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!