Hi Everybody,
My
goodness has this been a busy week! We sometimes wonder if we have the
energy to do it all but somehow we figure it out....and with sunny warm
days like today we feel like we can accomplish anything!!
Now
that those who went to Idaho are back home in Utah again, we're not
homesick anymore for not being there. It sounds like it was loads of
fun and now the party is over and you all have to go back to work or
school or whatever you do that's time consuming and stressful. Our
Cornell students started back into school after their spring break last
week and they just walk around like zombies from having work piled on
sky high. It's probably no greater than for those who go to any other
university (depending on who you talk to) but there's an absolute
obsession within the university here that says you're not being
productive unless you work 7 days a week. Hence, half of our
discussions at our weekly Cornell United Religious Works chaplain's
meetings is how can we get the students in our various faith groups to
"come back" to church and church activities. We're pretty fortunate
because we probably have about 50% of our students participate in
Sunday, Monday, Thursday activities and many of the other groups feel
like they're doing well with one or two percent. This philosophy does
affect some of our students as well when many student seminars, project
meetings, group planning sessions for classes, and other mandatory
activities for sports or music, etc. are held on Sunday. It's a
definite problem that CURW wants to take up with the new incoming
university president.
Enough of that boring
stuff! Our students took the time Monday night to bring over a happy
one year anniversary on your mission cake. That was a lot better than
trying to burn a pair of pants or whatever else it is that missionaries
do when they hit a year mark! Good thing we're senior missionaries!
These are such good kids we have here!! We're back to last Friday and
three more weeks of Friday Forum and then the majority of our cooking
big style will be done for the summer. Whew! It will be nice to just
worry about refreshments for Institute and feeding missionaries. But
Friday Forum has been so successful....we routinely get 8-10 non-members
come besides our 40 or so members. We tend to think it's for the free
food but then when we see them totally engrossed in the message,
something's clicking. Like last Friday one of our students led the
discussion on Elder Bednar's "Tender Mercies" conference talk and you
could just see lights go on in the brains of our visitors when learning a
new concept.
So we'll end up with a funny
story and then this last weekend's activities. First the funny story.
We took one of our Owego Institute regulars, Valerie, who is a
non-member. to the chiropractor before Institute (she doesn't
drive....long story for another day). We got done early so decided to
take her to dinner at the Dryden Hotel which is well known for its good
food. We had a great meal, then Dad goes to pay the bill and the cash
register is in the bar and they just get ready to run the credit card
when the power goes off totally messing up the card scanner. Power
comes back on but it takes awhile to get the machine up and running
again, so Val and I walk in to see what's taking so long and here's Dad
in his suit, name tag and all, sitting at the bar. Talk about a photo
op!! Just not one of those we particularly want to put on Facebook!
Rather than looking like a "regular," he paid with real money and we
left laughing.
And again it was a great
weekend for baptisms here. Saturday at noon was Katelyn's baptism in
Corning. She was taught by both our Owego Sisters and the Corning
Sisters because she lived in both places and when she was in Owego, she
came to Institute. She's a GREAT new member of the Church whose
boyfriend is serving a mission in Arcadia, California. Then we stopped
off in Elmira where Dad sat in the car and napped and read and then went
to 5 Guys to eat a hamburger while I went to a wedding shower for
Alicia who came to Institute in Cornell last summer where she met Tim, a
BYUI student who was only here for 6 weeks on a summer internship type
thing. In 4 weeks they fell in love and are getting married here in the
Palmyra Temple at the end of the month. "They," whoever they is, say
that you can be considered successful CES missionaries if you get at
least one marriage during your time on the mission. We don't agree with
that philosophy but it is fun to see it happen. Then we came back to
Nikko's baptism that night and it was so good. I think we've talked
about Nikko before. Anyway, 3 days before the baptism, he decided to
let his parents know (who live in California) that he's getting
baptized. In 2 days, his Dad (a very opinionated and successful German
businessman) and his sister are on a plane coming here to talk him out
of being baptized. It was a very stressful day for Nikko and the
missionaries. They came to Friday Forum with him where the great
discussion was on Elder Bednar's talk and then just spent the rest of
the afternoon talking to Nikko and his friend, Sarah, about the Church
and long story short, grudgingly accepted his son's decision. They came
to the baptism where the Spirit was so strong and as part of the
service, Nikko bore testimony to his Dad and sister about his journey
into faith and baptism. It was amazing and his Dad was so touched that
after the closing prayer he stood up and asked to talk to the group
about what he'd felt in the day he was here being around Nikko and the
members of the branch. It was quite a touching and humble declaration
from a pretty powerful man. Anyway.....all in all a good weekend. Oh
and to finish the week off, the baptism of a 12 year old boy whose
mother is a member but father is not and was taught by the missionaries
in Trumansburg Branch. They don't have a font in their chapel so they
came here to our building for the services. So 3 more baptisms in a
week!
Well.....we didn't mean for this to
be a "and this is what we did" email but it seems to be just that. But
it was oh so good.....it's a week-ful of big and little things that make
for happy days no matter how busy they are. We love it!
Be
good this week, all of you who are always so good! Our phones just
popped up with a high wind and hard frost warning for Orem. for some
reason we have a Utah weather app on our phones. What's going on
there??!! We love you all and pray for you all for all things you might
need this week. And now we'll sign off with a billion X's and O's!!!!!
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