August 2, 2014, Happy 24th Anniversary!

This week we celebrated our 24th Anniversary!  I know it sounds cliche to say that it's hard to believe it's been 24 years, but it has gone by so fast!  If we knew then, what we know now, would we still have gotten married?  Absolutely!  We are even better together now than we were back then.  We have grown in so many good ways, have watched our kids grow up, are so proud of all of them, we have awesome grandkids who we love with all of our hearts, and we are thrilled to be serving a mission together!  It seems to be a culmination of everything we've worked for and shared together over the last 24 years!

To celebrate our anniversary, we headed to the coast of Maine and spent a night at the Cliff House Hotel in Ogunquit.  Nancy and Dale went with us and we had a wonderful time together. We love Maine!  It was everything we dreamed it would be.

 The rocky shoreline is incredible and like no place we have ever been before.  For our anniversary dinner, we had lobster, of course!  It was absolutely perfect!

We ate at the Lobster Shack in Perkins Cove.  It was like something off of a postcard.  The whole place was picture perfect!

Tuesday, we explored the shoreline on the Marginal Way in Ogunquit and then headed a little bit further north to Kennebunkport.

President George Bush Sr. and Barbara's Kennebunkport home.

Lobster Pot Pie at the Kennebunk Inn's restaurant.  It was a dish featured on the TV show, "The Best Thing I Ever Ate"  It was pretty delicious.  Mike and Dale ate that and Nancy and I shared a lobster pizza which was featured in Oprah's magazine, "O".  It was pretty great too! 

Fun signs in Kennebunkport

After exploring some of the shops while the guys relaxed and read in a nearby park, we started back, via the Nubble Light House, Long Sands Beach in York, and a delicious dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Agave in Newberry, Mass.  We had a wonderful anniversary, very special to be celebrating in such a special place and time in our lives.  We are truly blessed in so many ways and are so grateful for all of those blessings!

We got back to work on Wednesday and have had a very busy, and very productive missionary week! Our zone met it's goals for July, so our zone leaders treated us all to crepes for lunch on Wednesday.  We met at the Longfellow Park chapel in Harvard Square and they cooked tons of crepes with strawberries, bananas, fresh whipped cream and nutella.  It was every bit as good as all the crepe birthday dinners we have had at home with our kids over the years.  After lunch, our sweet sisters presented us with this giant card that they had made and which all of our district signed.  We feel so loved and love these great missionaries in return!

The sisters in our district along with our zone leaders

Our awesome anniversary card.

We walked to our zone crepe lunch today!  It was quite a ways, but it really wasn't a bad walk.  It took us about 45 minutes and it was a beautiful walk.  We walked through Harvard Yard and it was beautiful.  Here's the Harvard Library and a statue of Harvard's founder, John Harvard.

 

 It is so awesome being here and living right in Cambridge is an amazing opportunity.  We are learning more and more each day how to navigate the crazy street system and how to ride the trains.  We haven't tried taking the bus yet!  Our GPS has been a lifesaver!  We literally couldn't find our way anywhere without it! 

We have been on a lot of visits this week and have met some amazing people.  Everyone is so receptive to let us come visit and they are some of the most loving, kind people we have had the opportunity to meet. 

Wednesday night was Transfer Meeting at the Boston Stake Center in Weston, Mass.  We got to go and hear the testimonies of 31 departing missionaries.  It was an incredible experience.  They are such amazing young people and in the words of our mission president, they are now "ready to go home and the training wheels come off" as they will now have to live everything they have learned in the mission in the real world.

We were introduced as part of the large group of incoming new missionaries.  It was a thrill to be a part of this great part of God's army!  Thursday, as part of our temple day, we were able to be part of a temple session in which all the departing missionaries were attending.  It was such a bittersweet day for these young people to finish up this incredible experience in their lives.  What a wonderful way and place to spend your last day in the mission field.  It brought tears to my eyes to think that the next day they would be returning to their families all over the world--such a happy day for their moms and dads, siblings and friends to welcome them back! 

Friday was a busy day of visiting and teaching the gospel.  We are getting into the groove of teaching with the younger missionaries and feel like we are able to contribute a lot to their teaching.  It feels absolutely amazing to testify of our Savior, Jesus Christ and to help people come unto Him!  We love it so much!

Today, Saturday, we drove to Farmington, Connecticut, just west of Hartford, and met with 32 other senior missionaries and our mission president and his wife at the Hartford Temple site.  We were given a presentation about the building of this temple that is under way by a senior couple who's full-time assignment is to be at the temple site, to record it's progress, to work with the workers, and to give presentations about the process of building a temple to visitors who come to the site.  Afterwards, we all went to lunch at a nearby restaurant and then had another presentation at Wilford Woodruff's birthplace.  It was a great day!

Elder Tom and Sister Marjean Harris, Elder and Sister Pack.  Mike discovered as we talked to the Pack's that he went to high school with Sister Pack at East High in Salt Lake City.  They live in Los Alamos, NM and know Mike's brother David and his wife, Viera.  Marjean is my brother Pat's wife Kathy's sister--small world indeed! We love these senior missionaries so much!

The future Hartford, CT Temple

It was an amazing week!  It's hard to believe all we are able to cram into one week!  We are busy bees and are so happy as we fall into bed exhausted at the end of every day!  To top off our week, we made a visit this evening to a member and we asked him if there was anyone he knew who we might be able to teach and he said Yes!  He is going to ask him tomorrow if he can come meet with us on Wednesday!  We are thrilled for this potential opportunity and will be praying hard that it works out!

Until next week, have a great week and remember the words of Hannah Moore, "If you can only be good at one thing, be good at smiling!"