Week 54 - Hegsted's mission
6-August-2023. Sunday
It was fun to take Anna to Rutland with us to attend church. We love the branch so much. I must admit, however, that I was aware of her as I played the organ. I know, she knows that I am not that accomplished and do not get enough practice, but still knowing she was there made me nervous. How dumb! I should have let her play.
Sister Shelton talked about girls' camp. She is the YW president and she spoke on how hard it is to live in the world today and have church standards and how proud she was of the girls. Another leader spoke about how good the girls were in attending every activity planned for them and how she saw the branch's girls benefit by this obedience. They are a wonderful group of girls. I am sure it is nice for them to get to be with more girls than just the small group they see at church.
On the way home, we stopped at Thundering Brook Falls. It is a short walk to the falls mostly on a boardwalk. However it is part of the Appalachian Trail, so Anna can claim to have "hiked" a section of that famous trail. It was very busy and hard to find a parking spot.
The site was not as crazy as last Sunday. However about 2:30 several large groups came in and so when we got there it was very busy when we arrived at 3:00. That lasted for over an hour with more people coming in during that time. I was able to take 3 different groups below with the golf cart and that was fun. Dede had a group of three nonmembers. They told me how great she was. I saw that one lady walked out with a Book of Mormon and seemed so pleased with the visit. At the same time, I had a family of 7. The father is a Navy dentist and in 2 weeks, they will be transferred to Japan. I was somewhat surprised at how shy the children were, but they had been taught so well. There were four girls and the youngest two had wonderful curly red hair. They will be so distinctive in Japan. The oldest at 17 was excited to be going to Japan. My hat goes off to the wonderful men and woman of the armed services and the members of the church who spread the gospel through these services.
We came home to a wonderful meal of roast beaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. I told Anna I felt like so many of my friends who had maids on their missions and would come home to meals. I never had that and so it was fun to experience it for one day. Not that Dede does not feed me, but to walk in the door and be hit by the smell of such a wonderful dinner was rather pleasant.
After dinner we went up to Camp Joseph and sat around the campfire with Buswells, Arbons and Bob Dunkle from the ward. It was such a pleasant evening and it is always good to eat a S'moore.
Dede and I arrived a year ago this week. What a difference in weather. I am not sure it ever rained last August. Everyday was in the 90's with nice high humidity. We are not scheduled to hit 80 degrees through the first half of this August. (Add 7 more days to that record). I must admit, it has been pleasant. I rather fear that summer is already ending and we will have an early fall. That could screw up the leaf peepers this fall. But perhaps Jon and Shirlee will see some leaves changing when they come.
7-August-2023-Monday
This is our last play day with Anna. We will take her to Boston tomorrow night. However tomorrow is PDAY for Buswells and they missed PDAY last week and have their daughter here for a week. They headed to Boston hopefully to watch a baseball game tonight and then are headed to Portsmouth tonight. Such fun. We return to a full day shift on Tuesdays to cover for Buswells. I worry they have meetings etc. and that we need to fill in for them even more. We will need to continue to ask how we can help.
Today was waterfall exploring day. We left at 8:15 and hit the following waterfalls: Moss Glenn and Little Moss Glenn Falls. Warren Falls, where kids were jumping off cliffs into the pools. Warren Gorge Cascade, Roxbury and Cox Brook Falls, and Mooretown Gorge Cascade. I am always amazed at how many of these falls were mills in years past. The Yankees of Vermont truly utilized the mountain streams and cascades to their advantage. Obviously everyone is waiting for pictures. We also drove through 4 covered bridges. Three as on the same road within a half mile of each other crossing different streams. Did I mention one waterfall required going down a ladder?
It was a slow afternoon at the site with 4 people coming in. After our shift we came home to pack and get ready to take Anna to Boston Tuesday night.
8-August-2023-Tuesday
What a difference a day makes. On Monday we had 8 people in during the entire day. Tuesday we had 13 people come in during the first hour (3 different groups) and we were fairly busy the entire day. It has been a few months since we worked an 8-hour shift and so we were tired and hungry by 6 pm when it ended. We did get just a few minutes to eat a sandwich around noon. However for the rest of the day we were just steadily busy. What a great deal! We had several great families come in. Perhaps my favorite was a couple from the Community of Christ Church. They have a great love for the prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and were fun to take through the site. These cousins of ours who believe in at least the first half of the restoration under Joseph Smith are so sincere.
We had two couples, the women were sisters who were so fun. They wanted to know every detail we could deliver to them. It is so easy to give such people a tour of the site as the Spirit is already there in abundance. So different from the couple who came in where he was mad that there was a tour and she wanted to feel the Spirit from the tour. It is so hard to know what is going on in the lives of each individual who comes to the site. I can only hope that each feels something.
It was supposed to rain all day. We got about an hour of very hard rain and the rest of the day was very pleasant allowing us to take people down below and get that portion of the tour as well. Of necessity this extends the peoples time at the site and the time we spend with them and that is part of the reason we were teaching almost every minute of our 8-hour shift. I love it.
We came home and threw everything including Anna in the car to head for Boston. Anna's plane flies out tomorrow morning, so Dede arranged a hotel so we can get her to the airport and not have her exhausted as she will need to drive home from SLC to Twin Falls where she lives. It was a nice hotel, although the traffic was heavier than expected so it was more difficult to find than I had hoped. (Yes, I am a traffic wimp.). We were lucky that we had just light rain on part of the drive, but for the most part it was good driving.
9-August-2023-Wednesday. PDAY
I am glad to be home, but I am grateful for the day we had. Yes it was sad to drop off Anna at the airport. It would have been nice to spend today with her also, but tomorrow she needs to teach an inservice class and so she needed to leave at a decent time. However, if we were dropping her off it means we had her for almost a whole week and that was wonderful. We saw so many wonderful things.
After dropping her off we headed for the temple which is like 14 miles away. As we pulled out, Google predicted we would arrive at 8:50 for our 9 am sealing session. At the airport exit, two different roads were closed down by the police which meant traffic jams everywhere. We did manage to arrive at the temple by 9:07 and we still participated in the 9 am sealing session which we followed up by attending the 10 am endowment session. It was so good to be back in the temple. We missed two weeks in a row and it seems like an eternity. It is so good to see and greet people we have come to know and love there.
I have invested my study time for the last two weeks to study Romans. I have struggled in the past with this book, but I am coming to love it. I am not Robert Millet, but I can finally feel the spirit of this great book.
10-August-2023-Thursday
It was so good to sleep in my own bed and to sleep in. I spent the morning working on the review. When I can put in 3-4 solid hours I feel like I am making progress. Still it is slow and the more I do, the more I realize I have missed and need to take more pictures, locate more places with GPS or get directions. Such fun. Also as I look up something for a chapter I am writing, I realize I missed items in other chapters. Often it is just a missing endnote, but I think the endnotes are really helping me organize the review. I think I am at over 100 endnotes. Most are sources, but some are merely explanations that I move from the body to the notes, to help its readability.
While I worked on the review, Dede made apple pies. At least one of us saw an end to our labors. I am excited to help end the labors of the pie tonight when we have our social. This will be our first under our new leadership the Buswell's. God bless them. I think they are finding out how much administrative work there is with the calling. On 11-September, a couple, the Hoope's, will enter the MTC to come here. They will only be here one year. When we arrived everyone was serving a 2 year mission. When we leave, other than the site president everyone will be on 1 year missions.
We had a great day at the site and it stayed busy until 5:30. When I got here, there were two couples from Switzerland. Two spoke little English. I wish I could give a tour in German and I tried. I could understand them as they were speaking especially the man from Zurich. However the words do not flow in German. I have been reading scriptures in German, but it does not help with vocalization. We also had two wonderful families of 7 (Colorado) and 6 (Iowa). Dede had a pair of nonmembers who were the shortest tour of the day, but who left with good feelings for the church. Days like today are wonderful and during the last 20 minutes, I am able to get the blog written for today.
Tonight we had our bi-monthly (twice monthly) dinner. We can do it on Thursday this month, but next month Thursday will be the Buswell's PDAY and thankfully, they plan to utilize their PDAYs. I am so glad. I think it helps them and they come back with great ideas for us. The Wilcox's will go home in 6 weeks. So many changes in such a short period of time. I am guessing it is easier for the mission to have people stay 2 years, but having one year missionaries allows more people to feel the joy of serving at an historical site. Regardless, I would hate to think that we were already home as would be the case if we had served only one year. I am finally feeling like I love people and am serving as I should be serving. Hard to leave when you are on a roll. And, if I have improved my ability to serve in the first year, what will I be able to learn in the next year?
We had a wonderful dinner with the other couples including the Arbon's from Camp Joseph. They will continue to serve here until right after general conference in October. Technically they are called until next spring but can do their service from home just supporting people who want to sign up. The Wilcox's will leave at the end of September. We will have two new couples in September and will have a chance to get to know and love more people. That will be choice. It was interesting to talk about the Durtschi's who were the leaders before the Ewer's. They have an annual get together at their home and those who served with them will attend. Dede and I did not know them in person but knew of them.
11-August-2023-Friday
We had the early shift this morning, so we did not get very much done before going to work. When we arrived, there was a car in the parking lot and so I took the cart below and found a family of 6 walking down there. I picked them up and took them to the foundation and bridge sites. The grandfather was so grateful to be saved from walking up the hill. Interesting to start a tour down at the foundations, but they were so fun. I think they left at noon. We told them everything. They were so great at the restoration board. Such a joy. We then had another family of 6. The son had been a missionary in New Hampshire mission and they were also so great at the restoration board. With families like these, the tours just take care of themselves. I also had a nonmember couple. They were so kind and awed by the entire place. They promised to get some friends and come back. Just a great day. We had another family come in right at 2 pm, but had to give them to Brother Buswell as I needed to take the car in to be serviced.
When I got home from getting the car serviced, we took a drive to buy ice cream in Williamstown. They make their own ice creams. It was 30 minutes away. We went up by freeway, but came home on the back roads. We revisited the floating bridge and took real back roads after that. It was just good to be with Dede and nice to unwind.
12-August-2023-Saturday
It was another fun day in paradise. Worked on the review in the morning while Dede went into Lebanon to buy brads for her primary lesson on Sunday. It seems there will be no one there this Sunday other than Dede. Should be interesting.
At 10 am we walked into Sharon to watch the Sharon Old Home Days parade. It was about 3 blocks long and down route 14, so they just held traffic on both ends until the parade was done. I thought it great fun. A small town parade is always fun and simple, but the candy haul was impressive. We were the second group of people who saw the parade. We stopped short of town and stood in the shade and thus Dede could talk to everyone in the parade and she enjoyed it immensely. Dede says I talked too, but I do not remember it.
At 11:30 we went to the church so I could speak at a YSA gathering. I did not speak until 12:30 and felt like I spoke with the spirit and so I am grateful to God for that gift from Him. There were only 20 YSA there even though it covered five different New England states. VT, NH, MA, ME and CT. Hard to say why, but I read the poster in the church and it basically said, come to a YSA service project, meet at 11:30 and we will be done at 8:30. Often when they come here, they stay overnight, but not this year. Hopefully more information went out with YSA representatives. There were as many YSA senior missionaries as youth. The good news, we had 10 of these wonderful youth show up later in the day at the site and so it made our day better. Sadly none of the Sr. missionaries were able to come up during our shift.
Had delightful people beyond the YSA groups. Dede took through a group of 4 reeling from the death of a father and uncle. They wanted a short tour, but continued to stay as I am sure the spirit was healing them. Finally Dede took them below and at the bridge, one stated, "dad is here with us."
I had a delightful nonmember couple from Moscow ID. He enjoys learning about religions and seems to have put some time in studying the Church. I enjoyed my time with them and teaching them from the restoration board. Right at 6 pm, Dede started giving a tour to the cutest couple who are attending Dartmouth. He a New Englander while she was from Hawaii. They too were nonmembers but full of questions. They left with a BoM in hand a promise to come see the lights at Christmas time.
It is time to start getting excited about putting up Christmas lights again. It was a busy, but delightful day. God is so good.
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