Week One Hundred

This week was awesome! 

So first off I have to give a shout out to one of my favorite Haitians Judith! She got baptized on Saturday! I was able to find and start teaching her my 4th transfer in Revere! She is awesome! We would teach her a couple times a week through other Haitian members, Google translate, and the gift of tongues😂😂 

Besides that the Lord has been blessing us with lots of miracles over here in Winthrop! Including awesome weather. The only downside is the trees are dumping pollen EVERYWHERE! Our cars are all dusted yellow when we go out in the morning. I have a picture of what it looks like in some water! 

This past Thursday we were out tracting and we met a mother and a son. They had just moved here from Texas. They have no family and don't know anyone around here! We talked to them about church, and how they can get a family there, and make lots of friends. We were able to set up a time and we met them again on Saturday. On Sunday we had Tons of people at church, but it seemed as if everyone but them were coming. Well sacrament meeting started, and I was a little sad, but still happy to see tons of other friends that had made it. Well as the Sacrament hymn started playing I stood up to go close one of the doors, and boom the mom was standing there! She was used to the mega churches they have in Texas where there are thousands of people there so it didn't matter when you show up. She thought it was awesome how many lil kids were running around too!

President and Sister Blair go home this week! It's been great serving with them, and I am so happy I had the opportunity to. They are the best! 

This week we are also heading over to booth Bay Harbor to be in the Windjammer parade. That should be lots of fun and pretty good for the Elders over there. We are working with lots of people now and were able to see six of them come out to church yesterday! It's a Winthrop miracle! 

Hope you all have a good week!

 Hallowell

Painting a deck

Better than Sam's Club pretzels

Week Ninety Nine

Had a pretty great week! It started out with President and Sister Blairs final zone conference, and because the nature of next transfer, it happened to be my final one as well. It was a pretty amazing experience. My very first zone conference was held in the same chapel in Farmingdale Maine. As I sat there in the pews, I remembered how I felt that first zone conference, and how excited I was for what awaited me on my mission! I had good reason to be excited, because it has been amazing. I've seen so many miracles happen. So many random people becoming family! Anyways fast forward back to zone conference. After learning a bunch of missionary things, and about the new mission president, President Beck, we transitioned to temple talk. So my missions goal was called temple in 10 here in the land of New England. At zone conference everyone was calling it temple in T minus 10. President and Sister Blair taught us the importance of marrying a covenant keeper in the temple and to make it a priority in our lives after! Then we talked about the temple to be built here in New England. He showed us a video of President Nelson announcing the some temples, and he pauses at the last one. He told us to wait for the day when he announces a temple in our mission and he promised us that we would cry😂 We talked a lot about temple dedications and what takes place. We talked about shouting hosanna with white handkerchiefs. The Blairs each got us a white handkerchief that said New Hampshire Manchester Mission on it. Then they told us we would see them at the temple dedication. At the end of the meeting President said his final words to all of us, and had us stand to sing the Spirit of God. At the end we kneeled for a prayer and President Blair said it. All you could hear was a bunch of people sniffling. Amazing people! I learned a lot from them. Catch me here in New England for the Northern New England Temple dedication though! 

On Friday we did a blitz of the Winthrop, and I had Elder Ricks with me. So just like old times we tore up the Throp and saw miracles. The next day I took all the boys to have an exchange Meeting in Sam's Club. Good place. 

Overall things have been going really good here with in the area! We had a meeting with the bishop a few weeks back and we spoke about missionary work here in the ward, and we put some awesome plans into place. Every 5th Sunday there will be a missionary sacrament Meeting where we basically are in charge of it from the music to the speakers. Then on every fast Sunday we are having a missionary fast, where everyone fasts for opportunities to share the gospel! Along with the gospel principles class we have every other week, we have the ward busy. Things are going great with the people we are teaching too! 

Anyways I'm staying in the Throp for the last 6 weeks. Hope everyone has a good week. 

 We conquered the rock!

Week Ninety Eight

Hey everyone! 

This week was awesome! We went on exchanges with the Lewiston Auburn Elders to start it off, and it was a blast. We spent our time in mostly Lewiston, but made it back to Winthrop near the end of the day. We got to go finding for a few hours and that was a party. We talked to Somalian, Angolan, Congolese people, Mexicans, Guatemalans, and white people. There are tooooons of Somalians out here because they are refugees! They are just about all Muslim, and Ramadan just so happened to finish that day. So it was craaaaaazy! The Somalians were going crazy, and some were even inviting us to go to their parties. We talked to a group of like ten of them. The chief Somalian pointed up to us and said "one God!" and we said "yes" then he said "Mohammed prophet, Jesus prophet not son of god"  then in my well versed Arabic I tried to explain to him what we believed. At the end we agreed pointed up and all said "One God".  It was a good day.

We had some good opportunities to do some service this week as well. We set a date for baptism with one of the people we are teaching as well. We also exchanged with the Oxford area, and I took Elder Rosevear down here. We were busy at work, and were able to teach 5 lessons together, which is great because he's in his 1st transfer and wanted all the practice he could have.

Yesterday we helped Bill dig a massive rock out of the ground. This thing is huge and I didn't have faith a mortal man could move this thing. But after some hard work and a tractor we were able to move it a couple of inches. We will try again another day.

The mission is going great. I'm excited for all there is to come in these next few weeks, and want to make the most of my time left. I learn something just about everyday, either about myself, people, or the gospel. Have a good week everyone! 

Week Ninety Seven

Hey everyone! 

This week cruised by. We started it off by driving down to MLC with the Sisters. We didn't get to pick up the Elders this time, so it wasn't as big of a party. It was still pretty fun though. It was good to see all of the friends I've made over the course of my mission. I got to see Elder Turley and really sit down and talk for the first time since the MTC. We talked all about our missions, and he asked me tons and tons of questions about Revere. Good place. Elder Solomon and Peterson are doing great too. I may never see Elder Petersen again as a missionary. Besides that the mission leadership conference was good. We talked about a lot of different things. I'll be honest the end or it was really sad. Sister Blair didn't even try to hold it together, and she was crying, but she bore us a powerful testimony. President even started to shed some tears as reality began to set in. I don't know how I was so blessed to have them as my mission President and wife. I've learned a lot of valuable lessons from them that I'll be able to use long after my service here is done.
The day after MLC we met with the district leaders Elder Anderson and Elder Ricks. They made some awesome actions steps for their districts. Those Elders are doing some great things for their districts, and they've been making my life nice. 

This Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Caleb Cluff. He's in my stake back home. It was really weird being with someone that I knew before the mission. He brought back a lot of good memories of Syracuse and Layton. #syracusesquad It was cool both being in a random small town in Maine. Someones got to call Stephen King. We saw some miracles though. We got rekt by a couple of people, but kept pressing on. We didn't find anyone until we picked up the phone and just tried to call some people in our spare time. Then at the end of the night we got a referall from the boys over in Newport, Elder Wells and Patten. So God blesses us for our efforts. Sometimes they aren't as immediate as that, but I know they will come. Just find joy in the journey, and help all who pass by. Have a great week everyone!

Also the people we are teaching are getting close. Exciting times.

Syracuse Squad

Elder Clifford, Sister Smith and Elder Cluff