The Jolley's in Upstate New York

April 19th was a glorious day!  Probably my most favorite day in our mission.  It was a day spent absorbing the Spirit as it testified, over and over, of Jesus Christ and the work of Salvation and Exaltation.  We had the most wonderful opportunity to spend the day in Palmyra with our entire zone and the Syracuse and Owego Zones.  We began our day picking up our darling Sisters Taylor and Erickson and hit the road.  For part of the road trip, we listened to Sheri Dew’s talk, “Prophets Can See Around Corners”.  The Sisters had not heard it and we love it, so we wanted to share with them.  We arrived at the temple, grabbed Piper Gentry so she could let us into the Stake Center so Sister Taylor and Elder Buck could practice their special musical number for Zone Conference.  By 10:10 we headed back to the temple to get ready to do an endowment session. (A few weeks ago, President and Sister Gentry had the distinct impression that every missionary ...

 This past week has been a beautiful week but the end of the week was the best of all.  On Saturday, we took a trip to Palmyra to do baptisms with Robert and Katie Atwood, and Jack Weismore-all brand new members of the church.  We knew that it would be a bit crowed in our little Rogue so we rented a car from the airport.  We had much more room and it made the trip better.  The temple is about an hour and 45 minutes from our home so we would be gone most of the day.  We picked up the Sisters and headed to Oneida to pick up Jack.  The Atwoods were bring Lori Jones to watch their kids while we were inside the temple.  The Atwood's had found a few names on Family Search on their family tree and we took a few names too.  Jack is funny, he likes to sit in the back and observe.  He doesn't like to "do" and he had even said to the Sisters, "Wait!  I have to do stuff?"  And they told him, yes, he would need to do stuff.  We found h...

 Maybe Springtime is here.  We say that with the knowledge that last April 19th we had 10 inches of snow.  We are hoping that we are done with snowstorms.  That being said, we did do some walking at Lowe's because of rain, wind, and cold.  But when we walked into the store, look what we saw! Nothing screams Spring like beautiful flowers in beautiful colors.  These just made my heart happy.  Every store we go to, I'm pulling out my camera to take pictures of the flowers.   Monday, our P-Day, was our darling Sister Taylor's birthday.  She has extreme celiac disease and there are no restaurants that she feels safe eating in but we did find a place called Bowl Boss that makes Acai bowls and they have gluten free so she said she could eat there.   We were excited to take her and Sister Erickson out for lunch.  We had never had Acai bowls before and we both liked them.  I'm not sure if Sister Erickson was convinced though.  We l...

 Time just seems to be marching forward.  How is it possible that we are into April? But here we are.  We hit our one year mark on March 28th.  You know what that means don't you?  We are now less than 6 months to go.  And we have heard from all the missionaries that the last 6 months just flies by!  This week was also transfers.  It is always hard to say goodbye to Sisters and Elders who have wiggled a place into your heart.  We try to take them for ice cream the day before they move.  This time we lost Sister Zimmerman and Elder Winn.  But, we also know that we will get two new, wonderful missionaries to take their place. Our Sister Erickson is teaching a 6 week Astronomy class and it was wonderful.  It was a little bit of a hot mess because the Atwood kids, who are really smart, wanted to answer every question or make continual comments.  More than that we had one lady who asked the most off the wall questions.  Si...