Well, the weeks just keeping marching on. This week has been amazing as we have spent time with our new friend, answering questions and teaching doctrine. We spent a couple of days with Robert and he has a ton of questions-mostly about the Book of Mormon. He is feeling the spirit touching his heart. He is reading and re-reading ,wanting to understand. We answered questions from "was Lehi a Jaredite, did Lehi land around Manchester-close to where the plates were found, do we believe baptism is a statement of our belief in Jesus Christ or a step needed for salvation, do we know when the sealed plates will be revealed, how did the people in the America's know that what they were being taught was from Heavenly Father instead of a snake oil salesman." And the questions go on and on. He has been in church the last two weeks and at our Book of Mormon class. He is moving forward at a fast pace and we are super excited-he is even talking about letting his little girl get baptized with her mother. Thank you for praying for him. The prayers are working.
Our week was busy besides meeting with Robert. We had a great District Council with the 12 of us missionaries and our Zone Leader and his comp. There were 14 all together. We love having Elder and Sister Park with us. Sister Park jump started the idea of celebrating birthdays with cake and ice cream at our District Council lunch the week of the birthday. This week we celebrated Elder Park's birthday on the 4th and Mike's birthday on the 7th. Because we will be in Zone Conference on the 7th, we celebrated together.
I have been working on coffee filter flowers for our Relief Society Birthday Celebration. Why do I get these bright ideas that take way longer than I have time for. They are so cute but man, did they take forever. I will include pictures of our evening and my decorations next blog.
We spent some time on Friday with the Parks, here at our house, putting together a favor for each of the missionaries for Zone Conference. We put together bags of Lucky Charms with a cute little tag. Our tables will have a green table cloth with a gold square piece and a Green St Patty's hat with gold coins scattered around. The missionaries will love their bags of cereal. My prediction, some of them will eat them before they even leave the gym after lunch.
After we finished 80 bags with tags we had a salad bar and hot French bread for lunch. We had such a great time. We love hanging with the Parks.
Our Book of Mormon class was great. We discussed the second half of 3 Nephi 11-the Doctrine of Christ. Now we will start studying the individual topics starting with faith. (most of these lessons we have given in the last year-but we want topics that are good for Katie and Robert)
We had the chance to go to the temple on Saturday. It was a snowy day but they keep the roads pretty good around here so the trip was great. The temple was quite full and there was even a wedding. We loved our time there. Mike took a man from the 1300's and I took a woman from the 1700's.
Afterwards we ran to the Sacred Grove. I only had my phone camera but I had the bright idea of doing a collage of the Sacred Grove in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. We'll see if that happens. There was so much slush on the pathway that I couldn't get in very far. It actually became quite a swamp so I had to settle for what I got. I was hoping to get further in to grab some of the witness trees. (Do you know what the witness trees are? They are the trees that have been in the grove since before Joseph said his prayer that Spring morning. They call them the witness trees because they stood as witnesses to the glorious vision.)
To top off our Saturday, we went with Elder and Sister Park to dinner at a little pizza/Italian place in Herkimer and then had tickets for a basketball game to watch the Herkimer Originals play at Herkimer College. They are a minor league basketball team playing in the American Basketball Association. Their name was thought up by Alice Cooper. The name comes because they believe that Herkimer is where basketball really started. Who knows? One of the players is a member of the church and doesn't go to the Utica Ward (he's less active), but Elder Park got to know him by telling him he wanted to come to one of his games to watch him play. That's how we got tickets. It was a fun game to watch. The gym is smaller than our high school gyms at home. Number 7 is our boy! He really is a dad of 4 littles, but man can he play-he is really good at 3-pointer shots.
Sunday was a great day. We had our first missionary coordinating council and hopefully we will all get the hang of meeting once a week for just a few minutes. It's interesting, people here try to use the old handbooks. But, as you know, the church is not printing handbooks any longer-things change constantly, so we use our devices for the updated information. It is an interesting experience to try to help them learn that they need to take a step into the 21st century when they really are more comfortable with a book in their hands.
We had the Sisters for dinner and had the chance to discuss a couple of friends, teaching, and a baptism that we have next Saturday. The work is moving forward and we are so happy to be part of it. We love being missionaries. We feel so blessed by our Heavenly Father. We love our Savior. We love being blessed enough to serve Him, here in New York. We love the Book of Mormon. It is truly the word of God. We love all of you. We pray for you. Have a most wonderful week.
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