The Time has Arrived

That title could fit so many things, and in our case a couple of things. The major one was that the 5th Sunday in October arrived and in every ward and branch of the Lynbrook Stake, the video devotional was presented and signup sheets turned in. More about that later.

The other "time has arrived" event was that our daughter Hannah, her husband Jeff, and children Laurel, Maisy, Norah and Oliver (the Stevensons) came for their promised visit. We tried to keep up with our missionary responsibilities and be with them as much as we could at the same time. I think we did OK.

Upon coming into the apartment, they immediately
saw the 50th anniversary quilt. We love that quilt!

We took them to one of our favorite sites, Theodore
Roosevelt's summer Whitehouse and farm.

Fall at Sagamore Hill.

We often see deer on the trek to Fire Island
lighthouse, but this is the first we have seen one with
a rack of antlers.

There is a welcome center at the light-
house that explains how the lenses work.

In front of the lighthouse and the
museum.

The stairs to the top are finally open, so the
Stevensons hiked to the top. From there they
could see whales breaching and spouting 
in the distance.

Inside the massive, impressive 9/11 Museum.

Fun statues outside the Oculus, near the 9/11
Museum.

Late lunch in the Frauncis Tavern. I have
written about this venue before. It is a great
place to eat, but special as a historical site.

Night at Old Bethpage at the
Great Pumpkin Blaze. Over
2,000 carved pumpkins and other
Halloween displays.

We got to go with them to do baptisms
on Saturday. We had never been in the
baptistry, so it was even more special.

         

Hannah got to meet one of her idles,
Walter Rane, our favorite LDS artist
in the NYNY Stake Conference.

During that time we had two stake conferences to visit. Happily, they are close to each other: NYNY Stake and NYNY YSA Stake. We attended the Saturday sessions in the YSA Stake, while the Stevensons went to Lion King. On Sunday, Hannah wanted to be with the American Sign Language group in the NYNY Stake, so I went to the YSA leadership session and Olivia went with the Stevensons to the NY general session. They were on opposite sides of Central Park.

Hannah singing and signing a hymn
with the ASL group.

YSA Stake Presidency. President
Yamada is an inspiring leader.

Outside the window behind the 
speakers, an Israeli flag proudly waves.

Left is Crawford Gates conducting a panel
discussion in the leadership session. Right is 
Trent Dahlin, the high councilor responsible
for Self Reliance. More about him below.
Gates is the grandson of the great LDS musician
Crawford Gates. He has four hymns in our hymnal.
I got to sing under his baton when he came as a 
guest conductor at BYU in 1966.

One of the new members at the new member session
of the YSA conference. He was the newest member
in the room, baptized that day, and I was the oldest
having been baptized 68 years ago.

We both came down with nasty colds, so we did little on Monday and Tuesday. The Stevensons went to Liberty Island, but some of them were also under the weather, so they came home after being there for several hours. They left early on Tuesday. We made sure the kids were ready by 5:00 AM and took them to their parents' Air BnB a few blocks away where they had an Uber take them to the airport. We had some things that we had to finalize, but spent the day and the next day doing little but trying to recover.

We had nonrefundable, nontransferable tickets to the opera on Wednesday night, and we did feel a lot better, so we went to see La Bohème by Puccini. It was magnificent. I wished we felt better, so we could have enjoyed it more, but even a little peaked it was amazing. The brilliant sets, props, costumes, but especially the orchestra, chorus and actors.

The theater is one of the most beautiful buildings
in Lincoln Center.

I wanted to get the objet d'art just
outside the doors behind us, but the
backlight is too bright.

Olivia made a friend from Johannesburg,
South Africa. He is in the City for just
a few days and will spend them all in
theaters.

We had good seats, but this picture hardly does 
justice to the grandeur of the stage.

The NY YSA Stake and the Lynbrook Stake both had devotionals on Sunday to introduce self-reliance courses to their members. We worked with Trent Dahlin, the high counselor mentioned above, and McKenna Ceci, the Self Reliance Specialist.  They asked us to go through it with them, so on Friday we did a dry run. We we were able to give some of our observations, for which they were grateful. Their devotional was on Zoom, Sunday evening. 

The Lynbrook Stake did their presentation during the second hour on this 5th Sunday. They had videos for each unit depending on which language they needed, English, Spanish, or Mandarin. I have been working on these videos for several months, now. Trent, from the YSA Stake had volunteered to put the recording onto the slides to create the videos. I drafted the script and had help translating it into Spanish from our daughter-in-law, Ruth. The Mandarin version was translated by Sister Olive Wang, who is in the stake RS presidency, and is now our dermatologist. The Mandarin version was delayed and delayed and not finished until Sunday morning. Still, while there were some hiccups, it seems to have gone exceptionally well. We attended the Little Neck Ward to observe and lend support.

Bishop Boggio discussing the purpose
of the presentation and explaining
the handouts. Almost everyone who
attended church turned in a signup sheet.

President De La Hoz on the TV in
the Little Neck Ward introducing
Self Reliance to the audience in every
ward and branch in the stake.

One of the slides from the video.

We went from Little Neck to the stake conference in Ossining where the Yorktown Ward meets. It is also the stake center. We were able to be with Sydney Reynolds, a friend of our niece, Jessica Smith. We had met Sydney when she came to visit us in Sweden, so we were happy to visit with her again. She and Jessica came to our NY apartment earlier in September, just after Sydney moved here to teach at a German school in White Plains.

With Sydney after the conference.

Beautiful autumn. The fallen leaves completely
covered the parking lot at the Ossining building.

This Jewish man was working the room, so we
got a picture.

It's a long drive to Little Neck and then to 
Ossining, but the autumn leaves and stately
bridges made it much more pleasant.

This brilliant tree is under a couple of freeways.

Sister Wang, whom I mentioned above, is now our dermatologist. She found a nasty carcinoma on Olivia\s face a couple of weeks ago, so today it was removed. As we drove home, we got a text from our son, Micah, who was very near our apartment. We drove up just as he arrived, so he followed the car into our garage and joined us for the afternoon. We had a nice visit, went to the Mini Burger for lunch and drove him to the airport. Our wonderful neighbors, Sister and Elder Barnes brought dinner to us, knowing that the numbing medication would be wearing off by that time, and Olivia would not want to cook or do much else. 

Micah was here for the presentation of the Emmy
awards. His team was nominated for three, but did
not win. Of course, the honor is getting the
nomination,,, He was able to do a lot of networking.

There you have it. Two weeks in as efficient a fashion as I could make it. We are seeing great progress in our mission efforts and it makes us very happy. There are ups and downs in this work and we are happy to live through both. Right now, it seems that much good is coming from our efforts and the efforts of so many with whom we work in this mission. The young missionaries continue to inspire us with their diligence in the purpose of their work. They had a mission goal of 195 baptisms. Some zones achieved their goals, some did not and it looked like it would not happen. Then, the Chinese Zone reported. They had a goal of 40 baptisms for the month and achieved 80, bringing the overall total to 221. 

Thanks for your patience for these past couple of weeks. It is good for us to recall the events of each week and report them to you. It would be so easy not to do this, but I'm grateful for the commitment I have made. It makes me want to report. Love to each of you, and God's greatest blessings.