We Get To Do So Many Interesting Things in the Lord's Service! 8-6-2017

We get to do so many interesting and different things!

In the past ten or so days we have been blessed by many different ways to serve and learn, it seems each day is a new adventure in the Lord's service here in Ohio!

We had the opportunity to attend a community play that was directed and produced by two members of our branch.  What we didn’t know until we got there that there were children in the play that we had been praying to meet and their parents. What a miracle!  We had several prayers miraculously answered that evening!

Our young elders wanted to see the Earthworks Mounds in Newark - there are lots of mounds in the area, these are just some of them.  So for their P-day they got permission and we got to take them to Newark about 40 miles away.  That was a fun experience for them and we shared with them what we had learned several weeks ago when studying Alma 49 and 50, about fortifying the cities by creating mounds of dirt and breastworks on top of them. A neat experience to read those chapters while we were there!

Our branch president and his wife have a big big garden and feed many of the people in our branch from that garden, and we and the young elders went one day to dig potatoes to thelp them with their harvest. Something we had never done, but it was fun to do!  President and Sister Welker do so much for the branch and missionaries, it was fun to be of service to them! He is the one that raises “therapy ducks” to help him with his PTSD and I even got to hold one of his pets- Big Bird. Fun!

We got to have a very special evening with our new mission president and his wife with all of the senior couples in the mission.  We had had a similar evening with President and Sister Daines before they left, and it was suggested that we have one with President and Sister Stratford.  What a blessing it was for us to get to know them better and to fellowship and learn from the other senior couples.  We have such a different job from the young missionaries and even from each other, so it was great to share stories and missionary tips!

We were able to go pick up a food order for a widow in our branch, and it was so interesting to see how the welfare system is administered here in the mission field.  The branch president filled out the order several weeks ago and submitted it (online) to the storehouse somewhere near Columbus.  We came at the specified time to the church location (about 30 miles away) and they had a little devotional there in the parking lot of the church, then they unloaded the commodities that had been ordered, and we loaded them in our car and drove away and they drove away.  Very cool!

But the most interesting thing is that we got to attend a “Firestarter” with a dear friend and neighbor that we met while living in Roscoe Village.  She invited us to attend this fellowshipping evening with her and several friends from her church and their pastor and his wife.  It was held at a boutique bed and breakfast called the Apple Butter Inn.  We had dinner and then relocated to the parlor where the Pastor and his wife, who have beautiful voices sang and led us in singing and prayer.  The evening was about 3 hours and it was a very sweet experience.  We were impressed with their sincerity and effort to follow the Savior.  We made some comments and were very welcomed.  They told us how brave we were to come, but it was them that had to be brave to invite two Mormon Missionaries to attend! We learned so much how other people pray and worship.  After the evening we compared it with institute that we teach and were reminded how important it is to give an invitation to act to those who we teach, what is it that we want to have happen in the lives of those we teach.  It was a great learning experience for us and a very nice evening.

We also helped serve at a community meals church this last Thursday at the Presbyterian Church.  We love doing those and we provide a great service and people are so appreciative of what we do.  In fact, when we walked in this time, they said, “we were just talking about you”.  There are so many great people in this community! Our job is to meet as many of them as we can and introduce them to the church and show them what Mormons are like who enjoy living the Gospel.

Teaching institute continues to be a wonderful blessing and challenge. We are not only teaching New Testament, it is a chance for us to Teach In the Savior’s Way and practice what we have been teaching others to do for the past five years, but also show the members of the Branch the blessings of learning and teaching this way. It is not yet an official calling, but the branch president has asked that Sister Blanchard kind of be the lead on these lessons until the stake calls someone.  We both teach and share and we enjoy doing it together.

We also provided the meal after church today to give our branch president’s wife the day of- she has provided this meal for a long time!  We brought a potato bar, salad, oatmeal cake and cornbread.  We also had invited a nonmember to come just for dinner and she was so helpful, we would love to have her attend all the time! 

And we had 32 at church today, wahoo!

The thing that we are learning more than anything is that the Lord is in charge of His church and His missionary program.  We are seeing miracles and the Lords hand every day in our lives.  We get to meet people and have experiences that are absolutely not in our planning, but are orchestrated by the Lord.  Our job is to be worthy to listen to the spirit and then obey the promptings we receive.  As Sister Beck said a few years ago:” The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.”  We can certainly bear testimony to that!