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

 It seems that we spend more and more time on Zoom with everyone we have to meet. We did have some in-person time, but a lot of online time. And, wherever we went or whatever we did this week, one of us would say to the other, "Did you take any pictures?" The answer constantly came back, "Ugh! I forgot!" Not a lot of pictures, this time. Just my fascinating tale-telling prose. (Ugh, again!) There are some at the end. As Olivia often says, "Dig deep, there are beans at the bottom." We attended our district council meeting on Tuesday, which is always a treat. Elder Moser gave the training this time and included a model that President Holmes has taught.  Elder Moser decided it could be applied to every aspect of a successful life. I noted that the same concept could be applied to retaining converts.  The things these diligent young missionaries learn on the street and in their lessons is amazing, sometimes. A good deal of the time, as a matter of fact. Eterna...

Brother Chris George, whom I have mentioned many times, who is our WSR manager, had an appointment to meet with some of the administrators and faculty of Teachers' College, which is associated with Columbia University. Others from the WSR department and from the Seventy were invited, but if they could not make it, he wanted us to join so he would have an entourage. They couldn't make it, so we were drafted in. The Teachers' College was the first to establish a graduate school of education in the country. It started as a small school that taught immigrants the arts of cooking, sewing, and home management, but quickly grew to be a highly respected school of education. Within a few years of its existence, it was incorporated into Columbia University. It is still semi-autonomous from the University, but clearly affiliated. The Church made a donation for research in the field of psychology last year and they would like the same this year, naturally. Chris was careful not to make...

 Well, it's off to work for one of our employment candidates, anyway. Others are in the hunt, and hopefully, they will be successful, soon. The man who got the job still has a way to go, so we have a return appointment with him this week. Briefly (if that is possible for me), he has been served by Elder Packer in the past, but we were asked to work with him this week because the Packers were not able to be at the center that day. Olivia was busy with another project, so I met with him alone. It turns out that he actually got a job as an on-call worker for a company last December, but had not heard from them until just before he came in on Thursday. They do janitorial and other services and wanted him to start the next day. The brother brought in his resume, which I reviewed with him, briefly. I found no indication that he is bilingual on the resume. His English and Spanish are both excellent, so I asked him why he had left it off. He just hadn't thought of it. I reminded him th...