bits and pieces of the past week

Last weekend, we attended our first stake conference in the Rochester, N Y Stake. At the Saturday night adult session, we heard wonderful testimonies from recent converts who made mighty changes in their lives when the gospel of Jesus Christ changed their hearts. One young woman  told of how her tattooed, smoking,drinking sister got baptized, paving the way for her conversion as well as her boyfriend's (now her husband). Here is the sister's story.

After the Sunday session of stake conference, we had the Elders and two fairly new members of the Church (Casey and Maren) over for lunch. Both of these beautiful young women are the only members of the church in their families, just as I was so many years ago ,when I first joined.

Maren (on the right) is very excited to be going to the temple for the first time this month.(She is also planning on going on a mission this summer.) Elder Ellis is helping her get registered on the new familysearch.org, and getting names of her own ancestors ready so she can perform the ordinances for them in the temple.

While they were busy at the computer, the talented Elder Preisendorf filled the room with beautiful violin music. He will be playing the violin as part of a special musical number at the next zone conference, which will be held in the Sacred Grove in May.

While out and about, checking 21 missionary apartments, from the  northeast to the northwest of our mission (Niagra Falls to east of Palmyra), we had a chance to visit with these delightful couples. 

The Stevens had been helping check out missionary apartments to the far south of Niagra Falls, and have completed that service. We thanked them for the help they had given for the past few years, got the apartment keys from them, and gave them to Elder and Sis. Wood, who will be helping us by checking those apartments.

It was fun to go out to lunch with the Woods, who have recently arrived in our mission from Liberty, Utah. We feel such a bond with other senior missionary couples. We're all in the same boat! (and love serving ) 

This morning, Sunday, we took a lovely 2 hour drive to the small Wellsville Branch, where we were the invited speakers. It was a great experience meeting these awesome members of the Church.

Everything is about to turn green around here. We had a high of 59 degrees!