Dear Family and
Friends—
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It’s very cold in NY today, with enough wind
to make it not nice at all to be outside.
NYC has a four hour parade in Manhattan today—I wouldn’t want to march
in that parade, let alone watch it. The
nice part is that if you happen to be in the area, you can watch for just a
little bit, and then go back inside. I
have been out this morning—normally, I get my hair done on Thursday but had to
have it done today since my hair dresser will be in Chicago Thursday. Just walking from the train to her salon was
enough to put the kibosh on any tiny thought of parade watching. Strange thing is that last Tuesday we walked
from the temple through Central Park (after we were finished) and it was 65 and
smelled heavily of spring. Every person
and their dog (literally) were out in force, like ants at a picnic.
Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day—can
you smell my corned beef cooking—don’t you wish you were here to have
some? : )
Last Monday we had a really great
FHE, lots of support and an excellent activity.
Hope the weather doesn’t hold people back for tonight
Had a wonderful, wonderful day at
the temple last Tuesday. It was warm
enough in the morning to walk through the park to get there, and I already
mentioned the walk back. Lynn and I were
the officiators in a session and that hasn’t happened in a while so it was nice
to be with my man. I also did some
initiatory with one patron, a young lady from Korea who did graduate from the
Accounting Dept. at BYU, but she didn’t recognize Lynn’s name.
Wednesday
was spent shopping in the morning for food for Institute. I decided since I was prepared and we were
going to show Pres. Monson speaking at the last Women’s Meeting I could afford
to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time—have a light supper for those
that would come. We had Institute start
a half hour early so the class members would have time to eat first, and that
is what happened. We had eleven students
which was really terrific—if you feed them, they will come. It was also a dinner to celebrate Dyan
Banana’s mission call to the Salt Lake City Mission. Apparently there will be no Temple Square
experience for her, but she’ll have a great experience nevertheless.
It was what happened after our
meeting was over that threw me for a loop:
One of the class members came just in time for the class. We invited her to get something to eat, she
declined, we renewed the invitation when we were finished with the hour and she
went to get something to eat while I went downstairs to the kitchen to handle
some clean up. When I got back to the RS
room, the three Caribbean ladies had stacks of plates of food in their hands
and were busily putting every last leftover on the plates, putting more plates on
top and then took them home! Since I
found them in the finishing up processes I knew I couldn’t tell them I had told
the missionaries they could have the left-overs; there was plenty for the missionaries. I was really upset. I asked Lynn if the women had gotten
permission to do that. He said he told
the one lady who didn’t eat before class that she could have something to
eat—how she and the others interpreted that to mean literally take everything
home is beyond me. It is a different
culture, but it’s taken me a long time to let all the steam out of my ears.
Thursday Lynn and I worked all day
long on getting the mission history almost finished and the pages in the
plastic sleeves. Lynn keeps changing
things, making them better—he’s always thinking of ways to do it better. Then, in the evening he went into Manhattan
to listen to a Catholic boy’s choir from Spain but he went to listen to this
choir in an Episcopalian church called St. Thomas. The Catholic Church, St. Thomas and one other
church from somewhere are the only three institutions (sponsored by a church)
with in-residence boy’s choirs which give them a school experience. The choir from Spain comes to NY on a regular
basis. I’m not into boy choir music so I
wished Lynn well. He came back and said
he was disappointed because the Catholic boys sang Catholic music—well,
duh! He wanted to hear Episcopalian boy
choir music! But, he said the boys were
excellent, he just didn’t like the style of music. I had bought the last Hunger Games DVD and
watched that at the apartment, thoroughly enjoyed what I experienced.
Friday was shopping, preparing
Institute lessons and just getting chores done.
Saturday Lynn and I took our mostly
completed mission history binder with us to the Tenny’s apartment. They are the new CES teachers in the Brooklyn
area. They were given the responsibility
to do the mission history for 2014 and wanted to know what to do, so they had
us over to lunch at their place so we could eat and explain. We got a lot of discussion in on just
teaching Institute in this area. They
are no longer teaching on Staten Island and want to take over our Institute
when we leave, coming to our class in May to see how it goes. I am very nervous about this, I’m not
impressed with either one, they just are too quiet, but we will be leaving in
June so it doesn’t make any difference.
In the afternoon I went to church
for a rehearsal of a reader’s theater for our RS birthday party. When I got to church, the downstairs rec room
was decorated to the nines. Marianna
Szabo, our Hungarian member and her young daughter did quite a lot with crepe
paper and balloons. I know it sounds
cheesy, but Marianna did a lovely job and made the ugly room look quite
pretty. I was reading the part of Elizabeth
Ann Whitney, Emma Smith’s 2nd councilor. We had a nice salad bar dinner first (boy,
was I glad after having a heavy lunch) and then the program. We have a lady in our ward who does directing
for a living so she had a nice script made up, two missionaries to do the parts
of Joseph Smith and John Taylor, and five ladies part—went quite well. (It was about the 1st meeting of
the Relief Society). I didn’t have a lot
to say, but enjoyed the experience. We
have another lady who is a musician by trade and she said she composes music
too, so she made up a song for the RS to sing and we had a grand time trying to
do that—just words, no music so we had to follow along with Tina as best we
could—it was an easy song. I’ll have to
send it along after she writes notes to it!
Sunday we had a child baptism. The oldest son of one of the new members
turned eight and he wanted to be baptized.
We haven’t seen the mother or her two boys for over six weeks so I was
surprised with this new development.
There were a lot of people there to support the family and give Kenneth
a good experience. He got to be baptized
twice. : ) Kenneth’s brother had a birthday so we
celebrated the baptism and birthday with a very nice cake.
After that, Lynn and I went to
Marianna Szabo’s place for dinner. She
invited us the previous week and promised us Hungarian food. She has a five year old daughter (soon to be
six) whose name is Csenge and it is pronounced chang-gah. Strange name, drop-dead gorgeous little girl. We had a delightful time with them. The Hungarian food was sauerkraut cooked in a
chicken broth with large pieces of chicken.
You put sour cream on top, eat it with slices of bread and oh my, it was
SO good. She also had a pizza cut into
small pieces in case Lynn and I didn’t like the sauerkraut dish. She showed us a video of Hungarian inventors,
we showed her the Joseph Millet video and everyone was happy.
Lynn and I came back, changed our
clothes, got in the car and then went to the hotbed of Hasidic Jewry to see
people dressed in costumes for Purim. It
was dark by the time we got to the right neighborhood so there were not many
people on the streets; rather they were gathering in the homes of the wealthy
Jews and having Purim parties. The homes
threw open the curtains, lit the rooms up and virtually every large room we saw
had a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. People were dancing (well, the men were
dancing) in a few places that we could see.
Purim is party time for the Jews.
Since we didn’t get to see much, Lynn brought me back and then decided
to go to the local synagogue to see the evening celebration there. He came back to report that the place was
packed, some heavy drinking was going on, but he and many others just had soft
drinks. His Jewish friends were there,
welcomed him and told him in no uncertain terms how grateful they were that he
showed up. Well, there you go. Apparently Purim is a day of flip-flops—the
Jews do something’s they would not normally do, and drinking heavily is one of
those things. He was really glad he
went. He came home at 11:30 but he said
the party was going to go to 4 am!!
Grateful for the gospel in my life
and the safety it is. When I see members
who try their very hardest to live the gospel and keep the commandments, I see
so much good happening to them. And,
those that “taste of the fruit, then walk into different paths” well, it’s a
sad thing to see. Sure am glad to have
the opportunity to teach Institute, as I always say, the teacher learns the
most and is the biggest winner. Hope you
enjoy the rest of your St. Patrick’s Day.
Love to
all—Kathy/Mom
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