was at the Peter Whitmer Farm in Fayette. The Site Directors for our Historic Sites are
the Searle’s; and their son Scott is good friends with Eric; so Eric was able
to meet the Searle’s and become acquainted with them. Eric was able to experience the Whitmer Farm
Visitor’s Center and also to be in the restored log home of the Whitmer’s and
have Elder Searle tell him of the events that took place in the log home. We drove Eric back to his hotel in Henrietta
so he would be able to attend some meetings on Thursday and Friday morning.
Thursday
we left the office at 4:30pm so we would have time to drive to Geneseo and have
some dinner before teaching Institute at 7pm.
Jon Sykes was the only YSA who came to Institute; but we had a good
lesson; Jon is a great young man. He is
going to move to Utah in June and marry a young lady in the temple and live in
Utah. The Geneseo Elder’s came to the church
near the end of the lesson. They were on
exchanges with the Warsaw Elders because Elder Maisey’s driver’s license had
expired on Monday and his companion could not drive. So the two Elder’s from Warsaw could both
drive, and had permission from President to drive; this made it so neither
companionship had to walk to their appointments. One of the driver’s was Elder Pratt, it was
good to see him. We had received Elder
Maisey’s driver’s license Thursday so we had it with us to give to Elder Maisey
so he could drive again.
Friday
at about noon we left the office and picked up Eric Levie again from where he
was working and then drove to Palmyra and took Eric to see the Martin Harris
homestead, the grave of Alvin Smith, and the Book of Mormon Publication site at
the Grandin Building. Sister Hausauer
and Sister Aiello provided most of the tour for Eric; they are awesome
missionaries. Elder Fuller finished the
tour because the Sister’s had a teaching appointment. Elder Fuller also gave us tour of
Shortsville; this a name made up by the missionaries for the area under the
floor of the Grandin Building. When the
building was restored it required considerable work under the building to
stabilize the rest of it. Under the
floor are some of the old wood and other furniture and items that were in the
building when the restoration began in the 1990’s; some of these things were in
the original building in the 1820’s.
Hardly anyone gets to see this area; it was awesome. We then went to the Hill Cumorah Visitor’s
Center so Eric could see all that was there.
We returned to our home and Eric spent the night with us.
Saturday
morning we got up and had a nice breakfast fixed by Sister Jensen. Eric remembered why he spent so much time at
our place when he lived there, Sister Jensen makes good food. I think between Nancy Carter and Maxine, they
provided most of Eric’s meals when he lived by us. I took Eric to see the historic sites here in
Mendon where we live and told him of the historic events that occurred here. We then went to the Hill Cumorah and drove up
to the top where I told Eric of some of the additional things that are special
to this place and he took pictures. We
then went to the Joseph Smith Farm and the Sacred Grove. We stopped at the Palmyra Temple for Eric to
take some pictures. Sister Jones and
Sister Gillespie gave us the tour of the log home and the frame home and the
barn and cooper shop. These two sisters
are also awesome missionaries. Eric and
I then walked through the sacred grove and I shared a number of things about
the grove that I have learned from others.
We had a special day at the historic sites. We then left the farm and drove down Stafford
Rd. and stopped at the home where Porter Rockwell lived and grew up with Joseph
Smith. We also stopped at the lake rock
school house where Oliver Cowdery taught school before becoming the scribe for
the Prophet Joseph Smith. We also drove
by where the saw mill was from which the Smith’s obtained the lumber to build
the buildings on the Smith Farm. This
place is still a saw mill but now has all the modern equipment that saw mills
have and is much bigger. We then drove
Eric to the Rochester Airport to catch his plane to return to Mesa.
Sunday
we had made arrangements to go to Brockport to church, instead of to the Geneseo.
We sent Elder and Sister Willyerd to attend church in Geneseo and stop
and pick up Dan to take him to church with them. It was good to see the good people in the
Brockport ward where we lived and attended the first year of our mission. They all remembered us and seemed pleased to
see us again. After the block of
meetings we stayed for a baptism service for Joanne Mayo. Elder Ellis baptized her; she will be
confirmed next Sunday. Going to
Brockport allowed us to express our appreciation for their kindnesses to us
while we were with them. After the
baptism we went to the Ellis’s apartment and she provided a good dinner for
them, us and the Arrington’s. We had a
very close association with the Arrington’s and it was great to spend more time
with them. As we were finishing our
dinner Sister Lucero brought her niece Joanne (who had been baptized that day) and
Joanne’s son and they had some dessert with us and visited. After we said goodbye to everyone we drove to
Casey’s home and visited with her for a little while and then said our goodbye’s
and drove home. By the time we arrived
home my brain was not sharp enough to do the blog message, so I waited until tonight
to do the message.
This morning we had office staff meeting where President invited the Servoss’s to share their testimonies before they go home on Thursday. This evening we went to the Site Couples Family Home Evening at the Hill Cumorah. Norman White had been invited to share his life’s story, conversion, and finding his wife; and the experience he had in being blessed to provide some of the logs that were used to reconstruct the Peter Whitmer log home. Norman was given the Melchizedek Priesthood and ordained an Elder in the Peter Whitmer log home. Norman and his wife were privileged to be the first live sealing in the newly dedicated Palmyra Temple. A good brother and friend of Norman’s had taken care of having the temple work done for Norman’s birth parents, earlier in the day. So after Norman and his wife were sealed Norman was sealed to his birth parents. The rest of Norman’s story is in a blog message from last year when we also heard him give his presentation. What Norman shared is another witness that there are no coincidences, everything is intertwined by divine design; as Elder Maxwell said some years ago.
In
the month of February there are only three birthday’s in our immediate
family. We hope Madison has a wonderful
birthday on February 18th, and Landon on February 20th,
and Colby on February 24th.
We also recognize the birthday of Jay on February 5th. I also remember that both my Dad and Mom graduated
from mortality in February. We hope
everyone has a special Valentine day in February.
We
will be released next week on February 7th; and we will begin our
journey home on that day. We will arrive
home on February 16th. Bishop
Kemp has invited us to speak in Sacrament Meeting on February 17th at
11am in our church which is at 1560 South 1100 West Provo Utah 84601.
We
love all of you and look forward to seeing you any time it is convenient for you
to come and see us; since we are
officially retired we think maybe we will be at home a little more. Since we do not know what being retired
means, being at home more may just be wishful thinking.
Love
to all of you,
Mom
& Dad, Grandma & Grandpa, Maxine and Richard