April 22, 2012

Two weeks have passed since my last post! Hard to believe how time flies here in New Hampshire. Last week we made a bed run to Vermont. It is amazing how these missionaries hardly ever complain about their circumstances. Don't misunderstand--they are not living in squalor or poverty, but when their beds are sagging and ready to fall down, they don't complain. Elder Benjamin sent out a letter to each missionary so that they could tell him what condition their bed is in. So, we went to Lebanon and Hannover, Vermont and also Randolph, New Hampshire. It was a great trip in the "Moose" pulling the trailer, and the weather was wonderful. The Elders in Randolph even sent US home with a bag of home-baked chocolate chip cookies! This week Elder Benjamin will be making a bed run to Machias, Maine. It is the farthest area out--5 hour and 41 minutes each way. He is going by himself and going to listen to General Conference tapes for 11 hours. I want to go, but I'll have to check out my calendar first. I have a lot of things on it to get ready for transfers next Tuesday, May 1st. This will be our second transfers, and we are using all the notes from our first one to be able to have this second one run smoothly. More about that whole process after we go through it next week. Friday evening of this last week we visited an investigator (Colleen) and her 11-year old son, Dylan, with the sister missionaries and the elders in the same area. She is a single mom, and as most 11-year old boys, Dylan has an attitude! He and his mom banter back and forth (maybe banter is a more polite word!) The sister missionaries were trying to get him to commit to writing in a Gratitude notebook every night before he goes to sleep. He wasn't having anything to do with that, so one of the elders tried to get him to understand what gratitude is all about as it relates to Dylan loaning out his football to the neighbor guy who came over during dinner. I think that Dylan sort of got it okay. Everyone was surprised that, when Elder Benjamin and I were getting ready to leave, Dylan came up to me and hugged me. His mom was dumbfounded! I told him that all of my grandkids call me Grammie and he seemed to like that. I don't know yet if he has a Grammie close by, but he softened up a little anyway. Colleen has a roommate with 2 little kids and while Colleen was taking the lessons, Debra would sit in on them. Well, Debra got baptized last December and Colleen has not yet. She's getting close though. She has a wonderful testimony and I feel confident that she will be baptized soon. Elder and Sister Davis live down the hall from us and we are always taking food back and forth. They went on a trip up the coast of Maine yesterday and came back with some dark chocolate orange sticks (one of my favs) for me. Today they are getting bread pudding from us. While were were on our Vermont bed run, we stopped at President Goodrich's Maple Farm in Cabot, Vermont. He is the second counselor in the Mission Presidency. His family has owned and run the Maple Farm since 1840. They have over 43,000 maple trees and a tiny store where we bought grade A pure Vermont maple syrup from them. I bought the little maple syrup cookbook from them as well. And that is where the recipe for the bread pudding came from. They sell Maple Cream (Spreadable Fudge) too, but they were totally out. Sister Goodrich cooks it up herself and puts it in jars. Since they were out, she is going to make some up and send it to the office. I'm so excited about that. Sister Davis got some a couple of weeks ago and loves it on her toast every morning. The bishop called us in after church today to get to know us better. We thought he would ask us to speak in church, but no luck. He's very new so I'm sure he will get around to asking us one of these days. We are getting to know the members a little bit now. Relief Society is great! I love sitting with the other old sisters. They are fun and so full of wisdom. I may have to adopt a couple of them. My monitor went dead today, so Elder Benjamin hooked up Elder and Sister Hymas' Philips 22-inch television flat-screen and it works okay. We are going to make a trip to Costco at the end of the week for all the supplies and food for transfers, so we will pick up a better one for me then. We are missing all of our children and grandchildren terribly, but we know that this is where Heavenly Father wants us now at this time of our lives. We have been very worried about Cèlin's illness and pray for her every day. I chatted with her today and she says she is getting a little bit better every day. But, she has still missed 6 weeks of school so far and won't be going this week either. She hopes to go half time next week. Let's all pray for her that she will get well and be able to return to her normal (?) quirky self!!!! More next time, Love, Mom/Dad/Grammie/Poppy/Sister/Elder/Karen/Mike/Aunt/Uncle