News from Carthage

Dear Friends and Family,

Well….There’s snow! The calendar says April but the weather says February.  It won’t stick around, hopefully, but there was enough to shovel.

This has been an eventful week.  Conference was so awesome.  The Church is a living Church with present day revelation, as you all know. It was a once in a lifetime experience to be able to be a part of a solemn assembly while serving here in Carthage. Thank goodness for technology. It will be interesting to see how things will play out with the new changes in the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums and retiring the home and visiting teaching programs.  We told one of the missionaries about the changes in home and visiting teaching and he thought we were playing an April fool’s joke.

In this past 2 weeks, we have seen visitors from all of the continents of the world, excluding Antarctica. When the mobs thought they could stop the Church by killing Joseph and Hyrum, they underestimated the power of the Lord. During the month of March we had over 2,200 visitors here at Carthage.  I’ve never borne my testimony so many times.

 I just barely took 2 sisters from Africa on a tour.  They are so sweet and humble.  As I bore testimony to them, I felt as if I were in the presence of angels.  They were so proud to tell me that they are members of the church and love it with their whole soul.

Just recently we have had several tours with people from Morgan County. We were able to take Jade Woolsey (a neighbor) and his family through the jail yesterday.  It was such a spiritual experience.  We have wonderful people from Morgan. Just this morning, we had visitors from Mountain Green and Coalville. The Church is strong everywhere with committed members.  We are ready for the next level as presented to us by President Nelson.

Once again it is time to begin evening rehearsals for “Sunset on the Mississippi”.  It’s nice to know what we are in for.  Last year was such a head-spinner as we learned tours, songs, and parts in 2 plays.  It’s much easier to have some of that behind us.  The summer will go fast!

Hope you are all well and basking in that good weather we keep hearing about.

The Lord loves and blesses us all, individually.

Love,

Sister and Elder Long