Patriot's Day

President Johnston of the Mission Presidency sent out an email inviting all the missionaries within a reasonable distance to come park their cars at his home which is just down the street from Lexington Green, have breakfast and watch the festivites. April 19, 1775 is when the British "invaded" Massachusetts and the Revolutionary War was underway. It's a holiday here, probably like July 24th in Utah. So we rolled out of bed at 0330 and headed for Lexington, which is only a 20 minute drive (with no traffic). Oh, but there was traffic this morn. People start arriving at the green at least by 4 am to get the front spaces. Pres. Johnston had room for about 20 cars in his yard.

It's tradition that all the reenactments take place at the hour of the original event, thus the early starting time. Paul Revere' ride and capture happen at 11 pm. So this battle began at 0545. We didn't get there early enough to get front row spaces but we had out buckets to stand on (the big white pails like we keep food storage). That got me over the heads of the tall guys in front of me so I could see. It was a tad chilly at that hour and since rain was forecast for later in the day, there was fog and clouds which made everything look misty. So the redcoats marched in and faced off with a small group of terrified colonists that kept backing off. We decided that was the smart thing to do when all those British with their guns and 200 troops faced that little group. The muskets were fired and when the smoke cleared, the bodies were on the ground.






After the shooting was over the British lined up and marched on to Concord for the real battle!! And here are the missionaries all lined up for breakfast afterwards.

Since it looked like maybe it would warm up we decided to go over to Concord and watch the parade. It was quite fun as all the costumes were of the revoluntionary period, the bands were fife and drum and it was short!!!

















So it was a very fun day and did start to rain that evening. I wish we could have seen the battle at North Bridge but maybe if we're here next year. That was done on Saturday and we were teaching a workshop.

We had our first "office hours" this week and two people actually showed up Tuesday morning and we each took a person and worked with them for nearly an hour. It sure is interesting to see what's going on in other lives!!! Makes you appreciate what's going on in your own life!!! Thursday morn we were in Nashua at 7 am for the BYU breakfast where we found a few other people looking for work. The speaker was an investment banker and he said it's just another one of the roller coaster events and it will get better. BUT, have we learned anything from this experience??? Because it will go down again!!! Once again, it's get out of debt!!! There were a couple of conference talks that support our work too. I don't think any of the senior couples that are leaving here are going to be replaced. They say the economy is making people afraid to go out. Oh well, it's just money:)

Tomorrow we go to Hartford to teach a workshop. And it's supposed to get up to 80 degrees. Spring has finally sprung here---the purple and white flowering trees are out, the frogs are SOOO noisy at night and with all the ponds and lakes around here, the singing frogs are aplenty!!! We've even had to turn on the air conditioner a couple times just to get some air circulating to cool it off. We get the western sun right in our windows so it can get toasty. Went on our ward yahoo group and asked if anyone had an airconditioner we could use for our bedroom and we got all kinds of offers!!! So we will have cool nights! A couple of the missionary apartments needed vacuums so I went on the list and had an abundance of offers so the missionaries will not have any excuse for dirty carpets now!!! Their excuses for dirty apartments are interesting!! One Brazilian Elder grew upwith maids so he doesn't know how to clean anything. It was always done for him!!! But I AM glad that no one inspects our apartment!!! We keep getting "stuff" and it's all over the place!!! At least we were able to move some of the boxes and stuff to the file cabinet in our "office" building!

We haven't scheduled any more fun things yet, but I'm sure something will come up!!! We never miss an opportunity!! And it's nice to be flexible enough to be able to take in these things.