Missionary Work and Homes Full of Love

Sunday, October 6, 2013

  We are starting to see fall leaves

Even though last Monday was technically still September, we started visiting the sisters of White Plains 1st Ward again and Sister Boone resumed the job of driver.  I now have the ward list for 1st Ward divided up so that they are in neighborhoods as I had previously done for 2nd Ward.  We have probably been to more than half of the houses in this ward so far, and based on what we had done in the past, it looked like it would take another two weeks to visit the rest of the homes.  But because we had them grouped a little better, we were able to go to quite a few in one day.  Part of that also stemmed from the fact that we found very few women at home.  Our first two visits of the day on Monday were scheduled appointments.  The first one was Sister Emerson, a sister we had visited previously.  She seemed so much more comfortable with us this time and we enjoyed our visit very much.  The second sister, Sister Ucles, just recently moved to this area with her family from Italy.  She and her husband are originally from Honduras, and he is in the military.  She speaks English quite well but sometimes struggles to call to mind the word she wants to use.  We enjoyed our visit with her as well.

 I love to see the geese take off from the lakes when I walk by

Tuesday was the first day of the "government shutdown".  We saw a few more people at home today because they were told not to report for work.  We went to 13 homes but found only two sisters at home.  We visited briefly with each of them.

Shot a picture of this squirrel who froze in a very awkward position while I passed by.

Wednesday we only found one out of 17 sisters home, but we still considered it a successful day.  The one sister we visited is Sister Logalbo, whom we had visited in August seemingly by chance, but we felt the Lord had a hand in helping us find her and being invited in.  She is disabled and doesn't get many visitors.  We enjoyed an hour together and she let us present a spiritual thought and have prayer with her.  She said she has started reading the Bible.  We left with a promise to return.  We will give her a Book of Mormon next time.

Thursday we again attended the temple and had fairly good traffic going in both directions.  We attended two sessions.  It may not sound like a lot, but it takes us about 7 1/2 to 8 hours from the time we leave home until we return.  We are physically exhausted by the time we get home but spiritually uplifted by the experience.

Friday we had two appointments again.  The first one was Sister Hendricks who we thought was active, but she does not attend church all that often.  Her children have all left the church.  She has been a widow since 2004.  She heard that we had stopped by her daughter-in-law's home about the first week we got here.  (Her daughter-in-law told us that they have home teachers, but she was not really interested in having us return for another visit.)  Evidently she told her mother-in-law that there are sister missionaries in the area now.  Sis. Hendricks wondered why she hadn't seen us yet.  Then she asked why we had chosen to visit her.  We said, "Well, we just wanted to meet you and get to know you."  She asked how we knew about her.  We told her we had a ward list of all of the members in the Ward.  She wondered what was on the list about her.  We said we didn't know anything about her.  That is why we came to see her.  She was actually very nice and we had a good visit.  She put some cinnamon rolls in the oven and invited us to sit down and have one with her before we left.  This put us late for our next appointment, but we felt it was important to accept her invitation.  We will for sure return and visit her again.

After our next appointment with one of the active sisters, we went to a few more houses all of which were "not home."  We were very surprised at the end of the day to receive a call from Sister Eckloff, one of the sisters who was gone when we stopped by earlier.  We had stuck our card in the door with our names and phone number as we do with all of the houses we visit.  We were happy that she had actually looked at the card and called us.  She is one that we visited in August who gave us a very skeptical reception at that time.  She acted a bit unusual, like she was actually afraid of us.  She was afraid that something bad was going to happen to her now because we had stopped by.  She told us that something bad always happens after someone from the Church stops by.  She seemed more alert when she phoned us and asked if we would mind taking her to a doctor's appointment on the 15th.  This is our second opportunity to help a sister get to a doctor's appointment.  It is nice that we are getting more opportunities to serve.

Sister Boone loves to point out the beautiful flowers and plants and large homes that we drive by every day.  I was surprised today when she had to stop and get a picture of a couple of things we saw.  One was this very interesting mailbox.  

A big cuddly teddy bear?

Our last visit of the day was a model home that we passed by in one of the new housing developments that we visited.  She decided that we just had to see the inside of these fancy homes, so she jumped at the chance to go into the model home.  It was kind of an awkward situation for me, but I walked along with her as she admired the furnishings of the home. 

 It was a very beautiful house—one of the smaller designs of less than 2,000 square feet for only $350,000, probably not the best choice for us, but lovely nonetheless.

A very rosy sunset after a rainshower

Saturday and today we have had the opportunity to watch all of the sessions of General Conference on TV.  I have thought about how conference talks have changed over the years.  When I was younger, it seemed like most of the talks were about specific basic principles of the gospel like faith, repentance, scripture study, the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the gospel, the Atonement, having Family Home Evening, prayer, chastity, paying tithing, keeping the Sabbath Day holy, the Word of Wisdom, and food storage to name a few.  These are all great principles to be reminded of but can be easily covered in Sunday School or other Sunday lessons.  At this General Conference, we were encouraged to be obedient, but I felt that there was a lot more emphasis on our relationship with our families, with our neighbors, and with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and keeping the commandments out of love.  When Pres. Monson gave his closing address, I got my pencil and paper ready to write down everything that the Lord wants us to focus on for the next six months.  This is what I wrote:  "Homes full of love.  Nourish testimonies.  Show increased kindness.  Ever be found doing the work of the Lord."  Pretty simple isn't it?