Dear Family and
Friends—
Happy Cinco de Mayo!! It’s a lovely day outside, but still windy
and cold—windy and cold, the operative words for this spring.
Busy week—I’ll need to get right
down to it and condense it a bit since today is, and will continue to be a very
busy day.
Last Monday, we had 30 people come
to FHE. So, three weeks ago we had
thirty, two weeks ago we had 29 and last week we had 30. This may not mean much to you, but it is
huge! We have been thrilled with the
attendance. We know it won’t happen
tonight since some have already told us they wouldn’t be there. But, we had a great activity and again, more
food than we needed since Br. Soleta decided to celebrate Dyan going on a
mission by bringing his contribution.
Tuesday, per usual, was temple
day. A week earlier, I had asked Sis.
Corsan (the women’s coordinator for our shift) to put Lynn and I on a regular
session as patrons. I had one last male
name to get the endowment done and wanted Lynn to do it. Much to my surprise, I was put on a session
as a patron, but Lynn wasn’t! Lynn went
to Br. Corsan and asked if his schedule could be changed so he could go with me
and get that last family name done. Br.
Corsan chided him a little saying Lynn should have given him some notice before
hand to get the schedule changed. Lynn
told him that I had talked to Sis. Corsan about putting him on the
session. Br. Corsan then became
thoughtful and said that he remembered then that she did tell him to do
that. All’s swell that ends well. Mer—we forgot to pick up the card and will
pick it up tomorrow and send you all the cards.
Yay! The rest of the day went so
nicely—another day in temple paradise.
Made two loaves of bread after getting back home.
Wednesday—wow, now that day was spent
with me in the kitchen. I made a quick
trip to the grocery store to get a few things and then came home to make a
chicken/grape salad; used 10 eggs for egg salad; made a cherry bar dessert and
a dessert called Éclair Cake. Then, made
sandwiches using my homemade bread and some croissants. We took a lot of things with us to Institute
that night, getting there extra early to set up tables and food. The Tenney’s bought chips and a large relish
tray so we were set for our early “last day of Institute before the break,
celebration of Dyan’s mission” dinner.
Dyan has been a grand excuse for a lot of parties!!!
We discussed Elder Hales talk “If Ye
Love Me, Keep My Commandments.” We had a
new investigator in the class and talking about keeping first and second
estates and eternal life and everything that implies, with her there, got me
off on an uncertain start—I really didn’t have time to interview her to find
out what she did or did not know about our doctrine. I was uncomfortable and it came across that
way, but Lynn came to my rescue on some critical things, plus others in the
class made some outstanding comments and the lesson settled down, only to
become one of the best lessons that I thought had ever been given in the class. I ended up bearing my testimony of the truth
of the gospel and the things we were talking about; also, talked about the Book
of Mormon and the role of Joseph Smith.
It was a sweet experience.
After class, we invited the
missionaries in the hall to come and finish the rest of the food and they were
so very eager to do that. We had a small
group eat at seven, so there were plenty of leftovers. I grabbed Barbara (the investigator) and gave
her a big hug and apologized for my shaky beginning but she told me that she
already understood a lot of what I had been talking about and really enjoyed
the class a lot. Whew. That was a relief.
One interesting thing that happened
that Wednesday is the East coast had a lot of rain and we got 2+ inches that
day in Brooklyn. We were told that the
two Elders in 5H (our old apartment) could not come to the church that night
because they had water in their apartment.
Uh-Oh! We knew all about that
since we got water in through the ceiling, off the windows, when we lived there
before. So, we cleaned up as fast as we
could and made our way back to the apartment.
When we got to 5H, there were four Elders mopping up water, using every
towel available—it was a mess! They had
told our Super about the situation but their next door neighbor, Pat, is not
afraid to mince words with anyone and the Elders told us she had yelled at
Brian about what had happened in 5H. We
have decided not to deal with all that mess and bureaucracy and will take the
Elders out of the apartment when we leave.
We found out Saturday that there will not be a couple to replace us when
we go, so we will leave 5A for one set of the Sisters and have the mission
abandon 5H. The two Elders in that
apartment got a plate of food each from us.
Next day, Thursday. Lynn and I knew that a production crew from
the HBO sitcom, “Girls” was going to be in our building and in the front on
Thursday morning. We had a date that day
with Claudette Clark, an angel lady from our ward. She has wanted to take us out on an excursion
and lunch for a long time, so Thursday was the day. We were in our foyer at 9:45 and greeted by a
lot of people and a LOT of equipment.
Actually, they were through filming and were starting to pack up. We took a lot of pictures. The outside/front of the building was also
filled with people and equipment who were packing up. When we got to the corner of the street there
were the stars of the show getting in a van to go to the next location. I have heard of the show “Girls” but only
heard of it, never seen it. New York is
the prime location for a lot of TV shows.
Lynn and I made it by train to the
New York Transit Museum which was located at an old, abandoned subway
stop. It was a very interesting place with
pictures and explanations plus artifacts and models lining the walls and
corridors. It was especially interesting
to read the history of how they put the tunnels under the East River for two
lines. These subways were constructed in
the late 1890’s so you can only imagine the best minds, best engineering were
brought to bear to get the train underway.
Apparently Boston and New York were having a contest to see who could
get their system up and going first.
Irish immigrants were the main body of workers for this project. Down in the lower half of the museum were old
subway cars, some going back to 1918, I believe. They came complete with old advertisements
that line the walls of our subways (just the upper walls).
After that, we took a short bus ride
to Juniors, the old iconic restaurant in downtown Brooklyn, famous especially
for their yummy cheesecake, which I have talked about before. I ordered a 10 ounce hamburger which came
with fries and a couple of onion rings, but my goodness, they also put pickled
cole slaw, pickled beets and dill pickles on the table to eat with your
meal. Also, a basket with potato rolls
and corn bread. You simply could not go
away hungry, you went away stuffed. Claudette
insisted that we get a slice of chocolate mousse cheesecake for dessert and
then bought us one more to take home.
Chocolate mousse cheesecake is to die for, BTW. A lot of food went home with us that
afternoon!
Well, a huge meal deserves a big
walk. I changed my clothes, donned my
Yankees hat and went off to Prospect Park.
Much to my astonishment, at the edge of the park on the streets there
was a stream of water running down the edge.
I went a little further and there was a lot of water coming across the
street. A little further down and I
could see what was going on. The area I
start walking at, the south end, is on the low side of the park, further north
is higher ground. When it rained the
lake filled to overflowing, and so did the springs which feed the lake, so the
water naturally went to the lower south side.
It really wasn’t a problem and there were hundreds and hundreds of
walkers, bikers etc. to attest to that, but it was interesting to see. There was a low spot in a meadow in the park
which filled up with water and created a new lake. A lot of flowering trees to see on the
walk—it was glorious. Lynn took a bike
ride trying to hit some stores that would hopefully have information on
Bermuda. He didn’t have much luck.
Friday was catch-up day with writing
and studying then Lynn and I went to the Botanic Gardens to see what condition
they were in. We were satisfied that the
gardens were beautiful enough for the senior missionaries to enjoy the next
day—only one uncertainty, the weather.
The Lord blessed us with beautiful
weather on Saturday. It was warm enough
and partly cloudy. Lynn and I left our
apartment early in the car so we could park on the streets then take the train
to meet up with the senior missionary couples, at, well, Juniors again!! We had made arrangements a month earlier to
go to eat at Juniors and then take a tour of the Botanic Gardens, so when
Claudette took us there to eat we were excited because then we could find out
personally, beforehand, what we were getting ourselves into.
There were two couples waiting for
us when we got there and we waited a half hour outside for the others to show
up, and then went inside to order. Need
to tell you that our beloved “F” train, the one that we ride 90% of the time
had been derailed in Queens causing 19 injuries. Because of this, there were problems on many
other lines and we waited an hour for the rest of the group to show up. Juniors was good with this and were ready and
waiting when the others finally showed up.
Pres. and Sis. Calderwood also came with the AP’s who were glad to get a
free meal. We had a great time socializing
and getting to know some of the new couples.
Then to the gardens by train. The BBG was packed to the gills with
people. It was Saturday, the cherry
trees were finally completely blooming, it was warm, it was beautiful—so, the
people came. Dealing with our older
group was like herding turtles—they were super slow, but that’s reality so we
took our time and showed them our favorite things and after an hour and a half,
they were on their own.
Our day was not over. We came back, got changed and went to the
Park Slope Chapel for the Saturday night Conference session. They decided to try an experiment and have
the meeting at 5 pm so mothers could come with their children if they needed
to. I believe it worked—there were a lot
of little kids in the chapel and overflow and apparently a lot of couples with
children upstairs where the nursery area is located. We had a great meeting, the presenters
interacting with the audience a lot. We
took Claudette home and then settled in for the night.
The next day we took the train to
the Marriott Hotel by the Brooklyn Bridge (yes, that’s what it’s called) for
the Sunday meeting. The first order of
business after the meeting started was to release the 1st councilor
in the stake presidency and replace him with an Hispanic man from Dyker Heights
Spanish Ward, which was a needed, good move.
They had a lot of speakers, with good messages. Dyan’s brother, Isaac stood to be sustained
as an Elder. He’ll go on a mission in
about 6 months. After the meeting was
over there were a lot of people to talk to and we were among the last to
leave. Went down to the train station
and waited a half hour for that train to show up—ugh!
That night we went to Lana and Tanya
Golikova’s apartment with a video in tow about temples. One of the messages from conference was to
get our converts to the temple to take out their endowments. We had about 280 baptisms in our stake in the
last four years and only 16 of those people have taken out their
endowments—ouch! Lana is one of those
people, so we talked to her about going to the temple. She said she is going to start taking temple
prep classes pretty soon, so that was gratifying. Still, having our own little lesson with her
was instructive and both paid attention to what we had to say.
After such a busy week, I was tired
last night and went to bed earlier than usual.
The gospel of Jesus Christ as
restored through the prophet Joseph Smith is true. The Book of Mormon is the word of God and it
oozes the Spirit of the Lord when you read its pages. : )
It has been my blessing to teach the Institute class—as the teacher
always learns more than the students and this has been a year of learning.
Wish you all well this week and hope
it’s a good one!
Love, Mom/Kathy
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