Search and rescue

Winter has arrived!!  It snowed all day on Saturday dropping about 6 inches of snow.  I know it is nothing compared to your snowfall but it is plenty for here.  I haven't gone out to clear off my car. It is 20 degrees and feels like 6.   I've decided to let Mother Nature clean it off because it is supposed to be 41 degrees on Tuesday and warming to 61 degrees on Thursday.  That will save me having to scrape ice and snow off my car.

Elders Menden and Rossi admiring my "full" refrigerator

The snow crew. Sisters Dos Santos and Bush, Elders Rossi and Menden, Sister Staker

Looking out my kitchen window

Saturday morning storm warning

After the storm Saturday night

The last two weeks have been busy!  When I try to tell people what I do all day it seems that I don't do that much.  But this week I have spent a lot of time on the phone helping missionaries (what else??) with illnesses, accidents, bumps, headaches, depression and anxiety, talking to doctor's offices and parents making insurance arrangements, and the list goes on.  I really love what I do, but because of the nature of the work, I can't really go into detail about it.  Just know it is work that I love.  I love the missionaries and get great blessings by helping them and being around them, learning from them and feeling their spirits. 

I've had a couple of excursions:  one to Manhattan to accompany a missionary to an appointment and one to Flushing to dinner with the sisters.

Coming in from the cold, windy streets of Manhattan.

Sisters Hilliard, Kim, and Yu

Sammy Muñoz, a former missionary, came to visit. A fun time!

Had trainer/trainee meeting on Wednesday.  Mostly I have been at my desk doing the previously mentioned work.  Not a bad place to be toward the end of the week when the weather was bad.

I had sisters here for dinner on Tuesday night so I made lasagna soup in the crockpot.  The crockpot is my go-to method of cooking.  Throw it in and 6-8 hours later, dinner is prepared.  Then after the missionaries shoveled snow, we had hot chocolate and left over soup on Saturday.

Sisters Bush, Albanese, Gourley, and Staker

Saturday night I made a huge crockpot (I bought an 8.5 quart crockpot right after I got here.)  of chili for Sunday dinner.  I hadn't shopped all week and I didn't want to go out shopping in the snow storm so I opened can after can from my cabinet and threw together something we called chili. It wasn't bad for a make shift meal if I do say so myself.  I wanted to make corn bread but I only had two little boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix.  I mixed them up according to the directions.  Then I got the bisquick and mixed up a coffee cake. I put the two batters together and baked it.  It was not bad - corn bread with a cake like texture.  There were 11 of us and we nearly ate it all.

Monday Laura, the new convert from Colombia, came to tell me good-bye.  She is leaving to go back to Colombia Tuesday morning.  Sister Morales was one of the first missionaries to teach her.  She and her companion came to my apartment to tell Laura good-bye.  Sister Staker and Sister Bush have been fellow shipping Laura and teaching her English, so we were all here to wish her well.  It was a tearful time but we all promised to meet in Utah at some point in the future.

Farewell hug

Bottom right picture:  Sisters Morales and Staker and Laura

To share some of my thoughts:  I was reading Alma 11 in the Book of Mormon one day this week.  As I read in the study guide, a phrase jumped out at me. The paragraph in the study guide reads:  "Even, the Omnipotent One, the Lord Jehovah, cannot save his people in their sins.  He came on a search-and-rescue mission to save people from their sins.  But no one, not the least and lowliest of mankind or the mightiest Apostle and prophet, can be saved in sin."

The phrase "search-and-rescue" grabbed my attention and gave me pause to think.

Perhaps it caught me because my son Jake, a lieutenant on the Unified Police Department in Salt Lake County, was over the search-and-rescue division for a few years.  I have heard some of his stories of the heroic ventures of his men and volunteers in finding and saving people.  I have heard of some of his searches that have not been as successful as hoped for.  I've seen him elated at times and devastated at other times.

The thought of the Savior on a "search-and-rescue" really made me ponder his mission and feelings.  How happy it must make him when a soul is found and returns to him.  How sad he must feel when one is lost.  Because this is a new concept for me, the search-and-rescue phrase, I wondered if others have made this connection.

On lds.org, I found a talk given in 1993 by President Monson, then the 2nd counselor in the first presidency, titled Search and Rescue:

"During the seemingly never-ending years of the Vietnam conflict, we frequently heard through the media's blaring voice the term search and destroy. This phrase helped explain to the public the peculiar nature of combat in that area of dense jungle, oppressive heat, and debilitating disease.

This war was not marked by large-scale battles on open terrain. Rather, the enemy was often not visible-but nonetheless highly dangerous-thereby leading to the concept of search and destroy. Casualties were high, suffering rampant, and destruction everywhere to be found. We will never know how many cried out their own expression of the biblical question, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" The world sighed profound relief when conflict ceased and peace prevailed.

I was thinking of the term search and destroy this past winter as I visited with a neighbor and friend in beautiful Heber Valley east of Salt Lake City. Snowmobile adventurers had been lost for a several-day period in the backcountry of high winds, penetrating cold, and eerie silence. My friend Johnny told me of the desperate plight of the lost and referred to the anxiety of their families. He mentioned that he was a member of the county search and rescue force, whose members left their businesses and farms and went in search of the lost and missing.

The searchers had prayed for a break in the winter weather, knowing the critical element of time in such a rescue. Their prayers were answered; the weather cleared. Surveying each grid of the vast area through the use of high-powered field glasses as the helicopter flew back and forth through the mountains and the ravines, the lost party was finally spotted. Then came the difficult task of reaching and retrieving the courageous group. All was well. The lost were found. Lives were spared. Worry and fear yielded to joy and jubilation.

Johnny, with heartfelt emotion, said to me, "I love to search and rescue. Just to look into the faces of those who could have died and feel, as well as see, their profound gratitude fills my body and soul with compassion and thanksgiving. I've never before experienced anything quite like it."

Perhaps he was witnessing the personal understanding of the Lord's pronouncement, "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God." Or maybe Johnny was feeling the penetrating declaration of the Prophet Joseph Smith, who said, "It is better to save the life of a man than to raise one from the dead."

My thoughts turned to that favorite song from Sunday School, the one that always brings tears to my eyes and compassion to my heart:

Dear to the heart of the Shepherd,
Dear are the "ninety and nine";
Dear are the sheep that have wandered
Out in the desert to pine.
Hark! he is earnestly calling,
Tenderly pleading today:
"Will you not seek for my lost ones,
Off from my shelter astray?"

The next verse reflects our response to the Shepherd's plea:

Green are the pastures inviting;
Sweet are the waters and still.
Lord, we will answer thee gladly,
"Yes, blessed Master, we will!
Make us thy true undershepherds;
Give us a love that is deep.
Send us out into the desert,
Seeking thy wandering sheep." "

President Monson was speaking in the Priesthood session but his words are applicable to all of us.  He goes on to say:

"Brethren, in our priesthood callings I am confident we at times wonder if we are affecting the lives of others in a favorable manner. The instructor in the quorum who prepares so diligently, the home teachers who put aside their own convenience and carry a message to the families upon whom they call, and the quorum officers who reach out to rescue perhaps will never fully know the far-reaching influence of their service. This is particularly true of the faithful missionaries who day after day carry on in the service of the Master. Never complaining, ever serving, always sacrificing for the benefit of others, these noble servants deserve our undying gratitude and our fervent prayers."

If we are to follow in the steps of our Savior, we will want to be on a daily search-and-rescue mission to help our neighbors, family members, ward members, anyone who is struggling in any way.  We can be "true undershepherds". What great joy we will have if we can help but one soul to find their way to the Savior.  To help in times of need.  To lift and support those around us.

We can faithfully fulfill our callings in the Church and be kind and compassionate to those we meet regardless of the circumstances. We can have an effect on the lives of people; perhaps an effect that we will never realize we have had.

I love you my family and friends.

Visitors to my yard at home in Utah. My daughter, Deanne, tells me there are tracks all over
the yard-front and back. She has seen deer several times. She saw 5 this night but only got 3 in
the picture. One is across the street-difficult to pick out of the shadows.

Sisters Bush and Staker. They were taking mattress overlays for there beds. I took them to their
apartment but couldn't get right in front because I came at a one way street from the wrong direction.
It gave me a good laugh to watch them maneuver those mattresses across the street. It is not
uncommon in the city to see people carrying televisions and all sorts of furniture and other bulky
items along the streets. Some have carts. Others do not. When you don't have a vehicle.....

New Year’s resolutions

The weather here is worse than Utah!  I’ve heard it said about Utah that if you don’t like the weather, wait an hour and it will change.  Here in New York, it is 60 degrees one day, sunny and balmy, and 35 degrees (with wind and humidity, it feels like 7 degrees) the next day.  Then it rains and goes to 45-50 degrees for a few days.  The poor missionaries don’t know how to dress.  Should they wear a coat and die of the heat?  Or they think it will be warm so they wear a sweater only to find a sudden drop in temperature and a strong wind off the ocean.   I guess it can be like that everywhere but it seems particularly routine here.  At least we don’t have inversions.  Jake took a winter hike up Millcreek Canyon on Saturday.  He sent me some pictures that I will share.

Tuesday

Beautiful winter mountains

Inversion in the valley

Mount Olympus to the left. In the distance the Oquirrh mountains.
The tiny ones right in the middle is Corner Canyon and Point of the mountain.

Jake enjoying the sunshine with the inversion behind him.

I’ve read that weather and temperature changes don’t have an effect on whether you catch a cold or sickness but from the number of missionaries in bed with colds and gastroenteritis, I am beginning to question this fact.  However, just to set it straight, I do know that it is not the weather but the number of people with whom they come in contact in stores, homes, subways, church, etc.  It is IMPOSSIBLE to properly wash hands often enough to avoid the dreaded common cold virus.  The viruses we seem to have this year though are particularly nasty!!

Just a helpful hint to anyone who gets gastroenteritis (stomach flu): drink ginger tea for nausea and vomiting.  The missionaries have been my guinea pigs.  I have recommended ginger tea and then ask for feedback.  The ones who drank it raved about how it helped them. I didn’t do an excel document to calculate the numbers but a guess is that 75-80%, or more, found the ginger tea helpful.  The way I look at it, what have you got to lose????

I apologize, but I am going to be all over the place this week.  I live between JFK and La Guardia Airports so I get a lot of “fly-overs.”  I think most of the air traffic is bound for JFK. I seldom hear it any more but today as I listened to a jet fly over, I was thinking about the times I’ve flown over cities and looked down wondering what the neighborhoods are like.  Where are the people in all of the cars going?  What are the people doing?  I’m sure I’ve thought that as I’ve flown into JFK probably right over Rego Park where I now live.  This afternoon as the plane flew over I was preparing food in the kitchen.  I know the streets.  I know the neighborhoods.  I wondered if the passengers in the plane were thinking about the people and homes and streets below them.  Don’t know why I had to share this but it just struck me that I was in one of those homes that plane was flying over and I was just doing mundane things and carrying on life just like everyone else.

The sister training leaders are at the church next door fairly often.  They live a 20-30 minutes train ride away so they asked me if I would help them with meals when they are on exchanges with other sisters so that they wouldn’t have to go so far to get dinner.  Of course, I jumped at the chance so that I could cook and spend time with the missionaries.  Two things I love to do.  So Tuesday was our first meal together for exchanges.

 

I went to the store to pick up some last minute things for dinner. This person was taking
a shopping cart full of aluminum cans and plastic bottles to the recycle collection.
In NY every time you buy a can of soda or a bottle of water you are charged
a recycle fee of a nickel, I think. People go through trash collecting cans and bottles.
I've mentioned this before but this person had a load!!  I think it was a woman.
She had at least 10 large plastic bags full.

Tuesday night dinner guests:  Sisters Staker, Grimsman, Monteiro, and Bush

 

Wednesday I went to Flushing to meet some missionaries and then I invited the Korean sisters to dinner.  Their choice was a Japanese restaurant:  Nippon Cha.  Good food!  I had Yaki Udon (Pan-fried soba udon with kimchi, pork, veggies in okonomi sauce.)  Soba udon are thick noodles.  The other three had Teishoku (Set meal).  Each had a different meat but the meal comes on a tray with salad, soup, poached egg, and meat prepared in whatever way they choose.  We were served a complimentary appetizer:  Takoyaki (Octopus balls with bonito flakes).  I was a little leery of the octopus balls but it was really quite good.  It had a creamy texture inside and a small bite of octopus.  The outside was crispy.  The flakes on top moved.  Really!  They moved and it looked like the dish was alive.  We were told that the heat (temperature) and then the flakes cooling made them move.   I looked it up on Google for a more accurate description of the Takoyaki.

Sisters Hilliard, Kim, Yu

For dessert we went to Martha's Country Bakery. I had Mississippi mud cheesecake.

akoyaki and Yaki udon

Teishoku (set meal)

Takoyaki (たこ焼き or 蛸焼^?) is a ball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special moulded pan. It is typically filled with minced or diced octopus (tako), tempura scraps (tenkasu), pickled ginger, and green onion. Takoyaki are brushed with takoyaki sauce (similar to Worcestershire sauce) and mayonnaise, and then sprinkled with green laver (aonori) and shavings of dried bonito. There are many variations to the takoyaki recipe, for example, ponzu (soy sauce with dashi and citrus vinegar), goma-dare (sesame-and-vinegar sauce) or vinegared dashi.

Takoyaki was first popularized in Osaka, where a street vendor named Tomekichi Endo is credited with its invention in 1935. Takoyaki was inspired by akashiyaki, a small round dumpling from the city of Akashi in Hyōgo Prefecture made of an egg-rich batter and octopus. Takoyaki was initially popular in the Kansai region, and later spread to the Kantō region and other areas of Japan. Takoyaki is associated with yatai street food stalls, and there are many well-established takoyaki specialty restaurants, particularly in the Kansai region. Takoyaki is now sold at commercial outlets, such as supermarkets and 24-hour convenience stores.

Yaki is derived from "yaku" (焼く^?) which is one of the cooking methods in Japanese cuisine, meaning "to fry or grill", and can be found in the names of other Japanese cuisine items such as teppanyaki, yakitori, teriyaki, okonomiyaki and sukiyaki.

Friday I went to lunch with Sister Albanese.  Her companion had gone with other missionaries to pick up a car so we took off for the mall.  Panda Express.  Good but not adventurous.  Great company though.

Sister Albanese

New Year’s Eve all of the missionaries had to be in their own apartments by 6:00 P.M.  Sisters Dos Santos and Talaboc who live upstairs came down and we had pizza and played Monopoly Deal until they had to go to bed at 10:30. I forgot to take pictures.  You will have to use your imagination.

Sunday in Primary I decided to do a singing time based on making New Year’s Resolutions.  (Thank you Katie for the idea.)  I had balloons with the name of a song inside each balloon:  I Am a Child of God, A Child’s Prayer, Scripture Power, I’m Trying to be Like Jesus, Baptism, I Love to See the Temple, Nephi’s Courage.
Then I had some resolutions on the board:  Remember who I am, Pray always,  Read Scriptures, Choose the right,  Keep covenants,  Prepare to go to the temple,  Be obedient.

As a child was chosen, they could pop the balloon to get a song title and then match it to the resolution. I explained to them that Primary is a good place to learn songs that can help one remember to keep their resolutions.  The music has a message and when we are trying to make a choice, for example, we can think of the song and even sing or hum it to help us make the right choice.

I went to LDS.org to see if I could find a story or thought that I could use in singing time. I didn’t find one but I found a great talk.  Because I had been doing a lot of thinking about New Year’s resolutions, this talk hit home.  I have been making New Year’s resolutions all my life.  Like most people, I haven’t in the past been all that successful or diligent about keeping those resolutions.  This year, in addition to others, I intend to be more regular about exercise and I must lose some weight.  My yearly mantra.  I thought about how I’ve said this so many times and then I just keep up with the same habits I have always had.

The talk is a BYU speech titled "Flaxen Threads" given by Carlos E. Asay in February 1982.  He says:

Bound with Flaxen Thread

I have invited two young men, Elder Brockman and Elder Robey, to help me introduce my subject. Will you two please step forward. You will note that both have their wrists bound together. Though you may not be able to see the material that I have used in binding my friends, it is the same for each-flaxen thread.

Elder Robey's wrists are tied with only one strand of the flaxen material. I will now invite him to muster all his strength and courage and break free. (Pause) Did you notice how easy and effortless that was?

Elder Brockman's wrists are tied with twenty strands of the flaxen thread. I now ask him to do what Elder Robey did. (Pause) If you were close to the pulpit, you would see that my captive is really trying to break his cords. You would also observe that, as he strains to break the thread, it is beginning to make indentations in his wrists, and, if he were to continue much further, I think it would cut and draw blood. Thank you very much.

Bound by Habits

I have engaged you in this simple demonstration to make a point. Suppose each strand of thread used in binding these young men represented one bad habit. From the demonstration, we might conclude that a single bad habit has limited restricting power. A number of bad habits, however, has great power-almost limitless power.

"The chains of habit," said one man, "are too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken" (Samuel Johnson)

He goes on to say:

When I taught at this institution, I worked with students who fitted, floated, or failed. Those who fitted came with purpose, high resolve, and good work habits. Those who floated appeared on the scene for a semester or two and faded away to something less challenging when their grades finally caught up with them. Those who failed lacked the commitment and discipline required of a person in an institution of higher learning.

It seemed to me that most of the failures were shackled by poor habits. Some were not in the habit of attending class regularly; some were not in the habit of reading required texts; some were habitually late in submitting assignments; some were not in the habit of budgeting time and energies; and some were not even conditioned to work. In all too many cases, so it seemed to me, one weakness seemed to breed upon another, and what appeared at first to be a flaxen habit proved to be a strong inhibiting cord.

A Spanish proverb reads: "Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables." I suspect that most students come here with pure intent. They register, select their courses of study, and attend their classes with high hopes of attaining declared goals. But, when one becomes careless, when one permits resolve to sag, slouchy habits appear, and academic anemia sets in. This malady comes web by web until learning and growing are choked off by the cables of intellectual inactivity.

I hope that I have piqued your interest and that you will read this talk in its entirety.  His talk is directed to students but it fitting to each of us.  It is more about habits than New Year’s resolutions, but in order to be successful in keeping these resolutions, most often they have to become habits.

We all have habits.  Some are good habits.  Some are not so good.  If the habits we develop lead us to righteous living such as regular and frequent scripture study, daily prayers, Sacrament Meeting attendance, Temple attendance, etc. we can rest assured that we will be blessed.

I am going to do my best to live up to my resolutions this year (including exercise and weight loss) and to develop habits that will take me nearer to my Father in Heaven and eternal life with my family.

I wish you the happiest of Happy New Years and pray that you will be blessed beyond measure in all that you do.

I love you my family and friends.

 

I always love flowers!  A gift from a friend.

There is a missionary here who has Celiac's disease so he can't eat gluten. One night
he and his companion were invited to dinner. He couldn't eat anything that was prepared
so they gave him three bananas. Now every time they go somewhere and he can't eat something,
his companion asks:  "Do you have any bananas?" So this Elder get bananas frequently!

Tonight the elders came with a can of cookies for me that had been given to them by a family.
Then they showed me the can of "cookies" they were taking to their gluten-free companion.
I'm always getting such a kick out of these missionaries. They keep me giggling!!