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!

P Day in winter time

During the winter we look for indoor activities for preparation day. Sometimes we have to go shopping rain or shine to get food for the institute classes.

Today we were able to visit the Body World exhibition in Times Square. 

The human body is amazing. There is no way it could've been created just by chance. Thank goodness for our creator and a great plan of salvation. 

We visited time square in Manhattan, which is always an interesting place.

Today we saw a "weed head" man with a box on his head begging for money so he could smoke marijuana. At least he was honest about what he would do with the money.

We also saw a person dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. This occurred near Broadway and 45th St., where they dropped the New Year's eve Ball.

Riding the subway train is always interesting as well. Today we encountered three men singing for money. They were good singers. There ought to be a better way for them to earn a living, though.

And we got our very own "Subway Selphie". 

Living in a large apartment building is still a new experience for us. Trash detail is amusing. Basement fills up fast with trash from so many tenants. 

Our trusty van has come in mighty handy for hauling food and people.

We are well and happy and enjoy serving the Lord. Is hard to believe that we have now been on a mission for one year.

A special Christmas and birthday

We had a wonderful Christmas season. Our children planned a special family reunion and birthday party in St. George, Utah to celebrate Linda's 70th birthday the day after Christmas. Our wonderful mission President Calderwood gave us permission to fly out for the celebration. So we did!  Thank you, President Calderwood. We had a two week break from institute classes, so our schedule is free. We had a wonderful time as you can imagine.

The week before we left, however, we welcomed five new missionaries to our district including two new sister missionaries. Sister Christiansen and sister Nevitt. Sister Nevitt is the niece of Monte And Julie Nevitt friends from our old Prescott days. 

We were also able to attend the nutcracker ballet in Brooklyn the Saturday before we left.

We spend Christmas with our son Tyler and his wife Cristiane and their three beautiful daughters in Henderson Nevada.

I also got to see her other grandchildren including four-year-old Luke and two-year-old Tessa. 

One special event was our attendance at the Las Vegas temple with family members.

The family arrange for a special dinner to honor Linda on her birthday.

We had 30 of our 32 family members in attendance that night.

We enjoyed good times just sitting and talking and sharing. 

The children and grandchildren prepared a special book of letters to grandma which they gave her at her birthday party. 

It was wonderful.

We finished our wonderful trip by spending a few days in Colorado with our daughter Juliann and Berrett Doman and their four wonderful children. 

We had a wonderful trip and now we are back in New York ready to get to work once again.

December activities and transfers

The There is a lot going on in the mission field during December.

Last week the zone missionaries sang Christmas carols at a local hospital. We were very well received and everyone seemed to enjoy the singing.

The sister missionaries hand made a beautiful Christmas wreath for our "10E" door in our apartment building. Christmas in a small apartment is a little different than what we are used to, with family and friends get around. Our Christmas tree this year is about 18 inches tall and hangs on our wall!

We always love it when our family and friends come to visit us in New York City. We were very pleased to have dinner with our cousin Cindy Parry Coleman and her two boys Shane and Cody last week. They were in New York City to see a Broadway play and the Rockettes Christmas show.

This was the week of transfers in our mission. We always invite the missionaries from our district to our apartment for a special meal a few days before transfers to say goodbye to them. Apparently Sister Tenney's wonderful meal made a few of the elders quite sleepy! They seem to feel comfortable in our apartment and we love having him over.

We lost five of the six young missionaries in our district with the latest transfers. They were a good group and will be missed. Getting all their luggage in our van was also a trick!  We take luggage to and from the mission office on transfer days. We also welcomed five new missionaries to our district, including the niece of Monte and Julie Nevitt our dear friends from our old Prescott days in the 1980's and 1990's. We will enjoy serving with Sister Nevitt and her new companion sister Christiansen.

Our institute classes are going well. We really enjoy teaching the young Hispanic students. They seem to carry a special spirit with them. This is our Sunday night class on Staten Island.

We had the wonderful opportunity on Monday night the 15th of visiting the Lincoln Center in Manhattan and singing Handal's Messiah with approximately 1500 other people. It was marvelous.

The Manhattan Temple is right across street from the Lincoln Center. Not was beautiful late Monday night with all the Christmas lights lit up.

At this special time of the year we are particularly aware of the great life and mission of our Savior Jesus Christ. We are so grateful He came to earth and completed his mission including the atonement, which opens the gate for us to return to live with our Father in Heaven. May we all rejoice and remember that He is the Gift!

Holiday Activities

This is a busy and wonderful time of the year. One of our privileges as senior missionaries is to take young elders and sisters to the temple when they reach their six months, 12 months and 18 months milestones. It is a trip there really look forward to. We were able to lead a group to the temple this past week.

We all rode the subway train from the mission office to the temple. The challenge is to not lose any of them along the way!

We had a good group.  They enjoyed being photographed outside of the temple.

There were 10 of us in our little apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. We fed four missionaries and four young single adults plus ourselves. Sister Tenney cooked a wonderful traditional meal. They really enjoyed it!

We opted to watch the Macy's parade from our apartment tv, rather than going to the parade site on sixth Avenue and standing around for several hours. That morning we were busy cooking food.

We did watch the Macy's parade on TV, however.  We really enjoyed Harold the policeman.

He looks just like Harold, don't you think?

Some of our friends were in attendance.  They said the balloons and bands were spectacular.

As CES teachers we were invited to a special lunch at the temple building on Monday, 1 December (to the chapel portion).  There were about 40 institute teachers and spouses from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut in attendance. We had a very good program and meal.

We even reconnected with Elder and Sister Lotz and Sister Young,  who were with us at the MTC last January.

It is fun to run into old missionary friends.

We topped off the day by visiting the Rockefeller Center.

We saw the huge Christmas tree which was not lit today we visited. It was lit two days later. It was still beautiful even though unlit. 

We also saw the famous ice skating rink at the Rockefeller Center.

We finished the day vby visiting the Christmas spectacular performance of the radio city music Hall Rockettes.

 They were amazing.

They perform 12 fantastic numbers. A "must see" if you come to New York during the holiday season.

It's a busy and full time.

We are also enjoying teaching about the Savior Jesus Christ to our institute classes. 

We are presently studying the visit of the Savior to the American continent after his resurrection. We enjoy our institute classes very much. We are connecting well with our students. They are sharp and quick and we have to move fast to keep up with them!

Enjoy a beautiful time of the year, and remember that He is the Gift. 

Changing and growing

One of the good things about a mission is that you're always changing and growing. That is true for us as a senior couple as well as for the young missionaries.

We are continually being challenged to do more and to learn more. Each week we learn more about the wonderful resources the church has to help us teach the Gospel.  We love studying the Gospel together and teaching it to the young people out here.

We recently had another transfer meeting which always brings great excitement and many changes. Pres. and Sr. Calderwood are great inspirational leaders.

We are so blessed to have them as leaders.

We love working with the young missionaries in our district and zone as well as with the young single adults and institute classes.

We also love our temple work on Friday of each week. Last Friday we were able to enjoy a cold ice cream cone on a cold New York night. It makes a lot of sense doesn't it!

On a recent P day we were able to take in the Disney on ice performance called Frozen. 

The performance was held at the new Barcklays Center in Brooklyn. We greatly enjoyed the performance, but would have loved to have seen it with some of our grandchildren.

It was a great show.

We enjoyed our Brooklyn stake conference this past weekend. Our presiding officer was elder Anthony Perkins of the first quorum of 70. 

This stake is very racially and ethnically diverse. There are probably more Hispanic members than any other culture. We also have a large contingent of Chinese and African-Americans. Some conference talks were given in English and other talks were given in Spanish. we enjoyed them all.