Weekly Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

We had a pretty busy week. We spent pretty much the whole day on Tuesday at the Institute building this week.  They had the institute and seminary teachers and administrators from all of the northeast area in for training this last week.  There were more than 40 attendees.  We didn't have to cook anything, but we kept the snack food stocked and organized during the day.  They tried to keep lunch on a West Virginia theme so they had hot dogs, pepperoni rolls, Mountain Dew (yes, they drink a lot of Mountain Dew here) along with veggies and snacks.  We had some down time while they took everyone on a tour of parts of Morgantown. That evening's meal was catered so we didn't do too much until clean up time.  We got there about 11:00 a.m. and headed for home at about 7:00 p.m. That tired us old folks.  

As we mentioned last week, we got sister missionaries in Oakland.  These two sisters got more done this past week than all the elders we've had since we got here. They are working hard and are including us quite a bit.  We have wanted to help young missionaries more and these sisters are now including us a lot more.  We have been involved in two discussions and a couple of member visits already.  We invited both of the investigators to attend church this week and they both came today!  The sisters attend the Young Women's class and they are making friends with the girls that come, usually only one.  They will be attending the YW activities as well. 

For our Sacrament meeting today, we had kind of a testimony-style meeting where members had an opportunity to get up and talk about memories of their mother instead of having talks.  It was a very nice meeting.  The sister missionaries sang a special number accompanied by sister Schurger on the guitar. It was really pretty.

We had an interesting thing happen at the hospital this week.  A lady came into the lobby where we check people in and she just kept going without checking in. The lady said that her daughter just had her baby at home and she was rushing up to the labor and delivery floor to be with her daughter.  The young Dad come through a little while later and told us a little more of the story.  I guess the mother only had one or two strong contractions before the baby started coming. He was pretty calm for having just delivered the baby. I told him he would have a story to tell that very few fathers would.

We were able to attend our District Council meeting this week.  We missed the previous two meetings because we were in North Dakota one week and with the Bouchard family the next week.  We had transfers last week that really impacted our district.  About 75% of the missionaries in our district are new. We look forward to getting to know them better.

Mom's scripture today is from the Book of Mormon, Alma 56:47-48.  It read, "Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; Yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it."

These verses teach us the important influence a righteous mother can have on her children.

That's it for now. We love you and pray for you daily.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandad

Jamee and Kerry

Sister and Elder Cooper