Missionary Activities

A few weeks ago, President Smith called me on the phone and wanted to know if I would take charge of inspecting missionary apartments. Before we left the office, I was in charge of them, and since I've been gone, not too much has been done. The main problem is that about eight senior couple missionaries have gone home, and they were all inspecting apartments. Thus, we had a lot of apartments that weren't assigned inspectors. Several new couple missionaries came in the past couple of weeks, so I was able to get them to take over.

Dick and I have four missionary apartments that we inspect every six to eight weeks. These missionaries are in one of our new apartments. They had a clean apartment, plus they made brownies for us. Left to right: Elder Peine, Elder Clark, Elder Fusco, and Elder Meadows. When we called Sister Ortega and Sister Angel to see if we could inspect their apartment, Sister Angel invited us for breakfast. She fixed German pancakes. Very yummy. We had a nice visit with them, and they have a nice clean little apartment.

Sister Merrell had a birthday on August 13th, so we decided to celebrate. She has been working in the Family History Center on a microfilm, so the Merrells traveled with us on the train down to the FHC last Saturday. They worked on family history and then took in a temple session, while we finished up in the FH Center. Then, we walked across the street to Lincoln Center, where we watched and listened to a fun group of country entertainers. They often perform in the subway. We enjoy listening to them. After that, we went to Clarks for dinner.

Then, we went to a yogurt truck and got some yummy yogurt. A nice man took a picture of the four of us, with the Lincoln Center in back of us.

We then walked about ten blocks to go to see "Sister Act." It was a lot of fun and full of enthusiastic singing and dancing. We had a great time. We're glad we were able to celebrate with the Merrells.

Two days later, we continued to celebrate Sister Merrell's birthday, as the whole office staff, plus us, went to Piper's Kilt to eat lunch. It was our "P" day, so Dick and I weren't in our missionary attire. But, everyone else was in their's. Left to right: Elder McMullin, Elder Hellberg, Sister Beck, Sister Merrell, Sister Tobon.

Here are the four elders. Dick, Elder Merrell, Elder McMullin and Elder Hellberg. We had a fun time together. Sister Tobon fixed us Mexican cheesecake for dessert, with candles and all. It was really good.

These are some of the things that we see when we come up from the subway on our way to work. On Thursdays and Saturdays, the little island across the street has a street market: flowers, vegetables, wine, bread, etc. Lots of people shop there.

This is the Alice Tulley Hall that is directly across the street from the temple. We've attended two musical performances there.

Every Wednesday during the summer, the little island has live entertainment. We get to hear about ten minutes of their performance before we go to work. It's kind of fun.

The other day, as we entered the Family History Center, there was a group of missionaries who had just come out of the temple. They asked us to take pictures, and then Dick invited them up to the chapel to do a little singing. I played the piano while they sang, and then we took a picture of all of us singing. They have really good voices and it's fun to hear them sing. You can tell they were having a good time.Today, Sunday, August 21st, Dick and I went to the local ward in Scarsdale for Sacrament meeting. When we got home, it started to rain very hard. We were scheduled to help with a genealogy booth right in the middle of Harlem for what is called "Harlem Days." There are several blocks of booths of all sorts, plus food and entertainment. I wondered if it would happen. But, the rain stopped, and we took the train to Harlem, 125th Street. We walked about fifteen blocks and arrived at the family history booth. There were six computers set up and people were invited to find out about their ancestors. We spent about four hours helping people (mostly African Americans) try to find some of their ancestors. It's pretty tough when people don't even know their grandparent's names. But, we had a fun time.

Elder Torres and his companion helped talk to people. There were alot of people who were interested.

Here's the line to get help.

I was really taken by this beautiful lady, and I asked her if I could take her picture. Isn't she pretty.

Just as we were finishing up, it started to rain. A nice man from our church gave us a ride to the train station. I took this picture as we were waiting for the train.

We are keeping a pretty steady pace, and sometimes when we get home at night, we are exhausted. Sometimes I wonder how we can keep going so hard. I guess the Lord is blessing us. We love what we're doing.