The Greenfield Family

Hey Everyone!!!!

I hope you all had a great Paddy's day and a great week overall!

We definitely did!

Last Monday we had a St. Patrick's Day P-day where we all wore green and we had a treasure hunt where the prize at the end was gold chocolate coins! :P It was really fun. We also ate pancakes and bacon for lunch...not very Irish, but it was delicious.

All ready for our Paddy's p-day!

Tuesday was the day itself. I wasn't expecting it to be anything special because I'm in Greenfield which is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but people made it special :) We had a WebEx first thing in the morning. If you don't know what a WebEx is, it's like a conference call thing where President and Sister Packard can talk to everyone in the mission and give us all the announcements and updates, and then we read the Book of Mormon with President Packard. So it's really awesome! But this week's one was a little different! The Packards started off talking about St. Patrick's Day and how it came about, and then they talked about St. Patrick's Day in Boston because it's SO big there, and then they talked about...me! It was hilarious!

Then later on we went to Dave and Linda's for a special St. Patrick's Day dinner. Linda had her favourite Irish music playing as always. Ireland's Call on repeat. It was amazing. We had corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots for dinner..classic! It was actually delicious! Yes that's right...I actually enjoyed cabbage! I had it so much this week, but it was actually really good! It's amazing how missions can really change you...not only spiritually, but with your taste in food! :P

Irish and American flags flying together!

Later on we went to help one of the members, Doug, with is family history. We were preparing him to go to the temple on Saturday. He has been a member for 38 years and has never been to the temple because he went inactive shortly after he was baptised, and he was reactivated just last year! So it was a really special time for him. Well, we went to his house with Kelly, and we started helping him to get more names to the temple, and we realised that we have no idea how to do family history. We're terrible at it! So we ended up having to call the number for help with Family Search and we talked to this lovely old lady in Salt Lake City who talked us through everything. It was embarrassing that we offered to help him with his family history and we don't even have a clue how to do it. How awkward! I NEED to learn!

On Wednesday we went to dinner at President Kemsley's house, our Branch President. But we ended up eating at his school! He and his wife own a school for Chinese students, where he helps them to learn English. It's really cool! We had delicious authentic Chinese food for dinner, and then we got a tour of 'Kemsley Academy'. It's awesome!!

We saw this on the way to President  Kemsley's house!

On Thursday we had a scary experience! We went to the church at around 8:15 at night because we had to print out something from the computer. Well, when we got there, there was a light on in one of the rooms. We got really scared and thought there was some creeper in the building so we just sat outside in the car, and didn't go in. We called Brian because he doesn't live far from the church, so he came and checked it out for us. He went into the church, and we were just outside literally thinking of every possible bad thing that could happen, and we were planning our escape route, buuut then he came out and told us that someone must have left the light on when they were cleaning.....fail. So there were no creepers thankfully.

On Friday we had an awesome lesson with Jose! We were just super straightforward with him and told him that he NEEDS to come to church! Well it worked because HE CAME ON SUNDAY! It was his first time EVER in church! Kelly brought him, and she said he was so nervous at first! Bless him! He told us that he really enjoyed church and the talks and everything! We're going to see him this Wednesday so we're SUPER excited!

Saturday was probably one of the best days of my whole mission. We got to go to the temple with 4 recent converts, plus Doug, plus Kelly because she's just awesome! There were too many of us to all go in a car so we had to take a bus to the temple! President Kemsley has buses because of his school so we used one of them, and off we went! It was so amazing! The highlight was definitely being there with Doug as he went to the temple for the first time EVER, and did work for his Dad and his Grandfather. It was such a special day. Also, President Packard was the one baptizing everyone so it was even more special! That was definitely the highlight of this week! :) Also just being there with all of the amazing people that I've come to love here in Greenfield. This really is an amazing place with amazing people who I'll always hold close to my heart.

On Saturday night when we came home we walked into our bedroom and there was a weird crack in the wall and a big bubble at the end of it! REALLY hard to explain. I have pictures. Anyways we were looking at it to try to figure out how it happened, so I put my hand on the wall, and some weird smelling liquid came out of the bubble! SO GROSS! We made some calls and we were told that there was water behind the wall, and it'll be getting fixed sometime this week, but for now, we have to move our beds into a different room. So, we spent our Saturday night moving our beds into the living room :P It was an interesting experience ...

The weird crack in our wall

Moving our beds!

Our beds cramped into the sitting room!

Sunday was Branch Conference and it was really great to see SO MANY people in the little Greenfield chapel! Something that kept coming up throughout the day was the fact that the Greenfield Branch has grown so much in unity, and we're a family. This is what we've really been praying for lately, and it really is so amazing to see the members working together and working so well with us. We want nothing more than to unify this branch. We can always do more, we can always be better. This branch had definitely become more unified since we first got here, but there's always room for growth! We are always praying for unity and Zion here in Greenfield! We know we can all achieve this!

A beautiful New England sunset

I love this place SO much! Missions are the best!

I love you all, and I hope you all have an amazing week! :)

Love,

Sister Rebekah Barrett