3 Month Anniversary: FEED, DRIVE, LEARN AND MIRACLES! 8-27-2017

This week we celebrated our three month anniversary of our mission!

In some ways it seems like so much longer, we have had years of experiences in just these three months!  It seems like we were at the MTC years ago!

 We LOVE being senior missionaries serving  in Coshocton, Ohio and love the members of our branch!  We typically have 25 - 30 people attend church on Sunday and that will include several non members.  

Someone asked us the other day to put into one sentence our mission so far, and we said: Feeding, Driving, Learning and Experiencing  Miracles!  

Feed: We feed a lot of people! We invite people into our home (members and non members) and we help with the after church meal each week, we feed the young missionaries and bring treats to every institute class. For example last week we helped feed or treat about 55 people! 

Drive: We drive  many miles to far reaching areas to find people- we have put on about 9,000 miles on our car in the past three months. We even named our car Buckeye!  The scenery is so lovely, what a beautiful state! Some people don't want to have much to do with us, and then we meet someone who turns out to be someone who might return! 

And of course we love that and it makes the trips so worth it!

Learn: We learn! We thought we were coming on a mission to teach, but we are learning soooo much!  We learn so much and many awesome things as we interact with and watch the lives of the people in our city, branch and mission!  And we learn tons as we prepare and teach our institute class.We tell everyone we teach Bible Study!
 Sometimes our brains get tired!

Miracles: And MIRACLES!  It is amazing to see the Lord's hand manifest itself in the lives of the people that we are working with and also our lives.  

 We just marvel at how we get to watch the unfolding of the Lord's work!.

And it is His work!  So many miracles!

A few photos:

Feed:

Drive:

Learn:

Miracles:

Where We Live - 8-23-2017

ONCE AGAIN WE LIVE ON A GOLF COURSE: We might have told you that we live on what was once the Coshocton Country Club - it closed down five years ago. The other course in town closed last year! We had never walked the old course near our condo until last night - it was spectacular. The grass is high and the bugs are thick, so trekking through the forest wasn't high on our list. But it turned out to be super beautiful with some of the most gorgeous trees ever. Paul saw five deer, a mother raccoon with baby twins, a woodchuck - and a he found three golf balls!

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD AS CONDO CONSTRUCTION BEGAN: This view from Google Earth was taken just as construction began on our condos - We'd guess 2015 or 2016. If you draw a line from the asphalt parking lot to the lower right corner of the photo, our condo would be on the area of bare dirt on the line.  There are now six duplex condo buildings - more to come soon. 

Since our street doesn't exist on GPS yet, our physical location is 925 Cambridge Road. 

OUR HOME IN COSHOCTON: This is a picture of our duplex condo home taken from the realtor's website - we live in the unit on the left. It's perfect for a senior missionary couple: two bedrooms, so we have an office. When we first arrived in Ohio, we lived in a small third-floor apartment over a deli in a 175 year old building. No elevator, no washer/dryer, no dishwasher, garage, etc. - in realtor talk it was very "quaint". So moving to the brand new condo, small as it is, has been a huge blessing. We love the amenities and our neighbors are terrific. We're the only married couple in the entire twelve-unit development - and most of them are older than us! 

BIBLE STUDY GROUP: A couple of months ago, Paul was invited to join an 

inter-denominational Bible Study Group that is held each Wednesday at 7:30 am in a small restaurant in the nearby town of West Lafayette. There are usually about 12 men present, about half of them are the pastor of their congregation. It's a wonderful opportunity to learn about other faiths and try to correct some of the inaccurate views that others have of our faith. So far he has been able to share with them such LDS teachings as "Teaching in the Savior's Way", the LDS concept of the Atonement and Elder Bednar's talk about "The Character of Christ". One of the pastors invited him to join a senior mens' golf league in the same village - that has been a wonderful opportunity to meet new people as there are sixty retired men in the league. Many thanks to Pres. Johnson for advising Paul to bring golf clubs on our mission! 

Summer Mission Activity- 8-22-2017

Yesterday (and Monday) was the annual summer mission activity.  Half of the missionaries come one day and half the next.  President would have to get permission from Salt Lake to have all of the missionaries gather at one time.  He said he might try to do that for Christmas, but will let us know.

The missionaries love these annual gatherings, because they rarely get to see each other except for zone conferences and district meeting, and then it is just part. 

And the purposes of both are so different.

It was so fun to see of these wonderful, quality and wholesome young men and women come together to have some clean fun.  To know that each of them had made the choice and qualified him/herself to be representatives of Jesus Christ and then was called to serve here in Ohio is wonderful.  These are exceptional missionaries and we are so blessed to be able to serve with all of these wonderful people.

Great people, great fun, great food and wonderful memories!  (and some rain!)

President and Sister Stratford are amazing and the missionaries already love them so much, even after just being here six weeks!

 

The Farrers Come to Visit! Aug 18 - 21, 2017 Missionary work + family = LOVE!

Laurel and family are moving to Connecticut and were able to spend  parts of four days with us!  It was wonderful!  We LOVE being missionaries and we LOVE our family, so to have the two come together was absolutely wonderful! 

We had a temple session with all of the senior missionaries and our mission president on Friday afternoon, and that was the time they were arriving, so Laurel, Bret and the kids met us there.  What a fun treat to have them see our beautiful little temple and for us to see them again!  It was like Christmas!

We then headed east and stopped in Newark for dinner (thanks to an Olive Garden gift card) and showed them the mounds. We then continued on to Coshocton and Wally stayed at Rain’s house and then Chris' home both members of our Branch.

We so enjoyed showing off our town, the area, Amish country, seeing the sites, but the thing we enjoyed most was them getting to meet these wonderful members of our branch.  We love these people and talk about them, so it was fun for them to get to see our family (part at least) and then for the Farrers to get to meet all of the branch.  Melia and Cohen raised the attendance at Primary to 5!

Some of the highlights:

JUST BEING TOGETHER!

Attending church together including the dinner afterward

Visiting Roscoe Village, especially the candy shop

Making cookies with grandma and a bird feeder with grandpa

Playing in the park- putting on skits

Going to the Farmer's Market

The Ohio-Erie Canal Boat ride
Pearl Cheese Factory
Melia's Tea Party

Dinner at Der Dutchman

Driving through Amish country and seeing the beautiful farms

Seeing the world’s largest cuckoo clock

They left early Monday morning to finish their journey and what a wonderful weekend we had with them on their way through.  

Thanks again Laurel, Bret, Melia and Cohen (and Wally) for coming to see us!

Any and all are welcome to visit!!