Hello again Family and Friends,
Well it's been a schizophrenic weather week here at the Cove. One day it's beautiful, and the next we are in the middle of a blizzard. But it's still a great experience and we're getting a ton accomplished. This week I have been working on several projects, including digging footings and building a pad for the Humanitarian
Center expansion, taking down a couple of gigantic cottonwood trees from in front of the pavilion at missionary village (which will allow for the expansion there), and
placing a 24" X 20' culvert under the road I built across Cherry Creek. This has also been a week of snow removal when needed. With this push on projects it's been a
very tiring week to say the least, and I can hardly wait for reinforcements to begin showing up. The other Polar Bears have been busy also. They have been finishing up the new apartment which will be occupied by our new chefs, the McAtees. They have also been reconstructing the kitchen in the barn to make it more user friendly. We have added some huge refrigerators and a freezer which will accommodate a great deal more food. Just what we need, more food! Truthfully, we are looking forward to Sister McAtee's great culinary skills! With the McAtee's new assignment I wonder if Elder McAtee will find the time to retain his title as "Champion Rattle Snake
Hunter."
In a couple of weeks we will be able to go home for a few days to get our taxes done and attend our granddaughter Olivia's baptism. We are really looking forward to
seeing our family and catching up on their lives. We are sorry that we won't have time to see all of our friends who live in that area, but our time will be short and our priority, of course, will be our family. We are excited that many of our family and friends have told us that they are planning on coming up for a visit this summer. We'll try to make it worth your while! But then again, the Cove experience
alone is worth the trip.
Today in church we had a young man from Casper give an inspiring talk on personal inspiration. As part of his remarks he told us of an experience that happened on his
mission a few years ago. He told us that he and his companion were giving the missionary lessons to a young man who seemed to be interested in the church and
although the young man still had a number of concerns he was praying about them. One of his concerns was accepting the Book of Mormon. The young man told the missionaries
that he would be gone for a couple of weeks to visit his father and seek his council. He also knew that his father had shown a lot of animosity toward church because of his father's own religious beliefs. The night before this young man
visited his father he had a vivid dream in which he saw a Book of Mormon on his fathers table. He knew that realization of this dream was highly unlikely due to his
fathers Anti-Mormon stance. When he walked into his fathers house, sure enough, there on the table was a Book of Mormon. When he questioned his father about the
book, the young man was told by his father that the day before he had found it laying in the street and although he "hated Mormons", ( an attitude I have a hard time associating with someone who believes in Christ ) for some reason he was prompted to pick the book up and bring it home. He said he had every intention of throwing it away later, but had laid it on his table and forgotten about it.
Consequently, because of this spiritual experience, or what some may term a coincidence, the young man decided to join the Church and is now a strong member.
To those of you who are not of our faith this story is probably hard to relate to, but to all of you who are, this is just another one of the countless examples of personal spiritual experiences that tie us to our faith.
This story is not made a part of this email to try make those many family and friends, who are "not" of our faith, believe! But on the other hand, we desire to share these experiences with those many family and friends who "are" of our
faith and who, because they have personally had spiritual experiences, are touched by the spiritual experiences of others which help ground us in our faith. I know they touch my heart!
We love and respect all our family and friends no matter what your beliefs and consider all of you a blessing in our life.
Elder Leavitt
Hi everyone !! As Elder Leavitt said, the weather has been a topic of conversation this week. I think we experienced what I would call our first blizzard this week --
certainly more snow in one storm than we have seen so far. I'm grateful that we were warm and cozy in our apartment and could watch it out the window and not be out "in" the storm.
We have had many visitors this week -- probably because of Spring break and also because of the aforementioned storm, I-80 was closed. This forced some people to
choose the longer route to get to Cheyenne so they therefore drove by Martin's Cove. I met several visitor's who were not Mormon but were nevertheless touched by the story of the courageous handcart pioneers. I was also privileged to meet a descendent from the Hodgett wagon train (which met up with the Martin's handcart company here at Martin's Cove), a descendent from one of the rescuers, and a direct
descendent from a family who traveled with the Willie Handcart Company.
I'd like to quickly tell the story of the woman I met who was the great great granddaughter of Charles Moulton, who was an infant with the Willie Handcart Company.
Charles was born on the ocean voyage to America and not only survived the ordeal of getting to Iowa but also the handcart trek across the plains. But what is
even more amazing is that he was able to hang onto life after having been caught in the frigid winter storm that hit the Willie Company on Rocky Ridge. After this baby
arrived in Salt Lake, "when his pitiful little body was held up in the sun one could see right through it, so little flesh did he have". Another miracle is that his whole family made it which included his parents and 7 siblings. Before they left England their mother was given a blessing in which she was promised that her entire family would make this incredible journey safely. Surely the Lord had his hand on this family and now they have a great posterity who honor their pioneer ancestors.
Happy Birthday to our precious little Isabella, who is 3 years old today. When we talked to her this evening, she told us about her birthday party and the gifts she
received. It was so fun to hear her sound so grown up :)
Well, enough for today. We love and miss you all and are getting excited to see our Missionary friends who will be arriving soon.
Our love and prayers,
Sister Leavitt
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