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

 Our family celebrates birthdays and an anniversary all within days of each other. Our granddaughter, Rebeca's birthday is on the 19th, our son Tavan's is on the 20th, our grandson Nigel's is the 21st, Cedric (son) and Sarah's wedding anniversary is on the 22nd, my birthday is on the 24th (somehow we missed the 23rd). It is easy for me to remember the founding year for the Salt Lake valley, and by extension, the State of Utah, because I was born on the centennial in 1947. That makes me old, I guess.  Nigel, the first of the fabulous five grandchildren all born within seven months of each other. Tavan is now 50. He is the first to break the decade barrier for our kids, every 10 years. Rebeca, our newest high school student We shared a birthday pie with Elder and Sister Barnes. They gave me the Pound + Belgian  Chocolate Bar. What could be better? Cedric and Sarah celebrated 17 years married.   This was an emotional week in many ways. With 32 young missionaries go...

 The second Tuesday and fourth Sunday of each month we conduct Facilitator Training. It was Olivia's inspiration that led us there, and it has been a blessing. We have been encouraging our stake and ward representatives to start classes as soon as the need is perceived and not wait for a stake devotional. She pointed out that if we want that to happen, we need to provide a method of making it easy for them. This time we only had one, Juanita, who will not start her course until September 5th, but wanted the training right away. Unfortunately, her phone was having camera issues, so we didn't see her, even though she could see us. As part of the training we suggested that the participants need to have physical manuals, especially those who were joining by phone, rather than tablet or laptop. We remembered that the high councilor responsible for self reliance in her stake said he had found several manuals, so we suggested that they get together. We contacted Brother Guy Moran, who...

 We did get to celebrate the 4th of July in a fun way. We were invited with a few other couples to the Brooklyn Duncans (there are two couples in the mission named Duncan, so they are designated by assigned area). They have a very small apartment, as do most of  us, but their balcony has a great view of the City skyline. From there we could see the fireworks from Staten Island to Uptown Manhattan. Once they got started it was a lot of fun to track them. We also experienced some expensive fireworks going off in the neighborhoods near us. Watching the sun go down behind the Statue of  Liberty Photos hardly do them justice because they were so far away. Behind the buildings of Lower Manhattan. Midtown and Uptown Manhattan   A little blurry, but you can see the Statue of Liberty with fireworks all along the New Jersey side of the river as well as all around on the City side. Getting there was easy, an hour on the subway, without having to change trains or buses. Getting ...