Sister Williams with the packages from one of  Monday's three deliveries!

More!

Sister Williams is way too busy getting ready for the mission Christmas to do the blog, so she assigned me to do it! (Now she owes me.) It's been a wild week, with most of the stress on her shoulders. Monday, the senior missionaries got together for FHE and organized the 32 packages for elders and sisters without packages from home. (The hard part is that the quantity and sex is nothing more than a wild guess until the VERY last minute!!) Today, she, Sister Shapiro and the office elders have been calling every missionary to ask them if they have received their packages yet.  The mission Christmas devotional is Friday (the day after tomorrow), and I'm sure my companion won't return to normal until a day or two after that. She loves it, and is doing a GREAT job, but she lives in fear of missing someone!  I'm constantly amazed how hard she works and how much she loves the missionaries!!!!  We also have been amazed and gratified how generous parents and senior missionaries are in donating to help the missionaries who don't receive as much!  My mother made 20 necklaces for us, each of the senior couple donated generously, and parents (without us asking) have sent all kinds of money! (Today, we opened a letter from a parent with $150 in it.)  Plenty of $, but tomorrow (Thursday) will be BUSY scrambling to fill the gaps, shop and finish getting ready, and we know it will all work out! (Even though today it's a little scary...)

Meanwhile, my work goes on pretty much as usual. We delivered a new car to the Sisters in Terryville last Friday, and as usual, it was fun to get away from the office and see some new country. Not to mention enjoying that new car smell that will last just until the missionaries hang smelly things in the car (probably within the hour). We think it's funny that every single missionary car has trees or other smelly things hanging from the mirror, and sometimes fresheners in the vents, too. The younger generation seems to like "air fresheners"!!

Terryville Church

Last Saturday was our branch Christmas party, which was fun! We are getting accustomed to the later starts (7:30 posted start time, 8:15 actual meal start), and just enjoy watching everyone enjoy each other's company.  They had a brother in the ward who is a DJ do the tunes and after dinner almost everyone in the branch danced, mostly in one large group, for 90 minutes or so! We decided that we definitely need to brush up on our Latin dance steps (me a lot more than Diane!), so we can participate more. Sunday I asked my class of 12 teenagers what percentage of their friends are nonmembers, and I was amazed how LOW it was--mostly in the 5% range!  It helps me to understand why they (even the teens) love to come to any church activity and spend time together!!  Even seminary, which is Tuesday through Saturday at 7:00 PM in our stake. Life is different here. It's a wonderful opportunity for us to open our eyes and see thing differently. Diane and I often discuss how it helps us to see what is truly important, so we don't equate 'different' with 'wrong' or 'not as good'.  What we are used to is not necessarily better, even in church administration!

We still like it on a mission, and know we are doing the right thing for us!  We wish we could share every day with our friends and loved ones, but this will have to do for now!!!  We love you all!!

Flushing Building Dedication, Musings & Korean BBQ

We had another busy week that flew by!!  Transfers are next Tuesday, and the week prior is often more of a slow week, but this one wasn’t for me!  Two accidents, one new car pickup and delivery, the on-going shell game of getting missionaries into a loaner car so theirs can get body work done, new Flushing Building dedication yesterday, and prep for today’s SS lesson.

Transfers this week will be a tough one!  I think there are 28 going home (most of whom we know well, so it will be tearful!), another 24 coming (including one who will need to be trained and certified as a NYC driver that same day).  It’s always a busy day—it’s all carefully scheduled to get missionaries in and out at certain times, so they aren’t all at the church/office at the same time, but they love being together, and love saying hello and goodbye, so the schedule ends up as more of a ‘rough guideline’, and ~150 missionaries and their luggage end up all being there at the same time! It’s hard to imagine the bedlam.  Every time, I have elders and sisters who can’t find their cars (they park as far away as ¼ mile away to find parking, and sometimes both companions are changed).  In addition, last transfer, there were two sets of missionaries who came to me for cars, and I didn’t have any planned (!), through some miss-communication with the assistants! But, as always, things work out (that time with a complicated two-week shell game of loaner cars and swaps).  My goal is for nothing like that to happen ever again.  I know I sound like it’s all about the cars for me, but that’s just my assignment!  It’s really all about helping the Lord’s work move forward the best we can, in our human, error-prone ways!! We love transfer week, but we are also very glad when it’s over.

Elder Mingyun Ko and us. Elder Ko has been assistant to President Reynolds for the last 6 months, and goes home 12/14/16.

Yesterday for the Flushing Building dedication, Diane drove over at 9AM to help get things ready.  She had an assignment to stay in the primary room and explain the Primary program to English-speaking visitors, along with a Spanish sister and a Chinese sister and a Korean sister with the same assignments in their respective languages.

I stayed at home, did a driving test for another elder who has to drive starting Tuesday, worked on my SS lesson, took shirts to the laundry, and moved cars around to clear the parking lot for Sunday meetings.  (Church parking lots here have 12-20 spaces, and they generally are double and triple-parked on Sundays.)  Real estate here is just so valuable and hard to get!!!  Property value in Queens is roughly ten times that in Utah, in my estimation.  A 2500 sf house on ¼ acre is about $2+ million. (But I digress…) At about noon, I walked over and caught the subway to Flushing, then walked the mile from the end of the line to the chapel.  The entire journey of 6-7 miles took 75 minutes, and I loved it!!  Along the way I ran into two sisters and their recent convert in the subway, met and watched a lot of other interesting people, and saw MetLife stadium on one side and Arthur Ashe tennis stadium and the globe from the world’s fair ¼ mile away on the other side (the subway is on an elevated platform not underground in that part of the trip), then walked through the center NYC’s largest ‘Chinatown’ in Flushing.

After the dedication, we were invited over for dinner by the Shins, along with the Rapleys and another couple that are Chinese (can’t remember their name). We assumed ‘over for dinner’ would be to their house, but when we got directions, it was to a nice Korean Restaurant (BCD Tofu House, in Bayside). We got to see a very nice area of town that we hadn’t seen before, and get to know some people outside of church, which is always great!  Brother Shinn is a bank manager and a counselor in our stake presidency, Brother Rapley is our stake patriarch and CES administrator for the area, and the other brother works in customer service (and has a BS in Electrical Engineering).  It was fun to talk and hear conversion stories, not to mention be adventurous and eat everything in a wonderful Korean BBQ.  (I told Diane, “Don’t wonder what it is, just try everything and see what you like!”)  Luckily, when I asked they brought some wood chopsticks—MUCH easier to use than the chrome ones in the place settings. (I found when I went to Korea for business that my hand cramped up by the end of a meal with metal chopsticks…Not in shape for chopstick use.)  Although it was not comfort food for us, it was an adventure, the company was great, and we loved the experience!!  Our mission is much the same-- the experiences aren’t always comfortable, but we know we are doing the Lord’s work, we know he strengthens us every day, and we know that our love and our testimonies are stronger than they have ever been!!  We still love it!

Closing number at the Rockette's Christmas show.

Christmastime in New York

These have been a busy couple of weeks and time seems to be flying by.  Elder Williams and I have been doing some of the quintissential New York Christmas things.  There is so much to do here its hard to cram it all into our Saturdays.

Last Monday we went with some of the other Senior Couples to Grimaldi's for pizza in Brooklyn. This involved a lengthy subway ride across the East River to Manhattan and back across the river again to Brooklyn.  On the way home Marc was sitting across from me next to a 20-year-old.  They were thoroughly engaged in conversation all the way home and you'd have thought they were best friends.  They talked a great deal about the Church, along with music and sports.  Marc is a much better missionary than I am.

On Thursday night we went with Sisters Shapiro and Petersen to the Rockettes Christmas show. The area around Radio City and Rockerfeller Center where the tree is was packed with wall to wall people.  Everyone was in a cheerful festive mood so no one seemed to mind the crowds.

The show was amazing!  There was a 3-D part where we watched Santa's sleigh soaring over Manhattan, lots of very impressive music and dance numbers, and a beautiful nativity scene with live sheep and camels!  It even snowed white confetti into the audience.

We feel almost guilty having so much fun. However, we do  manage to do some work.  Monday I went to the doctor's office and when I came back I was greeted with a wall of packages and mail. One of my projects now is to keep track of who gets Christmas packages so we Senior Couples can make up some gift packages for those who don't get anything. It stresses me out a little to think I might miss someone.  Last year they did 30 packages.  I had the parents put smiley faces or Christmas stickers on their Christmas packages so I could tell the Christmas ones from the ordinary ones.  A few remembered.  I love it when there is a hole in a package so I can peek inside to see if there is wrapping paper.

I have been emailing parents.  I love them!  They are great.  I was having some trouble getting a group email list generated though, but two very computer savvy elders, Elder Smith & Elder Christie came along just in time, pressed a few keys and worked their magic.  I'm learning a lot from the missionaries.

Some days it gets a little stressful.  Not the bad kind of stress but the fun kind.  All sorts of things seem to come at you at once but they usually involve helping the missionaries with something, which we love.

We got to go with the office elders to deliver some new cars to the missionaries in Riverhead at the far end of the island.  I love trips to Riverhead.  This included lunch with the office elders.  Great fun.

We continue to be amazed at how readily blessings come to us as missionaries when we need them.  I am constantly reminded of my Heavenly Father's love for us and so appreciate His tender mercies that seem to shower down on us daily.