It's Up to Us, New York, New York

  We were invited to attend a special luncheon with the American Jewish Committee. For the past 10 years this committee has been meeting over lunch (last year was only virtual due to COVID) with various members and leaders of the Church who are involved in community outreach, interfaith relations, and public affairs. We were invited along with Chris George, whom we have talked about before. Also invited were the Manhattan Temple President, and the Westchester stake President, President Mortensen and his wife. Many of you will recognize the Mortensens as Adam and Eve in one of the temple films.  This man seemed to be the chairman of the AJC, but he was not at our table, so we didn't get his name. Laura Shaw-Frank was the speaker at the event. This young man is a masters student at a local theological seminary. He is LDS, and is doing a blog as Brother Jones to promote interfaith relations. Nathaniel Goldman, Olivia, Peter Fox, me, Chris George, our supervisor. These and James J...

  I spent a lot of time this week trying to prepare PowerPoint presentations for various events that are coming at the end of the month (yikes, this week!) and in November. On Saturday we have been given 30 - 40 minutes to speak to a combined group of Relief Society sisters and bishops in the Plainview Stake. WE WILL TRY TO TAKE MORE PICTURES! We met some really important, wonderful people and forgot to take pictures. More on that later. Anyway, the stake Relief Society President really wants us to explain the courses available in Self Reliance, but also discuss English Connect and BYU Pathway. So I have built quite a presentation for that. We will try to impress the attendees, especially bishops and stake leaders about the relationship between retaining all the new members and Self Reliance, including English Connect and Pathway. The idea is starting to resonate with several leaders with whom we have talked recently. We attended a 7:00 AM breakfast meeting for elders' quorum and R...

  You will recall that we had invited the missionaries from our district for a meal last Monday. In part, because two of them helped so much in our moving into the apartment and because we love them and wanted to do something nice for them. This week, because there were several senior sisters who had questions about issues that have arisen in their text group about such matters, especially as the holidays are upon us, President Holmes called a special meeting with just the senior missionaries. As the meeting progressed, he made clear that while he pretty much left the work of the senior missionaries up to them, some things would seem to hamper the work. Among them was inviting the missionaries for breakfast, even on a P day, and inviting them for a meal to thank them for helping seniors move into their apartment. We looked at each other and the thought, though not expressed was, "We've done it all wrong so far..."  President and Sister Holmes I'm glad we said nothing ...