12-March-2023-Sunday
What a great day. Started out rough with daylight savings time beginning. I am such a wimp, but I dislike the time change. As my grandma used to say, it is really 6:10 instead of 7:10 am. We were off by 8:30 and lacked traffic both ways so we arrived early for church and at the site. I felt like I played the organ well and believe Dede did well with the primary although she said the best singer was not there. Church started out with fewer than normal people, but it filled in well as the meeting progressed. Note, we did not have anyone with a key when we arrived so we sat in the warm sunlight for a few minutes. It was so pleasant.
When we arrived at the site, President Ewer was doing a tour for a young couple. We spoke with him for a few minutes and probably sat for 5 minutes when we started getting people in. They were spread out so we stayed busy for 3.5 hours. We have not experienced that since Christmas lights. It is tempting to say that we accomplished nothing which is true if you consider scripture study as our main focus. However it is not. It is those wonderful guests who come through the door. We had two young men, one a former member and his friend who was in the Broadway play, Book of Mormon. They were attentive and had questions during their short tour. We had a family from Burley, Idaho whose son will serve in Arizona starting in July. He was called to mission which does not currently exist. What does this mean? Hopefully that Arizona needs more missions because the harvest is so vast. We had a man from Ashton, Idaho who has worked as a hospital administrator in Idaho and Wyoming and is now a traveling administrator. He is not a member, but loves history including that of our church and we gave him a full tour. We had a couple come from the Ascutney Branch in NH. Not to see the sight, but to enjoy the spirit which accompanies the site. We had a wonderful visit with them until more guests came. Our last visitors from San Francisco arrived later than planned as their rental car had broken down, but we were able to give them a full tour and still leave by 5:20. What an absolutely stunning day. The Spirit was especially powerful as we bore testimony and let others bear testimony of Joseph Smith and the restoration. We are so blessed not to have large crowds which would force us staying on a schedule. We can take all the time in the world for people who want to soak up more and more.
On days like these, it is hard to remember that God also supplies challenges. By the end of the day, my feet were aching. I hurt them Friday and Saturday walking without my shoe liners. (Can I say dumb???) But while the people were there, I was fine. I will apply Epson Salt Rub (lotion) and will be ready to go again tomorrow. God blesses me when, as is the case today, I just keep moving forward. Having said that, I am aware that we have some sick members of our mission. They have different challenges than Dede and I and a different set of blessings for the sacrifices that they are making to rest on their day off so they are ready to serve as soon as possible. We are so lucky to have a God who is kind and wise enough to set up a special set of challenges and circumstances for each of His children.
13-March-20223-Monday
So great to get together as missionaries and enjoy our group study time on Monday. We enjoy one another and are grateful for the opportunity.
After study we went to Randolph. Dede and others have been writing cards to go out with meals on wheels to lonely people. This was the final installment. While there we looked up a good place to eat which ended up being the local bowling alley. As we came in the oldsters league was completing their bowling. The manager was helping one lady out. When he passed us he explained that she was 97 years old. Up until last year she had bowled three days a week, but she had carpal tunnel surgery and it was not as successful as hoped, so she can now only bowl once per week. (I hope I am so spry at 97). The waitress was great. She was also the cook.
We did not have any visitors today. It raining now and it supposed to turn into snow tonight, so it is not likely we will get any tomorrow, but who knows we can hope. We tried getting the church's zoom to work on our computer so we could give our first virtual tour tonight. We lack the correct username and password, so we ended up using the free Zoom which only lasts 40 minutes, so we had to sign up twice. Regardless, we can now say we have given a virtual tour and hopefully have others also request a tour as we work through our technical issues.
Our tour was with Lynne. My how we miss her and her wonderful spirit. What a pleasure to visit with her again. She has such a powerful spirit that one feels it over Zoom. We are now officially ready to give tours to anyone interested.
Friday and Saturday, I bruised my feet and it painful to walk. We did walk 30 minutes and after reading my scriptures I will bike for 20 minutes, but for the first time on a weekday for many weeks I will fail to get in my 10,000 steps. Bummer.
14-March-2023-Tuesday
Happy PI day.
A few weeks ago we had s snow day where it was so cold that it was hard to guess how much snow would fall. The cold, produced a powder almost 10-inches deep, but with absolutely not substance. Today we had the opposite. It rained last night, turned to snow as the day progressed and now back to rain. (May I say very heavy, wet snow.). At the site, it continued to snow all day and was gorgeous with the tree totally covered in snow but here at the apartment, it had warmed up and so there is not much to see.
Pretty slow day at the site. Everyone expected a big storm and thus stayed away. We were able to shovel and rake and manage to loose power twice, but that is about all the excitement. Well not quite. It is Pi Day and so Dede came home to cook pie for the missionaries. That is hard to beat. Again Happy PI Day.
I will really miss the snow. I will love the spring with the bulbs coming up, but we have had some gorgeous winter days.
15-March-2023-Wednesday-PDAY
I got up early and went up to the site to shovel snow and rake the roof. Spent only an hour, but it seemed a much better way of exercising than merely walking and since it was still snowing, we were in no hurry to get out and drive. However by 10:30, Dede had cabin fever so we decided to go to find the Red Kite Candy shop in Hanover, which the Buswells had told us about last night. I cannot believe I forgot to take a picture. What a wonderful place. The owner is a delightful person and her caramels are to die for. But most impressive is the service they performed during Covid. The world is full of nice people. They also have ice cream which we sampled after our lunch.
We went to the Han Fusion restaurant for lunch. I had read that it had good soup dumplings, so we order 6 of those and then had sesame chicken and cashew chicken. Both were good, but the sesame chicken was outstanding. The soup dumplings were marvelous. Not that I am the best judge of soup dumplings, but Sara and Sam have done their best to educate us in the fine art of enjoying soup dumplings.
The soup dumplings had a thin outer layer with great taste for the contents and lots of soup broth and a good sauce to put on top. The other lunch items were good. I forgot to mention the soup was also outstanding. This was a good place to know about and it is fairly close by our home.
We next drove up to Bradford to visit the Farm-Way General Store. This place is huge and actually has three different buildings to hold all their departments. General stores in Vermont can be very simple like the one in Tunbridge our amazing like this one and Dan and Witts which is in the town of Norwich, where the Smiths lived before leaving for Palmyra NY. This store had a shoe and boot department that was huge, but outdone by their clothing department which took almost all of the upstairs. In the other buildings they had furniture and home decor along with jewelry. We did not make it to the third store. My favorite item was the Christmas light decoration on the outside of the building. May need to go back in the dark.
They made this to look like a mountain landscape with the crescent moon above. This might be fun to put on the fence when I return home. Again, I wish it was dark.
Tonight we feed the missionaries from Rutland. They are in Lebanon today for training so we can feed them as they head home.
16-March-2023-Thursday
This morning I changed my strategy about working on defining the area below the site including rock walls and buildings. Instead of trying to determine what to draw, I decided to start writing what I wanted to cover and then I will add drawing and pictures to my report. This seems to be a good choice. I wrote an introduction and one section of the 15 sections I plan to do. Some pictures I will need to take when there is no snow and I will need to draw some maps, but I think it will be easier once I have the words in place and know exactly what I need to produce for pictures and maps. Anyway that is how I spent the morning.
We had the afternoon shift and nothing happened until 4:15. We then had missionaries stop in from their zone conference and 3 young woman from Massachusetts (not members) who saw the sign and decided to stop. All in all we had 11 people in the site and did not get out until after 6 pm. Oh what a joy to do our calling. I love this work. I am so glad that we have permission to talk to missionaries. The first two sisters that came in were new in the field and had never been on a tour. We then had two Elders followed by two senior sisters who started in February and so were very new. They are in northern Vermont as MLS missionaries. Good for them. We then had the two assistants show up. They have been out the longest and wanted to hear everything as it might be their last chance.
We stopped to shovel Jody's on the way home. Could not drive through a snow bank pushed up by the neighbors snow plow in front of Jody's drive. So we walked in. She came out again and it was good to see her and know that she is okay. We had left-overs for dinner. Sometimes I think heaven will be all left-overs, since Dede's are soooooo good.
17-March-2023-Friday
Happy St Patrick's day and Relief Society Birthday. We had the early shift and after such a great evening last night assumed today would be slow, but we have 4 groups comprising 6 people. Two groups, a single and a couple came out of interest and wanted just a short tour. Both were nonmembers and the couple lives is Royalton Town, so within 10 miles of the site and although they have come for the Christmas lights had never ventured inside. The next double was a brother-sister team he from Chicago and she from Utah. They were in Vermont to attend the funeral of a 91 year old uncle and wanted to come to the site. They wanted the full tour and asked so many questions we gave them more and more even breaking out the virtual tour to show them what it would be like to go down to the foundations. She really had great questions and wanted to soak it all in. Finally a single fellow who works for AG implements, which has 50 shops in NE. One is on Dairy Hill and so he was visiting there today and stopped to take a picture. I have visited with him before, but took time to take a picture of him with the monument and to visit with him. He moved from Elko Nevada and knew David Hermassen when he was the mission president in Reno. David was in the stake presidency at the YSA stake when I served as executive secretary there. The church makes the world so small. The company got into heavy equipment for tree removal and needed a safety person who was used to big equipment which fit his bill as he did this in the mines near Reno. What a pleasant man and I am sure an asset to the Maine Stake.
Driving down Dairy Hill Road there are 2 active sugar houses. The first two pictures are of one of these. These are the small variety so they will gather their maple syrup and cook it down. Remember it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Thus you can see both the smoke from the wood burning fire as well as the huge amount of steam rising from the sugar house. You do not want to do this in your kitchen as the wall will be coated in sugar. The maple buckets were right on the road in front of this sugar shack and probably are used by the shack. However there is also another shack within about 200 yards.
This evening, the sister missionaries went to Hanover to celebrate the Relief Society Birthday. Sister Ewer was the main star and she invited the others to come (exception were Bergers who attended a ward dinner). With the women at Relief Society, the Elders decided to relieve (pun intended) the sisters from the burden of cooking our dinners, so we had a boys night out and ate at the Crossroads in S. Royalton. I rate places I like on google maps, but I thought this was mediocre so I will not give them a rating. Still it was fun to be with these amazing brothers.
18-March-2023-Saturday
Another week is in the books and as Jacob said, our lives pass as if in a dream. This is such a great way to describe our mission. I would be amiss to not state, as much as I love serving at the site, an equally great blessing to our mission is the focused time that Dede and I have together. Yes we were together after I retired, but we were doing our own things. Now we are focused on the mission. Even when we are not working, we plan our day together. Whether it is a drive, working at the site, or shopping, we are a team. This will end when we again have two vehicles and our own agendas, but as for now, we are closer to being one than ever in our lives and I am loving it.
After vacuuming and ironing shirts (while Dede cleaned the apartment), I spent almost two hours working on my record of site artifacts. I had hit a stall place not knowing exactly what I needed to map. Thus I decided to write first and then draw maps that fit the description I am writing. This has been fun and I am excited to draw smaller more simple maps to fit the descriptions.
We drove along route 113 which is beautiful and managed to be 7 minutes late getting back. The Rutland Elders had brought Olivia whom they are teaching. She actually lives near Burlington and is attending school at Burlington. However with social media, the Rutland Elders found her and taught her and then she will be baptized in her new home ward in mid-April. Sister Buswell did a great job of giving her the tour and then Dede spent 30 minutes with them. Meanwhile I had a family from Boston who were delightful. Grandma was a second generation member from Guatemala and she came with her daughter and three grandchildren. The Spirit was so powerful especially when the children began picking out things from the restoration board to share. Mom was in the floods and grandma followed. She served a mission to her home country. We were truly blessed to have them come in.
We ended the day by driving to Essex Junction near Burlington to attend the evening session of Stake Conference. President and Sister Ewer were among the speakers and they were excellent. A nice conference. We will go back in the morning.
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