Didn't know we were so far away from Home

We went to Balitmore to the Air Port to send Sister Stinger on her way home. On our way back to Harrisburg we saw this sign. It was on I-70 just out of Baltimore. It makes us realize just how far away from home we really are. It won't be long until we will be making that trek back to our good old home state of Utah. As we continued on our journey a look at the roads of Maryland. Most of the highways out here are located in corridors of trees and rolling hills. It is hard to see anything outside of the shoulders of the roadway itself. Occasionally you will get a break in the trees and you can see some of the rolling hills and lush green meadows.

PA Harrisburg Mission - Lancaster County

The Amish in Lancaster County

Amish children on the side of the road

Amish Milk Barn

Notice the Amish lady hanging out the side of the buggy

The Amish milk barn with Jacob Ese pumping up the tires on the push bike.

Notice two amish ladies planting onion sets as they set on the planting platform.

Amish loading hay onto a wagon

Amish bailer run by a diesel engine and pulled by 6 mules

Last Saturday we took on of our Sister Missionaries that is going home to Lancaster to the Amish country. We did some shopping at Amish Stores and then to New Holland for lunch at the Shady Maple. We were able to get some really good pictures of the Amish at work.

We were even given permission to take some pictures of their children at play.

The Ellis' of Mifflintown

Today we went to Mifflintown after Church in New Bloomfield and had dinner with the Ellis'. They live about 45 miles North and East of New Bloomfield and about an hour from our Apartment in Mechanicsburg. They don't have any children but they have horses and they have a business of making wood signs that are absoultly gorgious. Brother Ellis enlays the wood and Sister Ellis does the painting. They do a lot of signs for business and for farms. They do one sided and two sided signs with inlays of horses and or dogs and other things as requested. We enjoyed seeing their work but even enjoyed more just visiting with them and hearing how they got into the business. Brother Ellis is the one with the white beard.

PA Main Streets

The streets in PA are narrow and the houses and business are right out on the street. Years ago the property owners were assessed their taxes based on the amount of frontage they had between the house and the street so everyone built their house right next to the street. As you can see from these pictures there is no frontage to these homes or businesses so that they could keep their taxes low. All of the Main Streets in the towns of PA are very narrow with limited or no parking on the streets and usually no sidewalks. This is the main street in the town of Middletown PA.

PA Archetucture

As we travel around Pennsylvania we find the most interesting Archetecture in both buildings and churches. We started to list all of the churches as we were driving along a road in Scranton PA. After driving for 15 minutes we had 5 pages full of names and decided that we could not continue this project. Churches here are like Mormon Churches in Utah. There is a Church on every corner. We find out here that if you don't like the Church you are going to you can go around the corner and find another one that you can go to. Many of the Churches originate back more than 200 years. There are a lot of building in Pa that are more than 200 year old. We have taken a few pictures of some of them.

TMI

On Friday we spent the day inspecting apartments. At the conclusion of the day we were in Middletown PA so we drove over to the Susquehanna River to the site of Three Mile Island (TMI). TMI is the place where 20 years ago they had a nuclear reactor leak radiation and they had to shut it down. Now whenever you live within a 3 mile radius of the Island you have to have an evacuation map in your apartment. We have in our Mission an evacuation plan for all of our Missionaries expeciall those who live within a 10 mile radius. The following pictures are taken of the site where 2 reactors have been partially dismantled and two are still operating.

Changes in the PA Harrisburg Mission

There has been some very interesting news that we have received this week. On Tuesday evening we got a phone call from President Pugh telling us that the Church has decided to combine our Mission with the Pittsburg mission effective July 1, 2009. That is why a Mission President has not been announced for our Mission. Our new President will be President Summerhays who is from Salt Lake City Cottonwood area. President Pugh said that they were neighbors when the Pugh’s lived in Salt Lake. Anyway we will be closing the office in Camp Hill after July 1. After the office has been closed down we will be finished with our work here and will probably return home a week or two earlier than what we had planned. At this point we don’t know how much we will be involved in closing things up or if the Church will send a group out to do this work. We do know that all of the information concerning our missionaries, apartments, utilities and mission files will have to be combined with the Pittsburg Mission. We are not sure right now how all that is going to take place and how much our involvement will be. We do know that we are here to serve and will do whatever we are ask to do. The two Presidents will be meeting together and traveling to the Mission Presidents seminar next week and will work out some of those details. Our original plan was to return home after the August 31st transfer. President Pugh had asked us to stay a month longer so that we could train the new President. Now we will be finished with our work on July 1st in the Camp Hill Office and will probably stay until after the July 20th transfer to close up the office and organize the move. We then want to do some traveling to Washington DC temple, Philadelphia, and New York before returning home through the Church history sites of Nauvoo, Independence, Far West, and Winter Quarters. That would put us home about the first week of August.