Monday, September 22, 2014, Mark's Baptism and Rockport, MA

Happy Fall y'all! We are in the best place in the world to experience the beauty of the Fall!  The leaves are just starting to change and in about 2-3 weeks the whole place is going to be a blaze of color!  There are so many trees here it's incredible. We are truly blessed to be here for this magnificent season!

 Another busy week for us!  We taught lessons, we had our first baptism, we set a baptism date for Kyle, we had a perfect p-day eating lobster and finding the best beach to walk along and relax at, the temple was amazing as always, we had visitors from home, we had a fantastic zone conference that lasted 10 hours!, we went on a historic home tour with Nancy and Dale, we taught our marriage class, had another perfect p-day today and did many more missionary things!!  It seems like we are getting busier and busier as the weeks go by and we are becoming more known and more integrated into the "fabric" of our ward and stake and mission.

Mark Anthony DiLaura's Baptism, September 21, 2014

 What a wonderful  Baptism day yesterday was for Mark.  It was a beautiful baptism service and he even bore his testimony at the end.  The Spirit was really strong and we all felt it.  The room was filled and the people in the Arlington Ward will take good care of him in welcoming him into the ward and the church.  All the people in this picture helped teach him over the last five months.  He's been waiting his whole life to become a member of the church.  He asked Elder Moore to baptize him so that was a really special opportunity for him.  I mentioned it in a previous post, but Mark likes to call Mike and I, Mr. and Mrs. Mormon!  It's awesome and we love it!

Pictured above are; back row: Sister Scott, Elder Butters, Elder Moore, Mark, Sister Moore
front row:  Sister Roy, Elder Lefthand, and Elder Kerr

Here are our zone leaders holding tight onto the Iron Rod!

So we have two p-days to report on.  Our p-day last week ended up being on Wednesday and we went about an hour north up the coast to a little town called Rockport, MA.  We wandered around a bit and ate lobster at Roy Moore's Lobster Shack.  It was a lot of fun and delicious!

Rockport, Massachusetts

After exploring the town a bit, we headed out in search of a lighthouse, which we never could find because it ended up being on private property, but we did find this perfect beach and spent most of the afternoon at it!  It's called Good Harbor Beach and it's just south of Rockport and it was rated 2012 Best Beach in Massachusetts!  We couldn't have agreed more.  It truly was a special place.

 

 

Wild Rose Hips

After our temple shift on Thursday, we met our friends from our ward in Longmont, Ryan and Maryann Soderquist and their three kids, Seth, Sariah and Kayla, outside the temple.  They were here looking around and checking things out.  They are considering relocating here since the Amgen plant in Longmont is closing down in the Spring of next year.  We went to Friendly's for dinner and had a wonderful time together.

On Friday, we had our zone conference with our zone and the Cambridge North Zone.  It was held in Revere and it was an amazing day, kind of long, but really great training for these awesome young missionaries (and us).

At one point just before lunch, there was a little extra time and we were called out of the audience (with no advance warning) to give advice on building stronger relationships!  We both felt like we did a pretty good job and it was fun being a presenter.  The big thing is LOVE!  We have to love each other and forgive each other and not let little things bug us.  We need to be loyal to each other and we need to have the Savior in our relationships!  We also told them how important it is to smile and laugh!  "Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured." Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley

Our mission president isn't just building good missionaries, he's building good future spouses and teaching our missionaries so much about relationships.  He says that our companion is our first priority.  Our companion is the work.  Our success depends on how unified we are as a companionship!  We are building Zion in our companionship's and then in our mission and then in the church!  It's awesome and it works!

Lauren in the orange sweater is serving a mini-mission for two weeks and loving every minute of it.  Her father is the Boston Stake president.

Sister Ng, Sister Hung and Elder Graft

Elder Graft, Elder Foote, and Elder Tait

Elders Butters, Davey, and Welker with Elder Johnson setting up the breakfast table.

President Packard has a genuine love and interest for every one of his missionaries.

Elder and Sister Moore with Sister Foote.

This is all of us missionaries singing "As I Have Loved You" to the sweet sisters who brought us our wonderful lunch!

We took the Chinese Sisters home after the conference and took them to dinner at the Asian House Restaurant near where they live.  It was fun getting to know the two of them better.  Sister Hung is from Hong Kong and Sister Ng is from Malaysia.  They are really good missionaries and are hard workers!
We are really getting to know and love all these great young people from our district and zone.  They all have so much to offer and we are very blessed to be able to work with them.

On Saturday morning, Nancy and Dale drove down and we all walked from our place over to Charlestown to a historic home tour.  It was wonderful.  We got to tour 7 historic homes that had been renovated and they were all very beautiful.  It's amazing to us that these places are within our ward boundaries and it was only about a 20 minute walk from our apartment.

Bunker Hill

After our home tour, we had a nice lunch at the Warren Tavern, walked back home and got ready for our lesson we were teaching with the Sister's and our marriage class that night.

We love our marriage class.  We didn't have a very big group this week, but those that came seemed to like the things we taught them.  Our building blocks for this class were communication and mutual respect.  We talked about listening and validation.  We reviewed last weeks class about building our marriage foundation on Christ.  We shared Helaman 5:12 and as I read it, I replaced the word foundation with marriage. "...remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your marriage; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure marriage, a marriage whereon if men/women build they cannot fall."

Yesterday, Sunday, during our ward missionary correlation meeting, President Clayton Christensen and his wife, he's 1st counselor in our mission presidency and author of the wonderful book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries, stopped by where we were meeting and chatted with us. They gave us a couple of tips and it was just a real treat to have them spend some time with us.

So today was our regular p-day.  We drove to Buzzards Bay with Nancy and Dale and rented bikes and rode 7.5 miles each way along the canal that cuts through Cape Cod.  It was a spectacular ride that ended at Scusset Beach where we ate our picnic lunch.  The ride back was a little rough because there was a strong wind and we were riding right into it. I thought how life is like that bike ride.  It's so beautiful and awesome (the ride and life) but there always seems to be something pushing us back (wind, opposition). We have to keep pedaling and push forward and endure to the end!  If we do, our rewards are feelings of accomplishment and exhilaration from the bike ride and eternal life from hanging in there with life!

This is called the Train Bridge.  It lowers so the trains can cross and raises so the boats can pass!

Scusset Beach

 
One of the traditions in our mission is to eat at the Ninety-Nine Restaurant when you have 99 days left in your mission.  Today is our 99 days left mark!  We didn't eat at the restaurant, but we did get a picture!

 We returned home from our big adventure very tired and our seats were sore!  We decided to try having lobster at home, so we pick up 8 lobsters from the Market Basket grocery store (they steamed them for us) and we had a feast at home.  It was amazing!  We each ate two whole Maine lobsters and they were fabulous!  The best part was they were $4.99 per pound!!  Well the best part was actually that they were so good, but  the price did help make them even better.

That's it for another week!  We love serving on a mission.  We are "anxiously engaged in a good cause" and it is bringing us much joy and fulfillment.  We are learning the importance of really embracing where you live and making the most out of every day.  We work hard in serving the Lord but find that it isn't hard at all.  It is the best work there is!