Surprise phone call

"Top of the Rock" with our good friends Bryan and Becky Smethurst, notice the empire state building in between us in the back ground.
Bryan & Becky had been on a cruise to Bermuda for the past week. They stopped over in New York for the night before flying home.

We were sitting in the Saturday conference session at our chapel with some ward members and missionaries when Doug's phone rang. He stepped out of the room to answer it. After a bit he stepped in and motioned for me to come out of the room. Bryan Smethurst called and said they were in New York headed to ground Zero and wanted to know if we could meet them and visit for a couple of hours. Of course we said yes. so we went home and recorded the rest of the conference session, hopped in our car and off we went. Way downtown was crazy. People, people everywhere. Doug's navigator, me, goofed up and we ended up parking on 42nd street and riding the subway down to about 10th street to meet up with them. We had a great visit and ended up at Rockafeller Center and rode to the "top of the Rock" to see the whole island before dusk. It was awesome. We had been there before around Christmas time but the sky was cloudy, not clear like it was now. You could see for ever. Time travels fast at times like this. Soon it was time to get them back to their motel over by JFK airport, they are to fly out at 6:00 in the morning. It was great seeing someone from home. We love them and are so grateful to have just a couple of hours with them.

A fun thing that happened while walking down 7th avenue to our where our car was parked. We were crossing a street and just as we got to the side walk we had someone yelling out "sister" - "sister". I looked over my shoulder and there were two couples standing together motioning for us to come over to where they were. They were mormons and wanted to know where they could go to watch conference on Sunday, or what channel was broadcasting it. It was fun to visit with them and not feel alone in this sea of people on the streets. They were from Bountiful and California. One of the couples had just gotten back from a mission in Peru. Of course it was our name tags that gave away who we were. Hope they found the chapel on 15th street for conference.