Well hey there ya'll!!
It turns out that the hurricane didn't
really hit Brighton very hard. After all of our preparations to be
without power and/or water for a week, we had a 30 second power outage
in our apartment....and that's all :) But we were very prepared and
ready for the worst. It was kind of fun: Sister Packard was texting us
updates throughout the "storm" last night. It sounds like several
missionary's apartments were without power for a good chunk of time and
there were also some accidents caused from lots of cooped up
missionaries doing silly things. My favorite was that some elders
playing Risk left their food in the toaster oven too long and
practically filled the entire apartment with smoke! No severe damage
done though :) ....elders.
We obviously didn't get a chance to email yesterday because we were
stuck inside from 6am yesterday until this morning. Best P-day ever!!
Well, as much as I thought I would look forward to a "break" from
missionary work I really hope that doesn't happen again. We didn't do
much of anything productive apart from text a bunch of people that
Bishop Thomas asked to in order to make sure they had everything they
needed. After that I used my time very foolishly. Basically we had an
early Halloween with all the junk food we broke out. It was our great
idea to ford the river in our street (not literally a river, just some
gutter overflow) to get a pizza from Papa John's across the street from
us right before they closed. So we had pizza for lunch and made an
apple crisp for dinner :) And there may have been s'mores at some point
during the day as well. Sister Khaled is in heaven!! In Portugal
their desserts aren't really all that sweet so she is loving the
American desserts.
We had lots of time to get to know each other and it was a really
great opportunity to really learn more about our roommates who I
apparently knew very little about. Overall a very fun and unproductive
but very safe day.
We got good news this week that Theresa (not Theresa from Lynn,
different Theresa that we've been visiting) is getting baptized!!
She'll get baptized this Sunday at 12:30 and we get to come! We are
SOOOOO excited!! I seriously love her a lot. I don't know how much
I've told you about Theresa but she actually does remind me a lot of
Lynn Theresa - she has lots of health problems and just wants to get her
life in order before she dies. She LOVES to talk and just having good,
sincere friends. That's what she has loved about coming to church -
everyone loves her there! She quit smoking 2 weeks ago and has been
going so strong! Her son Ryan who is an Atheist has even agreed to come
to support her and cheer her on at the baptism. It will be a great
day!
We had stake conference yesterday which was really amazing! We saw a
lot of miracles - the biggest being that 3 investigators came! One of
them, Danielle, is a girl who just showed up at Sacrament Meeting last
week because she once had a roommate that was LDS and has felt super,
"drawn to the Mormon religion" lately. So, we gave her a call and
invited her to stake conference. The surprise was, for me, that she
came! Usually that doesn't happen. But she came and really loved it.
She even met with us and a member afterward to learn a little more
about the Restoration which she apparently already understands fairly.
Something that has drawn her so much to the church is that the Book of
Mormon is like "another testament of Jesus Christ in addition to the Old
and New Testaments. We felt the spirit very strongly with her as we
were guided to know what questions to ask and how we should approach the
different parts of the lesson. She's so ready for the gospel!
I honestly admit that I was distracted during the conference itself -
Bishop and Sister Iverson from Revere 1st ward were sitting in the row
in front of us with their 8 month little boy making googly eyes at us
during the first half...but I really did feel the spirit. There was a
change in the stake presidency because Pres. Haight is going to be
joining the Mission Presidency as the 2nd counselor to President Packard
so we got to hear lots of very special testimonies of these great
leaders and their wives. My favorite part of the whole conference was
what President Packard had to say though. He can certainly command an
audience's attention and knows how to channel the spirit. He taught us
about the proper way to have more meaningful prayers. He went on to
basically mirror President Nelson's talk from conference about all the
great things missionaries can do. It certainly impressed upon me, again,
the importance of living worthily of that serious and sacred
responsibility we have to guide our fellow men closer to our Heavenly
Father.
I love you all!! Thanks for all the delightful Halloween wishes :)
All my love,
Sister Palmer
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