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...

 We had a totally fun week with family here.  Adam and Kristen and their three kids came and spent a week with us.  We about ran their legs off.  There is a lot to see here in New York but it's a lot of time in the car.  We had a blast learning about the Maple Sugar industry on New York Maple Weekend. We tasted incredible maple cotton candy and yummy maple cream.  The maple syrup is delish!  We also had such a great time in Lake Placid.  While we were at the ski jumping venue, they started jumping and we had the chance to watch.  It was pretty incredible.  They are so brave to jump at such heights and they nailed the landing every time.  We also ran to Mt. Van Havenberg to see the bobsled run.  Well, guess what? They were running bobsleds as well.  We watched several bobsled and skeleton runs.  It was so cool.  We also went on a horse-drawn sleigh ride in Paul Smith's and had such a great time. We loved visiting ...

We are seeing miracles all around us.  The hand of the Lord is ever present with His missionaries.  There are some lows, of course, but there are some beautiful things happening.  The most incredible thing is to tell you about Robert.  Have you ever watched a person's countenance completely change in front of your eyes?  I would say that is Robert. I especially noticed it in the last couple of days.  Not that he was dark but maybe heavy in spirit.  His face is almost glowing.  Not only has he agreed to let his little girl be baptized with her mother, he has been asking more and more questions and we have loved teaching him with the Sisters.  We have covered quite a bit in a very short time.  On Sunday, after church, he texted all of us and said that they are thinking of moving to Utah.  Wait! What?  He asked where we all lived and where they should look. We told them that Utah is way more expensive for housing than New York, bu...

 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 hi...