Moore Fun In Colorado: July 21, 2014 Week 1 of our Mission!

We finished our first week in the mission field! It has been an awesome week full of learning, teaching and adventure!

Learning—we went to an all day new missionary training on Wednesday and got a lot of great instruction from the Assistants, the President, his wife, and the mission nurse. The AP’s taught us a lot about the importance of planning and praying. As part of that, they taught how important it is to identify people who are most likely to receive our message and to look for people who have had some prior exposure to the church, for example, a church friend, they’ve been taught before, they’ve been to church, any kind of previous experiences with the church.

President Packard taught us about his idea of having our mission be a “Zion” mission. He gave a lot of scriptures about what that means; Mos. 18:21, D&C 88:124, D&C 105:5-6, and 4 Nephi 1:13,15. He asked each of us to go into the Celestial Room in the Temple and make a promise to the Lord of something that we can do to consecrate our mission to the Lord. Both Dad and I did that and we will let you know how that goes!

He taught that our 1^st priority is to our companion! That was for all the missionaries, not just the married senior ones. Our companion is more important than the work and our companion is the work. We need to work in unity and be in tune with the Spirit. He said, “we have differences that make us great together, we are in a safe place here and we are building Zion here!” He said to be one in purpose in everything—No Holding Back!

Sister Packard talked a lot about adjusting to missionary life. She said that STRESS is normal and we can all learn to deal with it, by understanding what’s normal, by accepting that it is normal and by living the principle shared in Alma 26:27, “keep going and the Lord will give you success!” For every negative thing, think of 10 positive ones!

It was all very helpful and we enjoyed it very much. After the training, which was at the chapel next to the temple, we all went to a session together, that is, the young missionaries (17 Sisters and 15 Elders) and Dad and I! We were the only couple in the session and so we got to be the witness couple. It was so awesome. There’s another (third) new movie and it was I think the first day showing it, so it was extra special being there and being with all those wonderful young people! I thought about our family so much and just felt so happy! We have a great big eternal family and we are so blessed by that!

We have been to dinner 3 times this week with the sisters at member’s houses in our ward. We are getting to know the members and it has been a lot of fun! There are a ton of Harvard Grad students in our ward with cute little families so there are tons of babies for me to love! The mission president told me I can hold as many babies as I want to!! I was so happy to hear that!

Teaching—we got to help the sisters teach members various lessons on our visits and had each of them make commitments to do certain things. Then yesterday, we visited a less active lady and her non-member husband and we actually got to teach him about the Book of Mormon and asked him what was keeping him from being baptized and he committed to writing down pro’s and con’s to being baptized and will let us know what he came up with on our next meeting. He has been an investigator for a while, but hopefully next Saturday, he will jump from the investigator pool into the baptism pool!

Adventures—we went kayaking in the Charles River yesterday which is the big river that divides the downtown Boston area and Cambridge. It was a blast! We also have tried some new restaurants like the Dumpling House. Not as good as NYC, but it was pretty good. I have a goal to not go to chains, but last night we already broke down and ate at Cheesecake Factory, which we can walk to from our apartment!

Nancy and Dale and our Sisters came to dinner last night. They were our first dinner party in our new apartment! It turned out great; pot roast, veggies, salad, rolls, and strawberries, hot fudge and Friendly's Ice Cream for dessert!

We were set apart and trained as Temple Ordinance Workers this week as well and worked on Thursday from 11-5 at the Boston Temple! It was so wonderful and we will be doing that every Thursday while we are here. That’s something we will be able to do at home and are especially looking forward to working at the Ft. Collins Temple when it is done!

Yesterday, we went to the Portuguese Branch Sunday School (Gospel Essentials class). They meet in our building at the same time as us so we think we will start doing that on most Sundays. It was so sweet! They have Portuguese sister missionaries and one of them translated for me. Mike understood most of it. The Spirit in the class was amazing and we loved being there!

Here are a few more pictures of our week: