Elder and Sister Williams NY NY South Mission: History, and the Making of History

Today was Stake Conference. We love Stake Conference because it gives us another chance to see so many more of the missionaries that we love. Elder Calderwood of the Seventy spoke. He was the Mission President here before President Reynolds. As I listened to him and to the other speakers, I realized what a special stake Lynbrook, New York Stake is. We love the diversity here. I looked around and saw people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Colombia, Philippines, El Salvador, South Korea, Dominican Republic, Dominica, and many other countries. People there spoke Spanish, Chinese, Mandarin, Korean, Creole, Tagalog, and even English! I think it’s so cool that the new Branch President of our Spanish/English Branch is Filipino. We realize more and more that the gospel will be brought to all the world not only through missionaries going into other countries but by people from those countries coming here and being converted and taking the gospel back to their own countries. I’m so impressed with the Chinese here! Every week the Chinese-speaking elders bring me at least one baptism record.

Yesterday for our P-day we went to Park Slope, one of the more upscale areas in Brooklyn. The Adamses, our CES senior missionaries live there and they showed us around. They said “We want to take you to this beautiful place.” They took us to Green-Wood Cemetery! It truly was beautiful. Many, many of the gravestones had mid-eighteen hundreds dates on them but the stones were brand new. Apparently they are replaced and kept up by the families down through the years. We had never seen a cemetery with so many mausoleums. These were very elaborate, some built into the hill with stain glass windows and even skylights. They were like mausoleum condos! So many of the stones were very large and elaborate. We couldn’t help but wonder what the “residents” thought when they got to the other side and realized their money was no good. It is a lovely place and is very peaceful. Many famous people are buried there including Horace Greeley and Leonard Bernstein. On a historical note, the cemetery is on the sight of a Revolutionary War battle. We laughed about going to visit our friends and them taking us to a graveyard, but we thought it was great!

Italian Bakery. There was one right next door and one
across the street

There are way too many restaurants here in New York. Within just a couple of blocks of our apartment there are Peruvian, Greek, Italian, Indian, Chinese and many more types of restaurants. I’m not sure we can eat our way through all of them before we go home. There are also many bakeries. New York has more bakeries than Seattle has Starbucks! These are real bakeries. We’re not talking bran muffins and bruschetta like Seattle bakeries but eclairs, cream puffs napoleons, knishes and more. It’s very dangerous! No wonder their cemeteries are so large.

We look forward to a somewhat quiet week in the office. The week before transfers is usually pretty slow. Some days are hard and the pace gets to us (well it gets to me anyway) but most days are invigorating and exciting. We can’t imagine doing anything else in our “golden years.”