19 October 2011

I wanted to tell you about another man of whom the Dohertys spoke.  When they joined the church in Ireland, they were the only members in their part of the country.  They saved every penny they could scrape together to go to the Temple in London with their twin girls.  At the same time, the missionaries found another man named Brother Moore and took him to the Temple too.  He had inherited a small hovel with two sections--one for him and one for his animals.  He had lived in poverty all his life in the mountains, where he rode his little donkey cart every week to the village to sell his vegetables, and then back again.  He had never even seen the sea, though it is but 60 miles from any place on the whole island, nor a train, nor had a ride in a car.  He had been baptized 54 years earlier by the missionaries before the Great War, and had been saving his tithing all that time in a box under his bed.  He knew the scriptures by heart, yet was very humble.  The missionaries arranged for him to get to the Temple by train and ship, then home by plane.  Imagine his wonder and gratitude!

We had an activity at our flat last night for the "Young Ones" in the branch.  It was poorly attended, but we had a nice time with the ones who came, and felt the Holy Spirit as we talked together.  Ray showed Facing Giants, which they enjoyed.  I had decided to make them a popcorn cake with gum drops, marshmallows, and almonds.  I usually make a candy syrup of corn syrup, butter and sugar to hold it all together, but we had to go all over town to find one tiny bottle of "glucose syrup." No spiced gum drops, so I bought some candy that resembled them, and only pink and white marshmallows which had to be cut in fourths with scissors, but it turned out okay, and they enjoyed it a lot.  Candy here is called "Lolly," chocolates are "chockies," breakfast is "brekky," and etc.

We've realized why things here are so quiet.  The shops all close at 5:00 or 5:30, even the grocery stores at 6:00.  Nothing is open on Sundays, or even Saturday afternoons!  Will you please pass that hint along to President O. so that families in America can be together in the evenings?  It's great!

Most of our contact time is spent visiting members and looking up old contacts, etc.  Today we found a nice young mother who invited us back, and an older lady who was a member, but not active.  She had a friend there who is not a member.  They liked us, and invited us back on Friday, when they promised to have lemon cakes and lemon butter we could take home.  Yesterday we met with one member who has been recently activated.  We realized from what she said that the members have great expectations of the missionaries, and feel abandoned when they are baptized or the Elders are transferred.  So she is going to get a friend of hers who has been recently baptized to come over to meet with us regularly.  We're hoping to teach them the lessons again, but I have an idea that she just wants to socialize.

There seem to be a lot of older people living in Albany.  Even they say it.  I don't know who will use these beautiful homes when they're all gone, because they don't have many children.  If they do, they usually have no relationships with them any more because they have had some problems as they were growing up.  It shows how the Gospel helps families to be happy.  I'm so thankful for mine!  Oh, do stay active in the Church!  Do whatever the Brethren say to do!  Always pray together as families and study your Book of Mormon!

I'm working on learning where all the scriptures are that go with each section of the lessons, or the main ones, anyway.  I will make a copy for you so that you can start getting prepared to go on your missions!  We look forward to our study time each morning.  This morning we had a fun activity.  We were reading in Preach My Gospel about how we need to give short, powerful messages, not more than one minute many times.  We thought about how many times people see our badges and hear our accents, and ask us what we're doing over here.  We took some time to write out how we can answer that question in a way that tells about our message rather than just that we are missionaries.  It's not scary;  it's exciting.  We want to go again when we're done (if we can still walk)!

Thank you so many of you, for writing to us on our email site.  We enjoy hearing what is going on with you too.  Love to all--R & T