Making Many More Missionary Memories! January 28, 2018

We have been busy!  With the onset of winter weather, we thought that things might slow down, but we just keep having new and different missionary experiences!

We had a wonderful zone conference where our young missionaries were issued smart phones and trained on how to use them for their missionary work.  Lots of guidelines but so many opportunities for sharing the gospel!

We had 2 great institute lessons these past two weeks 1) on the price of discipleship and 2) things lost and found: coins, sheep and sons.  We love teaching in the Savior’s way and learn so much from these wonderful members of our branch! We have several non-members attend and that brings a wonderful perspective to our learning together! 

We used to call the learning format “Share Learn Live and now we have followed the new RS and Priesthood direction of “Share Learn and Act”.

We got to attend the temple and even took a family name that was suggested to us on Family Search!  Yea for Family Search!

We have had many lessons with the sister missionaries over these past weeks.  They often teach in our home and that is fun to help them teach some of the lesson and bear our testimonies. We also provide the treats or dinner and it makes for a nice hour.  They are so obedient, one hour for a meal and one hour for a lesson, and then they are off again to teach another discussion. They are teaching all the time!  

When schedule permits, Sister Blanchard continues to serve at the Thursday community meals at the various churches in Coshocton throughout the month.  This past week, the second Thursday, was at the Grade Methodist Church and they are getting to know her there, she loves these wonderful groups of people!

When people in the community saw Sisters Hall and Humpherys article in the Beacon, the local free newspaper, the sisters got a phone call asking Sister Hall (BYU tennis player) to play with a group of women for a few weeks at Kids America, our local gym while one of their team members was out of the country.  And then Sister Humpheries (U of SF soccer player) was asked to help coach a youth league on Monday evenings.  After getting permission from our mission president, they went to both last week, and it was great exposure for the church, and the sisters were fabulous! Typically missionaries are not allowed to go to gyms.

A really fun thing is that Dustin Klein, one of our favorite people that we have met here in Coshocton  (and his family)  who works for Hathaway construction has invited us to watch a project he is doing. He and his team are just finishing up adding a planetarium to the high school.  Dustin has invited us up multiple times to watch the progress while they have been doing the remodel of the high school and installation of the planetarium equipment.  He has done a marvelous job and it has been fun to see the progress.  Plus we have been able to have some great discussions with him about his family. This past week the project was finished and he texted us to come and see the final product, and it is incredible!  We even got to see part of one of the shows, it is totally Imax quality! They will open it up for public shows probably this summer.

Dustin and Amanda also invited us to watch their daughters’ dance at the local high school basketball game half time performances.  That has been a very fun thing and we went two weeks, once with the sister missionaries and once with President and Becky Jacobs, who are their aunt and uncle. We even got to meet Amanda’s mother, the woman who runs the domestic abuse shelter and for whom we did the service project at Christmas.  She was wonderful, and invited Sister Blanchard to go to lunch with her sometime!  

That was a huge step!

We had another baptism today, an 8 year old child of the Chad and Heather Stokey family who are from the New Philadelphia Ward, that will now be attending our branch.  And how blessed we are to have them! A miracle happened today with little Lucas.  He was very sick and we were not sure if he would be able to be baptized, but he wanted to be baptized and we had all prayed that he would be well enough.  Last night he rallied and said that he would be baptized, and then he woke up with a low fever, but still was determined.  When they got to church today (he and his mom came late so he could rest) he was still sick, but was given a priesthood blessing by Elder Blanchard, who had a remarkable experience.  During the blessing, he felt impressed to bless him to be healed immediately and he did so.  The photos of him show how well he felt and what a miracle it was for him to remember on his baptismal date! It reminded us of our son Gregg who had had a very bad allergic reaction to something and his eyes were swollen shut the day before he was scheduled to be baptized, and because of a Priesthood blessing, was able to be baptized as scheduled!

We had a linger longer after church and fed about 45 people!  We do much less cooking than we used to (thankfully), because President Jacobs has now done away with all Linger Longers, except for special occasions, and this was a very special occasion.  Not only has the time we spent cooking gone down, but so has our grocery bill!  No complaints there!

We had a miracle happen today! We have several families and people that we are praying for and decided to have a branch presidency and missionary fast.  One of the people that we fasted for was Susan that she can have more learning opportunities, and help with overcoming some of her trials.  Well tonight she stopped by to pick up the plate of dinner that we made for her at the linger longer and she told us that just today, she looked at her schedule and one of her ladies that she gives care to was completely changed, and now she had Sundays free!  She can come to church!  She has never been able to do that until today.  And we told her that this was because of our fast!! Now we have to pray that she will sell her car so that she can catch up on her bills that she will have because of not having this client.

In our branch council, President Jacobs has helped us create a branch statement that we will add to the two standards of the stake.

So besides daily:

1-      Have meaningful prayer morning and night

2-      Read the Book of Mormon daily

We will add a third standard:

3-      Pray for, recognize and act on missionary opportunities! 

This is what our branch needs to grow, it sounds wonderful!

We love our mission, in February, we will be half finished, and it is just flying by!  We love being able to serve as missionaries and pray that we can be and do what the Lord wants and needs here in Coshocton!

Tom Baptism: January 20, 2018

Last night we had a baptism in our branch!  Brother Tom  was baptized after investigating the church for 7 years! Many sets of Elders had taught him and had many discussions, but our Sister Hall and Sister Humpheries invited and retaught and he decided that now was the time.  It was a wonderful evening, and 57 people attended, including many of the elders that had taught him.

He had to make some real sacrifices to be baptized, including chewing tobacco, but he was all smiles yesterday and today when he was confirmed a member of the church and given the gift of the Holy Ghost and a blessing.

It took Paul 8 hours to fill the font because the hot water heater is so small and the font so big, but he had plenty of work to do prepare the building for the evening.  He shoveled snow and cleaned and set up chairs.
Paul conducted and spoke and Kim did the refreshments, program and invitation.

It was fun to see the support that the branch and visitors gave him. 

It was a wonderful evening and the smile on his face was priceless.  He said he felt that a burden had been lifted off of his shoulder and he felt so light.

That is one of the incredible the blessing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! 

Wow, Time is Flying! Next Week is our 8 month Anniversary! First Two Weeks of 2018 1-14-2018

Wow, two weeks into the new year! How time flies!

We were saddened to have the passing of President Monson on January 2^nd.  We enjoyed watching President Monson’s funeral, it was a beautiful service! He was an incredible man and what a legacy of service that he leaves.  For our invitation to act the other day for our institute class, we invited each member of the class to do one service for one person each day, and then anonymously they wrote about what they did in their journals.

We look forward this Tuesday to hearing the announcement that President Nelson will make announcing the new Prophet.  We love him so much and already feel that he is the Prophet! 

How blessed we are to have living prophets today to lead and guide us!

For New Years Eve we went to the Jacobs’ with the Pearce’s (the new branch presidency and wives)  and had a fun dinner and played Trains, a new game that was a lot of fun!  Paul made gumbo, and Becky made ham loaf, macaroni and cheese and Missy brought dessert. Sisters Hall and Humpherys were able to come for a bit and they are always delightful.  We had a very nice evening! We got into bed long before midnight, which was also a fun New Years Eve treat!

We are now experiencing winter!  Two nights ago we had from 6 – 8 inches of snow and  freezing rain, and it is cold!  The first two weeks of the month were soooo cold, below zero many mornings, and with the wind chill, it made it feel so much colder!  I wear my thermal garments, a long sleeved t-shirt, wool tights and layers above that. Thank heavens that we have our new car with heated seats, what a blessing! And we also do not have to be out in it like the young missionaries, another blessing!  It would be a huge motivating factor to make teaching appointments if we had to be out tracting! 

Our sister missionaries, Sister Hall and Sister Humpheries continue to amaze and astound.  They are meeting the standards of excellence every week and then beyond, which is 5 new investigators, 2 people at church and a person preparing for baptism. They have only knocked on 5 doors in the month that they have been here, and are teaching all of the time! Tom Janicki is on date to be baptized this next weekend and he passed his interview today and it is wonderful to see the light that has come into his life! He has been studying the church for years with many sets of Elders, and is finally giving up his chewing tobacco and making the commitment to follow the Lord into the waters of baptism. This is exciting!

The Sister Missionaries here have really changed out missionary work!  We are so much more involved with them and do a lot with them.  They, of course, cannot teach a single man without a third female present, so often both of us with go with them or they will bring their investigators here for a discussion.  And they are teaching all the time!  Often we will have one to three appointments with them each day! We can’t do all of them because we have so much of our own work to do, but they keep us hopping! We also give rides to them and their investigators, feed them, arrange for all of their meals with branch members, and even yesterday we went with them to an appointment to teach a single fellow. Even though it was very cold and very snowy, he said that the people in his home were “not believers” and that we could just take a walk while the sister taught him, it was incredible.  We got to snap a few photos during this discussion, which was fabulous, but quite cold! Had we known we would be outside the whole time, we would have bundled up even more!

We have been helping Vickie Arnold and Rachel Daily move, and it has been a mess for them.  We went on the 4th and helped pack boxes and boxes.  Then this past Wednesday, we went and helped load the U-Haul truck with all of the boxes that we packed.  They had hired a company to come and move the heavy items and the furniture, but the company backed out, so they are still in two places, here and Mansfield, which is a mess.  They asked us to pray for them and we certainly will.  We had arranged with the senior missionaries, the Prices, to have a crew in Mansfield on Thursday evening when the truck we had loaded arrived and it was a great crew.  They had it all done in about an hour!  Two sets of missionaries, one sisters and one elders, plus the RS presidency and a member of the bishopric, so that was a great way for them to be introduced into the ward in Mansfield, plus the church is just about 5 minutes away! Wahoo!

We continue to teach our institute class, and we love it. We get to choose which lessons and how fast we cover the material, so we are going very slowly and with lots of participation and discussion.  Last week’s lesson was on the Sabbath.

 We finished with the self-reliance class at the end of December and that was as incredible program.  We have offered to any and all in our group, any remediation that they would like to help them along.
Our sister missionaries had their pictures in the paper, and now both have been invited because of their athletic abilities to help at Kids America! We got permission from our mission president for Sister Humpherys to coach kid's soccer on Monday nights for 6 weeks, and Sister Hall to help with a women's league for a few weeks. The Lord works in many ways to let people know that the Church has sent missionaries to Coshocton!

We cannot believe that in just one month our mission will be half over!  It just has been such an incredible experience!  Each day is a new and exciting adventure! We love the Lord and appreciate the opportunity to serve Him as missionaries! What a blessing it has been to us and hopefully the people in our Coshocton branch and community!

 

Sisters Hall and Humpherys Featured in the Beacon! 1-10-2018

We were surprised with the response that we got when we submitted an article about us in our local Coshocton Beacon Newspaper, so when the sisters came we decided to do the same thing!  The response in just three days has been great!  One person has called Sister Hall to ask her to be a substitute teacher for her tennis class, and the other local newspaper has called to ask if they can interview the four of us next Tuesday for their paper!  One thing about this close community is that everyone reads the paper!  

Fabulous!