Cooper, Kerry & Jamee

Dear Family and Friends. We had a fantastic week. Not too much missionary work, but a lot of time and great adventures with Ben, Holli, Eliza and Kristine (Ben's Mom). I'll try to tell you what we were able to do and see without going into too much detail and boring you.  We left Oakland Monday morning at 6:30 and headed to Gettysburg. This was one of our favorites.  We had a bus tour with a very knowledgeable tour guide.  We were kind of surprised at the magnitude of all of it. We learned of the different key battles and were on the sites where it all happened. There was a solemnity to it and gave us a great feeling of gratitude for the all the sacrifices made.  We then continued on to Lancaster County which is Amish country.  We went to the Shady Maple Amish Smorgasbord.  The place is huge and has a great selection of really good food. We had a chance to talk about some of our beliefs with the lady that was waiting on our table. Our missionary tags get a ...

Dear Family and Friends, The highlight of our week was seeing Holli and Ben and Eliza at our door on Saturday morning. Their AirBnB is literally next door to our apartment.  They didn't know we were that close when they made the reservation.  We had a nice breakfast, went out to visit the Flanagan's and they gave us some of their delicious pepperoni rolls. We were going to visit Blackwater Falls, but it was windy and cold and Holli wanted to visit our downtown antique shops.  After shopping we headed out to the Flight 93 Memorial and Visitor Center.  It was an emotional experience. Those brave individuals sacrificed their lives to save hundreds of lives. They have a tower with forty wind chimes, one for each passenger on the plane.  When the wind blows (and it was really blowing when we were there) it plays a melancholy song which blends together beautifully. We went to the visitor center and walked through the displays. There was one section that played voicema...

Dear Friends and Family, I am going to start with  the baptism that almost wasn't.  We had the baptism for Jeremy, the young man with autism, planned for this past Saturday.  For a few weeks now he has been saying he wants to be baptized, but when Saturday morning came he started having cold feet.  The biggest issue was he is afraid of water, especially when it covers his head.  It took a little persuasion to get him into his jumpsuit, but finally got him dressed.  Then it came time to get him into the baptismal font. Something we didn't know until after was he has a friend that was baptized into a different church and he convinced himself that if his friend could do it, so could he. We finally got him into the font but then he didn't want the elder to touch him because that was invading his personal space. When he finally got the courage he dunked himself before the elder could give the baptismal prayer. So we had to dunk him again after a few more minutes...

Dear Family and Friends,  Today is our official half-way mark for our mission. We entered the MTC six months ago today.  It has been a very interesting and life-changing experience. Sometimes it feels like we just got here and sometimes it feels like we've been here forever. We have learned much and have made a lot of new friends. We feel like we have made a big impact in the branch.  These are such good people who we have grown to love and appreciate. We have a branch activity night every first Thursday of the month.  The adults have had emergency preparedness and family history activities. The Primary kids and Young Women have their activities that night as well.  Up to this point there haven't been any Young Women activities in a long, long time.  Most members don't remember ever having them.  Mom is determined to have activities and she had her first this past Thursday. She actually had two girls come out this week.  That's 50%!  She volu...