Hi Everybody,
That's
right! Hot chocolate in August! Last night all the missionaries here
had a soccer game activity and invited anyone who wanted to come (had
some YSA and branch members and investigators and a couple of drop-ins)
and when we got home hot chocolate and a hot shower was the only way to
get warm. This is the weirdest weather out here. The locals say that
this whole summer has been about 10 degrees cooler than normal and that
suggests the possibility of a worse than normal winter. Booooo!
Actually it's been nice here in the summer.....think we've had the air
conditioner on maybe half a dozen times the last 3 months.
We're
putting our calendar together for between now and the Christmas break
and we're wondering if we can figure out how to put about 5 more hours
in each day! Thank heavens for a built in Preparation Day in our
schedule....or at least a few hours on P-day! But we're excited to get
back up on campus and have all our students that have been gone for the
summer come back....except for having to pay for parking and all the
campus roadwork that obviously won't be done before school starts. We
spent part of this week getting ready for next week besides our normal
stuff. Thank heavens for a generous endowment at Cornell so we can
spend $200 on paper products instead of having to wash dishes and buying
ready-made chocolate chip cookie dough! Isn't that the way I've been
making cookies for the last 10 years anyway?! We have a freshman
orientation assignment this next week with the Cornell United Religious
work and then a weekend of CES training and the temple in Palmyra which
we're looking forward to. We're still working on getting the office on
campus to be a comfortable place where the missionaries can teach and
the YSA can do visiting and home teaching there if they need to and a
place for them to go to if they need a "refuge from the storm" in their
intense university environment. One highlight of the week was going to
an organ recital on the new organ in the chapel at Annabel Taylor. We
feel like it's important to be supportive of the activities that take
place there and it was great. Then we were off to Qwego where we taught
our institute and two of the "guest students" were the CES couple who
were here about 10 years ago ( they were on their way home from another
mission in the Wash. DC temple)and who were the first ones to live in
our apartment and they say this "house" is a huge step up from what the
CES couples used to live in where they had to climb 2 flights of stairs
just to get to the front door. Thank heavens we don't have to do that!
And we won't complain about our humble abode ever again! Our Cornell
institute this week was especially good. We've been blessed to have a
larger than normal group all summer and they are really the ones who
make it so the others want to come. We're anticipating at least 8-10
new students here for fall semester....also several young married
graduate students are coming too. Here's another "small world in the
Church" chance meeting. A young couple from Iowa just came and they
(and especially their parents who helped them move here) know a lot of
the same Iowa people we knew from a lot of years ago. Everybody thinks
we know everybody! It's not really true, but sometimes we've found that
our experiences put us in connections with a lot of people who we love
and who've impacted our lives for much good.
So
in the middle of writing this email, the 6 missionaries from our area
came over because we'd promised them brownies and ice cream to celebrate
the birthday of one of the sister missionaries. They had a good
time....ate all of nearly one complete 9x13 pan of brownies with caramel
sea salt ice cream and hot fudge and whipped cream on top. That was a
request from the sister whose birthday it was. Then they sat around and
sang a few church songs....it was pretty fun. Sometimes it actually
seems like too much fun to be doing what were doing on our mission. Our
spiritual experiences, that so many other missionaries write about, are
different. For example, today in RS one of the young married sisters
questioned one of the statements from President Joseph Fielding Smith as
not being true, and the sister who was teaching the lesson, a Chinese
speaking convert of not that many years ago who still struggles with her
English, very kindly but firmly reiterated that when a prophet speaks
in the name of the Lord, then he's speaking the mind and will of the
Lord and we'd best be wise when we consider moving out of the "safety
zone." It wasn't offensive or condescending but a very faithful
testimony of prophets.
This
will probably be an all time short email but it's time to go to bed
because our day starts early in the morning. Dad goes over to play BB
with some of the elder's quorum and missionaries and investigators at
6:30 in the morning and it's laundry day for me and getting things ready
for a district activity at our house for P-day tomorrow and
refreshments for FHE and whatever else needs to be done. No hike
tomorrow....will miss it but it's supposed to rain anyway. We love
hearing from you all when you get the time to write but don't stress out
if there's not time to write....we know the next week will be crazy
with school starting. But before you/we know it, it will be next summer
again. Keep on with all the good things you're doing. We love showing
your pictures to anybody who comes into our apartment and bragging
about you all....actually we don't brag, we just say good things over
and over and over........
Love you all!
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