Hegsted Mission

Week 5 of the Hegsted mission blog.  We miss all of you, but are excited to be serving the Lord at this choice place.  21-August-2022 Sunday Another great day.  We left the house at 8:45 to attend the 10:00 AM Sacrament Meeting at the branch in Rutland to which we are assigned.  The area has a feel of a Park City or a Driggs 10 years ago.  Not quite as developed, but it is a place for skiing as well as summer recreation in the heart of the Green Mountains.  It is 45 miles away, but you go by local roads the entire way and so it is at least an hour drive both ways.  The way is beautiful especially as you approach the resort areas.  But all of Vermont is this way (especially traveling east to west where there are no freeways).  The villages are so fun to see; Especially when they still have a commons at the center.   As we approached the building, we could see the land around it first and knew we were approaching church property by the way...

  9-August-2022  Tuesday Welcome to Week 3 of the Hegsted Mission and my feeble attempt to record it. Yesterday, Monday 8-August were had our own 4-hour shift.  It was a slow afternoon as only one group of three came into the site with one drive by.  Dede and I spent time studying the site manual and gave a partial tour to ourselves.  We were fortunate to have Gary Boatwright come over the last hour and instruct us one-on-one.  Gary is the managing director of the church historical sites and wrote the site guide for the Joseph Smith Birth site and was visiting us to provide training and updates.  We have a great deal of information we can share, but we need to focus on the three key messages of the site  Prophetic nature of Joseph Smith The Smith family heritage of work and devotion to God. Family History. I was grateful for the experience.  We later had dinner with the site missionaries and Gary.  Afterward he provide instruction and an...

  Week 4 of the Hegsted Joseph Smith Birthplace Mission 14-August-2022 (Sunday) We again attended the South Royalton Ward since Dede and I were to open up the center after the first hour of the block.  I was asked to play the organ so we left early to practice and become acquainted with the organ.  I had prayed that the Lord would sustain me and allow me to play and not distract from the Ward Conference Sacrament Meeting.  I was truly blessed such that even without touching a keyboard for several weeks, I was able to play.  God be praised. As I was sitting at the organ for church, I watched a group of campers (actually hikers) come into the meeting, put down their backpacks in the back of the meeting and then take seats there.  They were some of our first guests at the site.  For 124 days, they have been hiking the Appalachian trail.  They started in Georgia and will conclude in Maine by mid-September.  There were six members of the group, th...