Christmas Time at Hill Cumorah

Christmas in the Palmyra Area

Greetings to all and Merry Christmas. We had a great Christmas weekend here in New York. It all began on Wednesday when we delivered packages for missionaries at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center. Then on Thursday night we drove back to the temple to attend a session. It was a great spiritual boost for the week. Friday we worked in the office and then at night we watched a video with the McVeas. On Saturday we attended a baptism in Rochester. Tina was baptized and has truly become a new person. She had a very rough life, but she had a friend that she met when they were four. As young teens, they were best friends and decided that they wanted to find the true religion but were not successful. They grew up and her girlfriend found the Mormon Church, joined it and moved away. Tina had lost contact with her friend and ended up going a different direction. After over 25 years of marriage and a hard life, her husband died and she determined to improve her life. She moved from Florida, to join her two daughters (who already lived in NY) to start a new life. She decided that she would visit the Mormon Church and find out what her friend had found was so good about it. She simply walked into the Rochester 1st Ward building and asked to be taught. The young sister missionaries, Chatterton and Wall, were happy to help teach her. The service was very nice. Many people attended, including four of us senior missionaries and Pres. and Sister Christianson, along with two of their granddaughters from Missouri. It was a great "white Christmas" (the baptism). In the afternoon, we went back to the Hill for a Christmas dinner with the other senior couples from the mission. We enjoyed a great meal and the camaraderie. Later that night we watched a couple of Christmas themed videos back at our residence. On Sunday we ate a leisurely breakfast and attended Sacrament Meeting. Then we went home and enjoyed a nap. While we were napping the turkey was baking. Then at 4 pm we had Elder & Sister McVea come join us for dinner. It was a very nice dinner. Of course we also had a few presents to open and finished up our '25 days of Christmas' gifts and notes that a friend had sent us. The longer we live the more we realize that spending time visiting with family members by phone, Internet or Skype is way more important and enjoyable than any presents. We also loved receiving the many Christmas cards from friends and family. Oh yes, we should mention that we had a little snow on Saturday but only half an inch. Then it snowed a little this morning (Monday). It has been a very unusual season here this year compared to the 30 inches they had at the same time last year.

We hope that all of you had a great Christmas and time of reflection on the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. He has blessed us all so much and will continue to bless us as we are obedient and follow Him. We pray that the Lord will bless each of you that you will have a great 2012 and that you will enjoy much happiness.

Christmas Zone Conferences

Family Home Evening at the Smith Farm

Chritmas Zone Devotionals & Joseph Smith Farm Family Home Evening

The past week has gone by quite fast. We had two days of special Christmas time Zone Conferences, one in Palmyra and the other in Buffalo. Both had excellent training sessions, skits, and good food. It is always nice to be taught by our great mission president, Pres. Christianson. Alma 7:7 tells us that the birth of Christ is a thing that is more important than they all. It was not only a wondrous event, but allowed the Savior of the world to gain a mortal body, live on earth, preach, heal, teach and suffer for us. Without His sacrifice on the cross for us, the atonement would not have become a reality. When we read the genealogy of Jesus, we see some bad characters along with the righteous. We have no excuses for trying to blame our problems or situations on the unrighteous people in our own heritage. We all have our free agency and we can each fail or succeed. We were told that today's prophets have said the words of Joel 2:28 "----your sons and your daughters shall prophesy ---and your young men see visions: ---" have been fulfilled in our day. We are all promised that we can have personal revelation. We must prepare ourselves to receive it. Also our testimonies grow as we nourish them.

Last night was another special time, we participated in Family Home Evening (FHE) at the Joseph Smith Farm historic sites. It was very nice to walk along the darkened path to the log home and then to the frame home and view the lighted temple through the trees. A senior couple read the Christmas story from the book of Luke, while a group of us stood around him inside the Smith frame home. In the barn there were some games, and back in the Welcome Center there was hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls. Singing was provided by many of the missionaries. In the basement were more games for the younger children. There were about 400 people who attended over a space of 2 hours. It was a very nice event.

On Christmas Eve we will be going to the Hill Cumorah Center again for another nice meal with the senior missionaries. We look forward to that, and then we will have a quiet night back in the John Young home. On Christmas Day we will attend sacrament meeting and then return home. We plan to spend time visiting with our extended family via the internet and Skype. What a great place to be during this time of year. It is also transfer time for some, we just had 6 missionaries depart for home today and on Monday, the 26th, we will receive 10 new missionaries. Life is good and we feel so blessed to be able to serve the Lord. May His choicest blessing be poured out upon all of you at this joyous season!

John Young Home Open House

Annual Christmas Open House

On Saturday the 10th we held our annual Christmas Open House again, only this time it was 2,000 miles away from our home in Bountiful. We hosted over 30 people, including neighbors, ward members and missionaries. It was a fun event hosted by us and our neighbors, Elder & Sister McVea (who work in the mission office with us). Elder Servoss conducted tours of the cellar and old attic. The pictures are of the house and the cellar, complete with old rough tree trunk beams. You also see the old steps.
This John Young home is 185 years old. You also see some of our guests including Sister Gonzalez from Ogden, and Elder Jeffs from Castledale, Utah. We also made a new sign for the home site of Brigham Young, which is about 1,000 feet east of this home. We had a great evening of visiting. We did miss all of you back in Utah, and look forward to having an Open house back there in two years. Enjoy the new week, we will be going to Buffalo for a special Christmas Bi-Zone Meeting on Tuesday. Pictures will be added above this story tomorrow.

Phones and John Young Home

A Great Week of Zone Conferences

This blog is a few days late, or a few early - depending on the point of view. We were very busy last week with Zone Conferences. We had 4 of them in 5 days. I had to attend all of them for about 5 hours and was able to stay the whole time at the one in Buffalo last Saturday. This was the time when we needed to upgrade and replace all of the cell phones for the young missionaries. I had quite a time trying to get 40 phones charged up, match serial numbers with phone numbers and then collect the phones at each conference. Things mostly went smoothly. They were happy to have a nice new phone. They are an essential missionary tool these days. They assist so much in planning appointments, encouraging investigators, giving the President and office staff a way to quickly contact each pair.

The spirit at the Zone Conference on Saturday was very strong. We loved having great instruction on faith and how to strengthen it. As a missionary you have such a unique perspective of things. We realize that as we strive to be strictly obedient to the mission rules and church standards, we are promised great blessings. Elder Bednar has said that we should do all we can and expect nothing in return. We were promised that the success of a missionary is not dependent on the number of baptisms, but on being faithful and following the spirit. Those missionaries will have success (even though it may not be measured in baptisms). We should be more concerned with our standing with the Lord and how much effort we are putting into serving the Him.

Tomorrow, Saturday, we will be hosting a Christmas Open House in the John Young pioneer home that we live in. It is a 185 year old home that was built by Brigham and his dad, John. We will be showing guests the old cellar and unused attic area.
We will also share information about the nearby site where Brigham had his mill and home and where he, Heber C. Kimball and 63 others were baptized. We will report on that soon. We hope that you all can enjoy the season and get ready for the celebration of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving & Erie, PA

Thanksgiving & Birthday Visit

This has been another great week here in New York. We had some busy days in the office and then got to have an extended weekend. Thursday was a nice sunny day. We worked around the house. Kent went for a 3 mile bike ride in the afternoon. Then it was time to drive to the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center for a nice dinner with many of the other senior couples. We had about 40 of us seated in the basement room. We had a very nice meal and our mission president shared a message of thankfulness with us. He wanted us to know that as the Lord's representative he wanted to tell us that the Lord was thankful for our service here. He also stated simply, "It's all true!" (meaning the restored gospel). It was great visiting with the other couples.

Friday was the big "66" for Elder Servoss, so we celebrated by getting up at 5 am and driving three hours to Erie, Pennsylvania. We met our cousins, Rod & Cathy Green, who are serving a mission in Wheeling,WV. We both had permission from our missions to travel there for a fun day of visiting. It was so good to see them after four months. They are doing well and have had a lot of success in reactivating members of the Wheeling Ward. They also volunteer at a hospital. We walked in the sand of Lake Erie and also did some shopping. At 3:15 we went to a buffet restaurant and had a very nice meal. At 6 pm we parted ways again, and both couples drove back to their assigned cities. Missions for couples are really great, and we are thankful for flexibility too.

Martins & the Schaff family

Baptism in Bath, NY & Visit in Buffalo

Saturday and Sunday were very busy days for us. We did a lot of traveling. It started yesterday, Saturday. We went to the Palmyra Temple in the morning, and then met one of the Sister Hill, one of our missionaries, who was released Wednesday, and her parents. At 3:15 we took another missionary couple and two Elders with us on a 70 mile trip to Bath, NY for a baptism. The Martins were baptized after a short three weeks of investigation, learning and prayer. They are a nice young couple. We attended to support some of our young Elders and their efforts. It was interesting driving there because over 20 miles of it was alongside Canandaigua Lake. It is one of the large finger lakes here in western New York. We drove through Naples and Italy valley also before reaching Bath. That part of NY has bigger hills (small mountains) than here in Rochester area.

Today we attended church and then drove about two hours to Orchard Park (near Buffalo). We went to visit a family friend, Mike Schaff. He and Jen live there with there three children. Mike was one of Trent's best friends and was in the scout troop when I was scoutmaster. It was great to see them. The drive there is on the toll road freeway, I-90. We passed through a lot of typical NY farm land, with red barns, open fields and wooded areas. This next week will give us a long weekend as the office will be closed Thursday and Friday. We will have a nice dinner with many of the other senior couples on Thanksgiving at the Hill Cumorah. There is a gathering area in the basement of the visitors center there that we will meet in. We look forward to that. Then on Friday we are driving 3 hours to Erie, PA to visit with Elder and Sister Green (Rod & Cathy). That is the half way point between our mission locations. It will be good to see them again. Our family members back in Utah are all getting together at Lance and Becca's home on Thursday. We miss all of our family and look forward to visits from them next summer. Meanwhile we are very much enjoying serving here. We learn new things all the time and are grateful that we are having some wonderful experiences. The gospel is true and we pray that all of you appreciate the great blessings that the gospel brings into our lives. We pray that you will all have a great Thanksgiving holiday time and that you will enjoy being with family, as your circumstances permit.

Niagara Historical Society Museum - Servoss Items

Fantastic Week

Mark's Visit, Sacred Sites & Servoss History

This past week was very memorable, since we had our first visitor from the Netherlands visit us here in New York. Mark Vander Donk came for four days, as part of his US trip. He and Elder Servoss went to the sacred sites on Tuesday, while Sister Servoss carried on at the mission office. We had a wonderful time walking through the deep leaves in the Sacred Grove. We could barely discern the trails beneath 1 to 2 inches of leaves. It was an amazing site. We stopped and sat to contemplate the wondrous event that took place there 191 years ago. President Christianson tells us that the Grove and the Hill are outdoor temples. You can feel the spirit of the Lord as you visit those places. We also had the tours of the Smith homes. We sat in the log cabin upper room where Joseph was visited by Moroni. Technically the Smith cabin and the Whitmer cabin were both reconstructed on the exact original sites and built using old methods and tools. Presidents Kimball and Hinckley both said that they were built in the same airspace as the originals. It is amazing that one can feel the spirit so strong in those cabins.

On Wednesday the three of us drove to Niagara Falls. Mark was very impressed with the falls, since Holland is so flat and they don't have waterfalls. We enjoyed our time there. We obtained permission from our mission president to make a trip into Ontario, Canada. We knew that we had Servoss ancestors who had lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake (25 miles north of the falls on the edge of Lake Ontario). We went there not having much family information with us. We knew that Daniel Servos (they used only 1 'S' then) had lived there, and that there was a Servos Burial site somewhere close. I said a silent prayer, pleading with the Lord to help us find some information on my family, since we had come so far. He listened and my prayer was answered within only a few minutes. We stopped at the Niagara Historical Society Museum to ask questions. When I asked the receptionist if she knew where we could find the Servoss burial site (pointing to my name tag), she said, "Of course, it is close to here, but we have a lot of Servos items here in the museum. Turn around and look at the display cases of Servos items." Wow, we were stunned! We walked over to the cases and looked at the uniform of Captain Daniel Servos. We then saw Servos silverware, a wooden scoop shovel, a baby bonnet, and other small items. We did not have much time, but she said that they had a lot of documents in the other room that listed histories of the Servos family. One document was a 200 page doctoral dissertation that had been written in 2006 about the Servos family in Canada. I took some notes and had a few copies made. It was very hard to leave the treasure trove there. We knew that we only had about 1/2 hour of daylight to try and find the small cemetery. We then went on a road search and after driving around a mile square area, within which was the cemetery, we found the Falk home with its fruit stand. We were told that the graveyard was back through the vineyards of the farm. We could not find anyone home, so we had to end our search. Later we learned that the Servos homestead called Palatine Hill had been located about 1/4 mile away. We will go back a few times more while we live in this area. It was an amazing place to visit.

Thursday we had to get back to the office and get caught up on the work. In the afternoon we went to the Mission Home for the MLS Senior Missionaries (Member & Leadership Support) training and dinner. Mark attended with us. We had some great training and were told by President Christianson about the great value of the senior couples in the Wards and Branches here. We then enjoyed a delicious meal and then had time to visit and share stories. It was a great week. We are so blessed to be here.

The Two of Us in New York

Kent's Eye Miracle

Pictures above are us with Elder Gudgell, us at the office, and us at Lake Ontario.

In January of this year, I was noticing a change in my vision. I could not see very well out of my right eye. I put off going to the optometrist for a few weeks. When I finally went to see him and had an exam I was surprised to find out that I had three burst blood vessels in my retina. He told me that I needed to see a retina specialist. Three days later I was being examined and was told that I had a major problem and could have lost my eye had I not come to get help. My vision was 20/50, he recommended a treatment. I asked our son Trent to give me a priesthood blessing. Our prayers concerning my eye increased over the next few months. The doctor told us that we would need to serve in North America, so that I would be near the proper caregivers. Over the next few months I had two shots of Evaston in my eye. It seemed to help, and my vision improved to 20/30. The doctor recommended that I have a special laser treatment, which I then had done. He burned 240 tiny holes into my retina to allow oxygen to get into the affected area and help heal the eye. A few weeks later I had a vision exam that showed that I could now see 20/20. I was so amazed and so was the doctor. A month later I took my divers license eye exam and passed without corrective lenses for the first time ever. Since arriving in the mission I have had two follow-up exams and during the last one my vision was again verified as being 20/20. The nurse said that she had been working with retina doctors for 19 years and had never seen anyone recover from that condition like I had. She and the doctor agreed that my recovery was a miracle. We were so pleased and also felt that I had been very blessed. The Lord has been so good to me. A miracle has taken place and I am so glad to have great vision once again.

Pictures of the Seminar

Area Mission Presidents Seminar

The much anticipated Area Mission Presidents Seminar was held here this past week. Our mission was the host mission. We had 22 presidents and their wives in attendance. We had the opportunity to drive the mission van to pick up four mission presidents and their wives at the airport. They included Pres. Pitt (our former Stake President from Centerville), Pres. Hess (also from Bountiful), and two others. They were accompanied by their wives. Three General Authorities from the First Quorum of Seventy also arrived: Elder Jay Jensen, Elder Marcus Nash, and Elder Jose Alonzo.

Elder Servoss had the duties delegated to him to take care of all of the physical arrangements for three different venues. It involved a lot of planning which started last month with a walk through of the Palmyra, Fayette, and Pittsford ward church buildings. He was given an outline and planned out the details. He arranged for help at each building and found a person who could supply 12 desk mics and 3 cordless mics to use. The set up started on Wednesday morning when we set up things in Palmyra. We had to put out 15 long tables with chairs in a seminar form. Each table was set with a table cloth and candy dishes, nuts, and water. Fortunately the ward members has already set up the tables and chairs for the dining area, which saved us time. At 9:45 I had to drive to the office to do some work. At 5 pm we had to be back in Palmyra to set up the sound system. Two hours later I drove home. Then the next morning (Thursday) I was back at 8:15 to open the building. The presidents arrived at 9. After 5 minutes of problems with the sound system, I got the controls tweaked and all was well for the rest of the meeting. I went back to the office to get Kae and returned to meet some of the senior missionary elders who came to help take down the tables and chairs. We finished just after 2 and then drove 45 minutes to Fayette to set up things. Kae decorated the Relief Society room tables with pumpkins, flowers, acorns, and silk leaves. We worked hard and had things ready by 7 pm. Then we had glitches with the sound system that took us until 10 pm to resolve. We got home at 11:30 pm.

Friday morning I was up early and headed off to Fayette. I spent an hour and a half there and then returned to the office to work, a 45 minute drive. At 5 pm three of us senior Elders were back there to take things down. We had help from ward members and young men and were done by 7:30 pm. We then had to drive back to Pittsford to set up things there. I had asked the High Priests to help, and was very grateful to find that they had set things up by the time we arrived at 8:30 pm. It took us over an hour to set up the sound system, and so it was about 10:30 before we arrived home.

Saturday morning I went to the church at 7:10 am. I met the bishop's councilor there and got the building unlocked. We had to hurry and move a piano into the gym and do a quick test of the sound before the 9 am arrival of the group. I stayed at the church while they had the program. At 12:30 we were able to take things down. We had plenty of help and were done in less than an hour. Everyone was very pleased with the terrific job that they said Elder Servoss and the others had done. Elder Jay Jensen (one of the 7 Presidents of the Seventy) thanked me personally and told me that he had been told many years ago, while preparing for a similar event, that if things ran smoothly it allowed the spirit to be uninhibited in the meetings. That he said had been the case over the past three days. The Area Executive Secretary, under whose direction I worked, told me that he had been doing these events for 13 years, and had never had one run so smoothly. He also had very little that he had to do for clean up, which was very unusual for him. We were happy to have had so many people who were willing to help us serve. Our mission president was very pleased with all that we did, and thanked us many times. Kae and I know that we were in the Lord's master plan a long time ago to be able to be here in New York for this event. It was a great experience, but very tiring.

Fayette & the Whitmer Farm

Seneca Lake Camp