11 June 2017

11 June 2017

On Monday, although rain was in the forecast, we took the subway Downtown and walked a section of Highline Park.  The High Line is a city park built atop an abandoned elevated railway that winds through the southwestern side of Manhattan 30 feet above street level.  It stretches in a linear path for 1.45 miles.  The section we walked had views of the Hudson River and some of the old pier pilings sticking out of the river.

The subway was the most used means of transportation (along with bus) for Matthew and Melissa.

Highline Park Walkway

Golden, Diane, Melissa, Matthew (The Highline)

Golden and Diane - The Highline

Golden, Melissa, Matthew (Art) - The Highline

Matthew and Melissa- The Highline

Dominique Angelo bakery pastries

After spending the morning at The Highline, we walked to the subway and took the "W" Train to China Town and Little Italy (across the street from each other). That was quite the adventure. I wanted to buy a smaller purse that would not hurt my neck and a white watch that I could use in the temple. Matthew told us to just walk and the people would come out to find us since we looked like tourists.

I asked; :How would they know?" and Matthew said they would know. In just a few minutes we were running through the streets with some guy. Melissa told me to run with Matthew and she would stay back with Golden. I started running but I was concerned that I did not have any money with me.

Part way through the run, they changed guys that were leading us somewhere and we hurried through a few more blocks. Then Matthew started the negotiations with how much he was willing to pay for each item. He told me to keep quiet and he did all of the dickering. It was crazy to watch and I whispered to Matthew that I did not have any money with me because it was back with Golden. He said,  "Don't worry. We will get together."

Matthew was negotiating for a purse and a watch, and when he told the guy who had them that the money was back with the spouses, he had Matthew make a phone call to Melissa that someone was coming to lead her and Golden to where we were.

When Melissa saw the man sent to get them motioning for them to come, they followed as he quickly took them across the street to the end of the block, saying "Hurry!  Hurry!"  Melissa said, "We are hurrying," as Golden hobbled to keep up with her.  At the corner, the man motioned for a woman to 'keep eyes open' as he turned around the corner, all the time motioning for them to hurry.  He then changed places with another man who led Melissa and Golden to where Matthew and the original man negotiated on another block.

Diane's new Kate Spade purse from China Town, NYC

  I now have a nice small black 'Kate Spade' purse and a white watch from the "Black Market" to wear in the temple.

After that episode, we had a nice luncheon in Little Italy at Sophia's Restaurant.  The salad that we shared was pear and walnut.  We paid by debit card and were soon on our way.

Pear-Walnut Salad from Sophie's in Little Italy, NYC

This evening, we took Matthew and Melissa up to the 37th floor to the rooftop where they took photos of the area.  Next to the building on 66th street, a new high rise apartment building is being built and on the southwest side, Lincoln Center complex kitty-corner from the temple provides philharmonic, ballet, opera, etc.

Columbus Avenue & 65th Street - Lincoln Center; note angel Moroni

On Tuesday, Matthew and Melissa were able to enjoy their time at Ground Zero. The attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 is such an amazing story. Many miracles occurred through a major disaster of a terrorist attack on America (nine-one-one). The Lord can truly turn our hearts to each other in hard times, and they become a major strength for all to stand by. Our Heavenly Father is over this land of America and all things that happen here will be for a greater purpose than what we see at the time.

After their tour and visit to Ground Zero, we took Matthew and Melissa to the Noche de Margaritas Mexican Restaurant on Second Avenue and 90th Street that we had enjoyed visiting in the past.  When we went to pay, we were told that the debit card was declined.  We wondered  if the number had been "lifted" when we paid for our meal the previous day at Sophie's.  Mountain America Fraud Protection said that three transactions to a games store in Brooklyn had hit the account, but only one of them went through.

Golden and Diane at Noche de Margaritas

Matthew and Melissa tn Noch de Margaritas

Wednesday morning before we left for our FHC shift, Matthew and Melissa flew back to Utah, ending their short vacation to New York City.

After Melissa returned, she checked "Find A Grave" and some printed sources she had and found that it appeared to show that the missing child in the Ewing family from her Family History experience was Huldah Ewing, as four small headstones were showing around the Ewing headstone in the Mona Cemetery.  She found that Huldah had been sealed to an older brother as he and his wife were having children at the same time that his mother gave birth to the younger children.  She had also previously felt inclined to believe that the missing child was a female.  But she wanted to check further to substantiate these findings before having Huldah sealed to another set of parents.

After Melissa's Personal Family History Experience a few days before, we both felt strongly that the child missing was a little girl. This is one of the miracles that comes with these personal experiences as the spirit is very strong and will witness to us what we need to know to turn the hearts of those involved. This has been a powerful gift to experience with loved ones and to be a witness of just how much our Heavenly Father is in this program and how he answers our prayers when we are involved in His work.

On Thursday, we served in the early morning at the Manhattan Temple, and later in the afternoon at the Family History Center.  We have been struggling with a very slow internet connection with FamilySearch.org to the point that we have been hesitant to put the sandwich sign out in front of the building, When we have many people using the computers, not only is it slow but we get quite a few error messages, indicating that the source or record could not be found.  We have been able to work on preparing extended loan films for the permanent collection or sending digitized ones back to Salt Lake Distribution.

Friday, a physical facilities mechanic worked with us again on the Internet.  We have been told that new firewalls are being beta tested in Utah and will be sent soon to New York.  Eric, the mechanic, said that he had just had training and these should be able to allow faster speeds than the current ones. He plans to install the first ones that arrive in the Lincoln Square building so we can keep things going at the Family History Center, particularly now that summer visitors as well as locals are using it close to capacity.  This is getting to be extremely frustrating for us trying to help patrons, when the system is so slow that at the end of the day we fall asleep waiting for searches to be completed.

We were invited to a concert by Mark and Susan Dransfield, Interfaith Missionaries, given by a former member of their ward when they lived in Connecticut some years ago.  Yoshi Akimoto, a concert pianist, and her daughter Allison Eldredge, a world-class cello player, had several of their students perform.  The concert was held in Steinway Hall on Avenue of the Americas between 42nd and 43rd street.

Yoshi is affiliated with Young Talent Chamber Music Inc. and these students between the ages of nine and 17, played with professionals in this Chamber Music Concert.  What fabulous talent!  On Saturday evening they were to perform in a benefit concert in Connecticut.  The last two numbers were played by Yoshi and Allison, both of whom have toured the world and whose students have garnered International Awards for their talent.

Today was a long Sunday for us. We started out behind because we got mixed up on our time to leave the apartment, so we were not able to make it to sacrament meeting on time with the Harlem YSA Ward. We missed the sacrament. After the meeting we went downstairs to the Family History Center to do our presentations and lessons that we had prepared.

Because we were behind, Golden decided to do his presentation discussing what the calling of a temple and family history consultant was with the Harlem YSA Ward.  He played a couple of videos from Elder Russell M. Nelson asking for all members to sacrifice time to the family history program. We then played another video talking about all of the blessings that will come to each one that accepts the call to sacrifice their time. This was from the LDS.org training "The Gatherers-Consultants"The videos are very powerful and we had four consultants that were there for the training.  Two were from foreign lands, one from Sri Lanka and the other who was very recently baptized and almost immediately called to serve as a temple and family history consultant, one sister and Line, the Harlem Family History Center lead Temple and Family History Consultant.  They were also joined by Abu Conteh, High Priest Group Leaders from the Harlem First Ward.

When Golden finished his presentation, it was time to go to Sacrament Meeting with the Harlem 1^st ward that met at 1:00 pm. When we got up there we learned that Elder Rasband was there and would be speaking. It was an amazing meeting to be in the presence of a living prophet. After the meeting, we walked up to meet Elder Rasband and spoke with him for a short while. He thanked us for our service in New York and told us of President Monson’s love and appreciation for us. It was a wonderful experience.

Then we went up to President Smith and told him of our health issues and we asked if we could move our mission to an 18 month mission. He said that he could support that and would honor our request and start the ball rolling. This would be having us return home some time in the middle of November.

After speaking with President Smith, we went back downstairs to do our personal family history experiences with Line [pronounced Lina] Berentsen and Abu Conteh, High Priest Group Leader. This was Line’s 3^rd lesson and probably the most challenging one. She needed help breaking apart her 4^th great grandmother’s family that had several duplicates, wrong children and wrong husbands. To say the least, it was a mess.

I did a lot of praying for guidance on how to do it because it was so complicated. When I started to analyze it, my mind cleared and I knew what to do to help her out. To make a long story short, she was able to break the family apart, remove relationships of her great grandmother and re-establish other relationships that brought the family back together correctly. She was able to follow my directions and explanations as to why she was doing what she was doing, and she was able to close the lesson with a clean family line for another generation. 

Line is slowly beginning to understand the importance of documentation and taking pictures of everything she does in merging and breaking families up so that if it does not work, it can be reset back to the original state. We both discovered how important it was to carefully think things through and what the ramifications would be and then prepare so that we could undo if we had to. Everything worked out perfectly. When I showed her pictures of the area where the family was from in Norway, she immediately related as she was raised not too far from where the family was residing.

Three Temple and Family History Consultants from Harlem and the girlfriend of one of them attended the TFHC training second hour of the block.  They witnessed Line's experience and gave us their contact information so that we can invite and begin to prepare for their one-on-one spiritual Find, Take, Teach experience as part of our training with them.  Their names are Clark and Sarah Sheffield who were sustained in Sacrament Meeting today, and Ryan McCullough and Caroline Belnap.

Golden met with Abu Conteh and found that, after finally getting into his FamilySearch.org account, he had three generations in his tree.  His siblings were added and there was quite a spread between his birth and that of his next younger sister.  When asked if there were other children in the family, Abu said he was really young when they were born and died, but they were two brothers.  He knew the names and they were added to his family.  Next week, several of these family members, none of whom have received temple ordinances, can be reserved, printed, and ready to take to the temple.  In fact, Abu may not yet know, but we will also encourage him to be sealed to his parents as well!  He is 82 years old.

When asked how he felt, he said; "This is a very good day!"  He was almost ready to give up when trying to get into his account and it took a phone call to FS Support Missionaries to make it happen as FamilySearch.org was extremely slow today.