This Week in Harrisburg

We attended Zone Conference in Harrisburg on Thursday. Zone Conferences are held every 6 weeks for each of the Zones. The combine Zones so that there are only 3 conferences for 7 Zones. This gives the mission the opportunity to train the missionaries on a regular basis. We had about 70 Missionaries at the Zone Conference in Harrisburg. The Zones in attendance was Harrisburg, Lancaster, and York.

This week was Easter. Happy Easter to all of you. We attended Church at New Bloomfield and then come back to Harrisburg and had dinner with President and Sister Pugh. They had invited the other office couple and two sets of Elders to have dinner with them. It was fun to get to know the Pugh's and the Missionaries in a more casual setting. We talked about Easter traditions and what they did on Easter. None of them had every rolled easter eggs, so we shared with them then wonders of rolling colored hard boiled eggs down a hill until they fell apart and all you had left was a yoke.

A little about New Bloomfield Ward. They are a country folk who live up in the mountains in a farming community. They are farmers or retired people who have retired from the military or from Government service. We see them come to church in levis and casual dress as well as suits and ties. One of our Couple Missionaries who have been assigned to a branch made the comment at Zone Conference that it would be nice to see people in church with teeth and cleaned up. It is interesting seeing what we are use to at home and how they dress here. We are adjusting!!!! We have found these people very friendly and open to us. We have about 100 to 120 attending the Ward each week. They are trying to get that number to 160 so that they can build a chapel onto their building. Right now all they have is a cultural hall and class rooms. The cultural hall doubles as the chapel and cultural hall. Saturday evening we had a ward dinner at the Chapel and when it was finished the tables were removed from the cultural hall and the benches were set up for the Chapel for Sunday Morninig meetings.

The pictures above are taken in New Bloomfield along the main street. Note the narrow roads, the closeness of the houses to the road and the roundabout in the middle of town with the monumnet to those who served in the military in the middle. Everything outside of town is open fields with homes out in the open fields.