Spring is Here

April 15, 2022
We have now been here in Lowell, MA for over a month and I’ve not been very good at keeping this blog updated. I will try to do better. As the title says, Spring is coming. Trees are beginning to bud and bloom. It rains nearly every other day. We are settling into a routine of our duties. One of our fellow senior missionary couples who we trained with back in the Missionary Training Center said in an email, that "senior missionaries need to kill their own meat everyday." Which means we are largely responsible for finding our own work. Some of our work we have decided is seeing to the welfare and comfort of the young missionaries, most of whom are away from home on their own for the first time. We try to pamper them a little bit, and in truth, we enjoy that a great deal. We have the English classes three times a week, and we really enjoy that. We both tutor some of the more advanced students. Lynn teaches a young man from Ecuador, who is very motivated and works very hard on his lessons. I usually tutor a young mother and daughter from Brazil. It always amazes me how much I do not know about English, or about the many rules of English. I am always saying something like, “English is very complicated…” The thing that strikes me about these students is just how driven they are to learn the language of this country.
We have been cleaning up the records of the ward by trying to verify addresses of people and phone numbers. Clerical work needs to be done somehow. This led to a great visit with a young woman from Cape Verde. It is always inspiring to me to learn how people came to arrive in this country. The immigrant ethic is incredible and illustrates too well how we Americans take our life for granted.
We also teach Gospel lessons with the young missionaries from time to time and those are enjoyable experiences as well. These young sisters and elders are excellent at what they do. We are there just as a support and to lend our experiences from time to time. So far, we’ve helped teach lessons to people from Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil, and Puerto Rico.
The highlight from last week was to be able to travel to Sharon, Vermont to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial. As we drove the 126 miles from Lowell we enjoyed the beautiful countryside, and we can imagine how even more beautiful it will be as the leaves return to the trees and what it must be like when the fall colors are in full swing.
Here are some pictures of the memorial site:

Sister and Elder Zollinger at the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial. The inscription on the front of the obelisk reads, "Sacred to the memory of Joseph Smith the Prophet."

The obelisk is one foot high for every year of Joseph Smith's mortality. He was born on December 23, 1805 and died on June 27, 1844. So over 38 feet in height.

This week we were able to attend our first Zone Conference in Nashua, NH. This was a great day to be able to see the amazing way these young people are instructed and help each other. We were able to meet another senior couple who are in Pittsfield, MA, a couple of hours from us. We also were able to spend some time with the senior missionaries who work in the Mission Office in Manchester. There are some subtle differences in the construction of Latter-day Saint chapels through out the world, and in New England, that is true as well. Here is an indoor chapel picture of the Nashua Stake Center that shows the high pew benches in the old New England style. Different than what you will see out west.

---

That is all for now and I promise (fingers crossed) to do better at updating our activities.