Week 5

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 it is kept.  Even though it is a branch, it is well organized with a great Branch President.  Members were eager to greet us and tell us their names.  They introduced us to their new converts and told us the ins and outs of the branch.  Since the initial speaker was sick, Dede and I were invited to tell about ourselves and bear testimony of the gospel. It was nice to be able to introduce ourselves.  We will attend 2 out of 3 Sundays, but every third Sunday we need to open the site (between 10 and 11) and will need to stay in the S. Royalton ward and leave right after Sacrament Meeting.  (no time for travel)  Next week, I was invited to lead the discussion in Elders' Quorum Meeting mixing Bednar's talk on "We heeded them Not" and Nelson on "Hearken to Him."  I told them we would need to bug out 10 minutes early to get back for our 1 pm shift and he said that was fine. It will need to be 15 minutes as we have a tour bus coming in.

Had a delightful shift at the site with a mixture of members and non-members.  At times based on clothes and appearance, it is hard to tell the difference, but a few questions usually get us to the answer.  Dede and I had a mother and young son who loved history.  She was in Logan for two summers working at the Opera Theatre doing lights etc.  She was so impressed with the "Mormon People" even if she could not find a place to buy coffee.  She had a BoM but had only read the history, but knew a great bit due to her exposure in Logan.  Hopefully she felt the Sprit of the place.

Another couple, a mother and son were Universalists and were as kind and attentive as one could ever hope for.  Looks are ever so deceiving.  The young man had long hair and tattered clothes but would make any mother proud with his kindness.  They had a BoM as they were told to learn about and respect all religious beliefs.  They were a delight to take through the site. 

We saw one covered bridge on the road to Rutland.

22-August-2022 Monday

We began the day with our Monday devotional. I took my work clothes and weeded for two hours after the devotional while Dede went to the apartment to work there.  Although the flower beds are not that large, the edging and weeding I have been doing is hard work and so it does not tend to get done like the light weeding and deadheading that can be done while we wait for guests and while we are dressed up to do tours.  I am grateful my father and grandfather instilled in me a love for flower gardens as it is a pleasure to work in the gardens rather than a chore.  

The six hosting missionaries had a dinner at 6 pm, followed by watching the video produced by the Martin's Cove missionaries to do remote tours.  We learned a great deal.  Previously the missionaries would go about with phones or laptops and take videos of themselves and the site as they gave a tour.  The new plan is to have video available without people and then using Zoom speak to the tour as videos are being shown.  Somewhat like a Power Point Presentation. We learned a great deal from them.  We also learned a great deal about the vision of President and Sister Ewer.  It will be fun.  They want to be ready by 1-December.  With Christmas lights and flower beds, that will be a challenge, but it will be doable.

23-August-2022  Tuesday

Dede and I had the early shift at work.  We we came in, the Bergers (FM missionaries) were shampooing the carpets.  Gosh they are people who are so easy to love and cherish.  We had a great time visiting with them throughout the day as they worked around the site.  They were trimming branches that had tent caterpillars (to take them away and burn them) and I would help them find and cut them down.  I think I have mentioned that Dede and I may be the youngest of the missionaries and definitely younger than the Bergers and Wilcox's. I do not understand all the mission rules and whether I am not supposed to climb things since I am not FM or not, but we will need to work through that.

I so enjoy our visitors.  Dede had some members from Jerome, ID who live on the canyon wall of the snake.  When I asked were in connection to Auguer Falls he said almost above it.  She was a good friend of Patty Merrill and was as lovely and vivacious as Patty.  Fun!

I took a young family of nonmembers through the site.  They are Greek Orthodox.  According to the husband with whom I spent the majority of the time, she is very devout and he somewhat.  But it is an important tradition for them, both religious and as a heritage.  He just wanted to know about the church without being told the Joseph Smith story.  Thus I let him lead with the questions he had about temples and meeting houses and threw in some church history.  At the end I offered him a BoM which he graciously accepted.  He was so kind, I felt fortunate that I could take him around and get to know them.

We had the car serviced in White River Junction and then ate dinner at Three Tomatoes Trattoria.  There was a fountain outside with dolphins and turtles spewing water of which we got a photo and sent it to Ian and Lyndee.  The food was good and we have lunch for the next day

We went to Walmart for a few sundry items and across the street to Ice Cream Fore-U.  Normally a very busy place but it was showering rain and so we walked right up to get the largest portions of ice cream imaginable.  We were stuffed.

On the way home, we stopped to look at Quechee Gorge which is very impressive and which we will hike when it is not raining and not so late.  We missed the Vietnam Veteran memorial as it closed at 7 pm and ended the evening taking pictures of the White River nearly in front of our apartment.  It is very low due to drought.  Final note, the first leaves are already starting to change colors.  Hard to believe.

To the left is Quechee Gorge and below is the White River several hundred yards from our house.  This river is nearly empty and thus the people cannot tube down it like they normally would.  

24-August-2022  Wednesday

Today was our P-Day and we had arranged to have internet brought into our apartment.  We were told we needed to be there the entire day and unfortunately he did not come until 5:30 pm.  There were issues and he left about 7:00 pm.  Other than taking a walk, we were in the home all day.  Dede cleaned so much.  I caught up on the blog and released the last two weeks, but more importantly I began creating what I call a 1905 video which includes the story with pictures of what Junius F. Wells did to create a monument on the ground he had found to be the birthplace.  I am learning a great deal about editing and I hope to use this with people who want a little more detail about how the site was created.  I doubt I would ever get the 1905 video approved for use in the theatre we have.

25-August-2022 Thursday

Having the late shift and not being able to travel yesterday we went back to Barre Vermont in the morning to see the Hope Cemetery with its amazing headstones many done by the famous stone carvers that have worked in the area for years.  One could spend a day taking pictures there and Dede and I took many and I will provide a sample from my photos:

Next we climbed Great Lookout trail which is really about 1/2 mile total to see the back of quarries.  This old truck was in the parking lot, the quarries are filled with water.  Barre is home to many abandoned quarries, which have been bought by the existing quarry, Rock of Ages, which is owned by a large Canadian mining company.

Our next stop was the Rock of Ages Quarry.  The workshop is closed, for viewing, due to covid so we could not see craftsman preparing granite.  The guide had worked in the quarry but retired 15 years ago and then started as a guide 5 years ago.  Since that time, they have gone from power drilling and using wedges to split off the granite blocks to using a diamond saw (like a plastic rope with metal bands studded with industrial daimons) and power equipment to separate the granite blocks.  This reduced the work and noise and the manual labor.  They now employ 25 people where they once had 200 and the output is about the same.  Still he wanted to let us know how it was done in the past when everything was drilled and then wedges (feathers) were used to split the granite.  (Since this was how things were done in 1905 when the monument was build [but without power drills] it was interesting.)  Note in the first picture you can see drill holes with a feather in the first hole.  The other pictures are from the quarries, some which are abandoned.  The colored water (looks like glacier water) is a result of the quarry dust.

We had a great shift.  Dede took through 5 members all female friends.  Only one knew much about the church so Dede spent over an hour with them.  I took through two gentlemen friends who were just fun to talk to.  I then had a family of 7 who were also fun to talk with.  Dede played with the younger two children, while I talked with the older ones.  Worked well.

Another fun case were two men who came through.  One is a tour guide who knew the place well.  He was so glad that Dede just said if you have questions let us know and be sure to show your friend the two original stones.  He was impressed that we let him do his thing that he came back and visited with us for 20 minutes to tell us that all site missionaries should be similarly aware of the needs of the visitors.

After our shift we followed the signs for the Justin Smith Morrell estate in Stratford.  This was an impressive estate.  He was rich and then served 40 years or so in Congress.  He was influential in the Land Grant Laws which established land-grant colleges in every state, i.e U of I, USU etc.  

We went into Stratford itself and I took these two pictures around the Commons, the first is the town hall and town church where town meetings have been held each March since 1891 or so.  The second a Universalist church.  So many of these villages have a grassy common area with a road around them and then shops and churches around the commons.

As we started home it bugged me that Morrell was a famous name I should know.  Sure enough the JSB and his estate are less than 8 miles apart as the crow flies and he is the author of the Morrell anti-bigamy act which started the issues of anti-polygamy in Congress and would result in the Manifesto.  As I pondered this, it occurred to me how important he was in church history.  Polygamy needed to end and the church needed to refocus on temple work.  All of this was accomplished with the Manifesto of 1890 and the announcement that children would be sealed to their parents and grandparents and no longer to church leaders.  Truly God moves in mysterious ways to accomplish His great work as the questions which resulted from this act and the subsequent acts prompted Wilford Woodruff to approach God in prayer resulting in the Manifesto.  

26-August-2022 Friday

It was a cloudy day which turned into torrential rain and so we thought we would have a very slow morning shift.  It was just the opposite as we were busy all morning long.  Dede had the opportunity to take through a number of nonmembers today.  One particular couple, the man had investigated the church.  I think he is still interested, but does not like the pushiness of the missionaries.  He had so many questions and Dede spent 45 minutes with them and then Sister Buswell another 30 minutes.  Hope he finds what he is looking for.

Took a family of seven through who have come East while the husband is on sabbatical from BYU.  So polite and well behaved.  What a pleasure to have them.  We went out to the home site and monument all with umbrella's which was fun if not noisy in the heavy rain.

The first visitors I took through were an older gentlemen who will be baptized 11-September and came with the missionaries.  One of the Elders is from Blackfoot.  The man knows so little about the gospel and the church, that it was good for him to be here to learn more and feel the Spirit.

We invited the Buswells to dinner to repay their kindness as they fed us earlier.  Dede made a spectacular meal and made everything fancy.  The highlight was watching their granddaughter via Zoom participate in the PeeWee Lamb show.  She dressed up as a lawn mowing person, and her lamb was econo-mower, grass in the front end, fertilizer at the rear.  The crowd loved her, but unfortunately the judges did not.  We loved her around our table in Vermont.

27-August 2022 Saturday

Started the day by returning to Quechee Gorge and hiking the 0.3 mile trail to the bottom.  Hiked back up and then hiked to the dam and back.  Finally we went into the visitors center to learn more about the area.  The hike down was wonderful as we looked back up the gorge toward the bridge.  The dam was built to hold water for a mill pond and race (as is so often the case around here), but now powers a small electrical generator, at least when the flows are better.

From the trip down to the bottom and at the bottom:

At the dam with the dam and the power plant.:

We then went looking at more covered bridges:

The longest bridge in Vermont is the Cornish-Windsor which is actually between VT and NH crossing the Connecticut River and is owned by New Hampshire.  It was a toll bridge and had penalties for "speeding."

Then three more bridges near the village of Woodstock:

We worked the afternoon shift, which started out slow, but in a special way.  Two women came in who had been in the same mission in Mexico.  The one lives in NH and spoke great English and the other from Mexico City understood very little English.  Because it was slow, we were able to give them a very long tour, which they wanted.  Long because we covered everything and then the one sister would translate it to her companion in Spanish.  The Spirit was so strong and we were so glad that we had this slow time to allow God to show them this tender mercy.

Toward the end of our shift a family came in that has been traveling the USA for the last 5 months and will continue for one year, visiting every state.  They home school their children and if the knowledge the children knew about church history and gospel reflects on their secular knowledge, they are doing well.  Also the children were so well behaved.  They have a trailer home which they parked in the parking lot of Camp Joseph as people are not allowed in the camp on Saturday night.

While Dede led them through I noticed a large group at the monument so I went out and found 9 younger people.  I approached one and asked if he (they) had questions.  I spoke with him for some time and during the conversation spoke with the majority of the group as they wandered over and then wandered away.  They said they graduated from UVB in 2013 and still enjoyed  gathering together despite jobs and other hinderances like significant others.  One girl had wanted to stop and the others reluctantly allowed it to happen, but they also asked some questions before scurrying away to avoid me.  It was funny to watch as they were trying to hide their cigarettes.  I was so glad they came and the girl asked some great questions.  I sensed that they were very shallow.  They are 9 years out of school and still appeared to be single college students with a lot of school knowledge but no breath of wisdom or purpose in life.  I suspect they all sense that shallowness, but do not want to admit it in front of their peers or even to themselves.   The one girl who came in left a beer on the table.  I took a photo of the beer before disposing of it as I thought it might be unique for my mission.  Again, I hope the Spirit works on them to fill their emptiness.