August 26, 2013
Dear Family and Friends—
How’s
everyone? I got to get this done
soon because the Sisters said the computers were down at the library and they
need to use our computers to write home.
Interesting that the Elders don’t care, but the Sisters do. Weather report—cloudy out today but
still the temps are so nice.
Lynn’s on his bike now trying to find some boys under 18 that the bishop
told him about that basically want to disappear. Some live a long ways away so it will be interesting to see
what he finds out.
I’ll
start with a week ago: We only had
6 ward members come to FHE which is very unnerving. Elder McDonald did a great job with his Jeopardy game and
his brownies were outstanding.
Hope we get more out tonight.
J.D. called late Monday night and said that there was a mission report
at the ward he attended the day before—his first time in his ward. The missionary said she served in the
NYNYS mission and her name was Sis. Santistiban. Wow! I had just
sent her off with hugs and kisses just a few weeks before. She loved her mission experience here
and lived in our apartment building for her last transfer. Small world. I spent Monday doing mission history.
Next
day was the temple. I had an
incredible day because I was scheduled to be just a patron so I could see the
new movie. It’s much better viewed
straight on than trying to see it out of the corner of your eye. : ) I gave the scripture in the prayer meeting (from Ether
3). Also had a short stint in the
baptistery, and Lynn was there as a witness. There were two people doing some work. The man doing the baptizing was from Bilbao,
Spain originally and he was there when Sean was on his mission, although he
never knew Sean. He’s lived in the
US for the last 18 years. Later I
was asked to “pass off” all the parts of the temple ceremonies that I should
have memorized; everyone is being asked to do that so they can
“re-certify.” So, without a hitch,
I did. Sis. Corsan was surprised I
did so well, and just beamed.
Me too. I was just
relieved.
At
the end of the day I told Lynn I was hungry for a really good hamburger so we
went 7 blocks north to Big Rick’s and shared an amazingly yummy Sumo burger
with mushroom sauce on top, plus shared an order of their thick cut French fries. The burger was a pound of meat! This was heaven in a meal. We needed to walk after that!! and went
directly north a block to Central Park and did a lot of walking. We went to the Strawberry Fields
(think—John Lennon) where people were hanging out, playing their guitars,
taking lots of pictures, then just wandered around till we figured we needed to
get to the train.
In
the morning I went shopping at COSTCO and Shop Rite to get food for the
breakfast I was having Thursday morning.
I’ve decided Wednesday is the time to go to COSTCO—it was so quiet. In the afternoon Lynn drove me over to
the Green-Wood Cemetery so we could climb on a trolley and take a tour. This cemetery was founded in 1838. It’s in Brooklyn and not all that far
away from us. It’s 478 acres in
size and is a national historic landmark.
There are about 560,000 people buried there. Yes, people are still being buried there. Lots of famous people are buried there,
thus, the tour. Out tour guide was
a hoot of a lady and has been doing this for a long time. When we got to Leonard Bernstein’s
grave she sang songs from “West Side Story” for us. She used to be on Broadway so she had a pretty good voice. The thing about this cemetery is its
great beauty. There are natural
hills everywhere, ponds, lots of birds, about 8000 trees. The rich people have hand-carved
statuary with their ostentatious “houses” that entire families are buried in,
plus statuary on regular head stones.
We were on tour for three+ hours ending at a magnificent small chapel
with lots of stained glass. Yet,
this was only one tour of three that we could take. The Battle of Brooklyn took place in this cemetery, an
important battle that allowed Gen. Washington to save 95% of his army (in
retreat) while two regiments held off the Brits, literally losing their lives
as a sacrifice to save the rest of the army, so the place is referred to as
holy ground, as it ought to be.
I
spent the rest of the day making three different breakfast casseroles for
breakfast—one using bacon, another sausage, the last using ham. I baked them all that night and
warmed them up for breakfast for the Zone. I also had sweet rolls, strawberries, raspberries,
blueberries, grapes and OJ to go with the casseroles. So at nine the next day the “kids” came over, we found
places for everyone to sit and eat.
The casseroles were a good idea because it meant I wasn’t fixing food
early in the morning and cleanup was easy. Everyone loved the breakfast!
I
spent my afternoon working on the mission history—there is so much to do, so
much to learn. We tried to
visit a home teaching family, no one there.
Friday
was shopping per usual, went to two home teaching families—again, no one
home. Lynn is nothing except
persistent. We can’t get these
people to answer emails or phones so we have to just drop by. I spent the afternoon with mission
history. Lynn had gone on a bike
ride and asked if I would like to watch the movie “Lincoln” that night. I agreed since we hadn’t seen it. The Green-Wood Cemetery has a large
memorial that was erected in 1869 to the Civil War soldiers that fought in the
war from Brooklyn, so the memorial kind of brought Lincoln to mind. I loved the movie but unless we get
Clear-Play, I won’t buy it—too much swearing. After the movie it was off to Google to answer the questions
we had about the characters and situations depicted in the movie.
Saturday
was a big finances day, plus a ton of laundry, two loaves of bread, and I took
the hanging files that I had bought Friday night at Staples and completely
organized my filing box. I had
things in folders but they kept bunching up in the box making it inconvenient
to find anything. I discovered the
plastic edges a week ago and like a thunderbolt it dawned on me that they were
there for hanging file folders.
How could I be so stupid?!!
Now all the files are up, straight, easy to find. It is a warm and fuzzy feeling.
So,
what has Lynn been doing—burning the midnight oil to get the ward picture
directory done. It has been a
frustrating, huge task. He took
his thumb drive to Staples when I went and had the store do the pictures in a
high quality format. They looked
good. Just one problem—when he
went through the pictures to collate them, he found out the lady at Staples who
helped him didn’t give him the last page of the pictures. The store was closed by the time it was
discovered. Lynn’s burning the
midnight oil finally took its toll as he woke up this morning with a sore
throat and not so great sounding cough.
He
gave the bishop what he had of the directory, though, yesterday. Church was quite good. Lynn gave the Priesthood lesson
on marriage by Elder Clayton and he said it went quite well—lots of
participation by the men. After
church we witnessed the baptism of Yahdaii Kadamawi, a young man from Jamaica
originally. Yahdaii has dread
locks that reach to his knees. He
brought two good friends with him that were from his former religion. One of them was decked to the nines
with all kinds of beads plus a huge turban on his head. This was the first convert baptism that
we have seen on our mission. There
have been two others but we were not able to make it to the other two. (One happened while we were going to
the airport so we could go to California). Lynn was told at the last second that he was going to
conduct the meeting—oh, OK.
Because of Yahdaii’s hair, which floated on top of the water, he had to
be baptized twice, but the second time was the charm.
After
the baptism, we took Kathleen Reynold’s
home, ( we also picked her up in the morning) then we came back to the
apartment, had a small bite to eat then we were off. We went to the two home teaching families that we had missed
(we hoped time #4 would be the charm) and we found them. With both families, the dad was home
for a short time too, bonus!
At the Bien-Amis, we took Sabrina a birthday card and gift because it
was her birthday that day. And,
surprise, we got to their apartment just as they were getting ready for her
birthday party. So, we stayed, had
some snacks to eat, sang Happy Birthday with the group and ate cake. She had a small group of family there
for her party. After that we went
to the hospital to see Garrett Harris.
Lynn said he had a lot fewer things hooked up to him. Apparently he awoke enough to get an
MRI and they found out that he seemed to be ok, just had to get that head
injury healed. Three friends were
there that we got to meet. No one
talked to Garrett because he was unconscious, but hopefully some day we can
find him awake and talk to him.
Then we went to visit Br. Pinerio, who is one of the ward members Lynn
is trying to help with his financial situation. But, he had a bad accident and really messed up his right
leg. When we saw him yesterday, he
was doing much better. Then
we tried to go to two other places to find people that were hiding from the
church but couldn’t get ahold of them.
Lynn’s on his bike trying to find the missing people plus some others,
as I mentioned before.
After
the baptism yesterday they let people bear their testimonies, so I did. The Church is true. The Book of Mormon is the best—love
that book. I told Yahdaii he
needed to read from it every day and I hope he will, and I would say the same
to you—read some every day!
Expressed my gratitude for Lynn doing so much for our mission
experience. He doesn’t write very
often about what he does, but he does SO MUCH. So, that’s the letter for this week. Hope all is well with you.
Love,
Kathy/Mom
No comments:
Post a Comment