Visits, Spring and the temple

We are enjoying the visiting of homes of members here. The Relief Society president and the Branch President gave us a list of people to visit and it is fun to get to know them. We also have enjoyed the start of Spring and especially listening to the messages of General Conference.

Shauna gave a wonderful summary in her weekly message:

"It is a wonderful thing to be in a little town in southern New York state, hidden deep in the rolling hills just waiting to burst with spring, and hear the words of prophets and apostles living on the earth today.  What wonderful messages of peace and strength.  The Holy Ghost will indeed support us in the trials of today if we just listen for His still small voice."

This is in front of one of our members' homes, showing Spring trying to get through the snow

We have had a lot of rain here, but I guess that is normal for this part of the country. Yesterday, in our travels, it rained off and on, but the day was pleasant, nonetheless. In the morning, we took the Elders with us as we drove to the temple in Palmyra. This time we even did it without consulting a map guide on our phone. State highway 21 actually connects our little town with the temple, though we vary from that highway at times for better connection. At the temple, we enjoyed meeting our daughter and two grandsons and participated with baptisms for the dead. The temple workers comments that it was the busiest morning at the baptistry on record. I had the honor of baptizing two grandsons, my daughter and my wife all as proxy for deceased family relatives. As we came out, we saw our mission president waiting there.

This is Elder Wagstaff and Elder Smith standing with President Evans at the Palmyra temple

Also, in the past week, we started another form of service for the area. I am a member of Find-a-Grave and was curious about any requests for photos of graves in the area. People who have ancestors or family in particular cemeteries request someone to go there and take pictures of the grave stones. I found that the main cemetery near here, the Rural Cemetery of Hornell, had well over 200 requests still pending. We visited the cemetery and started taking pictures of gravestones, transcribing them and uploading it all onto the website. Some of you may have seen FamilySearch presenting Find-a-Grave entries as source material. That is what we started doing here in some of our off-times.

We love working and serving here!