Service

As missionaries, as church members, and as parents, our main focus is to give service. That is what missions are all about. As missionaries we have the opportunity to give service to the members, to the young missionaries and others. We also stay in close communication with our family, and hopefully we give service and a good example for them. One grandson (Taylor) just received his mission call, and another grandson (Jacson) is in the process of submitting his missionary papers. A third grandson (Tyson), is currently serving, so we are amply blessed as a family. 

Cooking is a big part of what we do. We are serving food to others at least three times a week. It has been said that a CES mission means "cooking every second ( CES)". And that is just about right!

Subway riding continues to be a big part of our weekly routine. Sometimes sister Tenney and I get separated on the subway by the mass of people! It is always an adventure to ride subway trains. 

We always invite our district missionaries to our "pad" near the end of the transfer period for a farewell meal, which we did this past Saturday.  We are losing the elders, but the sisters stay in Park slope for this next missionary transfer. Good deal. We will get two new elders later this week. It is sad to let them go, but we look forward to getting to know new missionaries.

We love our families and hope that many of them will be able to share the joy of missionary service.

We are glad to be the Lord servants in this little part of New York City.

Have a spring, everyone!

Visiting the City

One of the joys of serving in New York City is that we have family and friends who want to visit us. There's a lot to see and do in New York. 

We were very happy to welcome her sister Diane visiting us from Phoenix for four days. We took a bus tour of Manhattan and saw some wonderful things.

And, of course, riding the subway trains is always a novelty for someone visiting New York City.

During the week we were able to visit the Manhattan Temple and do temple work for family members. We really enjoy searching for family members needing temple ordinances using the family tree program. It gives special meaning to temple work when you can do proxy work for one of your cousins.

Another highlight of the week was the opportunity to attend the Spring spectacular show of the Rockettes at radio city music Hall. 

Radio City Music Hall is set in a busy part of the theater district in Manhattan.

We all enjoyed the production very much.

Another highlight of this past week was our semiannual stake conference for the Brooklyn stake. We do not have a stake center large enough to hold the congregation. Instead, we meet in the Marriott Hotel in downtown Brooklyn, near the Brooklyn Bridge. We have a very diverse steak. There are as many Spanish-speaking members as there are English-speaking members. There is also a large group and Chinese-speaking members. There are also many single adult members and single parents with children.

We enjoyed very much serving with the members in Brooklyn. We enjoy working with Hispanic members too. Hey good number of our students are Hispanic young adults living at home and Brooklyn with their parents. They are very faithful and have good spirits.

The arrival of spring

Spring officially began on Friday, March 20. It takes a little while for that message to get through to New York City, though.  We are still experiencing some wintry weather, but it is getting better.

A couple weeks ago we had the opportunity to take about 18 missionaries to the Manhattan Temple. They are allowed to visit the temple every six months, with a senior missionary couple as chaperones. We always enjoy that duty.

A few days before each transfer meeting we invite our district missionaries over to our apartment for a district  meal.  At this transfer two of our missionaries finished their mission and went home. They were good elders who will be missed. Due to a slight decrease in the overall missionary force, two of the elders were not replaced in our district, thus our district was reduced by two missionaries.

We had a delightful senior missionary activity at the Mission home in the middle of March.

This was our one chance on our mission to see the Mission home. 

All 10 senior missionary couples serving on Long Island were able to attend the event. Pres. and Sr. Calderwood are on the left. In addition to a wonderful potluck meal, we had sharing time. It's missing a couple was able to share something about their family as well as highlights of their mission. It was a great day. Is a privilege to serve with such fine people

We continue to enjoy our institute classes. This is a photo of the Staten Island group, mostly young Hispanic's. They are very faithful. We often sing and pray in Spanish, which we really enjoy. 

We attended a transfer meeting this past week. We recieved only 8 new missionaries, the smallest group since we arrived in New York. We sent home about 18.

We really enjoy mixing with the young elders and sisters, especially transfer meeting. They help keep us young! Sister Bowman, one of our favorites, took this selfie photo.

We were able to check one item off our bucket list this past Saturday as we went to the Empire State building, you see the view from the 86th floor with a group of young adults from our stake.

It was a cold and windy night, but we enjoyed the view and the company.

With this view we can see Lower Manhattan and the one world trade center building and the Statue of Liberty in the distance off to the right.

All in all, a busy couple of weeks. We really enjoy the variety of activities we have as missionaries here in New York City. Missions are great!

The end of winter

Looks like winter is finally coming to an end. 

Cleaning the sidewalks is a constant challenge. This lovely lady is a native of Brooklyn, so she is used to this work.

Missionaries keep up their appointed rounds no matter what the weather is.

This past week we had a series of mega zone conferences. 

One highlight is the testimonies offered by departing missionaries.  This is Elder Bey, our district leader. He is returning to Goodyear, Arizona next week. He has been very good to work with.

As part of the mega zone conferences, we were asked to give a series of workshops on using family tree as a missionary tool.  That was an enjoyable experience for us, as it caused us to get involved in family history work. That can be very enjoyable and fruitful work. We have been able to find and take to the temple several names in the past month.

One recent nice recent experience was to host the sister missionaries in our apartment as they gave a Skype missionary lessons to a young Chinese girl. She is planning to be baptized.

We have three functions in the next five days for which we are required to provide a meal. That always keeps us hopping.  Sr. Tenney has a great reputation as a good cook.

We are enjoying our work. The time is passing too quickly.

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.