Forever Friends

Elder Williams wrote last week about our Senior Missionary Dinner at the Mission home.  We are at that point of our mission where couples we have gotten close to and have come to love are leaving.  President Reynolds had us go around the table and tell one thing we didn’t think anyone knew about us.  We learned a lot about our fellow missionaries.

Elder and Sister Lilly (who are leaving in 2 weeks) worked for the Church humanitarian aid department and were involved in providing aid after Hurricane Katrina and again in Haiti.  They have some good stories to tell. 

Another elder told just a tiny bit about being a paratrooper in Vietnam.  On Monday after the dinner we had our small group FHE at Sister Petersen’s.  I asked him some questions about his experience (being careful not to get too personal).  I won’t go into too much because it was some private stuff he was sharing but, wow!  You just never know the things people have gone through in their lives.  Half way through the story his wife got her phone out and started recording.  She said he had never talked that much about it before.  Some things he only touched on but his wife told us later that he had been a POW.  Years later he joined the church and he shared his testimony about how the temple helped him deal with things.  I can’t describe what a true pleasure it is to work with these missionary giants.

 

Yesterday Marc and I took a little drive to Brooklyn to see if we could find the house from the show Bluebloods.  We found it in a very posh area of multi-million dollar homes.  Then we drove home through Flatbush—the least posh part of our mission.  There was a stark difference. 

The house from Bluebloods

I appreciate that Marc is willing to just jump in the car or subway and go on an adventure.  He is much more spontaneous now.  It’s great!  Then on Sundays we talk to our friend Jay who grew up here and knows EVERYTHING about New York and he fills us in with lots of tidbits of interesting information about what we saw.  It’s great to know someone who can teach us so much about the area.

I have been dusting off my sign language skills learned in college.  They are still pretty dusty. We have a sweet little deaf girl in Primary who has just started attending.  So far she just has sat there unable really to participate other than to hold posters and things for us.  Today as I taught them some signs and we sang I noticed she was singing (with sign) with a big smile on her face.  It felt good.  I love that as I have prepared for my songs there have been a couple of times when I was stymied not knowing which sign to use.  The first time I ran into the ASL missionaries at a Zone Conference in Brooklyn and the next time they came into the office.  We don’t see them much because they are in Brooklyn but they are here when I need them.  I know the Lord sends them because this little girl is so important to Him. I witness every day just how much He loves all his children.

Checking cars at Dyker Heights Zone Conference

Dyker Heights.  You can't see it but it was snowing.  Better than checking
cars in 98 decree weather with 90% humidity.

Stolen Cars, 9-11 and Good Company

Had a nice P-day all planned yesterday, but life got in the way of some of the plans!  Diane, Sister Petersen and I had tickets to go to a small, private 9-11 museum in the morning, then planned to relax and get a few things done in the afternoon, then go to the yearly senior missionary dinner at President and Sister Reynolds home in the evening.  One out of three happened, for me!

At 8:00 AM on the way home from working out, I noticed that the newest mission car (red 2017 Subaru Legacy) was missing from the place I parked it, 100 feet or so from the church.  (I try to get any extra cars out of the church parking lot for Sundays.)  I knew the key was in my desk, so I checked first with the missionaries with keys to the office, and they denied it was an inside job.  Then I checked the church mission GPS system, to see if I could see where the car was, and I couldn’t see anything, so I figured the car was stolen and the thieves ripped out the GPS unit, when it started yelling, “No driver!’ every ten seconds (which it does if a driver doesn’t log in).  I finally called the police at about 9:00 and reported a stolen vehicle.  They showed up in only about 15 minutes (and it wasn’t Jamie Reagan and Eddie, much to my disappointment).  (That’s a ‘Blue Bloods’ reference, for the rubes in the audience.)  Much to my embarrassment, the officers, after checking around for 15 minutes, told me that the vehicle had actually been towed away!  They were nice about it (semi-believed my protestations of innocence), gave me the impound lot info, and I slunk away to spring the car from lockup.

That’s another long story that I won’t get into much…Can you believe towing cars is such big business here that they have reverse valet parking at the lot!!  After paying the $200, you show your receipts to a nice uniformed officer in a Prius, and he takes you to your car, wherever it is in the 1000 car lot!  Very efficient way to collect big $$!  (There were 20 in line when I got there, and they got quite a laugh about NYPD towing off a church vehicle!)  Now I just have to figure out if it’s possible to get reimbursed for the damages the towing company did to the car (with under 2000 miles on it).  Looks like they dragged the front wheels sideways, popping and tearing one tire and breaking something in the suspension so it clunks loudly at every bump.  I finally got the car home at about 3PM.  (Two trips there—not enough proof of ownership information my first trip.  The elders that were with me to drive one car home enjoyed seeing some of the nice industrial area in the North Flushing area twice.)  Lesson learned: while concentrating on parking at least 15 feet from a hydrant, don’t overlook the other no parking sign hidden in the construction overhead walkway!  Enough about that!!

Diane and Sister Petersen rode the subway to Manhattan and really enjoyed the small museum!  It was put together by the man who was the official photographer of the 9-11 cleanup and recovery efforts.  The museum is in one room on a 2^nd floor, and consists of pictures and items found during the cleanup.  Both sisters said it was very wrenching emotionally, and said they heard a lot of sobbing (some theirs) during parts of the headset tour.  I wish I could have seen it, although I had another emotionally wrenching experience at the same time!

The largest piece of glass recovered from the twin towers.

The senior missionary dinner was wonderful!  Not much to it—dinner, talking, telling everyone a little about yourselves, getting told how great we are.  What’s not to like!!  We’ve said before how much like working in the temple it is, associating with really good people who love the Lord and are trying their best to serve!  Gives you another glimpse of what Heaven will be like!!  It always amazes me how much different each of our missions are!  Two office couples (but assigned to totally different branches in different areas of the city), a nurse, a family history coordinator couple, a housing couple, a CES couple teaching institute classes, a records retention couple that spends fulltime photographing historical records in downtown Manhattan, and a MLS (Member Leadership Support) couple out in the Hamptons.  As a senior couple, you could stay right here in this mission and serve nine completely different missions!  We love it!  We get tired (exhausted, my companion calls it), but we never doubt we are doing what the Lord wants us to be doing right now!  (But I am still looking forward to being retired sometime…) 

Me and a little friend at the Dyker Heights Zone Conference

S-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g!

This week marked our one year point as missionaries.  Time is flying.  There is so much to do.  I admit that I never much cared for the idea that the harder you work the happier you are but I have begun to see things differently here on our mission.  We are often called to do things that stretch us far beyond what we thought we were capable of.  There are times when the “busyness”, in any other time or place would be overwhelming.  I feel like we often experience what I call “mission blessings”.  The kinds of blessings you feel like you get because you need them as missionaries.  This past week (and due to 9” of snow—into next week) has been Mega-zone conferences.  This is a busy time for me because I usually attend all 4 of them to help Marc inspect cars and to work helping prepare lunch for about 60 missionaries.  Marc is busy inspecting cars and then, after lunch, instructing missionaries on how to keep their cars in good condition and trying to convince them not to eat in their cars.

Our 9-inch "dusting" of snow.  This is my least favorite part of our 80 step walk to the office.
The building on the right is our apartment building.  The office is behind it.  My companion cleared the walk
each hour all day.

Yesterday I went shopping with an investigator, Patricia, who was getting baptized today.  The young sisters have allowed me to sit in on some of their discussions.  Then, in my spare time, I have been preparing my talk for the baptism, learning a song in sign language to teach the kids in Primary, and preparing my Primary lesson.  Marc has been busy preparing his Sunday School lesson, preparing 5 cars to sell, giving driving tests, etc.  We wonder what it feels like to be retired.  However, the mission blessings have been evident in all of this.  Somehow we are able to feel spiritually and physically and emotionally, energized.  I truly feel like my mind is “quickened” and works far better than my pre-mission mind.  My talks, lessons and activities seem to come together faster than I have ever experienced.  It almost makes me want to stay on a mission for all the extra Spiritual help we are getting.

The baptism was well-attended.  In my talk I mentioned Mosiah 18:8-9. In this is talks about being desirous to come into the fold of God. We had talked with Patricia in one of our lessons about how we can think of a fold as something that “enfolds” us and pulls us in.  The Flushing 1^st Branch is such a good example of this.  A new person comes in and they all enfold them and make them feel like part of their branch family.

Patricia's Baptism
Sister Williams, Sister Wuthrich, Patricia, (other) Sister Williams, Elder Liljenquist

I feel so blessed to have a wonderful companion.  It would be hard to be together so much with someone who was difficult to get along with.  He even lets me go shopping as much as I want (almost) and hardly ever complains.  Seriously, I feel blessed because he tries very hard to understand and be patient with all my faults and quirks.  It’s either something he has become better at or, more likely, something I haven’t noticed before because I wasn’t with him so much.  We laugh together A LOT! And just enjoy being around each other.

We love being here and love the friends we are making and I marvel to think that a year ago I didn’t know these wonderful people existed.  These are people who will stay in our hearts long after we have left here.

Chinese New Year

We had a great P-day on Saturday!!  The Zone Leaders told us the missionaries were meeting at 9:00 for the Chinese New Year parade, which we thought would be a sight to behold.  Turned out we were in the parade!  It was everything we thought it would be—colorful, noisy, fun and COLD!  (With wind chill it peaked at about 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the day…) All the missionaries wore the ‘Mormon Helping Hands’ yellow vests, and the members from the Chinese ward wore green t-shirts, and we gave out candy treats (with church info) to the audience.  Diane and I were both reminded of the parades we marched in while in high school—most of the time is spent standing around and waiting for the parade to start.  We were the 30^th group/float, so we waited about an hour before we started.

General impressions: DRAGONS, bright colors, drums banging (something about a legend that once you start banging a war drum, it’s bad luck to stop, so we listened to ours for nearly two hours total…), huge crowds of dark-haired people (10-15 people deep along most of the 1 mile route), missionaries enjoying being together, Sister Williams with a big smile on her face (but paying the price today for being on her feet for 3 hours straight), and a general feeling of goodwill! 

Then, after the parade the Chinese ward fed us huge bowls of spicy noodles!  I had the 'mild', and my lips were still numb for an hour! 

In the evening we went out to Dinner with our friend Jay Stonehill, at an Italian restaurant he suggested in Corona.  (You know a restaurant is good when the day before, the only opening they had was at 5:00PM…)  The place was packed and friendly and noisy, and the food was great!!  I had salmon, Diane had some kind of tomato linguine, and Jay had chicken cacciatore.  The best part by far was the conversation, though!  Jay was born in Queens and grew up here, and he brought a bunch of aerial photos of our neighborhood at different times over the years.  It was fascinating! 

Jay Stonehill and us 2/4/17

Jay is not a member, but is very active in the branch, and he cuts the hair for all the elders in both New York City missions, and loves and serves the missionaries in many other ways.  He’s reading Jesus The Christ with me now, reads the scriptures daily, fasts on fast Sundays, is the branch Sacrament Meeting greeter, and now is going to be my pseudo-home teaching companion for the two families they assigned me.  He has been single his whole life, and is a retired school teacher (math) and part-time barber.  I love him, and he is way too good a man to stay a non-member!!  It frustrates him, too, that he lacks the faith (his words) to get an answer to prayers.  In the past two years he says he has progressed from an atheist to a very engaged agnostic.  We feel blessed to have him as a friend, and we are determined to give him every opportunity to feel the Spirit and be converted!  What a blessing it is to be here serving the Lord and having all these experiences!!  We love the Lord!