Our New Assignment

Happy Birthday to Owen. He's two years old tomorrow, April 6th. He is such a fun little boy, and I've been told that he is talking up a storm. This picture was taken at Christmastime with Amy and Jacob and Owen. They're all cute, eh?

Two weeks ago, we were able to attend the temple with the departing elders: l-r: Elder Lopez, Elder Berry, Elder Irvine and Elder Fox. We really have grown to love these elders. They will hold a place in our hearts forever.

Here are the Schoutens and us with the departing missionaries and the AP's. We love these young men, and we love the Schoutens. They will be going home at the end of the month. We will miss them.

These two elders serve in the area of the temple: Elder Faulkner and Elder Nevarez.

We were able to attend the baptism of Nettyla, whose mother and sisters are members of our ward. She is a sweet little girl. When the bishop tried to put the water in the baptismal font, the tap would not work. So, several men and children got buckets and pitchers and tried to fill it. Meanwhile, the bishop went into his office and said a prayer that they could get the tap to work. He went back out and turned it on, and it came on. He said Nettyla's baptism was a miracle and thanked those who helped fill the font.

We took a couple of our missionaries out to eat at Mezzaluna, an Italian restaurant. This is Elder Scott and Elder Willard. Elder Willard was transferred from the Westchester area. The two missionaries have been companions for over six months.

This is what we see every day that we go down to the temple. It's amazing that it stands right in the middle of Manhattan. This picture was taken across the street in the cafeteria at the Julliard School of Music.

We really enjoyed conference weekend. A handful of us attended the sessions at the Scarsdale church. But, before conference, we enjoyed Grandpa Dalebout pancakes with the AP's and the Merrells and Schoutens.

Elder Garside and Elder Zwahlen did a great job of turning the pancakes. They were good sports.

Elder Garside wanted to make a "smiley face" pancake, so he made the smiley face first and then put batter around it. I think you can see the smiley face.

Sister Merrell took this picture before we ate.

Our new assignment takes us to the temple to work in the Family History Center. This sweet lady is Rose, who is one of the guards at the temple. She welcomes people to the temple and others who come into the building. She's a darling.

This is our Family History Center. It's small but it seems to stay quite busy. We have four computers and two microfilm readers, as well as two scanners. We are really enjoying working there. Most of our patrons are not LDS. They just love family history. It's fun to see how excited people get when they find out things about their ancestors. For, example, last week, I had a lady who was convinced that she wouldn't be able to find anything. But, we were able to help her find quite a bit on her line. She told me that she felt like the stone that was in front of Christ's tomb had been rolled away and that she was finding out some of the things she's wanted to find out for a long time. Today, Dick helped a lady and she was so touched that she started to cry. The spirit of Elijah is alive and well in New York City.

Here is our makeshift sign until we get a professional one. We have a brother who is working on one for us.

Rose and I share a hug. We go to the Family History Center Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Then, we are working in the temple on Thursday. We spend about two hours each day commuting. Today, our train was having security problems, so we waited for about 40 minutes and no express train came. So, we took the local train, which was packed, and I mean packed. We stood on the train for about 30 minutes while the train made numerous stops. Many kids were going home from school. Here is a shot of some of them.

The Gospel is true, and we're grateful for the opportunity to serve. I told Dick today that I have never been in an area where the people are so diversified, so many nationalities.