Hegsted Mission

  19-February-2023-Sunday Another great day in the Rutland Branch.  I did mediocre on the organ, but better than last week.  I need to take time and practice once in a while.  Would need to borrow the keys to the church and figure that out, but I can tell I am getting worse.  Playing for an hour every week in the temple was marvelous for my retention of playing (muscle) memory.  With that said, I thought Sunday school was the best yet.  The youth had been to the temple and we talked about that for a while and they really got involved in the discussion.  Then when we switched over to the scriptures I kept all them all with me for about 30 minutes before some drifted off the last 10 minutes.  An improvement! Today was our day off and the weather was nice so we did tour #2 from the book of Vermont Bridges.  We saw 13 covered bridges today.  We were in the Western portion of Vermont from about the center of the state and moving up towar...

   12-February-2023-Sunday An absolutely stunning day with sunshine and highs in the low 40's,  Looking at the weather forecast, it appears winter which struggled to put in an appearance will leave us early.  The 10 day forecast predicts 8 days with highs in the 40's (41-49) and one day at 39F and the other at 28F.  It will freeze every night and I think this is supposed to be ideal sugaring time.  Freezing nights with highs in the 40's.  Perhaps the Vermonters will get a record crop of maple sap this year.  FYI.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.  Vermont produces more maple syrup than any other state and has 6.65 million trees tapped.  I think this works out to 10 trees for every person in Vermont.  The largest single producer has 460 thousand trees tapped, while our member friends the Goodriches will tap 190 thousand this year.  He called this his hobby, but I think it is a large hobby.  There a...

  5-February-2023-Sunday Indeed a pleasant day was had.  I must admit, I wondered about it before I got up.  I had dreamed that I had had a serious hit to the head.  And when I awoke in the  middle of the night I wondered if I would even be able to get out of bed.  I was feeling shaken, but ready to get out of bed so we went and I improved as we drove over.  The chapel was extremely cold again as the furnace is not working and between being groggy and having fingers that felt like frozen bananas, my playing was worse than my normal boring typical playing.  I felt very prepared for Sunday school, but it seemed less than stellar also.  Let's face it, I just wanted to curl up in a ball and go to sleep.  Regardless, the Lord blessed me again with one of His tender mercies and I was able to fulfill (if not magnify) both callings and make it through the block and even study my Scriptures afterwards. We were again invited to eat with the Shelto...