Our First Week

It was a week ago today that we arrived in Massena. We have done a lot of navigating, when Philips internal navigation goes on the "fritz" we use the iPhone and it gets us where we are going. We lay in bed at night and laugh about trying to find our way round. Massena is called a village, it has a population of about 13,000. Streets just go any direction and change names in the middle of the road, but we are figuring it out. It is older and has some beautiful well kept homes. People are friendly and ask us a lot of questions. The economy is poor, a GM plant closed several years ago and so did a Reynolds aluminum plant  but the Alcoa plant is still running and is expanding. We heard they may hire 1500 in the next year. Electricity here is very inexpensive, we were told that this part of the state provides all the electricity for New York city.
We have been going over the branch list and visiting member and part-member families. We have met some wonderful people. Everyone is excited to have the branch reopen. We are just waiting for the okay from Salt Lake before that can happen.
 We have our District meetings in Potsdam every Thursday and enjoy meeting with the elders and another senior couple from our district. There are10 of us that meet each week- the lesson the district leader gave last week was wonderful and it was great to be in the company of such wonderful young men. I could see our sons and daughter on their missions in similar meetings and it gave us a better understanding for their missions and made us so proud of them. In our minds eye we can also see our Grandsons and Granddaughters that will serve and what a wonderful experience they can choose to have.
The branch is having a temple excursion on March 16th which we plan on attending, the Palmyra temple schedule was full so we are going to the Montreal temple. We are excited.

February 18,2013

We finally arrived at our mission! We have traveled over 3,000 miles since we left our home in Havre on January 31 ,2013.
The MTC was wonderful, because of all the new elders and sisters coming in we were housed at the Marriott and traveled back and forth each day for our classes. We had five days of training and three of those we taught lessons from Preach My Gospel, two of those days the lessons were given to volunteers from the community. The volunteers did so well that we were convinced they were non-members. The third day we split up with other districts and we roll played as a less active family and then switched with the couple we were assigned to and taught them as they acted as the less actives.

We left Provo for our mission Saturday February 9, 2013. The weather in Rawlins and Cheyenne was not good but as soon as we were in Colorado the roads cleared and we had blue skies more days than not. Our mission president had  contacted us and encouraged us to take our time and see all the church history sites along the way, we traveled with another couple we met at the MTC who will be serving in Sharon, Vermont. We visited Winter Quarters, Council Bluffs,

 Nauvoo- this was one of the highlights of our journey, We attended the temple and met the temple president Spencer J. Condie. While we were sitting in the celestial room after our session he asked us if we would like a tour of the temple, we were thrilled. He showed us where the original endowment rooms were located and unlocked a door and told us that this particular room could only be used with the permission of the first presidency.

 We then traveled to Niagara Falls (it  was Valentines day),

then on to Kirkland and finally Palmyra which was also a very sacred experience for us. We then headed for the mission home where we were treated like royalty, we were taken out to dinner and spent the night in the mission home. The Next morning President Wirthlin made us breakfast called Philip as the branch president in Messina and sent us on our two hundred mile journey. Messina is a beautiful village along the St. Lawrence river, you can literally see Canada from here as it is just across the river.  We arrived around three that afternoon, gladly unpacked and went to the store to stock our cupboards.

We spent our first Sunday February 17, 2013 at church in Potsdam located about eighteen miles from Messina. Everyone was very friendly and said they had been waiting for us to arrive in there area. We bore our testimony's and enjoyed getting to know them especially those that are from Messina. We are now in the process of contacting members and hopefully opening the church for this Sunday. We have a lot to do but it is very exciting.

Leaving Montana

Yesterday  we traveled from our home in Havre, Montana to Salt Lake. We will be spending time with Shawna and Jayleen and their families prior to entering the MTC on Monday. Our oldest grandson Ian will be ordained a teacher this Sunday and Jeff, will be ordained a high priest. We are so glad that we are able to be with them prior to starting our mission.

Our Call

We have started this blog to keep our family and friends updated on our mission for the next eighteen months. We report to the MTC in Provo, Utah Feb.4,2013. From there we drive to Utica, New York to meet with our mission president Joseph B. Wirthlin Jr. He called last week and is assigning us to Massena, it is just as far north as you can go in New York .We will be next to the St. Lawrence river, across from the river is Canada.