Sunday, April 24, 2016

April 18, 2016

Last week for pday we went with our district into Boston to walk the freedom trail it was really fun! We walked to the top of the Bunker Hill monument (294 steps!) Saw the USS Constitution, the Paul Revere statue and the Holocaust memorial monument! We asked someone to take a picture of us just randomly and what do you know they were members traveling from Utah and their son was getting his mission call this week!

Tuesday we went to the Belmont building to help president with a tour for some college students from Alabama, they were from "Christ's Church" they came to meet some of us because they are wanting to serve their own "missions" it was really neat they asked us lots of questions about what its like to serve a mission and president basically gave the first lesson to them. One girl seemed really interested and asked a ton of questions, we also took them up to the temple and they got to go in to the lobby and someone from the temple presidency spoke to them it was amazing!

Australia mission has their PVC! They are so excited about it! They have an area seventy coming to see their mission and hopefully they will have everything all set with the PVC so they can show him. We are still working on the app we have been having lots of problems with it recently and we were told by the programmer that the provider for the app (facebook) is shutting down its system so we have to figure out what to do! Stress!

Maureen is doing pretty good, we have been meeting with her less and less because she has had all the lessons but we are really just trying to get her hooked on the BOM so we have been reading with her, she still has a bunch of questions and concerns, and at this point all she needs is to just take a leap of faith! 

We went on exchanges again this week, it was good we stayed in my area and i was with Sis O'Keefe she goes home this transfer and is from England. We did lots of less active work and stopped by this one woman who got super mad and said she never wanted to see us again and so i said if you dont want to see us again you have to get your records removed and she said i dont want to if it means any more contact with you.... its pretty sad that people harden their hearts so much but ive learned that you just have to laugh it off because we can only do so much. 

 PVC in Boston Commons! So we went on Saturday into Boston to set up the PVC it went pretty well. We drove right up into the park in our huge van with Brother Dowling in the car behind us, a park ranger came up to tell us to get off but of course Brother Dowling with all his experience in the media sweet talked us out of it and so we got to unpack and set up right there in the park! Then we drove the van back to the Cambridge stake center and rode the T station back to the commons. We had a few missionaries come and help us but it was super windy so the displays didnt last long. It was a good trial run and hopefully we will be doing more. We contacted a bunch of people using family history and we talked to one lady and i got to recite the first vision to her and i think i even saw her tear up. After we took down we had to stop by Sis Blacks favorite food spots in Cambridge since she served there for seven months. We went to this super yummy dumpling house and LA Burdick chocolates, their hot chocolate is to die for! Its taste like a melted chocolate bar!

One of the members of our ward just returned from Afghanistan this past weekend and during the middle of sacrament meeting our bishop had everyone stand up and thank him for his service with a round of applause it was really cool i had never seen that done before, thats one thing i love about the east coast- people do what they want to and what they feel is right, they dont have to worry about Mormon culture because there isnt any here. 

Patriots Day!!!! Okay my favorite part of the whole week! Today! MARATHON MONDAY! We woke up at around 3 a.m. and headed over to Lexington to get a good spot to watch the reenactment of the 241st anniversary of the shot heard round the world! It was amazing to watch and hear the stories of the those who died for our country! There was a member who lives right there in Lexington, the Johnstons, and they let missionaries part on their lawn for free so we got a nice parking spot! 
After the reenactment we went over to the mission office to watch the marathon which runs right in front of the office! It was so much fun we had a little BBQ in the parking lot and there were tons of missionaries and senior couples and President and Sister Miller were there with their signs cheering everyone on! It was so fun- every once in a while there would be someone from Utah or a member who would be running and they would stop and take pictures with us or they would just say "hey missionaries!" Sister Black and I ran across the street to take a picture of our group and this guy started to talking to me and asked who we were and how impressed he was with all our cheering and how fun it looked, his name was Wesley, he is from Brazil and runs a tae kwon doe place with his brother he asked me a lot about what we believe, he was a super nice guy, sister Black spoke with a woman from Russia and so we went and grabbed some Book of Mormons for them they both loved it. Wesley seemed really interested and said he was going to actually read it and i made him promise. who knows. 

Key Principle:
Im so grateful for this amazing country that we live in and for the freedom and safety that we enjoy we are so blessed. A quote that they said this morning at the reenactment that i really loved was
"They gave their today for our tomorrow" 

1 comment:

  1. Hi, my name is Jessica Babcock and I just received my call to the Massachusetts, Boston mission! I was looking at the Home page for the Massachusetts mission and I found some blogs and this was the first one I opened. I am extremely excited about my call and I was wondering if I may have Sister Brooks' email address, I do have a few questions! Reading this blog has given me even more excitement than I already have!
    Thank you in advance :)

    ReplyDelete