This has been a week of reunions. I so enjoy it when missionaries who have gone home come back to visit. Such a treat!! I have managed to do a little work but I have also played this week. Being a senior missionary has its perks.
Monday I had several sisters come over on their preparation day. It is always fun to have them in my home to laugh and talk and to share experiences.
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| Sisters Monteiro and Panoussi. Don't warm baked beans in the microwave in styrofoam bowls! |
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| Sisters Panoussi, Krause, Persinger, Hilliard, Steninger, and McDowell |
Tuesday, Mikala Anderson who lived upstairs for the last 9 months of her mission, came to see me. We went for pizza to John's Pizza of Bleecker Street and then I took her with me to a program at Trinity Church. Originally it was to be held at St Paul's Chapel but because of the anticipated attendance it was moved to Trinity Church.
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| Trinity Church |
The daughter of a friend here is a member of the Trinity Youth Chorus. The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra performed Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. The performance was amazing. Baroque music can be a little, I hate to say boring, but this was most interesting. I learned about hocket. I am happy when I can learn something new.
"Hocket, also spelled Hoquet, Hoquetus, Hoket, Hocquet, or Ochetus, in medieval polyphonic (multipart) music, the device of alternating between parts, single notes, or groups of notes. The result is a more or less continuous flow with one voice resting while the other voice sounds.
The hocket was a popular device in the motet and the cantilena (vernacular polyphonic songs) forms of the 13th and 14th centuries. It appears rarely in the early 15th century. Although hocket technique generally is found in short passages (often at the endings of sections or phrases) within a larger composition, it is used pervasively in the 14th-century French composer Guillaume de Machaut's "David," in which the two upper voices sing in hocket above a slower moving tenor.
More recently the term has been applied to instrumental textures, for example in works by Anton Webern, characterized by rapid, often single-note, exchanges between different parts."
I tried to hear this in the performance. The church is beautiful and the singers and orchestra were perfect in such a great acoustical setting.
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| After the performance we walked to the Charging bull on Wall Street. Mikala Anderson |
Wednesday was trainer/trainee meeting. We only had five new missionaries this transfer. The number doesn't matter though. It is always inspirational to be with new missionaries who are so full of the Spirit and desire to become good missionaries.
Mikala's parents also came to NYC. I went to dinner with them on Wednesday evening.
Thursday I went to Manhattan with a missionary in the morning.
Friday Vanyelina Gonzalez from Spain returned for a visit. I was able to go to lunch with her. What a delightful day!
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| Vanyelina |
Saturday, I was invited to lunch with Mikala and Hannah Fouts who was still here. They were visiting some of the sisters.
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| My lunch companions |
Saturday evening, my friend Diane Zenger, invited me to go to the opera with her. She bought a ticket for me and we went to Lincoln Center to the Metropolitan Opera to see Cyrano De Bergerac. She had some fantastic seats about 15 rows back from the orchestra on the main floor. She told me the sound is better in the highest seats but being able to see the artists so closely was wonderful.
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| Diane Zenger and I at the Metropolitan Opera |
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| Looking down into the hall from the top balcony |
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| View from a top floor down into the stairways and foyer |
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| Ticket and Playbill |
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| Performers for a final bow |
Lincoln Center is spectacular. The pictures don't do it justice.
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| Spectacular chandeliers |
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| Chagall murals. Each mural measures about 9 x 11 meters |
Diane also invited me to her home for dinner on Mother's Day so I have been royally spoiled.
I have had calls and messages from my family today. Being a mother has been and is the greatest adventure! Being a mother has been and is the most fun, the most challenging, the most rewarding. There have been times of tears, laughter, frustration, happiness, anger and endless ups and downs. I would not trade one second of my life as a mother for anything in the world.
I think of the times that a tiny newborn has been placed in my arms and the overwhelming fear that I might do something wrong to this helpless infant and at the same time joy has come over me as I look at that spirit that has come to me as a gift from a loving Father in Heaven.
Each of my children and now my grandchildren blesses my life daily. I love the memories of raising them and the thoughts of creating new and lasting memories in the future.
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| My grandchildren just before I left for my mission. |
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| My family- my blessing |
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| Rory and Reed who joined our family last August |
I love you my children and grandchildren. I am blessed to be your mother and friend. I value the support and care that you give to me in all I do and I thank my Father in Heaven daily for the opportunity to share my life with you.
I love you my friends.
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