Dear
Family and Friends—
Happy, Happy Birthday, dear
Sean!! He’s 44 today. Lynn and I talked with him for a while this
morning. Weather: apparently quite a few of you were affected
by the Arctic cold blast like we were.
Last Tuesday morning Lynn and I were walking to the train station (to go
to the temple) with the wind blowing 20-30 mph in our faces. It was four degrees and felt like 17-19 below
zero. Reminded me of walking around in winter
Minnesota. So, we felt pioneery and just
toughed it out. But, the warm train felt
mighty good. Then, in just a few short
days it got up to about 60, rained like crazy and the temps have yo-yoed ever
since. The weather did affect how many
people came to the temple, simply put, there were not a lot there.
Last week for FHE we had a birthday
party for Tanya Golikova. She turned
eight that very day. Her mother wanted
to have a party so she stayed home from work and baked and decorated 99
chocolate mini cupcakes. She brought
balloons for decorating the room downstairs and had games planned so everyone
could participate. Some of the games
were guessing where a scripture was found that she quoted. It was harder than it sounds. Lynn beat two young missionaries by getting
Alma 32 verse 20 through something. You
would have thought he had won the Super Bowl by the way he reacted. Thankfully, Tanya had a good group there for
her party.
Lynn and I were dismayed that she
hadn’t been prepared for baptism so we went to their place last night to talk
about baptism and were so shocked to hear that she wants no part of it—wants to
wait till she’s 30 so she can be baptized at the same age her mother was. Oh, well, hummmm.
How do you deal with that? I
finally had the thought that she really hasn’t been exposed to a culture where
baptizing 8 year olds happens as a normal process of being a member of the
church. It’s possible she’s never seen
an eight year old baptism, and even if she has, it was an extremely rare occurrence. Also, she doesn’t like to go to Primary class
but spends that time with some adult friend.
So, she really doesn’t know what the church is all about. We have our work cut out for us. I will take all suggestions as to what we
should do to teach a “you can’t tell me what to do” girl.
After our temple service last
Tuesday (I was kept very busy with the responsibilities I was given and so was
Lynn) we went to try and find Dillards.
Supposedly it was supposed to be down at Times Square area. But, when we got there, there was only a
woman’s clothing store. We were trying
to return some boots. A Sister
missionary’s aunt got them for her for Christmas but they were the wrong
size. The lady helping us went to her
computer and discovered that Dillard’s did list a store there. This small store sold their clothes to
Dillards but the boots could not be returned.
When we got home, Lynn found out that Dillards didn’t exist in the East,
north of Virginia. Waste of time. : (
Wednesday—big day. Lynn and I went to our mission office for a
Sister Missionary Conference. I was
there to be part of the Sisters, Lynn and the other men were there to be our lackeys. (They set tables, served the salad bar lunch
and cleaned up). It was an all-day
affair and was truly wonderful. As part
of the experience, they showed the video of Brad Wilcox’s talk “His Grace is Sufficient.” Now I have used this talk as part of my
Institute, as you well know. But,
actually seeing Brad give the talk is a more intense experience. I would like to try and show it for our
Institute class someday. We had four
workshops which were useful—I liked Pres. Calderwood’s thorough exam of Sec. 25
in the D & C the best. Some of the
sisters performed spiritual musical numbers, and Pres. Calderwood did give one
major speech at the beginning, a small one at the end. It seemed to me that the theme of the
conference was “Sisters, do keep all the mission rules and work hard, but, if
you happen to fail, don’t hate yourself!!!!
Instead, be forgiving, loving and kind.
And, don’t be hard on the other Sisters. I guess this must be a problem.
That evening Lynn and I had
Institute. Just three showed up but we
had one of the best class experiences ever.
The three ladies opened up like I have never seen them do before—it was
just great. We discussed Packer’s talk
about the scriptures being our safety net in a more wicked world. One of the women there was our 19 year old
Dyan who is turning in her papers soon.
You should have seen her eyes bug out when we told her that after the
papers would be sent in, it would take 3 weeks before her call came in the
mail. She was flabbergasted that from
the time she got her mission call to the time she would enter the MTC might be
as much as 5 months. Again, this is a
problem of a local church culture where missionaries leaving NY are extremely
rare, not like where we’re from where mission calls are a “dime a dozen.” She was going to quit her job this week; we
told her that might not be a good plan.
Thursday Lynn went to the NYNYN
mission office in Scarsdale, NY. It took
him 1 ½ hours to get there. He met up
with the Sr. Missionary couple from Monticello who had Doug Lee’s legal papers
that he took out of prison. Missionaries
loaded the papers in the Forester and Lynn took them to Doug’s apartment,
again, meeting up with our missionaries who brought the heavy papers into
Doug’s apartment. Doug figures it will
take 2 months to go through the papers.
He is going to contact two prominent law firms in NY to try and get a
job as a litigator. And you know what—I
think he will get a job; he’s too shrewd and smart to pass up.
I have been working as much as I can
to get the Mission History finished and returned to the mission office. There’s lots to do, I’ve got a ways to
go. All spare time is given to this
project, so if you want to know what I’ve been doing, I’ve been doing that.
One other thing of interest—Lynn got
tickets to go see the Fantastics down by Times Square. It’s considered an Off Broadway show, and it
is north of Broadway. We had a hard time
finding it, but ended up at one small door, to a small lobby, to a small
theater, which had seating for about 100, a kind of theater in the round, but
it was three sided. There were only 7
actors in the play/musical and they were not miked. But, the quality of the acting and singing was
incredible; again, only in NY do you get the very best. “Try to Remember” was the only familiar
song. The plot basically is a story of
life as told through the eyes of two idealistic dreamers who fall in love, then
discover that real life is much more than roses and poetry. Fantastics is the longest running
play/musical ever.
After the musical we went to Olive
Garden and our waitress looked at my missionary badge and said, “I know who you
are.” Turns out she’s member of the
church. Her parents were pioneer members
in Ghana, Africa. We had a great time
and the food was wonderful.
Yesterday Lynn had a meeting at
church an hour before Sacrament meeting was supposed to start. I dropped him off and then drove 20 minutes
to pick up Katheen (I’ve done this before, but this was my first time doing it
alone). I was supposed to call her on my
cell phone and let her know I was outside.
Without a cell phone you can’t get hold of these people behind heavily
locked doors. I dialed, and a recorded
lady told me my plan was up and the phone would not work. Panic.
I tried to push a door bell, but it wasn’t working. (Knocking wouldn’t work; Kathleen lived on
the 2nd level). I was about
to leave, when all of a sudden Kathleen’s non-member daughter came to the door
to leave, saw me and said her mother was coming. I told Kathleen what had happened and said
God wanted her to go to church. She
agreed with my assessment.
Lynn gave a talk on missionary work
in Sacrament yesterday, and as usual, he did a great job. All the meetings were extremely good and we
had a pretty good attendance thanks to the later schedule.
Ah, God’s miracles. Grateful for the truth of the Gospel and for
Jesus Christ and His merciful gift of the Atonement. Grateful for being here on a mission in New
York. We are so blessed.
Love
to you all—Kathy/Mom
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