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.