Brrrrr

Hi Everybody,

Remember when the temperature was minus 10 degrees and 30 felt like a heat wave.  Well, after a week of 80's and high humidity, 55 degrees feels like we're freezing.  We actually turned on the heat because this is an old apartment that lets all the drafts through, and of course this is New York so we're still looking for the sun today.  Maybe tomorrow!  That's not to say it isn't beautiful here because this is one of the prettiest places ever in the spring.  Every other day a different wildflower blooms or something grows that is a different shade of green and when the sun does shine the sky is absolutely brilliant blue.  We wonder if when the Smith family was homesteading in upstate New York in the 1800's, they had time with trying to stay alive and safe and well fed to stop and smell the flowers.

What an exciting week you've all had with graduation and school ending and the anticipation of summer vacation!  It's nice to take a "vacation" once in a while!  We got our last far away seminaries visited last week and even got the time to go to our first soccer game in over a year.  It was a state cup game for one of the seminary kids who thinks it's cool that Dad/Grandpa knows soccer and that I wear a soccer ball necklace.....he doesn't know I know soccer too.  They lost.....bummer!  And as soon as the game was over the loudspeaker over the whole complex came on to tell everybody to evacuate the fields immediately because a huge, dangerous lightning storm was coming our way.  So we left!!  We were driving home 40 minutes in the opposite direction as the storm so we missed it.....whew!!  Anyway, back to Seminary.  The students are still in school so they're just taking the new assessments and are totally stressing out about things.  We really like this new Seminary and Institute program.  The lessons are so good, similar to the youth curriculum where the students do a lot of the teaching and asking and answering of questions themselves. You (to the grandkids) are bright!!!!  We wish we would have had your Gospel knowledge and habits for study when we were your age.  We may hang out with the young single adults all the time, but we surely don't have their ability to go to bed late and get up early!  Going to bed at midnight and getting up at 4:00 a.m. is for the birds.  The one seminary we have left is just a couple of blocks from our house here so that means we can be like the kids and roll out of bed at 6:00 a.m. to be there by 6:30.  But we promise not to be grumpy or sleep through the lesson!  We'll bring the muffins or donuts!!

It was great this week to have parts of a couple of days (aside from helping people move, fixing air-conditioners, etc.) to try and "put our house in order."  That means that we cleaned and organized for the first time in 28 weeks!  There is much left to do but we made a good start.  We've learned you can do a lot with a couple of extra shelves and some boxes from Salvation Army!  Now if we can just remember what new places we put everything in!  We fed the Elders a couple of days this week.  Here's a new way to invite yourself to dinner.  "Elder Jolley, can we come use your computer for a few minutes and would you care if we brought a few things to eat for dinner."  Pretty inventive isn't it!  And this is all said in sad voices so of course we'll invite them to have dinner with us!  We love it!!!!!!  The branch and ward are great in providing meals nearly every day for the missionaries and we pick up the slack if needed and we know about it.  The missionaries really love transfer breakfast.  We've mentioned this before but it's when they all come over the day before or of transfer day and we eat lots and lots of bacon and eggs and pancakes and hashbrowns......and chocolate milk!!  We lost two wonderful missionaries to other areas this week from our district and two from our great companionships in Owego.  We feel like our grandkids are moving out of the house when that happens!  It also means that we get to drive missionaries to Utica and go to the meetings there to welcome new missionaries and hear the testimonies of those going home which is always such a great experience.  And this was President and Sister Wirthlin's last transfer meetings as well as they'll be leaving to go home on July 1st.  Bittersweet!!  Next transfer brings the wave of newly graduated from high school missionaries or those who've just finished a semester of college.  Our poor new president is going to have to deal with the logistics of over 40 new missionaries in the next two transfers (which is an all time record for this mission) but what is exciting is that some areas previously closed will be reopened and possibly even some new areas opened.  The work moves on!!  On a side note, with transfers and institute and a seminary visit, over one 24 hour period we put 360 miles on our car .  Bless the Toyota!!

So we'll finish this email with a new assignment which we never anticipated.  Our neighbor, John from upstairs, was gone from his apartment for about 10 days but his mail kept piling up.  His car was gone and we didn't hear any of his pets so we just figured he'd gone on vacation or something.  But it was unusual for him to not tell us he was leaving and when he does go he's only gone for a couple of days and his mailbox was literally overflowing.  So we decided to check around to see if anybody knew where he was but nobody knew anything.  So we finally decided to call his work place and found out that he was on medical leave.  Long story short, he got sick, drove himself to Cuyuga Medical Center which is about 10 minutes away and they immediately took him by ambulance to another speciality hospital in Pennsylvania where he had two emergency surgeries and is very sick.  But here's the painful part.  Nobody knew that his pets were in the house all that time (we thought maybe he'd taken them to a kennel).  So when John's ex-wife finally found out he was in the hospital and got here, the animals were almost gone.  They'd survived on water left in the pet dishes and what little was in the toilet bowl but were in pretty bad shape  So.....back to our new assignment.  For the last few days and probably all of this next week, we've become pet-sitters.  They're getting back to normal and we feed them and exercise them every day until John gets home.

Only one more day in May and then it's June.....my gosh where are the days flying off too!!!!  We hope you all have a happy week ahead of you and we know that you'll do good things this week that will bless the lives of everyone around you.  We love you!!!!!

XOXOXO  Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma and Elder and Sister Jolley (aka Von and Patty)