Weekly Letter

Good evening family, I hope this letter finds you all happy and healthy.

This was kind of a slow week, so this might be a little shorter.  Most of our time was spent driving through the Maryland and West Virginia countryside looking for people to visit. Our area is the entire Garrett County in Maryland and some of W. Virginia. Our branch  is the only area in our mission that is in Maryland and we are surrounded on three sides by W. Virginia. This area is REALLY RURAL and we spend a lot of time driving. It is really beautiful as we drive through the trees and rolling highway.  The forests are really thick and you can hardly see through the trees. I love driving through our area, but it is a little frustrating to drive for 20-30 minutes to find a home and then either no one is there or they won't come to the door. We have made some progress.  We have been able to talk to some people that the leaders of the branch are surprised would talk to us.  We have to keep driving and visiting so the inactive members will know that they aren't forgotten, although some of them wish they were.

Monday night was our weekly empty-nest Family Home Evening and I was asked to give the lesson.  We use the Come Follow Me manual and teach the Book of Mormon lessons. The lesson went really well and had good participation.  This week we had home-made Pepperoni Rolls as the refreshments. West Virginia is known for their Pepperoni Rolls and they are really good. It is basically and dinner roll stuffed with pepperoni and cheese.  What's not to like, huh?  

During the week we went to visit a member way out in the country.  On the way there I saw a sign for Blackwater Falls, so I asked him about it.  I guess they are pretty well known around the region.  They were only about 15 miles from his place so we decided to go visit. It was a little bit of a hike on a good trail down to the viewing area.  It is a beautiful area and I am including a picture.

Each Wednesday and Saturday morning they have a farmer's market down town.  We went this last Wednesday. I think they are winding down because there wasn't a lot of vendors. But we did get some homemade bread and huckleberry jam and some fresh tomatoes.

Each Friday morning we have our District Council with the missionaries in this district.  There are the two Elders from here (they are from Rigby and Eagle) and two Elders from Masontown and us. It's good to see their progress and visit with them. This week we bought them pizza for lunch. We are popular with them now. We have a zone meeting on Tuesday at the stake center in Clarksburg, West Virginia.  It's about a two hour drive from here.  We are excited because there will be at least one other senior couple there.  I think they are from Rexburg and have been out for a while.  We want to pick their brains to see what they are doing in their area.

On Friday we went to a little town called Friendsville and did some volunteer work at the Friendsville museum history library.  The history library is run by a 91 year-old woman who has been working there for more than forty years.  We are just helping clean up some files and getting things organized.  We don't think we are doing that much but they are really appreciative of our help.

Today we gave talks at church. We got the phone call to ask us to speak on Saturday, so we just used the same talks we use for out farewell talks.  We had some families that were on here on vacation come that came to church. It quite literally doubled our attendance.  They had a couple of teenage boys that passed the sacrament.  We don't have any boys that age, so it was nice to have them there.

I thinks that's it for this week.  We love you and miss you and hope that all is going well.  We are excited for Max to start his mission this week.

Love, Mom and Dad

I am sending a picture of out chapel, Blackwater Falls, the local famous lake and a pretty farm picture.  The leaves are starting to turn but will peak in the next week or so.