First Zone Conferences

This week we had our first Zone Conferences and spoke in Stake Conference in Alamosa.

Castle Rock and North Zones

These lovely Ladies cooked and served us lunch.

The Missionaries singing Army of Helaman to the sisters who prepared and served such a wonderful meal for us.

Springs Zone

Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders teaching their zone in a breakout session.

They taught about digging deeper into the scriptures and the importance of study journals *write down your questions and use the scriptures, words of later day prophets, and other study resources to find answers. *Use Bible and Church History maps to learn geography, distances, climate, and terrain...They then looked at the events, geography, time and distances around the story of the Savior calming the Sea....That many of the apostles were fishermen: They knew the storms of the sea and how to weather them. But this time they were fearful for their lives. The Savior can calm the storms of life when they are more than we know how to handle... By ship it took 1 and 1/2 days to sail across the sea...The Savior's time was worth saving one. In Mark 5 he travels that great distance to Heal the man with an unclean spirits...he then got back in the ship and sailed across the sea for another day and a half where he was met by Jarius, and asked to heal his daughter. While journeying there, he was touched by the woman with an issue of blood and took time with her...and then he continued on to help Jarius...he spent great amount of time to heal the one. Each was important.. I hadn't thought about the time involved in doing those things...

East and High Plains Zones

Fountain Zone

Manassa and Alamosa Zones

We spoke in our first Stake Conference as Mission President and Wife. President Stevenson was a Bishop and a Stake President and he loves to speak and teach...there was also a visiting member of the Seventy. I on the other hand usually feel nervous maybe because now I am not just Sr. Stevenson in my ward at home. I'm Sr. Stevenson the Mission President's Wife and am very new at this and growing into the calling. The sweet sisters were praying for me and told me just don't mention snakes and they will love you. No Snakes were mentioned in the giving of my talk. And I was much less nervous than normal. I'm sure it was the prayers of our amazing sisters.

Some of the things that I learned at the conference: Making and Keeping Sacred Covenant are the most important acts of our lives. Ordinances are things that we do to help us remember the covenants we make.

From Elder K. David Scott: * The way to adjust to the change in altitude is to drink more water...the way to adjust to the challenges and changes in life is similar: we can adjust by drinking the Gospel of Jesus Christ more deeply and you will feel completely at home. * Where we are is no coincidence, we are here to affect a life and be a blessing. Don't be like Jonah and fight it. Be where the Lord wants us to be.  We should pray to know what our purpose is and who and how to help. I would hope your time never means nothing...it always has a purpose.* What are the Apostles telling us to do? #1 Develope Unshakable Faith. Implored, earnestly begged, us to read the Book of Mormon Daily. Keep the Sabbath Day Holy-the Lord wants us to build our faith and a stronger relationship with Him, Keeping the Lord's day helps us knowHim. #2 Do more to help others partake of this gospel.The sign on our chapels says "Visitors Welcome"...he wished it said "Visitors Invited" Come worship with us. Pray for guidance & he will help us know who and how, Pray for inspiration with pure intent. Success comes when we invite.



We discovered that there is a railway that goes through the mountains to see the Fall colors...maybe if we have an extra day the next time we are here??? Definitely on our P-Day list while we are here...it looks amazing.

Can you imagine what it will look like in Autumn?🌳🍁🍂 We love the Valley💕🏞

Singing to those who served us.

Singing to those who served us...

Pueblo Zone



Pueblo Zone Silly 😎 Boys will be boys. (Arise from the dust my sons and be men!--President Stevenson editorial)

During the zone conferences, President Stevenson trained on the Doctrine of Christ and our purpose as missionaries and introduced "the pendulum of baptism" i.e., having the proper balance of focus on this important ordinance associated with our purpose as missionaries--What happens in a mission if the baptism ordinance is de-emphasized and what happens if it is over-emphasized only for the sake of numbers.  A good discussion ensued.  The week before zone conferences President Stevenson noticed that we had 105 investigators attend Sacrament meeting (an amazing accomplishment--most it's ever been) and we had 35 investigators with a baptismal date.  He felt a disconnect there.  So after the discussion on our purpose as missionaries, he invited the missionaries to teach the doctrine of baptism with an invitation to be baptized earlier in the teaching process, even as early as the first lesson (see Preach My Gospel, p. 40), to role play it as part of the first discussion, and then go out and try it.  The missionaries accepted the challenge, and had some amazing experiences.  (Note: investigators with a baptismal date are now consistently in the high 50s each week--we have amazing missionaries who accept instruction and then "go and do"!!!)

A Visit To Colorado College

We finished up the week with interviews in the East Zone

Our wonderful senior Sisters--Sr. Findley and Turlington.  They are such a strength in the ward and stake they serve in. They choose to have their P-day on Tuesday instead of Monday so they can attend the temple and take sisters in the ward/stake with them. They have had amazing experience of asking the people to go with them at just the right time for that person. I love listening to their experiences.  They have been teaching an 11-year old girl in the ward to prepare her for her baptism and her non-member father started listening in on the lessons.  Now he is formally taking the lessons and has a baptismal date to be baptized the same day as his daughter.

On Saturday, we got to go to a baptism, one of the great joys of serving a mission.

He is the forth member of his family to join the church.

All of these Elders taught his family. First his mom accepted the invitation of baptism and then his two sisters.  

He chose to be baptized after his dad returned from deployment overseas. 

Elder Beier drove out and picked up some of the missionaries who had taught the family. (so they wouldn't go over on their miles) 

We witnessed our first hail storm. It started with huge flashes of lightening and the roar of thunder. 

and little tiny beads of hail all over the deck. We've been warned to always park in the garage because quite often they are golf ball sized. The dents in the cars we see around town are evidence its not just a tall  tale. 

On Monday, for our P-day we were invited to go to Colorado College to view some items in their Special Collections Section of the Tutt Library. It's a teaching library so we were able to carefully handle the items. 

We learned a little bit about the history of sacred records. This is stone table. They're actually pretty small, only about as long as your thumb. They are made of clay, engraved with small tools and then fired so that the engravings become a part of them. They are small enough so that the word of God could be carried with them.

II Corinthians 3: 2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: 

3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God: not in tables of stone, but in the fleshy tables of the heart.  (This scripture later became the theme for one of the messages President Stevenson taught at our first zone conferences.)

This is a sample of modern day hand made papyrus. It was the most light weight and inexpensive way of writing but also the most fragile.

This is a lamb/ animal skin scroll of the Book of Ester

This is a close up view of the scroll. They tested the material it is made of and found it's stitched together in sections. The first couple portions are lamb skin but other parts are goat and calf skin. She let us feel the texture of the scroll. The back side it is very smooth and the side with the writing is soft but has more textural tooth and holds the ink better. They were more durable. 

The next form of sacred records were hand scribed books. That were very laborious.

In Mainz Germany in the 1450's Johannes Gutenberg invented  a movable type printing press. These are pages from a Guttenberg Bible. 

The pages were pressed twice first using black and then red ink.

Type setting from a Guttenberg Press

Other items in this specific collection are : one of George Q. Cannon's (an early apostle) hand written Journals (when he was in prison for polygamy)

https://libraryweb.coloradocollege.edu/library/specialcollections/Manuscript/cannontranscription.html

There were also copies of early Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saint Publications

But what we were most excited to see was a 1st edition of the Book of Mormon. It was one of the first 5,000 printed in Palmyra New York. We were able to handle it but not lift it off of it's support.

Amazingly, it was purchased in 1962 for $250. She explained that the large printed sheets that contained many pages were called a Gathering. They were folded a certain way and then hand sewn together. each Gathering had special marking on it so that you could see that the were bound together in the correct order. The book below would have had ridges across the spine. Sometimes notches were cut in the Gatherings so that the finished binding would be smooth. The pages of the Gatherings would be cut with a Guillotine when the stitching was complete and then the book would be bound and finished. It was rare for that many copies, 2,000 , to be printed at once.

http://www.mccunecollection.org/images/Equipment/Challenge%20Advance%20Guillotine%20Paper%20Cutter/%5B069%5D%20Guillotine%20Paper%20Cutter.jpg

They also had a collection of books with the Deseret Alphabet.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_alphabet

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Something I was unaware of is that books are still being published in the Deseret Alphabet. They bought these recently on Amazon.

This is a Minister's Traveling Prayer Book. She taught us that each book turned out to be unique because they were hand bound and embellishment was added to the pages by hand.

The black and red ink was done on the press. All of the other details, the gold leafing, and art work would only be found in that individual book.

A closer view of the Gutenberg pages.

My Seminary Class got to go to the Gutenberg Museum the year we studied the Old Testament. It was thrilling to get to see the pages close up.  The museum strengthened my testimony of our Father's hand in the Restoration. The Gutenberg Press made the Bible available to every one not onlythe Clergy. 

 https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/gutenberg-museum-mainz?select=Mr9uoehCGo38t_qIvCAymQ

Something unusual in their collection... A copy of the of the smallest printed complete version of the Bible. It sits on its own small podium with a tiny magnifying glass. It's only about 2 inches in length. It also has illustrations and with magnification is readable. Impressive! 

and the best part...

photos with the first edition Book of Mormon

We could open and close the cover and turn the pages but not lift it off the support.

What a wonderful and unique opportunity.

We finished off the day with the arrival of one new missionary.

... and interviews with three departing missionaries.  Elders Henning, Kunz, and Stewart.

Elder Henning and I had something in common. He is from a town near Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where my Mom grew up, and where we lived while my Dad was stationed in Germany the first time (my dad served in the Army), and where my Mom was taught the gospel. He asked what the church was like at that time. She replied, "It was just a branch. We met in a Dance Studio and went to the meeting an hour early to clean up cigarette butts and empty beer cans. Opened the door to let in fresh air and set up chairs and just had a fold up table for Sacrament Table and another with a portable podium. We sang to a piano played by the Branch President's wife. When we visited a few years ago they now have a beautiful chapel. and met a few people who were there in the beginning. It was an interesting introduction to the church. One I cherish." Elder Henning said the church was similar in his town when his parents joined only they met in the top room of the Fire Station. Thanks Elder Henning...that was a detail I didn't know. And such a wonderful thing to have in common.

President Stevenson, our departing Elders, our new Elder, Their companions and the Assistants.

💕 Our Missionaries!