Crisp

Once again, I was losing hope that we would get an email today, and once again I was pleasantly surprised!  Here's the latest from Melissa.

Hello all!  

As we exited our abode today, our skin was greeted by nothing short of cool air. WHAT? Yes. Isn't that lovely? It is FALL in New England, people! What a delight! I'm a lucky girl to be here in this beautiful city at this beautiful time of the year. 

I feel like I don't have that many updates since the last time I wrote you! Andrew was able to come up with a full second e-mail in just 36 hours but (fortunately) my life is much more stationary. :) 

Investigator update, P* was too busy to meet with us again this week. That was a bummer. He is a software developer and they've got a deadline coming up this weekend so he's been putting in a lot of extra hours. Hopefully he'll be ready to focus on spirituality with full force once that's over. We are still meeting with D*, who has a baptismal date, as well as J*, our Bible study man. We have a new investigator, K*, whom we met while looking for his sister who was on our potential sheet. He is pretty nice and so far wants to keep meeting with us, so that's good! 

We had a couple of really great lessons with members this past week! I love seeing people prayerfully draft a family mission plan - so far all the plans I've seen have been pretty different from each other, but that's what's so great - they're perfect for the family! I love that people make specific goals and have obviously made their personal missionary work a matter of personal revelation.  We started working with this woman named C*, who was baptized the week before we got transfered in, and confirmed our first week in Boston. She is such a sweetheart! She is pretty lonely and has a lot of challenges but she just has so much faith. She really wants to do what's right and she writes songs about the Book of Mormon, prayer, stuff like that. It's so funny because she actually has a very high-pitched voice, but when she sings it's this rich, chocolately, 1940's alto - SO FUNNY. I love it. We got to meet with a less-active woman who is another really inspiring person! Her name is S* and she and her parents were among the very first people baptized in Albania. Like, literally she and 40-ish others were baptized in a group as soon as it was legally acceptable. That was I think 11 years ago? Anyway, she has a lot of faith and wants to come back to church soon. 

Saturday was Elder Ludlow's birthday. He's an Elder who was actually in our district out in Oxford, and then got transferred into our ward just a couple weeks ago - we love him! For his birthday we bought some Snickers and Milky Way bars and arranged them in an L (for Ludlow, of course) on a sheet of aluminum foil, drilled holes in them, and stuck 20 candles in this piece of work. Then we made them stop by our apartment on their way home because we told them we had a teaching record for them - hahahahahahaha. They were not mad at our lies, luckily. So that was fun! 

Yesterday was a GREAT day! We had a nice time at church (with a visiting choir from the Haitian ward doing the musical number in Sacrament Meeting - AWESOME) and then did some planning. For dinner we got picked up by Sister Packard and driven to the mission home - we got to have dinner with President Packard and his family! My GOODNESS I just love them so much. We are working on putting together a travelling musical fireside that we can take around to all the Stakes in the mission. President loves me, and I love him. His family is just so amazing. It was wonderful to get to spend time with them. I requested an interview with him and asked for advice on how I can be a better companion. He gave me some wonderful counsel and a Priesthood blessing and I feel a lot better! I was happy to (again) feel such a strong confirmation that he is the person God wants to be leading the Massachusetts Boston Mission at this time, and that I am meant to be here at this time, too. I'm so blessed.  

I hope you are all doing well! I love you so much and appreciate your e-mails. 

Love,
Sister "I love Autumn" Broekhuijsen