Visit from a general authority

We were privileged to have a visit this week from David F Evans, a member of the First Quorum of the 70. He is the executive director of the Missionary Department of the church. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary, and Steven Allen, managing director of the Missionary Department of the Church. 

They along with Pres. and Sr. Calderwood spoke to us during the day long conference, which was held at the Rego Park Chapel. 

The theme of the conference was missionary work in the digital age.

They also discussed the very important safeguards for using technology.

For the past approximate three years the church has provided electronic tablets for missionaries to use in 30 missions in the United States and a few missions in Japan. Our mission is one of those test missions, along with the Phoenix Arizona mission. 

The young missionaries use their tablets extensively in their daily work. We senior missionaries do not have these tablets, but we use our iPhones in a similar manner.

The tablets are used for calendaring and planning, scripture reading, presentation of  missionary discussions and videos etc. The missionaries also access Facebook in an appropriate fashion.

For phase 2 of the testing, the church is now rolling out this program in 88 missions. 15 missions in Europe, 7 missions in Japan, and 66 missions in United States.

The Church has developed two booklets to help missionaries appropriately use the Internet and do missionary work on the digital age.

We thoroughly enjoyed the conference.

Our van has come in mighty handy on our mission. You're constantly packing missionaries into the car to go places. 

Besides us  there are six young missionaries in our district. We put them all in the car to go to the mission conference. 

Feeding the missionaries after the conference is also a delightful event. Setting up and serving is one of frequent senior missionary duties. 

We are occasionally asked by the young missionaries to assist them in presenting a missionary discussion. When we are there, these meetings are called "member present discussions". 

We had such an opportunity this past week to be part of the discussion with a recent convert and her 11-year-old son. 

We are getting through the winter. We have not had a lot of snow, but the snow that we have received has stayed around for a long time as ice.

We have to be careful where so we do not slip on the ice. So far so good!

It's been another good week in the mission field. We enjoy serving the Lord!

Sisters and the temple

During the past two weeks we've had a couple of good experiences.

On February 11 we had a conference for all sister missionaries. There were about 90 in attendance.

The theme was to help sisters to stay close to the Savior. Besides the general session, the sisters also attended various workshops during the day. 

Sr. Tenney was one of the workshop presenters.  Her workshop was on the topic of repentance.

We senior missionary husbands prepared the food, as usual. The menu was set forth by the mission presidents wife, Sister Calderwood, however, so the sisters were well fed. 

Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal and the conference.

As senior missionaries we periodically get the opportunity to lead a group of missionaries to the Manhattan Temple. They are allowed to attend the temple once every six months, since it is out of our mission boundary.

The missionaries always enjoy this temple trip, and so do we.

We are really enjoying our service each Friday in the mathattan temple.

Along with temple work, we also get involved in family history work, when our  schedule permits. We enjoyed researching and connecting families.

We are having a great time as senior missionaries. The time seems to be going by too fast.

Working with young missionaries

One of the joys of our mission is the opportunity to work closely with the young missionaries. We meet with our district every week.  We meet with our zone approximately every three weeks. We study the gospel together, discuss the status of missionary work in the area and have a little fun too. 

Add our latest district meeting we played a fun game trying to discover the person from the scriptures whose name was written on the card attached to our foreheads. We can see and this photo sister Christiansen and sister Nevitt having a good time with this game. Sr. Nevitt is the niece of Monte And Julie Nevitt, for our Prescott friends.

It is always interesting for us Arizona people to see the snow that accumulates in the winter.  Even though we have not had a very bad winter so far, the shopping center parking lot gets full of snow quickly when there is a bit of a snowstorm.  These snowbanks will stay for weeks.

This past week we had a transfer meeting. These meetings are the best. We love the enthusiasm of the young missionaries as they learn about their new companions and their new assignments.

As the mission historians, it is our job to take pictures of the new missionaries and the departing missionaries. We welcomed 21 new missionaries to New York with this transfer.

And we said goodbye to 17 missionaries. One sister missionary, Sister Watts and 16 elders. We hope she was well taken care of on her trip home!

At the transfer meeting the missionaries received wonderful counsel from Pres. and Sr. Calderwood.

They are wonderful leaders. They complete their three-year assignment at the end of June.

We feel honored to serve with them.

As CES missionaries we are invited occasionally to a special evening with a  general authority. This past week we had one of those meetings, with Elder Jeffrey R Holland. He didn't actually come to Brooklyn, but he visited with us electronically! Oh the marvels of our modern-day.

Elder Holland gave us wonderful counsel about what to teach him how to teach.  We love the gospel of Jesus Christ and rejoice in the restoration of the Gospel in these days. We feel so privileged to be able to serve as missionaries for a season.

It is hard to believe that we have completed over one year on our mission.

Being a missionary in the winter

I'm Missionary work goes on, rain or shine. We've had a pretty good winter for New York City, but we have had some snow and freezing rain.

Cars often get blocked in by the snow for several days at a time.

This is a view of the street in our neighborhood. Freezing rain is a challenge for walking. We need to be very careful.

To clear the snow, garbage trucks are pressed into service as temporary snowplow trucks.

When the garbageman cannot pick up the trash because they're plowing snow, the trash accumulates a bunch!

We continue to be heavily involved in preparing lessons and food for the young single adults and the young missionaries.

One assignment that we are happy to have completed is the mission history for the year 2014. It is now ready to submit to the church history department in Salt Lake City. It has been interesting being involved in the major happenings in the mission this past year.

For the current quarter the missionaries are concentrating on visiting all the active members and their home, to encourage them to participate in missionary work.  

The missionaries encourage the members to develop goals for convert baptisms, Sacrament meeting attendance, and temple attendance for newcomers. In our mission these are called the "5– 5–5" goals, because the overall mission goal is to have 500 convert baptisms, 5000 people in attendance at church on a given Sunday and 500 newcomers going to the temple.

At the end of every six weeks missionary transfer., We host the district missionaries in our apartment for a meal.

We only have one sister missionary leave your district this time, so that is good.

Our daily goal is to stay warm and dry!