Excursion to Plymouth!

June 5 Extra good Friday morning mission zoom because it was largely about personal scripture study. First of course a few miracles, including a lady who met the sisters and said "wait, are you Americans?" (I don't know if they were foreign language sisters) and when they said yes, she told them that about six months ago she had been praying about where to go to church and had a dream about two young ladies who were Americans that she met in the back of a big church and then a book fell into her lap. So they gave her a Book of Mormon of course and she was quickly excited to be baptized. Others have also had people basically come up and ask to be baptized, some who have taken lessons or attended church in the past but for some reason things didn't work out and now they want it.

Go Ballard and Esplin!

We were reminded of the great promise of President Hinckley when he challenged everyone in August 2005 to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year: "Without reservation I promise you that if each of you will observe this simple program, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God." 

Just was such a Bostonian missionary shot (posted on zone chat)

Sister Risenmay had been asking some of the missionaries what they do to keep their personal study interesting and effective, and shared ideas like having really earnest prayer first, writing names of friends (previously known as investigators) down with a blank space by each to note inspiration for them, making a visual page with notes and impressions. President R spoke of how critical it is in this day and age of teaching by the Spirit instead of memorized lessons, to have the foundation that only comes from in-depth personal scripture study. It's not just study time, it's time to commune with God. These missionaries are getting such good training for teaching and living the gospel throughout their lives! I'm going to do better at making sure I spend the full 60 minutes in study that missionaries are scheduled to do. They also mentioned that when things get casual, the first thing to go is companionship study - which we need to improve at.

Our monthly devotional was also great, the Risenmays have been studying Joy and asked everyone to find a favorite scriptures and there were some really interesting ones that were not the first we might think of - wish I'd noted them. I think that's a great study subject. They included an excerpt used by Elder Kearon from writings of Robert Louis Stevenson : 

find out where joy resides, 

and give it a voice far beyond singing.

For to miss the joy is to miss all.

Our local elders found an inactive member from Cape Verde, we wondered how they managed since we didn't even have an apartment number, but they went searching and hung around and called people they knew had been in the area before and eventually actually ran into his son! Who is now planning to be baptized! The member, Antonio, we drove to church but he hardly said anything at all. Apparently its is common for Cape Verdeans to talk very little although their household was plenty loud - he has eight kids, mostly about grown I'd say from the glimpse we got. 

They always want to do something different for the district council photo but we are always slow - didn't know the term for this move in time to immediately get what they were doing - treats in hand 

Also from District Council a paragraph from PMG that ought to be shared with missionary committees (we've been invited to many lessons with missionaries but they never thought to give us their contact information and suggest that we contact them, invite them to things, etc.): "Missionaries  can also give valuable support to people between teaching visits. They can text, read scriptures together, invite people to their homes or to activities, or invite them to sit together at church. They can answer questions about what their lives are like as members of the Church. Their life experiences and perspective can help them relate with people in ways that are sometimes different from how missionaries relate."

We went to check out the place Thorpes gave service and went back the next day to help out. It's called Maverick Landing (specifically their Community Center). Since all our new members we are trying to help work during the day, we have extra time. It is a mixed housing set-up planned and built a few years ago and during Covid there were people having trouble getting food so they started helping out. Now there is still a food program and for those who have trouble getting out, they deliver a bag of food and that's what Thorpes helped with. So we learned how to haul 82 bags of food around in a cart and wagon. I was impressed that it was all fresh produce! One lady did come out and give back the plantains - she was one of the few we've dealt with that actually has a Boston accent, and said these were for the Spanish and she was allergic anyway. The community center does lots of work to help people have stable housing, programs for teens and kids, etc. and they have a large Hispanic group but also quite a few Arabic. It was one of our random days (getting more frequent) that got quite warm and is going to be a challenge during July and August to haul this stuff around, especially since its ready about noon.

Its a really nice project with townhouses that are mostly full-price and some low-income and is in the center of several other apartment buildings are are more or less part of the group. Getting there and back, google has taken us four different routes in our two trips so its still confusing. I enjoy how the Boston area is full of trees and many nice gardens currently flowering. We delivered to two 6-floor buildings and lots of townhouses. 

Another thing we plan to do is be more careful about putting the full time into personal study, companion study and prep, and even exercise. So I went down to the workout room to check things out and did some elliptical and possibly brief start on weight training.

For Mission Tour next week (when a general authority visits to check things out and to teach) we were asked to study the talk "The Everlasting Covenant" by President Nelson and be prepared to give a 90-second message on what we learned. Here are the notes I made: 

The covenant path is the process of becoming one with God - we enter it first at baptism and more fully in the temple, it is all about our "hesed" relationship with God - covenants bind us to Him and Him to us – we become closer.

 Jesus Christ is at the center of the Abrahamic covenant; his atonement makes it feasible. Keeping covenants not only brings great eventual blessings but in this life brings strength to resist the world, helps us have direct access to God's power, brings us "all" spiritual blessings, and an extra measure of love and mercy. Jesus Christ is the guarantor of these covenants, which bring the greatest of all the gifts of God.

 Therefore our calling is to share the covenant with all the world (both sides of the veil) - to help every member realize the joy and privileges of covenant, share the gospel to all within our sphere of influence, and to support and encourage missionaries.

 (the tribe of Judah prepared for the 1st coming, Joseph for the second - we are adopted into the house of Israel when we "become Christ's")

 "The greatest joy you will ever experience is when you are consumed with love for God and His children"

We met with Amarildo again but still can't fix his FamilySearch problems, we are going to have to ask for help some more. Other visits got canceled. 

Wow, big day in Plymouth. Elder Mandorino volunteered to drive, (hooray) and we paid for close parking, in case the rain hit. which it did! We saw the Mayflower II in all its refurbished glory,

This looks more spacious in the photo - and they built the replica with an extra eight inches of height. Imagine it with 120 people and their animals, the openings sealed up tight against water, for 66 days on the crossing PLUS all the weeks beforehand while trying to get the other ship to stop leaking and to afterwards find a decent place to land, etc. They were on there for many months.

The dark inner area you see here is the entirety of the crew quarters to eating cooking sleeping - they crammed about 20 in there I think. They were considered a rough crowd and not used to passengers, especially religious ones who didn't like the crude language and treatment.

 Plymouth Rock which was once three times as big before people chipped pieces off - they were encouraged to! (with eight feet of it aboveground), now three feet. 

Then we hiked up to the Grist Mill (but decided not to spend money on it) and then to Pilgrim Hall Museum for a quick turn about the room(s) before getting to the dock for the whale-watching cruise. (I've been on very few boats so I took a Bonine first just in case and it worked.) 

They had very little success the previous cruise and they heard the whales were farther than usual so they had us come earlier and plan on longer, yet ten miles before expected we ran right into a big group vigorously feeding. Humpbacks, which were really active and (also due to being the only boat out because of threatening weather)  they gave us about twice the normal time watching them. I learned a lot, including that one form of feeding is only seen here around Cape Cod - they teach it to each other. But I can't recall for sure which - I think "tail-slap lunge". Chilly yes, so glad we bought rain jackets last week, and noisy. But worth it. Apparently this year has been unusually good "whale-feeding" in the area, promising more babies to come- they have four generations of whales identified still living. 

We quickly learned to listen for blows and to watch for bubbles and birds - the birds can see better from their vantage point and want to be there to grab fish the whales have driven up. The bubbles are one of the feeding methods - they make circles of bubbles driving the fish closer so they can get a more concentrated mouthful, sometimes working together. Often in this area they are eating sand lances, small skinny fish. They need the food that grows here in cold waters to fatten up and then they go off and don't eat for months.

the Stellwagon Bank Marine Sanctuary is nearby and the reason for the whale-watchers in the area. 

There were loads of tail photos and I realized they identify the whales by the marking on the tail, our naturalist could name two of the whales we saw.

So those are the professional photos from the naturalist or whoever worked with her and their long lense, here's the best of the many I took, showing more realistically what it was like to be there: 

very few were this close! but we were lucky in how many and how close we saw the humpbacks. they are considered one of the "kindest and most gentle and friendly" types. Our boats has a special designation that shows they are doing all they can to help protect and preserve marine life, they were very careful and deliberate in how they moved near the whales. They spoke about things like the pile of seals we saw on one beach from afar (apparently likely 300) and that anything you do that causes wildlife to alter their behavior is a "take" and frowned upon. Like if we went close enough for the seals to decide to go into the water. 

The CES person in Plymouth invited us all to dinner, his family was on the cruise (got in on the group price maybe - we could hear their kids getting so excited seeing the whales!). We were pretty soggy form the short run to the car in pouring rain (so great that it waited til we got back) and were glad we parked close by even if it cost more, we got to the house way ahead of those who had to slog up the hill in the rain, but overall with the wind and noise and chills and  hikes we were quite worn out)

Elder Lortz, front left, arranged the whale watching. Next to him is Sister McNeil, our hostess.

We had a lot of discussion about how nice it would be if the seniors could meet together a bit more for training or counseling together, etc. One couple said, "Nice to meet you, and now we'll never see you again" because they are off in New Hampshire-

Branch Conference meant lots of headphones - Portuguese to English for visitors and English to Portuguese for when stake people spoke. The little kids all wanted headphones even though they are the most bilingual in the place! They sent lots of messages about coming to this special mtg yet almost no one was there at the start - but it did completely fill up after a while. The stake Primary presidency asked me to play for an upcoming fireside about the faith of children in the scriptures.

headphones ready up on the stand