The LAST Transfer!

 The week began as a usual transfer week.  Monday night we had dinner with all of these wonderful missionaries pictured below.  Above is a picture of us with President and Sister Anderson.  We love them!  This was a hard outgoing dinner as we have had such personal dealings with so many of these departing missionaries.  Corry has counseled some, teased some and loved them all.  I have replaced phones, cards, taken them a phone, etc.  We just love them.  Below far right elder is Elder Beatty.  He got to stay an extra week because his parents are on a cruise with all of their siblings and it was just a couples cruise.  Elder Jones has really used him to help him around the office all week.  We had him and the AP's to dinner last night.

Below is Elder Seth Bloomfield (with a crooked smile).  He is one of my VERY favorites.  We speak Spanish together.  He was coming down a hill very fast on his bike about a year ago up in the Scranton area and collided with a truck.  It threw him over the truck but he just ended up with stitches under his nose and mouth.  He is a great missionary.  A very hard working missionary.

 Below are Elders (l to r) Hellyer, Wilcock and Hopkins.  Elder Hellyer and Hopkins were both service elders with Elder Jones.  Elder Wilcock recently crashed his car TWICE in a month.  He is not on Elder Jones' good list...

This is Sister Bennett.  She has been serving downtown near the temple.  She most recently served as a Sister Trainer.  She is a very good missionary and very sweet.

This is Sister Menlove.  We love her.  She is just a very caring sweet sister missionary.  I will miss her dedication. 

 This is Sister Clark.  She had probably the first accident Elder Jones dealt with and has been unable to drive since.  She most recently served here in Broomall so we have been able to get to know her and we love her lots!

These are the incoming missionaries.  They were a very smart looking bunch.  We had 9 come to us from the Mexico MTC and they were so very excited to eat semi-American food for dinner.  Notice the very large Elder right in the middle back.  He is Elder Pule and he is Samoan but most recently from New Zealand.  He joined the church about 2 years ago (he is 22) and his family disowned him.  Today he went tracting with his companion and a man told them to never come to his house and then pulled out a shotgun and cocked it at them.  Needless to say, they were quite scared.  President had them file a police report.  (and mark the area book to never go there again) 

So on Thursday after all of the transfers were done I went to the doctor about my neck, back and shoulder pain.  I decided about 2 weeks ago that my neck was out and have had 3 chiropractic visits but the pain continued, making it almost impossible to dress, fasten seatbelts, walk, etc.  Anyway, he gave me a medrol dose pack (steroids) and after 1 day the pain was gone and I was able to sleep and move without pain.  I am so very grateful to feel back to normal!  And Elder Jones is glad not to have to do tights anymore...

Other highlights of the week were a dinner at Bishop Kim's with President and Sister Anderson too.  It was wonderful Korean food and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now to another item.  I may have mentioned this at some time, but in November we had a workshop on genealogy for the senior Missionaries and we learned a bit about Family Search.  So for the next month when I was bored at the office I would look at my family tree. In particular, I was looking to see if I had any relatives that ever lived around Philadelphia.  For all of my Hamren relatives look at grandpa Ernest Evans.  His gg-grandpa was David E. Evans and David's wife was Lettie Thomas.  Lettie Thomas' grandparents on her mother's side were Doctor Edward Jones and Mary Wynne.  

Doctor Edward Jones set out from Bala, Wales in the summer of 1682 and traveled to Liverpool, England.  He sailed to America on the ship "Lyon", landing in a Swedish town called Upland (now called Chester, which is about 12 miles east of us).  Mary Wynne, his wife, was an approved Quaker minister and a daughter of Dr. Thomas Wynne of Caerwys, Wales.  Dr. Thomas Wynne descended from Sir William Gerard, Chancellor or Ireland.  Anyway, Dr. Edward Jones and his wife Mary had many children.  Their son John attended General Washington while in Philadelphia.  Mary and Edward came to America with the first group of Welsh immigrants.  They fled Wales for religious persecution.  They were friends and contemporaries of William Penn.  They settled in Merion (8 miles from us).  So Saturday we went to the cemetery where they were buried, The Merion Friends Cemetery.  It is very old and the grave markers that are still present are from the 1800's.  Corry visited with some people meeting there and found the area that they would have been buried as some of the first buried in this particular cemetery.  As we strolled through the cemetery we saw many Jones, Wynne, and Thomas graves--undoubtedly relatives.  In the Philadelphia area there are many towns with the name "wynne" in them:  Wynnewood, Wynnefield, Penn Wynne.  Edward Jones was born in 1645 and lived until 1737.  Mary Wynne was born in 1659 and died in 1738.  Their daughter Elizabeth Jones was also buried in Merion, PA, as well as their grand-daughter, Lettie Thomas.  If you look on the fan chart for grandpa Ernest Evans you can also see Caleb Evan 5 generations back and he was also buried in Merion, PA.  Who knew we had roots so close to here.  I also found many on thie very line who lived in Delaware and Maryland within 50 miles of us.  I am grateful that these ancestors had the bravery and fortitude to come to this new land of America so that we could enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy today.  

 So their cemetery is a national historic landmark.

 This is the general area they are buried.  You can see that only a few stones remain and they are mostly smooth and unreadable.

Entrance to the Merion Cemetery.