Wednesday, October 12, 2016 – Mission Training Meeting, Plant Bulbs, Prune Stock Coleus Plants

Our weekly mission-wide training on Wednesday morning was a little different today. All of the missionaries were split into four groups and each group went to one of the historic sites to be instructed and train how to do a better job.

Sis. Johnson went to the Brigham Young home for her training. I went to the Stoddard Tin Shop. One of the remarkable things about the Stoddard Tin Shop is the length of the tours. We are supposed to take 10 to 12 minutes to conduct the entire tour. That’s pretty hard considering all of the pages of information we have available to teach. That is why this morning’s training was so important. The lesson I came away with was that the Holy Spirit will guide us on what to say.

The purpose of the Stoddard Tin Shop tour is to demonstrate that our God given talents help build the Kingdom of God and each of our individual talents blesses the lives of others. The tinsmith, Sylvester Stoddard used his talent of making patterns to fashion his wares. Likewise the Lord has a pattern for our lives. If we follow His pattern we can bless the lives of our fellowman and find Him too.

It rained overnight but we were still able to plant bulbs after our Mission training meeting. Today’s bulbs we planted in the “Women’s Garden” were Jonquils and Anemones. We weren’t about to finish all of the flowerbeds we intended to plant. It started raining.  We’ll try to finish the last of the “Women’s Garden” tomorrow, weather permitting.

We spent the rest of our day in the shelter of the greenhouses. We pruned back all of the young Coleus rooted cuttings. We snipped off the top two thirds of the plants to stimulate the lateral shoots to grow and make the plant fuller, lower and bushier.

 

Well, it happened again. Another one of those “Tender Mercies.” Sis. Johnson and I were performing in “Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo” this evening and who would be bump into? Our old friends Dr. Les and Diane Pospisil. Dr. Pospisil was our family dentist for thirty years! We were very surprised to see them. We had a very nice visit with them and their son Doug and his family. It truly is amazing all of the friends, family and acquaintances we’ve run into completely by accident since we’ve been serving our mission here in Nauvoo & Carthage Illinois.