Sunday, August 10, 2014

Another busy and fun week in the Massachusetts Boston Mission!  We had some people over for dinner on Sunday evening along with our sister missionaries, Sister Scott and Sister Roy. We are really getting to know our ward quickly and the members here are being very receptive to missionary work and sharing the gospel with their friends and family members.  They invite all four of us to dinner and they are super good about greeting visitors and investigators at church.  We are very blessed to have such amazing people to work with!

We had a fun p-day adventure of whale watching with Nancy and Dale.  We had a fun ride out to sea and saw two Humpback whales.  They are in a nature reserve out in the ocean and apparently are seen enough that they have names; North Star and Hippocampus.  They surfaced several times while we were out there so it was pretty exciting.  We had hoped to see a lot more, but were happy that we got to at least see two!

After our whale watching excursion, we went to eat at another "Diner's Drive In's and Dive's" restaurant in downtown Boston called Sam LaGrassa's.  Nancy, Dale and I ordered their sandwich that was featured on the show, the Chipotle Pastrami.  It did not disappoint.  It was actually incredibly delicious! Mike got a delicious roast beef sandwich and loved it as well.

That evening we had a dinner and FHE with all of the temple workers at the home of one of the temple presidency members in Belmont, just down the street from the temple.  It was so nice to be with all of those wonderful people.  We all brought food to share and afterwards we had a nice discussion on pioneers and several people told beautiful stories about their pioneer ancestors.  It is truly a blessing to be a part of such a great group of people.  We learned a lot about their lives and their families.  One of the temple presidency members and his wife have been on 13 missions!  Incredible people!

We had a busy week of teaching a lot of people with the sisters.  We have several new investigators and we even set a baptism date!  We are thrilled to see how the Lord is preparing people to be taught the gospel and we are finding them here in the Cambridge 1st Ward.  Missionary work is awesome!

On Friday we had our zone meeting and our zone leaders, Elder Butters and Elder Kerr, made us German pancakes.  They turned out delicious!  Our zone is incredible and everyone works hard and is having a lot of great success.  

Elder Butters and Elder Kerr whipping up some German pancake batter.

Elder Welker and our district leader, Elder Santiago.  They are in the Cambridge 2nd Ward and are also the Haitian/Creole Elders.

Our digital Elders and our Chinese Branch Sisters!

Sister and Elder Foote and Elder and Sister Moore.  Sister Foote and I helped with the pancakes.  The younger missionaries are so appreciative of everything we do.  They really make us feel loved and needed.

 

This young lady calls herself the Whistling Cowgirl.  She is amazing and during one of our breaks she whistled for us.  It was pretty incredible.

Sister Kleuker accompanied us in singing "I am a Child of God."

I spoke in church today!  The topic was JOY!  One of my very favorite subjects!  I wrote my talk this week and then this morning I felt like I should revise it a lot so I did (after some resistance, I gave into the Spirit and did as I was prompted!) I revised it a lot and then at church I had to revise it again as I was the last speaker of 3 adult speakers, and I was left with only about 7 minutes to give a 15 minute talk.  I truly had to cut it in more than half!  The Spirit was so strong and I was able to share what the Lord wanted me to share.  I made up an acronym for JOY--Jesus, Others, You.  I talked about how we love Jesus and worship Him and through Him all things are possible and we experience our true joy through Him.  I talked about how His whole life was centered on serving others which brings us to Others.  We experience true joy when we are serving others.  I told them about our flood and although it was horrible, there was great joy in serving our neighbors and getting to know and love them.  Finally, I talked about You or each of us and that we are all literally children of our Heavenly Father with divine qualities and gifts that He has given us and that we should rejoice in that.  We should enjoy the things that bring us joy.  I shared some of the things that bring me joy, like babies, green grass and blue sky, campfires and s'mores, water (ocean, creeks, rivers, ponds, lakes), my family, my faith, and my Savior.  I said that we should strive to be optimists and have positive attitudes because life can be messy and hard, but even so, we can find joy every day if we try to! 

I shared the following quotes:
President Hinckley said, "Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured."

President Monson said, "Find Joy in the journey now.  Don't let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do."  Let us relish life as we live it and share our love with friends and family.  One day each of us will run out of tomorrows."

It was another wonderful week in the mission field!  We are looking forward to all that this next week has in store for us!  We hope that this coming week brings much Joy to all of you!