Dear Friends and Family,
I just noticed this morning that I
haven’t sent anything for a while. When we decided in October that we
wouldn’t travel in November or December. I was concerned that we wouldn’t have
much to do. Wow, I was wrong. We have been very busy, but we are
loving what we are doing.
We continue to serve at the Midwest Food
Bank on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings every other week. We
have made some good friends there and, we hope, also friends of the
church. They all know who we are and they refer to us as Elder and Sister
Merrell. We keep looking for missionary opportunities and every once in a
while we have a chance to share something about our church and the
gospel. When the new Nativity video was released by the church we
purchased some inexpensive flash drives on Amazon and loaded the video onto
them. Then we attached a Nativity pass along card to each flash drive and
gave 10 of them to our friends at the food bank. We hope that they will
watch the Nativity video and feel the same sense of wonder, awe, and gratitude
that we felt when we first saw it.
Our Mission President has discovered that
Carol has Family History experience and expertise. (Actually- I
told him) He has asked Carol and I to train the Zone Leaders and Sister
Training Leaders in our mission on how they can use family history as a
missionary tool. There are six zones and twelve sets of leaders. We
meet with each companionship for an hour in their weekly planning meeting
(something else the President asked us to do) and then we spend an hour on
family history. Prior to our visit we research the family trees of the
missionaries that we will be seeing that day. When we meet with them we
first teach them how to help a new member or investigator get started with a new
account. Then, to help the missionaries get familiar with Family Search,
we have each of them open up their account and we help them find some
ancestors who need ordinances. It has been really fun to meet with all of
these good young elders and sisters. When possible we also take them to
lunch and that has been fun too.
Our son Trent and his family came down
from their home in Virginia and spent several days with us over Thanksgiving
weekend. It was a little crowded in this two bedroom apartment but it was
great. We had a nice dinner on Thursday and then played games that
afternoon and evening. On Friday we visited the Aquarium in Atlanta and
then returned here for more games and leftovers. After going to see
Frozen 2 on Saturday morning Trent and his family returned home. It was a
real treat for us.
Last
week our mission held zone conference at the Atlanta Temple. Half the
mission attended on Tuesday with the other half attending on Wednesday.
The temple opened early for the missionaries and the 8:00, 8:30, and 9:00
sessions were filled with missionaries. After the sessions the
missionaries we able to participate in sealings and initiatory work.
There is a large stake center next to the temple and we had a nice Christmas
dinner there after which they watched “It’s a Wonderful Life”. We were
surprised to learn that many of the missionaries had never seen a movie that we
have watched almost every Christmas for years. They were amazed that they
could enjoy a black and white movie from the 40’s but they did. We
enjoyed seeing missionaries we have been able to work with and who have been
transferred to other parts of the mission and we also were able to visit with
the senior couples who are assigned to wards and branches throughout the
mission. They are wonderful people.
Our daughter Chelsie and her family will
travel from their home in Yorktown, Virginia the day after Christmas and spend
a couple of days with us. We are really looking forward to having them
here.
As always hope this letter finds you
happy and healthy.
You
can see some of our pictures on Carol’s blog.
Merry Christmas,
Elder and Sister, Mom and Dad, Grandpa
and Grandma, Rod and Carol Merrell
Addendum:
I just looked at Carol’s blog and it
reminded me that I left out an important thing that happened to us last month.
We found Christian’s birth mother in Romania. Most of you already
know that 25 years ago we adopted Christian from a Romanian orphanage when he
was 5 years old. Christian has always wondered about his birth
parents. Carol searched for them while she was in Romania years ago and
could not find them. When Christian was left at the orphanage his mother
left a letter giving her permission for him to be adopted. He was the
fifth of five children and at that time in Romania everyone was starving and
suffering. We have learned that his father was an abusive alcoholic and
his mother could not feed another child. So she made what must have been a
very difficult decision and placed Christian in an orphanage where he could be
cared for.
The
miracle is that several weeks after we arrived here in Fayetteville, Georgia we
were at church and after Relief Society Carol saw a woman in the hall and felt
like she should talk to her. After all we are missionaries and should
reach out to everyone. It turns out that the woman, named Anna, was born
in Romania. She offered to do any translation we might need but at the
time we didn’t think we needed her help. Just before our mission we helped
Christian obtain a DNA kit from Ancestry and soon after meeting Anna we obtained
the results. We didn’t really expect much but there were a number of
relatives in Romania listed on the results. We asked Anna to help us send
letters to these contacts to find out if any of them knew about Christian’s
birth family. She came to our apartment but advised us not to reach out
to those contacts yet. She said that everyone wants an American relative
and Christian would soon have many people claiming to be related to him.
As she looked over the information we still have from Christian’s adoption she
noticed that the city where Christian’s mother was last known to live is only a
short distance from where Anna’s sister lives. Long story short—Anna’s
sister and her husband made inquiries and discovered a woman who claimed to
know Christian’s mother. They obtained more information and then went to
the city where Christian’s mother lived and knocked on her door. They
took her a letter and picture from Christian. She was very happy to learn
that he was alive and doing well. If you look on Carol’s blog you will
see a picture of Christian’s mom looking at his picture. She asked when
he could come to visit. We haven’t got that far yet but we know where she
is and we know how to contact her. We will just have to see what the
future brings.
But imagine, of all the places we could
be sent we came to Georgia, to a ward where a woman from Romania lives.
And this woman has a sister who was willing to look for Christian’s
mother. And now she has been found. Now we know another reason why
we came to Georgia.
We will keep you posted.
Love,
Rod and Carol
