We have become TRAPPERS

Now that the weather is warmer we have a ton of squirrels all over our back yard. When cleaning out the garage, Doug found a wire cage trap. Now we know what it is for. Our neighbor Bill, told us that now is the time to start setting the traps. So Doug set the trap with an old pastry in it. Walla - the first day trapping and we have a BLACK BRONX SQUIRREL. Bill took it for us to his new home. You can't kill them, but you can transplant them. Doug set the trap again last night. This morning early Bill calls to see if we have anything trapped. Yes indeedy, there is a gray cat.
Oh my, was it one ticked off cat. Tons of cat hair flying all over the place as I let it out.

Just listening to the news, another huge crane has collapsed on 91st street and 1st avenue. We go that route all the time when driving down into the city. Two people were killed and possibly more. They will have to sift thru the rubble to see if it landed on a pedestrian or a car. SCARRY!!!!

HAIRSPRAY

We went to the Broadway play: "HAIRSPRAY". It was a great play that addressed the issue of segregation in the 60's. It a fun night thanks to Rex Davis. He had extra tickets from work and sent them to us. Thanks Rex. It was great fun.

We rode the subway and experimented with different train lines that we have not used before. It was good to learn a different route. After it was over we went for a stroll along the bottom of Central Park across town. It was a beautiful night for a walk.

Evidence of our crumbling stairs

Doug took a step down one day and the bricks crumbled and down he went.

We have a great liability here at the storehouse. Doug was going down the stairs and they gave way. He tumbled and took the brunt of the fall on his bad left knee. Ouch!!!!! Then a couple of days later a sister was carrying sacks of food out of the store house and she missed her step, but was able to catch herself before falling. The Bronx repair guys are on Bronx time. Still waiting.

Taking time for exercise

Doug has been enjoying his early morning b-ball with the Elders. They hate it when the Elder Elder beats them out. He might not move as quick as they do but he has a great shot.

Treyson has arrived

We received a pic message saying that Baby Treyson arrived at 1:10 pm today weighing in at 7 lb 10 oz, 20 inches long with inch long dark brown hair. Mom and baby are doing fine. Congratulations Dusty and Cari. XOXOXOXOX from us.

Still Waiting!!!!!

Tomorrow at this time we hope to be grandparents of number 9. We love you Trey all ready. Get here safe and sound and healthy! Our prayers are with you Cari and Dusty. XOXOXOX to you Tryston

Golfing with President Eyring

Our good friend Kari called us yesterday and told us about an awesome day she had golfing with President Henry B. Eyring and his wife and Kari and her dad Hank. President Eyring knew Kari's grandparents, the Isaksen's, from Boston, very well. I won't go into details as I will probably tell it wrong, but if you want to know about it call Kari. She did say over and over what an extremely nice man Pres. Eyring is and how he made you feel very comfortable in his presence. Like you had been friends for ever. Thanks for sharing that with us Kari. These once in a life time experiences need to be shared and written down. I share this with her permission. We love you Kari.

Zone Conference

With the last transfers we received 5 new missionaries to our Zone and 1 new AP. It is always great to get to know new members of our New York, New York North Mission Family. We love them all.

We love Zone Conferences. It is so awesome to be with the future leaders of our church, communities, and who knows, maybe even our government. Heaven knows we need them. The main focus today was on How to have the spirit with us in all we do and how to get it, keep it, share it and testify with it. How blessed we are to have the spirit of the Holy Ghost as a constant companion. It is so critical that we pray for the spirit, we must knock, seek and ask.

Mistaken Marriage vowes.

How would you deal with being married by mistake? I was sitting by a sister today and asked her if she was married. She looked at me funny and then said: I was by mistake and then it took me a year to get it annulled. She was at the court house with her bosses son who is in the USO. He needed to get to the court house to find out some information before getting shipped off that afternoon. It was near closing time for the court house. Hardly any one there. They found a judge and he misunderstood them for another couple and asked to see their ID. Asked them if they would swear that was who they were and then the judge announced them husband and wife. I am sure there was more to the story than that, but that was the gist of it. They had to go up stairs to another section of the court house to get the paperwork to annul what the judge had just done. It became a long drawn out problem and because the young man had to ship out for duty that evening, the young women was stuck with the red tape paper mess and had a very difficult time catching up with the young man because he had been shipped all around the country. After a year it was finally taken care of. So her legal name had his name on the end of hers for a very long year. She hardly even knew the guy, and was just being nice when she offered to take him to the court house that fateful day.

Our own Media Referral Investigators at CHURCH

Today is a great Milestone in the lives of two individuals. First is Elizabeth Roman. She lives in a care center and finally got permission for us to pick her up and take to church. We have been working on this for the past three weeks. She called us last night three times, one at 12:30 midnight because she was so excited about coming to church. This ward is very friendly and welcomed her right in. She enjoyed learning and meeting new people. We had her over to lunch and then had to get her back to the nursing home. We are hopeful for a July Baptism. There are a few things she needs to take care of before she can get baptized.

Second is Kristie Santiago. She is a young cute single 28 year old. We have been trying for a month to get her to church. She is very excited to becoming involved and learning. She has huge responsibilities taking care of invalid parents who she and a brother are the main care givers of. Everything has to be scheduled well because mom and dad can't be left alone. She works at a hospital down town in Manhattan. But she was at church today and was very excited to be finally be here.

Early Morning B-ball

Doug has been getting his exercise with the young elders early in the wii morning hours. Every body who knows Doug knows he is not an early morning person unless he is up on the mountains during hunting season. They have been playing basketball. They just hate it when the old guy beats out the young ones. He loves it. It brings out the BOY in him. And by the way, his Atlanta Braves team just beat the New York Mets 4 times in a row in Atlanta. When the boys come out in August we will be going to watch the Braves and Mets here in New York. (I don't think it will be a good idea rooting for the Braves here in New York. We will have to go in disguise)

Waiting on pins and needles

We talked to Dusty the first of the week. He said that Cari was getting really close to having the baby as she is dialated to a 4 and her membranes have been stripped. Haven't heard any news yet, but we are very anxious. Our prayers and thoughts are with you. Sure wish our bodies could be home in Utah to be there for you. We know our Clint is giving little Trayson and Brandon and Malea's little one a pep talk about now. She will be started on the 28th if she doesn't deliver before then. This makes number 9 grandkids for us. We love you all and miss you so much. XOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Congratulations to Jandi and Josh

Jandi and Josh Carter are the proud parents of Ashbey. He was born tuesday after a long drawn out labor. Finally he was taken C-Section. All are well according to Gramma Robin, and will be going home Friday. I think she said he was about 7 lbs. 6 oz, and 19 inches long with lots of dark brown hair and biggggg blue eyes. We are so excited and happy for the two of you, now three.

Shopping at Costco

We are so grateful to have a Costco near by. But shopping in New York City is crazy. Saturday we had to go to Home Depot to pick up a few things and thought we would go next door to costco to shop. I have never seen a full parking lot like this before. Everyone knows how big costco's parking lots are, well this particular one is even bigger, which is a surprise here in New York because of the land being such a premium. Actually Costco is in neighboring city called New Rochelle. It is about 10 miles from where we live. Because we couldn't find a parking spot Doug dropped me at the front door and proceeded to drive around until someone pulled out of their spot. The place was so crowded that I couldn't even get down the first Isle because of the shopping lines waiting to check out. So knowing how Doug does not like to wait in line I turned an about face and headed back to the door to let Doug know he did not want to go in there and we would come back another day. Saturday's are not the day to go shopping in New York. Actually many stores that have parking lots with not many cars there are a surprise inside because of the ton of people in the stores. People depend so much on the busses and subway and taxis. It is deceiving to drive up to a parking lot with few cars but to find the check out lines huge.

We attempted Costco again on Monday. Still busy but this time I had a neat experience in line at the check out. We had bought Doug a pair of pants and noticed a mark on them when we got in the car. I ran into exchange them. While in line the lady infront of me asked me if I would like to go before her because I only had one item. I told her thank you that was very nice and she then looked at my name tag and and asked me if I was from a Christian Church. I told her the name of the church and she said that she was looking for a new church. She had been raised Catholic but ever since college it just didn't feel right. She had also been divorsed and in the Catholic church divorse is frown on and she can't receive communion. I told her that Christ atoned for all our sins and of course she could be forgiven and invited her to come to church. I had nothing to write on so she gave me her receipt and I gave her our name and number and the address to the church. She said she would like to come to church, she told me I was a very friendly person and had a glow about me.

What a golden opportunity. The ironic thing is that I wasn't able to re-purchase the new pants because I was using Doug's costco card with his name on it and the lady at the check out told me I had to be Doug. The lady in line, whose name is Susan Seely told me as we were walking out of the store together that it must have been meant to be, because she wanted to find a new church. So you never know, hopefully she will come to church or see some of the missionaries some where else and go and talk to them, or better yet, the Lord will put her in the path of the Missionaries in New Rochelle.

P-day transfers and then to Central Park

Sister Pena and Chavarria, one gets a new comanion and one gets to go home to Utah!
Elders Grahl, Nearence, Leatham, and Blanchard. Nearence is flying home on Thursday and Blanchard's parents will meet the departing Elders at the Temple today and tour with him for a couple of days. Meeting all his converts. So we will be getting a new Zone Leader to replace Nearence.
We took off after distributing luggage to the new Elders and sister and rode the subway down to 77th street and ventured over to Central Park and had a picnic lunch from the Boathouse restaurant on the grass and then strolled thru the park. It was a perfect day for a stroll. We then went to the movie, Baby Mama.

This morning early we picked up Sister Pena, Sister Chavarria and some luggage as it is transfer day today. Sister Chavarria is going home to her family in West Valley City, Utah. She is a senior sister who has served a proselyting mission. She is this cute little Hispanic lady that we have grown to love. Not very good english, she and sister Pena are the only sister missionaries in the Olmstead area and me of course. She has a Mexican restaurant in Kearns called Guarache Azteca. It is on 4090 W. 5414 S. So any one reading this you should try it out. We are when we get back home.

Pretty things brighten my day.

Flowers for Mother's Day from Doug and a delicious bowl of fruit from a sweet sister who came to the storehouse to pick up an order for a little old lady in her ward.
The mommys in my grandkids life.

Life is bright, good and BEAUTIFUL!

This and That.....

Just a little of this and that.

Mother's Day was a beautiful day. The Bishopric spoke at Sacrament Meeting. All the mothers received a red rose. After the Block we had 6 baptisms. All were children except for the mother of a young man, they were both baptized. Doug conducted the meeting as he is now the Ward mission leader in our ward. I was asked to give the talk on Baptism and the Holy Ghost.
After the Baptism, we had invited two elderly sisters to join us for dinner. Doug had cooked dinner. It was an delicious meal. We sure enjoyed our visit with Sister Figuero and Sister Bazemore.

HOPE ALL YOU MOTHERS OUT THERE WHO MIGHT BE READING THIS HAD A WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY.

It was wonderful talking with all of the kids and they are the best. I had great surprises show up on my door step that came thru the mail. Thanks to Brandee & Kevin, KC, Kell, Allee, Taylee; Brandon & Malea, Easton, Maesi, Brecky; Dusty & Cari, Tryston; Brax. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!

Sister Frederica Bazemore went with us visiting a couple members. We were worried about a sister we home teach as she has just recently had a stroke and no one was answering her phone. So we went by to check things out. Turns out their phone cord needs to be replaced which we did today. We then went to St. Barnabas nursing home to visit Tom. He sure is a trooper. This thursday he will have an upper and lower GI then next week they will try to operated to take care of his feet that are dying, due to his illness and bad circulation. After he gets stable enough they have told him he needs two bi-pass surgery done on his heart. He sure enjoys us coming and reading from the Book of Mormon to him.

Last Saturday we ventured on the Subway to go to the temple with a new convert and some of our youth from our ward. Doug was needed to help as a priesthood holder at the baptistry. We had a couple of sisters attend a session while others were being baptized and confirmed. We went to the second floor to exchange garments for an elder. What a blessing the distribution center that just opened on the 2nd floor of the temple building is for the members in this temple district.

We hurried home so that I could go help set up at the church for our quarterly enrichment meeting. The focus was on wellness, health and nutrition. There was a handful there and all had a great time and were well informed. While I was at enrichment, Doug went to Kingsbridge chapel to pick up baptismal clothing for our baptism on Sunday. He also went shopping and surprised me with a dress for mother's day. It was a great surprise as we are always together and there aren't a lot of things we can do to keep it from the other. Missionaries are together 24/7. Thanks sweetie, you're the best and I LOVE YOU.

FHE aka Family Home Evening, at our ward building is a great opportunity to teach families what it is all about. We had three new single moms come with their children and then we have just the children of some families come with out parents. I know it is better that they come and have a good experience than to not have them come. But, it becomes difficult when we feel like we are just baby sitting. Many of the women have two or three jobs to keep their family afloat. Most are single parents. The Elders do a good job of teaching and organizing activities. They actually have as much fun as the kids, they are all just big kids at heart. We had about 25 total last night.

FEEDING hungry men

While I cut off white shirt sleeves and hemed them for Elder Stoddard and fixed a torn pocket on Elder Gale's shirt they stayed and helped Doug till, and plant a few things in our garden.
Elder Gale is getting some expert advise from our neighbor Bill who has lived right next door most all his adult life. He says May is the time to plant your garden here in "Da Bronx".

Our delivery day has changed to Tuesday now. Since this is the last day before transfers we invited all the english speaking missionaries to come help with the food delivery. Just as we get them trained it is time for many to be heading somewhere else.

So-long and best wishes

This is our Awesome Zone for the last 6 week cycle. We sure do enjoy mingling with the young missionaries. They are so good and so fun. We are in Awe of many who lead out and are such a blessing to the people here in "Da Bronx". We have watched as they gain experience and become more confident and become great missionaries. It is so hard to say good-bye. But an amazing thing happens...new ones come and we grow to love them too. Best wishes go to those who are transfering out of our area and to those who are heading home. We love you all.

T I C K E T #!+$^_**&_#$!+*& (I mean #12- but who is counting)

This is not a driving or parking violation. Have you ever had a ticket for "Loose Rubbish Property"? We called the number 311 which you call if you have any kind of question.. It goes to the city of New York offices and they will answer any question or direct you where to go to get answers. We asked them about putting bulk items out for trash day. We cleaned out the garage and have things that need to go. They said we could put all bulk, big furniture items and things out on Saturday for our normal delivery day. And that was that. So we did. We had some of the Elders come over and help get things out to the curb. There was an old entertainment center, a old twin hospital bed and frame, a head board, and a dresser. The drawers to the dresser were stacked on top of the dresser as it made it lighter.

Early Saturday morning I watched as the trash truck came by. Here in New York, it is the law that you have to recycle. So three trash trucks come by. One for plastic stuff, one for paper items and one for regular trash and bulk items. Everything was taken except the entertainment center and the shelves that were stacked in a box next to the box filled with broken down boxes. The paper trash truck guys flung the box of shelves on the ground when they were getting the boxes full of broken down boxes, scattering the wooden shelves on the ground. As I watched this happen, I called 311 and told them that the trash men left the entertainment center and the shelves. They told me to leave it right where it was and wait until the next day and then I could file a trash complaint. If we moved the stuff we couldn't file a complaint. So we left it and went on with our day. On arriving back home late that afternoon we found a ticket taped to our front door stating we had "Loose Rubbish Property", and had to pay $100.00. We called back up 311 and told them about the ticket. They told us that we were only allowed to have 6 total bulk items out at the curb at a time (this was the first time that was ever explained to us) and that because the shelves where not secured together and laying loosly, that is why we got the ticket. I told them I watched the trash men scatter them on the ground when picking up other trash, that we had them bundled together in a box. Their reply: "Sorry, you'll have to go fight that in court." **#@*&*%#@&*%%!@#^%!!!!!!!! That is what I have to say about that!

Silent Tsunami

That is the term we heard at our Stake Conference last Sunday. Elder Tingey was the visiting Authority accompanied by Elder Smith the Area Authority. Doug and I were asked to share some training at the RS Leadership meeting on Sat. The topic: the welfare system of the church. After that meeting we went to the Adult Meeting. Elder Tingey talked about his travels thru out the world and what kind of turmoil is going on in the world. He met with many World Leaders who have termed the food, gas, mortgage, employment, and health cost crisis a "SILENT TSUNAMI". There is much concern with the world problem. He stressed the importance of paying our tithes and offerings, and the faith necessary to carry us thru difficult times. Those who are prepared shall not fear. He had us stand so that others could see the missionary couple who was here in New York City to help with any type of welfare training that the wards could use. It was awesome getting to visit with him and shake his hand.

An interesting last couple of days we have had here at the store house. We have filled and watched a huge amount of food leave to help families in need. We actually had to have an "extra-additional" truck come and deliver food this morning so we could fill 4 food orders today.