Waiting Out Storm Titan

March 4, 2014

We were grateful to have a whole week of visits and meetings last week before the next ice/snowstorm caught up with us.  Last Wednesday, for the first time, we attended district meeting with the elders of White Plains District.  It was good to spend time with them and learn from them.  I am glad that we have been included in their meetings so that we can coordinate our work a little better and also get to know them better and see them in action as missionaries.  They take their work very seriously as far as training and preparing to go forth and serve each week but they still have fun while doing it.

We visited with some of the sisters that Sister Boone and I had met when we were serving in White Plains before, and it was great to see them again.  Each time we meet with them my love for them increases.  Sister Emerson is a sister who loves quilting.  Another of the sisters that we have wanted to visit but have not been able to get an appointment with just happens to be her best quilting buddy and she just happened to be there when we went for our appointment with Chris.  They are working on a "Chicken & Stars" quilt together, which is a block of the month quilt pattern that they found.  I have expressed interest in this quilt in the past and told her that I couldn't find it online when I searched for it.  I discovered that the pattern has been discontinued.  She was kind enough to loan the pattern to me so that I could make a copy.  Since the author of the pattern no longer offers it for sale, I hope I am not infringing on the copyright.  I hope that I will have some time in the future to make this quilt because it is awesome.

Pat and Chris holding a cute wall hanging they are making.

"1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Quilters"

These three ladies represent Pat, her daughter, and Chris

On Thursday, we attended the temple and took Sister Ren and Sister March with us.  On our way home we stopped at Chick-fil-A to eat a late lunch.  We arrived home about 4:30.

I wasn't sure how long it would take us to pick up the sisters and make it to the temple in the current traffic, so we gave ourselves plenty of time to make it to the 12:00 session.  We decided that if we got stuck in traffic and couldn't make the 12:00 session we would just enjoy the peace and joy of being in the House of the Lord while we waited for the 1:00 session.  Well, we were able to pick up both sisters and get on the road by 9:30, which is about 15 minutes later than Sister Boone and I left when we went alone to the 11:00 session.  The traffic was perfect and we arrived at the temple by 10:30 so we were there in time for the 11:00 session.  What a surprise.  We have never made the trip in that short a time.

It was a very nice session.  Every seat was taken because there was a busload of members that came up from the Richmond, Virginia Stake.  They usually drive about 2 hours to get to the temple and stay for two or three sessions.  This puts them back on the road during the evening rush hour traffic, so it generally takes them 6 hours to drive back home.  Doesn't sound like fun to me, but they keep doing it.  My parents traveled 8-10 hours to go to the Idaho Falls Temple when I was younger, and before the Idaho Falls Temple was built, they traveled all the way to Alberta, Canada to the Cardston Temple.  We are fortunate that there are so many temples in Utah and more being built throughout the world so that more and more members of the church can enjoy the blessings of having a temple nearby.  Just this past Sunday, Andrew and Melissa were able to attend the dedication of the Church's 142nd temple, which is in Gilbert, Arizona where they live.  Additionally there are 13 more under construction and 16 that have been announced but not started yet.  I love being able to go frequently to the Washington D.C. Temple while I am here.

WP 1st Ward Missionary Correlation Meeting

Sunday we had a full day of meetings.  We started at 9:30 a.m. with correlation meeting with White Plains 1st Ward elders and their Ward Mission Leader.  10:30-12:00 we attended 2nd Ward Primary Sharing Time and shared our testimonies with Senior and Junior Primaries.  12:15-1:00 we attended 2nd Ward correlation meeting with the White Plains 2nd Ward elders and their Ward Mission Leader.  We received information about the sisters in both wards that they have been visiting to help us coordinate our visits with the same sisters.  I sure wish we could have access to the area book and other information that the elders have on their iPads.  I think I will go ahead and break down and buy a tablet so that if Pres. Cooke gets us cleared to do that I will be ready.  1:00 to 4:00 we attended 1st Ward's block of meetings.  We were invited to offer the opening and closing prayers in Sunday School.  Then we were invited to offer the opening and closing prayers in Relief Society.  We felt spiritually filled when we finally got home at 4:30.  It was great.

We had an interesting experience Sunday evening.  Sister Divine put some salmon and rice in the oven for dinner.  She lined one Pyrex dish with foil and put the rice in it and covered it to cook while the salmon was baking in another piece of foil.  I was in the bedroom reading when I heard a crash and exclamation from Sister Divine.  It sounded like she had dropped the casserole dish.  We were both shocked to see that a few seconds after she moved the Pyrex dish from the oven to the stovetop it just exploded.  She had placed it on a burner that we had used earlier, but it should have been cooled down by then.  I don't think it was because the burner was either too cold or too hot.  We couldn't figure out why it broke, but it sure caused a mess to clean up.  At least the foil in the dish contained a lot of the rice.  After looking on the internet about exploding Pyrex, I discovered that we can add one more story to the long thread of people who have had glass cookware explode randomly, one time when it was just stored in a cupboard.  Either Pyrex is not as good as it used to be, or they have changed the materials they use, or it was not really Pyrex but another brand altogether.  Sister Divine is known for taking a lot of pictures, but unfortunately picture taking was not on her mind after seeing the mess that she had to clean up in the kitchen.  Later she said she was sad that she did not get a picture of it.

Sunday night the newest snowstorm (Titan by name) moved into our area.  It started out as usual as rain, turned to ice, and then dumped another 6-8 inches of snow probably (not quite as much as the last one, but it is so hard to tell when it melts quickly when it first changes to snow).

Monday morning, we received a call out from the APs that President Cooke didn't want the missionaries to drive anywhere but could work if we were able to walk to visits.  That left us in our apartment all day.  We don't usually plan visits for Monday anyway because that is when we try to make appointments for the week.  When we were at district meeting last week the elders were talking about how they go out and visit and meet people every day, but they haven't been diligent in meeting their neighbors.  The same is true for us, so we decided that we would step out of our comfort zone and make an effort to get to know our neighbors.

Since we knew we would be in the apartment all day Monday and couldn't go to the store or sightseeing, Sister Divine made a batch of cookies.  (I had the most important part of making the cookies—sampling the dough).  We then bagged some up to take to the neighbors.  It felt like Christmastime all over again.  I had to hunt for the bags and ribbon that I had put away a mere two months ago.  We put our names and phone number on mormon.org pass along cards and tied them to the bags.  We were both nervous about approaching the neighbors but we carried out the plan.  I was surprised to hear Sister Divine say that this was way beyond her normal self, because she is so bubbly and outgoing when she calls people on the phone and when we are talking to people.  Anyway, our apartment complex has several buildings, each one with about 28 apartments, so we chose to limit our first outreach to the three apartments on the same landing as ours.  One of those is vacant, though, so we took a bag to an apartment downstairs that we thought had a few children.  We chose an apartment that had a child's toy by the front door, but we didn't see any children when the woman answered the door.  We were okay with that.  At least we made an effort to introduce ourselves to the neighbors and told them that if they need anything, give us a call.  They seemed surprised and didn't quite know what to say but they smiled, thanked us and took the cookies.

We didn't want to go out in the cold yesterday evening to clean the snow and ice from our cars.  We just hoped that it wouldn't be too miserable doing it before we left Tuesday morning.  At 10:27 p.m. Monday we got another call out with a message from President Cooke's assistants that we were not to use our cars again Tuesday.  We used the morning to do companion study and family history work in the apartment.  We waited for the weather to warm up and until this afternoon, hoping that some of the snow would have melted and then we went out and cleaned off our cars.

I shoveled the snow off with the brush end of my ice scraper.  I was wishing I had one of the heavy duty scrapers but it actually wasn't that bad to clean off.  After I used the brush I turned the scraper around and scraped off the ice.  I had to take a few pictures first, though because I have not seen ice build up like this on a car before.

There was about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of ice below the snow that I removed, but some of that was a result of snow freezing onto the ice and not part of the original "ice storm" that preceded the snowfall--if that makes sense.

The windshield wipers embedded in ice

I didn't bother to lift my windshield wipers away from the windshield before the storm this time because I didn't anticipate having to drive.  (It is Sister Divine's turn this week.)  I think everyone here is hoping this will be the last snowstorm this winter.  You wouldn't know it from the looks of things, but we aren't very far away from the first day of spring.

We ended this evening with a telephone conference call with President Cooke and the other senior missionaries.  I was told that my new companion will be coming March 15, so I won't have much time by myself after Sister Divine leaves, which is Friday morning the 14th.  It is hard to believe that Sister Boone has been gone almost a month now.  Sister Divine and I have just kept ourselves so busy that time is flying by.  I hate to see her go but as with Sister Boone, there is not much chance that I can change her mind.  So we will just enjoy the next ten days and fill them with fun and love.