August 11, 2013
Dear Family and Friends—
It’s
been a lovely day today, more of the temperate weather. I feel like I’ve got to get as much of
this letter done today as I can because tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.
Monday
evening we have FHE. Had two
Elder’s do it, and it was, well, less than wonderful. You lose an audience of adults when you play “Hang-Man”. So, Lynn and I will do FHE
tomorrow. Since we’ve lost a lot
of capable adults who stopped coming because of work issues, it’s been more
difficult to give the assignments out.
I
was glad to get Meriden’s information on our Tanner line and hope you
appreciate the genealogy that I sent along.
Tuesday
was Transfer Day and it was outstanding.
By now, we really know a lot of the missionaries and it’s like having a
family reunion with them. Both
Pres. and Sis. Calderwood gave outstanding, inspiring, upbeat talks. He did make one important
announcement—starting in September the missionaries from our mission can go to
the temple twice a year which brought an excited buzz from the missionaries. He said that actually they can go five
days a week if they wanted; it’s just that they would have to bring a baptized
convert with them to do baptisms for the dead. I went down to the meeting for the missionaries who were
going home and got some email information and took a group picture. We came home with luggage for three new
missionaries for our district/zone and Lynn made sure it got distributed. BTW, found out that our mission is
pretty much at capacity, and from now on will get only the same number that
leave.
Lynn
wanted to get some exercise in and show me the Quaker Cemetery at Prospect
Park. So in the afternoon, we went
to a place that was new for me.
Sure enough, along a wooded path and off to the side behind a fence was
a cemetery. Walk a little further
and there was a sign that said it was private property owned by the Society of
Friends. It was a beautifully kept
cemetery. We then went off on some
other trails that I hadn’t been to before and we just drank in the beauty and
peace.
I’ve
been faithfully reading the latest Ensigns and there have been some excellent
articles in August—I would encourage you to read them.
Wednesday
morning I went to have my hair cut.
I had forgotten to get my subway card from Lynn and had to try and buy a
round-trip pass from the machines.
It was an experience in frustration and I ended up just buying from the
station manager. Ended up being 10
minutes late, but it worked out ok.
Got another super short cut.
Wednesday
afternoon I was able to get to work on the assignment of doing the mission
history, thank goodness. Having a
break from Institute was necessary to get this done. So, a lot of Wednesday was spent typing things up.
Lynn
went on a bike ride while I was having my hair cut and went to Radio Shack to
see if he could get some batteries for my fancy small flashlight. The clerk told him that two would cost
$20. Wow! Lynn told him he’d have to check with
me before he would purchase the batteries because they were expensive and
wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that kind of money. The clerk teased him by asking him basically if I had too
much control over decisions made in the marriage. Lynn said he knew that I would want to know the cost of the
batteries before a purchase was made.
Then the twenty- something kid who was quite bright and well-spoken
asked Lynn how long he had been married.
When Lynn told him 46 years this September, the clerk was blown
away. He said that in his
culture (Haitian) that a marriage lasts 2-3 years. He said he didn’t know anyone married as long as we
were. Lynn involved the church in
the conversation and the clerk genuinely wanted to have a church that had the
principles that we did and the concept of marriage that we did. Information was exchanged and at a
“let’s get acquainted” meeting with the missionaries Lynn gave the information
to them. So far, nothing has come
of it. Lynn may have to do a
follow-up visit to Radio Shack. :
) BTW, we were late for the
meeting, but a half-hour was better than nothing and it was nice to meet our
new ZL and the other new missionaries.
Thursday
was a lot of little have-to-do chores for me, ironing, mission history
stuff. In the early afternoon Lynn
got a phone call from Elder Ahlborn, one of the missionaries who teaches CES
for our stake and some places beyond.
He’s also in a Branch Presidency for the YSA. He told Lynn to call the Branch President of the YSA branch
(Ahlborn was in Utah to have a cancer check-up). Lynn did call the BP and found out that a young man who is
supposed to go to that unit (apparently he’s completely inactive) had been in a
car accident (he was hit by a car) and was seriously injured. The hospital contacted his parents who
live in Salt Lake, and in turn his parents called the BP and asked if someone
could go to the hospital and give their son a blessing. The young man’s dad got on a plane that
night so he could be with his boy.
The BP asked Lynn if he could go to the hospital and Lynn was happy to
do that. First he went to the
church and waited an hour for the missionaries to finish a meeting then he took
two Elders with him, both outstanding, to the hospital. They had to wait for quite a while
because 3 doctors were working on the young man, but finally a nurse gave them
permission to touch his upper shoulder.
One of the missionaries did the anointing, Lynn gave the blessing. Lynn told me that he tried to give him
a blessing of full recovery, but just could not, the Spirit didn’t allow
it. The patient was unconscious
while all this was happening. He
had serious head injuries.
Friday
morning I did my usual shopping, then called Moira so we could sing to
Joseph. He was in the middle of
eating his requested breakfast, pancakes, so we used our speaker phone and so
did she. He got the message! Bob has been way overwhelmed putting
out small “fires” that you get when you start up any new huge project and
opening up a brand new hospital is a huge new project, so he wasn’t home.
Lynn
and I had tickets to go to a Yankee’s game that night. The weather was iffy and extremely
humid but we went on the B train all the way from Newkirk Station to Yankee Stadium despite the
threat that the game would be cancelled.
It took us a while to find “will call” and the entrance for section 4,
but we made it. We were in the
nose bleed section, one row from the back, in the upper-most tier. But, and this is a big but, we had a
terrific view, there were no seats right behind us, there was instead a grate
kind of opening that let a nice breeze through and our seats were to the right
of the 1st base bag, so we saw plenty of action. There was a 45 minute rain delay, and
it did start raining again in the 3rd, but the game continued. That was the night the Yankees brought
back Alex Rodriguez and when he came to the plate there were plenty of cheers
and boos. He got up to bat 4
times, got out four times.
Worthless! The stadium is
just gorgeous, what an incredible facility. The Jumbotron is hugemongous. We were royally entertained by all that happened, too much
to mention in the letter. The
Yankees were winning 3-1 at the end of the 8th inning. The relief pitcher came in at the top
of the 9th. Two men
were out, there were two strikes on the batter (Miguel Cabrera) who had injured
himself with his own foul ball, there was one man on base. Then…….the injured player hit a solid
home run to center field—tie game.
Groan!! We stayed to the
bottom of the ninth then went home and found out at the computer that the
Yankees beat Detroit in the 10th inning. You’ve got to understand that this game was a dream
come true for Lynn, to see his favorite team, the Yankees, play in Yankee
Stadium.
Saturday
morning Lynn woke me up to say it was time for me to get ready to go to the
Primary activity at Prospect Park.
He had gone to Lana’s house to get the things for the activity and put
them in our car. Then I was ready
to go and two sister missionaries went with us to help set up. We got there and the Elders were there
to help too. We filled a lot of
water balloons for two of the games, set out snacks (everyone was supposed to bring
some snacks for refreshments) and just hung out with those that came
early. About an hour and a half
later we had enough kids to start the activities in earnest. Lana had small bats and balls, bubble
making “swords”, Frisbee, face painting kit (one of the sisters was kind enough
to help out there and she did a pretty good job). Really what happened is the missionaries helped the little
kids do some of the activities and kept them busy until we had enough to do the
water balloon toss etc. Not many kids
came—I think there were 11 but a fun time was had by all. The missionaries helped Lana clean up
and we put everything in the back of our car, delivered two missionaries , the
cooler and 3 gallon thermos to their apartment and our car still has the rest
of the stuff.
We
got back to our place, cleaned up, got back in the car, drove for an hour out
to Long Island and met up with the senior missionaries who had just gotten back
from a tour of an aviation museum.
We met them at Cozymel’s, a Mexican Restaurant. The company was wonderful, the food was
ok. We were glad to be with them
to support the activity, then another hour home and time to relax.
We
will return to the temple this Tuesday and are looking forward to seeing the
new movie. The Manhattan Temple
and the Palmyra Temple are the only two temples east of the Mississippi that
have the new movie, FYI.
We
wish everyone well. This has been
a BIG WEEK for the family, right?!!!
Hope everyone gets home safe and sound. We wish we could have been with you, but as you can read, we
had our own fun here!
Love
the gospel! It was wonderful today
to listen to the RS teacher tell me after RS was over about her conversion
story and the miracles that happened after that concerning her father who
passed away before she was baptized.
Just love the Spirit that teaches us doctrine and truth. It’s a great privilege to be here,
that’s for sure. Love
to you all—Kathy/Mom
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