The Manhattan Temple

Perhaps the highlight of this week was the opportunity to go to the Manhattan Temple on Friday. Periodically senior couples are asked to accompany the young elders and sisters who are allowed to go to the temple at a certain milestone month. When they reach the six-month, the 12 month or the 18 month mark in their mission, the young missionaries are allowed to go to the temple. 

They go as a group and must be led by a senior couple so they don't get "lost". The temple is in Manhattan, which is not part of our mission. Since we're still new, we accompanied another senior couple who led the group so we could "learn the drill" for the time we might lead a group.

We drove to the mission office and then traveled by subway to Manhattan. There were approximately 20 missionaries in our group.

Taking the subway is definitely the best way to get around Manhattan.  We made one subway transfer, but we did okay.

The Manhattan Temple is beautiful. It is a tall building in the middle of Manhattan. The angel Moroni stands on top of the building. We come out of the subway on 66 street and look directly at Moroni, right across the street from the Lincoln Center.

The temple is beautiful and very quiet.  We enjoyed going there and look forward to going back often. As senior missionaries we are allowed to go to the temple as often as our schedule permits. 

This week we were also privileged to meet with our mission president and the CES

coordinator. They both gave us wonderful advice to help with the CES missionaries.  We are enjoying the work and love to meet the fine young people here.

Staying fit and healthy

A lady missionary needs to stay fit and healthy by eating well and exercising. Sister Tenney does this well on a daily basis. We have an exercise room two floors above our apartment. We enjoy going there every morning except Sunday to start the day off right. 

A snowy second week in NYC

Well, we have now finished our second week in New York. We are getting a bit more familiar with the neighborhood. Thank goodness for GPS systems! We would be totally lost without our GPS. Even with GPS, we must get the street name correct. On Wednesday we wandered all over Staten Island on Richmond ROAD instead of the Richmond AVENUE that we were trying to reach. We saw some pretty country though. 

We had a large snowstorm late Wednesday night which caused us to cancel institute class on Thursday. We did not want to do that but we felt it was a prudent thing to do. None of the students have cars. They must use the subways to get to cLass. They often have to walk a long distance to the chapel.  It is almost impossible for the young adults on Staten Island to participate in a stake activity on Long Island, where Brooklyn is located. To get to Long Island these young people would have to take a bus to the ferry, then take a ferry boat to Manhattan Island, then take a subway to Long Island. It would be costly and would take about two hours to get there. They would then have the same challenge getting home. So it is just not feasible for them to participate in a Brooklyn Stake activity. 

Also, there's somewhat of a cultural divide between the Hispanic students who live in Staten Island and the Anglo students who live in the park slope area of Brooklyn.  Each of our institute classes has its own cultural climate. But we love them all. 

Maybe next week will talk about something besides the weather! Everyone around here us getting anxious for spring due to a long cold winter. Hope you are all warm and dry. 

Our first week in New York

Well, we have arrived in New York City. We arrived about a week ago on a very snowy day. Driving through Manhattan was just funny. We made several mistakes and met a couple of police officers. They were very nice to us, though, as they helped us get out of jams. We have now arrived in Brooklyn and have begun our missionary work. We are working with young adults throughout the Brooklyn Stake. Each week we teach three institute classes in three different chapels in the stake. Two classes are mostly Hispanic students, so I get to practice my Spanish. I have also been called as the first counselor in the Park Slope YSA branch. So we will be busy. We love working with the young people and sharing the gospel. We have a wonderful apartment on the 10th floor with a good view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. We will also like to get to work in the temple one day a week. If we can just know which subways to take to get there! We have met many nice people and love to work with them. The young elders and sisters also really sharp. There is a lot of enthusiasm in this mission. We love the work!

Goodbye to the MTC

Well, we have now finished our 10 days at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.  What a wonderful time we have had.  We have met wonderful people - mostly couples going all over the world to serve.  We have had great instructors.  The food has been fabulous and the accommodations nice.  We have had wonderful instructors - young returned missionaries last week teaching us how to "Preach My Gospel", and seasoned seminary and institute teachers this week teaching us how to present the gospel to the youth and young adults that we will be serving in the New York area.  This time has been really special.  We're ready to go!  We wish all of you could have an MTC experience.  It really strengthens our testimony that we are "on God's errand".  We feel so blessed and honored.  We also feel your support and love, and we go forward with your blessings and we also pray a blessing for you.  Elder and Sister Tenney.

Worldwide missionary effort

It has been a wonderful first week at the MTC! We are truly humbled and honored to be a part of this great work. We are impressed with the 60 couples in our group who are going all over the world to preach the gospel. Just to name a few, there are senior missionaries in our group going to the Philippines, to Malaysia, to Guam, Samoa, to Hawaii, to Minnesota, to Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma Kansas,New York, London, to Slovenia, to the Ukraine, Russia, Panama, Micronesia, Provo, Salt Lake, Layton. Just all over. 

What a great work we are engaged in.

Teachers have been excellent. We gave two discussions this week to investigators in the Provo area and we also worked with pretend part member families. We will be doing a lot of that in the mission field we suspect.

We are happy and well!

Senior missionary opportunities

We've got a question for you, our dear friends and family. What you think is the most common reason senior couples decline the opportunity to serve a full-time mission? (a) health, (b) home, (c) family, (d) finances, (e) pets. The answer may surprise you.  It is pets! That surprised us when we learned that this week in the MTC. 

There are now many opportunities for seniors to serve as missionaries right from their home. In the state of Utah, the church is conducting a pilot program for senior missionaries. In our training group there are many senior couples from the Wasatch front area of Utah called to work from home. They will serve as full-time member leader support (MLS) missionaries, working with leaders and members in their stake or surrounding stakes. They will be mostly working with less active members, trying to encourage them to come back into full activity. They will also do other assignments as directed by local priesthood leaders, including family history, indexing, humanitarian work, and other things. 

This is a good way for seniors to serve as missionaries while living at home! Think about it.