Happy May!

Hello Everybody,

It doesn't look like May here, it doesn't feel like May here,but the calendar tells us it is.  We're missing our sit-outside-at-soccer game-track-meet tans!  Honestly, we hate to start this e-mail with complaining about the weather here....so we won't.  But the interesting thing about being on the Cornell campus is that when the temperature hits 50 degrees (even if there's a 40 mile an hour wind) the kids all break out the shorts and tank tops.  It must all be relative when you've had a winter where most of the days are minus degrees.  School ends here at the University in a couple of weeks and then our lives won't be quite so crazy because we won't have quite so many scheduled activities.  We'll still have Institute but it will be moved to the Church  for the summer months.  In fact our Branch will become a "twig" for the summer.  All of the underclassmen go home to work (or play) and some of the graduate students will be headed off to internships for the summer and back in the fall.  Several strong members are graduating and leaving and so if you know of anybody who knows of anybody who is coming or thinking of coming to Cornell, let us know.  We want to nab them as soon as they get to Ithaca.  Our branch is composed of young adults, either single or married, that don't have kids or have kids under sunbeam age (then the ward gets them because we don't have primary).  There's a great atmosphere in the Branch even though we're pretty small.  Family home evening this last week was a "flour fight." The YSA's make little balls out of old nylons and flour and then throw them at each other.  Even us old guys got pretty hammered and should have taken a picture but didn't.  It was pretty cool.  Dad went out teaching with the missionaries one morning this week and he says they're good.  I didn't go (overkill) and there was too much to do here to get things ready for the food for Friday forum.  If anybody has any ideas of things that are cheap and easy to fix for a crowd and that can be transported from our house to the campus without getting cold and that can be stretched if 20 extra people show up and (as of last week) can accommodate the dietary restrictions of vegetarians, let me know.  PLEASE!!!!!!  Dad is also going to be serving this next 12 months on the Chaplains Council.  This is with the group we meet with on Wednesdays....the interfaith group on campus....and they have like an executive committee of 6 members who kind of steer the activities of the group which he'll be part of.  We discovered something that says that the LDS Church was one of the original members of this group dating back to the 1930's.  Don't know what our presence has been since then.  It's interesting that we're a body of religious members and don't start any of our meetings with a prayer so after a while he might suggest that we add prayer to our agenda.  Maybe when we get brave!  They're such a good group of men and women who care for and work hard with with the young students with their faith groups.  Tonight we're going to an interfaith round-table discussion where the students will gather in groups and learn about what each other believes.  We just get to go to it and the LDS students do all the work as far as what is presented.  Unfortunately it's at the same time as CES Fireside but we've been counseled to support the interfaith roundtable and show Elder Ballard next week (which of course includes food.....yikes I'm feeling like the food nanny these days).

New paragraph!  So I was really missing being home because it was BYU Women's Conference week and I wasn't there.  But the Owego Stake which we're part of had a women's conference on Saturday and it was AWESOME.  Our keynote speaker was one of our Owego institute members (former counselor in the stake pres.) and he had a wonderful analogy with a "shofer" horn and the idea that it takes time to polish us in our conversions.  I went to 3 classes, one by the counselor in the Palmyra Temple Presidency and his wife, another on the scriptures by a convert to the Church, and another by our CES supervisor on the temple in Christ's time and how it compares in physicality and doctrine to our temples and the plan of salvation and to the women of the Church.  Dad stayed home and cleaned house and scrubbed floors, etc. etc.....Nice!! On Memorial Day weekend, Brother Baker, our CES supervisor, has invited us to come and help with a 3 day activity over the Memorial Day weekend called Gathering in the Grove.  It's a big Conference sponsored by the Rochester YSA;s and will take place mostly around and in the Sacred Grove.  Our job with the other senior missionaries will be mostly grunt work but we'll still get to feel the spirit of the conference.  We're hosting one here in March of next year and our keynote speakers will be Terrell and Fiona Givens (The God Who Weeps).  We're hoping to include the general Cornell community in some of the activities.  I shouldn't say "we."  The young people do all the work and we just do what they ask/tell us to do.  Our Chinese family came to eat with us last night....a real American meal of fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, corn, jello, and rolls which they loved every bit of it.  The one thing they weren't too hot on was the ice cream and chocolate chip cookies for dessert (too sweet), but their little girl loved that part and the Tom and Jerry cartoons on our DVD player the best.  This family needs to be members of the Church but they just don't know it yet.  We've got a year left with them before the dad finishes his post-doc and they move back to China so we'll see what happens.  Our one group of Elders had 5 investigators at Church today which was amazing.  Three are scheduled for baptism in July. 

Well, you'll appreciate this short e-mail this week.  Anyway, it feels short to us.  We'll stop with a thought on missionary work from the book "The Power of Everyday Missionaries."  

"We succeed as member missionaries when we invite people to learn and accept the truth even if they use their agency to say no. "

If that's true,  we can all be successful member missionaries.....just have to open our mouths.

Love you all.....we Love, Love, Love the e-mails and the pictures on Facebook and on our phones and so missing Mason's baptism wasn't quite so hard as it could have been....but it was still hard.  But we know we're doing Heavenly Father's work (even Cooking Every Second).

XOXOXOXO  Dad and Mom, etc, etc, etc.