"To the Ohio" Paul and Kim Blanchard's Mission Blog: Another Interesting Week! But Then Again This Happens Every 7 Days! 7-13-2017

7-13-2017

Yes, another fun filled and varied week for Elder and Sister Blanchard!

Once again our week has been full of many blessings, miracles and manifestations of the hand of the Lord in our missionary service here in Ohio! How blessed we are to be a part of such an amazing work! We LOVE being missionaries and doing it together!!

We have the most diverse and amazing experiences!

To just name the highlights:

Our fabulous Elder Robison was transferred and made a District Leader and so we drove to Columbus for transfers. This is a HUGE transfer with all of the newly graduated high school kids now coming on their missions. It is so well organized and orchestrated, it is an impressive event!. There are different instructions for those who will be trainers, for those going home and the new missionaries who just arrived. The parking lot and chapel are a buzz of activity. In the gym are all the bikes and luggage and supplies for each new missionary with his/her name on them. In the RS room is training for all incoming missionaries about their cards, their insurance and their cars. Then the trainers and new missionaries meet each other in the chapel and is is a very spiritual meeting. They the brand new missionaries are taken to the campus of Ohio State where they begin contacting immediately! It is very impressive!

Here a portion of the instructions:

Thursday (Transfer Day)-

If you or your companion are being transferred, you will both need to be at the Dublin Chapel by 10:00 Thursday morning unless instructed otherwise. Remember, you are not authorized to drive into transfers so be sure to have a ride. Attached is a map where each zone will be meeting in the parking lot. Zone leaders will be there to help you find your way, therefore you can separate from your former companion when you get to your new zone and wait for your new companion. Once you have found your new companion, you are not allowed to mingle in other zone sections or in the parking lot. Return to your area and get to work!Transfers are always an exciting time in the mission as we receive new missionaries from the MTC and experience fresh companionships and assignments.

We look forward to another transfer together in the Great OCM (Ohio Columbus Mission)!

We met Elder LaFleur a wonderful Elder that had been serving in Cambridge and is a fit already in our branch!

While there I got to see the two young women who are from our stake serving in our mission, Sister Suzette Hansen and Sister Linsey Bennett, and what a treat to get to visit with them. They were both just bubbling over with enthusiasm for their missions and glowing with the spirit! So fun to see them!

The photo of the little yellow car is owned by a member in our Branch that we love to visit. The car is called a King Midget and they were made for a while in Athens Ohio. We are thrilled that Jim has been attending church the past four weeks!

We helped a widow in our ward with her raking and used the greatest tools! Giant mitts with claws on the end!

For Relief Society Enrichment this month, our RS visited the Johnson Humbrickhouse Museum in Roscoe Village and had a fun time together. But of most interest are two stones displayed there called the Holy Stones that were found in Newark about 35 miles away and have an interesting history!

From the Website:

The Set of Controversial Stone artifacts discovered in the 1860's

The Newark Holy Stones refer to a set of artifacts allegedly discovered by David Wyrick in 1860 within a cluster of ancient Indian burial mounds near Newark, Ohio. The set consists of the Keystone, a stone bowl, and the Decalogue with its sandstone box. The site where the objects were found is known as the Newark Earthworks, one of the biggest collections from an ancient American Indian culture known as the Hopewell that existed from approximately 100 BC to AD 500.

The first of these artifacts, popularly known as the Keystone due to its shape, was excavated in June 1860. Unlike other ancient artifacts found previously in this region, the Keystone was inscribed with Hebrew. It contains one phrase on each side:

• Holy of Holies

• King of the Earth

• The Law of God

• The Word of God

The second find came later in November 1860 when Wyrick and his excavation team came across a sandstone box which contained a small, black limestone rock within (the type of rock was identified by geologists Dave Hawkins and Ken Bork of Denison University). This rock was carved with post-Exilic square Hebrew letters on all sides translated to be a condensed version of the Ten Commandments. The name Decalogue Stone, comes from the translation of the Hebrew letters that outline the religious and moral codes described in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, which refer to the Decalogue or Ten Commandments.

We also had been asked to organize the library in our church, which is about the size of a large closet. The materials in there had not been sorted for a long time for example (the YW theme posters didn’t include the value of virtue) and we cleaned, sorted, organized and labeled. It looks wonderful now!

Elder Blanchard attended the men’s Bible Study on Wednesday morning and had a wonderful experience. This group is a gathering of about 10 men, some preachers that discuss the Bible. Elder Blanchard shared with them about Teaching in the Savior’s Way and they were so interested. They said that they are having a hard time reaching their youth because they are not engaged. Cool!

We taught institute on Wednesday evening again this week, and we are both learning so much! Our Branch president has asked that Sister Blanchard kind of lead out with institute abut both Elder and Sister Blanchard teach. Since we are studying New Testament, we tell people that we meet in town that we teach Bible study. It has been a wonderful experience and what a blessing to have the chance to “Teach in the Saviors Way”!

We also went to two community events, the Elks Fish Fry again, and met some wonderful people, including the former mayor of Coshocton. One of our two main goals is to meet as many people as we can and tell them that there is an LDS church in town and put a good first impression for those being introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Such great people attend that dinner- the ideal people we want to target! And the food is fabulous! We will certainly keep attending that.

On Thursday we attended the “Taste of Coshocton” which was very fun with all of the restaurants around offering samples of all of their food. We enjoyed ourselves, but it was hard to meet too many people because of the loud music. But a member of our branch was the MC for the evening so that was nice to see and support him. He is very involved in the community and so it is nice to let people know that he (and we) are members of our church, so few people know that there is a Mormon church in town.

On Saturday we had a very fun event, we will create a separate post about that, but it was the Water Games and Picnic. And 14 nonmembers attended! Wahoo!

We also invited a mother and son to our home for dinner that night, she has been investigating the church for about a year, but moved away to Zanesville, about a half hour away. But she came back for the water party, but we hosted them for dinner before taking her and her son Shane home.

And one of the biggest highlights of the week was an almost hour long visit with a Mennonite family. We had gone on a little date out for Witt’s frozen custard (YUM!) and a couple and their daughter, who we thought were Amish were sitting outside when we went to sit outside as well. We were the only ones out on the patio and we got to visit with them for a long time. They asked us where we were from and it just went on from there. We learned so much and they were so nice! They dressed as Amish, but drove a car and they own a huge chicken farm where they use electricity. Gerber is a brand of chicken sold here that is Amish grown without antibiotics and hormones and they are one of their famers, with almost 90,000 chickens in their barns. We were so impressed with Ruben, Esther and Megan Troyer! They have four children and she and I chatted about their home life, their garden, kids, how they met and what a wedding is like and Paul and Ruben talked about their business and farms. It was such a wonderful evening. We gave them some of our jerky and our contact info and hope to go visit them sometime.

We are learning that each of us has a fragile testimony and that we must constantly be working hard to maintain that testimony to move forward toward the Savior. As MLS missionaries (member leadership support) we work with active, semi active, non-attending and potential members of the church to help in any way we can. Having been young missionaries and now senior missionaries we can see the value of both, and what a different job we each do. As Elder Blanchard calls it “we are in business development and they are in sales”. We love being senior missionaries, we help our young elders and they help us. It is a win win all the way!