December 10, 2014 Concord Holiday Home Tour

December is here and it's a wonderful time to spread Christmas cheer!  I love this quote from one of our favorite Christmas movies, Elf, "The best way to spread joy and cheer is singing loud for all to hear."

We got to start out December in just that way.  We had the wonderful opportunity of singing at our mission transfer meeting on December 3rd.  Every six weeks, the mission has transfers.  It's when new missionaries come to the mission and it's when finishing missionaries leave.  It's also when missionaries get new assignments of areas to serve in within the mission.  It's a very exciting evening for the young missionaries.  The ones that are departing and going home are all asked to bear their testimonies.  It is a very sweet and tender meeting and the testimonies of these young people are incredible.  They mostly bear their witness of the power of the Savior, Jesus Christ, in their lives. They testify of the power of the Book of Mormon in changing lives and the impact that sharing the gospel has had on them and those they have served with and taught.

We got to sing with two of the departing missionaries as our accompanists, Sister Bailey on the piano, and Elder Davey on the violin.  We performed "I Come To Him" by Sally Deford.  It went really well and we felt like the words and music really touched the hearts of everyone there.  We felt very blessed to have had this special opportunity.

It was hard to say goodbye to some of our special missionaries whom we have grown to love, especially Sister Roy and Sister Scott who we worked with personally.  We had seven missionaries leaving from our zone!  We love these kids so much and have such a hard time saying goodbye.  We wish them the best as they leave their mission and start on their next adventure in life.  As President Packard says, "it's time for them to take off their training wheels." These kids have been well prepared for their futures.

The Sisters leaving from the Cambridge South Zone; Sister Blair, Sister Gledhill, Sister Roy, and Sister Bailey

The Cambridge South Zone Sisters

Our Sweet Sister Roy, she served with us for 5 of our six months!  We sure love her!

This is a picture of what is referred to as the "Fish Bowl" in our mission.  We have something unique in our mission and that's this center where full-time Elders and Sisters serve as digital missionaries.  They use all kinds of social media and church websites to contact and teach people the gospel all over the world.  One of the hundred convert baptisms from last month was someone in Africa who was taught by the digital missionaries in our mission.  It was pretty incredible.  They are doing some ground breaking work here in the Massachusetts Boston Mission!

 
We had our weekly assignment at the Boston Temple on Thursday.  It's a highlight of our week to get to spend a day serving in this holy place and to have the extra added treat of serving with family just makes it all the sweeter.

   

For our p-day this week, Nancy and I had a girls day out.  We did one of the things we both love most in the world, and that's going on a holiday home tour.  What made it even better was that these homes were old, historic homes in Concord.  It was a cold and very rainy day (where is the snow?) but we still managed to have a wonderful time.  We saw seven homes and they even threw in a box lunch and hot cider and cookies at the end.  

We started at the Concord Museum:

This was truly a feast for our senses!  We were in old, beautifully decorated house heaven!  It brought back so many feelings of why we loved growing up in Massachusetts.  I had memories come back of playing at a best friends house that was very much like one of these homes.  I loved their house and I believe my love for all things New England came from those four years of living here when I was just 7-11 years old!

We ended at the Colonial Inn where we sipped our hot cider and ate our delicious chocolate chip cookies.  The boys (who had a great day watching movies at the Braithwaites apartment) joined us for dinner there after the tour was over.  They had eaten there before and raved over the chicken pot pie.  So we had to try it and it was delicious!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  The Inn was starting to look really festive!

We have been working really hard on our mission in so many different areas.  It's hard to really document exactly what we do.  We love our mission and feel like we have done our best here. On Sunday, we got the ultimate compliment from one of the ward members.  She said, "you have done more for our ward in six months than most people could do in two years."  We feel like they are genuinely sad to see us go and we are genuinely sad to be leaving.  We don't take any of the credit for our success.  It is all due to the fact that we pray hard to have the Lord direct us to what He would have us do each day and then we do it.  We probably could have a whole lot more, but we feel that our efforts have been accepted of the Lord.  We have grown to love Boston and the people here.  It's a wonderful place to serve.

On Monday, we had our final temple missionary dinner and family home evening.  It was held at our mission president and his wife, President and Sister Bowen's home in Belmont.  We were invited to sing again (the same song as at the transfer meeting) and it went well again.  It has been a tender mercy of the Lord that He has helped me overcome my fear of singing while serving this mission.  I hope that I can continue to grow in my confidence.  It's amazing to me that a couple of years ago, I almost decided that I was done singing because I was just getting to scared and shaky in front of audiences.  Now, I feel I have gained my confidence back and I am so grateful!

It was a lovely evening and us and the Pulsiphers were both asked to give departing testimonies.  They have served something like 13 missions so we aren't even in the same league as them, but we did have some thoughts and feelings that we shared from our hearts.  We have been blessed to serve with these wonderful people.

This has been a busy and eventful week.  We are drawing to a close with just a couple of more weeks to go.  We intend to make the most of every minute!

Enjoy your week and make this holiday season one to remember by giving of yourselves in little kind deeds that you do every day!