Is It Summer Yet?

Hi Everybody,

The first thing we did when we got up this morning was turn on the heater!  Part of it was because we were still freezing from last night’s outdoor Tab Choir concert at Bethel Woods (more about that later) and part because it was cold outside and inside both.  We never appreciated that fact that at our home-home in Utah, the sun actually shines and shines in the windows of our house.   Ah the price we pay for green grass and trees here in upstate New York!!  But as much as it rains here, we just discovered that the state of New York has a state ordinance against any home fireworks….sparklers included.  Whaaaaat???  No wonder we couldn’t find any sparklers for the little kids when they get here on the 4^th of July.  

Where did June go?  Where did last week go?  We just wrote an email didn’t we?  Either we’re getting slower or time is going faster and we can’t keep up.  We try,  but our list of things to do before we come home keeps getting longer than our list of what we’ve already done.

So here’s some highlights of last week:

1.  FHE where 1 person came because everybody else went somewhere for vacation and Institute where we almost ran out of treats because we planned based on how many were at FHE and about 15 times that many came (in other words, 15 people came to institute).  We had some young people come from other units in our stake which was fun.  Our Owego institute stays pretty steady and we eat all the treats no matter how many come.  It’s so interesting how we can prepare two completely different lessons for our two institutes, both based on the same Conference talk.  We love the Conference talks!  Never has there been such a time in our society when we NEED the counsel of living prophets and apostles.

2.  The upstairs doggy got sick.  Help!  We realized that we’ve “tended” this dog for almost a month and still don’t know what her name is.  Supposedly John’s kids are coming to get the dog and cat in the next couple of days because it looks like John will still be in the rehabilitation center for a while. 

3.  We cleaned house (not ours), drove 45 minutes to the doctor, waited, and then drove back (not us), planted flowers (us) because there was one day last week when it didn’t rain, and did some more complex outside cleanup because it needed it and somehow what we think is a priority isn’t.  We just discovered that we have a real, live forest growing in our rain gutters.

4.  Put up a canopy that was big enough to fit 3 cars end to end, went to a baby shower  and drove missionaries on their “car fast” day (figure that one out).  Oh and went to 4 grocery stores in one day so that there is plenty of grandpa and grandma food when you all come.  The missionaries are hoping that there is some leftover!

5.  Big highlight:  Going to the AME Church in Ithaca (African Methodist Episcopal) for a “vigil” honoring the lives of those who were shot in the Charleston AME Church last week.  One of the highlights of that program was a young women singing “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and hearing the members of the congregation join in on the chorus.  There were many of us there from all races and we’re assuming many faiths joining together to share sorrow over what happens when evil expresses itself so violently and hope that some good will come out of this tragedy.

6.  A Big, Big Highlight:   Taking Stacey and Efen to Bethel Woods (two plus hours from here) to the 2^nd concert on the Tabernacle Choir’s summer tour.  Stacey is an older student in our Owego institute who joined the Church a couple of years ago and Efen is from Taiwan living here in the US and working at Cornell and who went to some meetings in Salt Lake a few months ago and saw what she thought was a castle from a distance (Salt Lake Temple) and ended up on Temple Square….so she’s a “Temple Square Referrel” and the Elders are teaching her.  They both absolutely loved the concert.  Bethel Woods is the site of Woodstock from the 60’s (google that if you don’t know what it is…..how could you not know what Woodstock was?!) and now there is a Center for the Performing Arts there.  We’ve heard a lot of Tab Choir/Orchestra concerts in the last many years but this was the best of the best!!  The Center was a stage and a covered pavilion so we just froze but didn’t get wet thank heavens because it rained non stop.  We were prepared with our winter coats and hats and gloves and blankets but the Choir/Orchestra were the heroes.  They sang with their normal choir clothes on and they had to be freezing and the wind was blowing the orchestra music here, there, and everywhere, and they just played and sang on and it was completely wonderful!  They will be blessed the rest of their lives for just performing in behalf  of the Church that one time!!

Time to finish….still another meeting tonight and then a busy but exciting  couple of weeks ahead of us.  And how we will miss the Jacklin kids and grandkids!!  But we know that two trips to NY in one mission is a little much to expect of you, especially with soon having two missionaries out.

We love you all….be happy….be good…..be safe….and as Elder Holland used to say to the missionaries at the missionary training center…….”DDST” which let’s see if you can guess what it means.

XOXOXO  Dad and Mom and G and G and E and S

P.S.  DDST= don’t do stupid things

HFD

Happy Sunday afternoon and Happy Father’s Day to everybody who is a Dad, who will be a Dad, whoever had a Dad, whoever does all the good things most Dads do whether they’re Dads or not….and etc. etc. etc.

How are you all this beginning of a new week? We just ate dinner for Father’s Day and my mind must have been elsewhere because we have enough leftovers for the next week (sorry, Bryce….they’ll be gone by the time you get here)! There seemed to be a run on dinner invitations for the missionaries today and we didn’t get our “request” in soon enough. Dad missed the rolls I never make (Rhodes just doesn’t cut it) and the cherry pie crust looks pretty much like the one I made the first time I tried to make a pie crust like Grandma Jolleys….bad. Maybe we can cover it up with lots of Hagan Daz!

We’re feeling a bit waterlogged here these days. We’re still lucky we haven’t had the floods in Ithaca that others have had. A couple of the gorge trails are still closed because of flood damage from last Sunday night. We’re hoping they’ll be opened by the time some of you get here. There was one little town called Danby that had five and a half inches of rain in an hour and a half. That was where the road was washed out just after we went through it last Sunday night and there was also a spot where the railroad tracks had no ground to rest on….probably 4 or 5 feet off the ground because the rushing water had washed that much ground out from underneath it. When it rains here, it pours! We’ve had our share of rain and wind as evidenced by the picture we texted you of the tree that blew over about 3 apartments down. It actually fell on the neighbor’s glass topped patio set and mushed it pretty good.

This last week was a week of being “On the Road Again.” We had four trips to Owego …..Seminary graduation, CES training, Institute, and helping the Sister Training Leaders get to their exchanges. We already told you about Seminary Graduation. CES training was great. Have we ever told you about our Supervisor, Brother Matt Baker? It would take too long to extol his virtues in this email but just let us tell you that he’s amazing. Whenever we feel to complain of all the road time we have, we think about what Matt does. He not only visits us but several other areas to provide training and even has a few places where he teaches both Institute and Seminary….and these areas are spread out over a couple of hundred miles. Plus his “weekend job” is at Regan Airport in NYC where he has permission from the Church to work from Friday night all night to Saturday night in order to access the government insurance benefits that they need for his critically ill wife. Heidi supports what he has to do a hundred percent and she is amazing herself in doing that with the help of friends and church members who help her to dialysis where Matt meets her at 2:00 a.m. to bring her home….several times a week. So even if you don’t know Matt Baker, remember him in your prayers!

We keep thinking that our Institute numbers will go down this summer but they’ve stayed pretty level most of the time. This is when people leave to go on vacation, students go home for the summer, work summer jobs, play summer sports. This last week we taught Elder Perry’s last Conference talk on the Family. How grateful we are for all of you and our pretty great family!! There are some big challenges in all of our families and how on earth would we get through these challenges without Gospel principles and teachings! We’re concerned about the very strong opinions of some of our students and members that don’t think that the proposed re-definition of marriage is a “big deal” and that the Brethren will eventually “catch up” with the inevitable. We teach in a conversation format where we ask questions and encourage the students to teach truth and testify to each other. Our job is to make sure that things don’t get too lively and to make sure that these really bright kids know that WE know that foundational doctrine is true and constant and what the Prophets and Apostles say about this doctrine is truly the mind and will of the Lord.

It’s a whole lot easier to do what we did most of the day Friday….good, hard, dirty work! We met a couple of sets of young missionaries at Valerie’s house in Berkshire and worked on her very long, very curved, falling-apart path of pavers and the flower beds on either side. Her health just won’t let her do that anymore and she was grateful! We are just having a hard time moving ourselves yesterday and today. We took a picnic lunch and sat on her porch to eat and the beauty around us was spectacular because she lives out in the country. And we were definitely blessed that day being the only day in the whole week where it wasn’t hot and humid!

Let’s see…..also a branch hike this week (where I kept up with the pregnant mom and her 2 year old), another dinner appointment (whoo hoo), a YSA to the airport, district meeting, “Meet the Mormons” with a less active family, and wishing we were with all of you when Zac went to the temple. We’re still trying to figure out how to make Los Angeles be “on our way home” in September. Minnesota and North Dakota are easy but California is a bit of a stretch.

In your busy, busy lives this summer, remember to always make time to love and serve each other. Evaluate your priorities and remember the good, better, best things that Elder Oaks counseled us to do. We’re still working on that and hope that by the time we’re 90 we may have figured it out. We love and miss you all but we want you to know that “sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven.” Aren’t we glad that we have hymn texts that say what we want to say so well?!

XOXOXO Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma and Elder and Sister (Elder-ette) Jolley

Bah...Again!

Hi Everybody,

Where are the tech teenagers when I need them!  If I soon don't start getting a little smarter, this may be the last email you get from us.  Not really....but I thought I was doing what Dad told me to do but obviously not, because I lost all of last night's letter again that I saved like I thought he told me to do.  It's a good thing we're not office missionaries or the whole mission would fall apart with my incompetence! 

So....good Monday morning and we will get this written sometime today.  The young missionaries just called and want to come over and "hang out" for preparation day...which means play games and eat and use our computers.  Maybe we'll have them scrub the floor and vacuum and finish planting the flowers.  Except it's pretty much too wet to plant flowers.  Last night at Seminary graduation, Dad just finished giving his talk and everybody's cell phone alarms (including his) started going off.  It was a flash flood warning for the area that our Stake Center is in.  A warning means that a flash flood or rising creeks or rivers are imminent.  Our stake building is up on a hill so everybody just calmed down and went on with the graduation.  It was a very nice graduation (Dad gave a great talk) and several of our institute students got certificates as well including 70-something year old Brother and Sister Albujah and 80-something-year-old Charlie.  At the tables where we ate afterwards, the students made a big deal over Ceasar and Olga and Charlie and they loved it.  By the time we helped get everything cleaned up and headed home it was dark and about halfway home we passed a bunch of emergency vehicles and road crew guys but it was too dark to tell what was going on.  This morning at the Laundromat, a woman said that they were trying to keep the road from washing out.  There was some major flooding in some of the little communities around here but not anything in Ithaca.  Somebody also said some areas had 4 inches of rain in 4 hours.  That must be a lot??

Dad also had to speak in the Ward Sacrament meeting yesterday as well.  We are “attached” to the branch but we try and go to as many ward things as we can and we think it has been good to do that.  We’re regulars at the Blood Drive sponsored by the ward for that area of the community and we’ve discovered it’s such a small but big thing to go every 6 weeks and donate.  That will be something we definitely keep doing when we get home.  So we literally are giving our blood, sweat, and tears to this mission! 

 Let’s see…..what else did we do this week.  Zone Conference for one.  We sang in a special musical number with a double mixed quartet of young elders and sisters.  It actually sounded really good.  We like ZC.  We like being able to see the missionaries from other units, especially the ones that have served here before.  We like the training we receive.  In role-playing so we always volunteer to be the “investigators” so we can give the missionaries a hard time.  In this Conference, President Wirthlin played part of a video-conference that all the mission presidents received last week.  It took place during General Conference training for all the General Authorities of the Church….First Presidency, 12 Apostles, and all the Seventies including Area Authority Seventies.  The information will come to the Stake Presidents and other leaders in the next month or so.  It was all about the Sacredness of the Sabbath Day and it was so powerful.

We’re really liking teaching The Teachings of the Living Prophets in Institute and have now started lessons based on the last General Conference.  It almost feels like we’re studying the scriptures when we read and study those talks over and over again.  What the Brethern and Sisters say is definitely the mind and will of the Lord!  We have to work a lot harder on these lessons because we have to put together our own lessons based on the talks.

The rest of the week was spent in visiting less actives with the missionaries, doing work at Harmony and her Mom’s house, tending Phoenix who’s Mom has just been put on bed rest for some complications in her pregnancy…and trying to still dig out our house from the last two semesters of not having any time to do any of that sort of stuff.

We see you’re getting ready for another Family Birthday dinner….soon it will be our turn!!  Life is good!  The Church is true!  Families are Forever!  Sometimes the only sunshine around New York is in our souls!  We love you all and are so grateful we have a Fine Family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

XOXOXO  Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma etc.

Bah!!!!

Hello Everybody,

I have a love/hate relationship with the computer/internet/anything electronic!  I had a great email written to you yesterday and you would have loved it, but I was one sentence away from finishing and I breathed wrong onto the computer and it deleted 3/4 of the email.  Seriously.....my fingers were no where near the keyboard when that happened.  So then I tried to do what I thought would bring it back and of course that just made things worse.....and so I gave up which I'm prone to do when something like that happens.  I could swear or such other things but that probably wouldn't be very missionary like.  So after reconsidering never typing on this thing again, here goes round two.

Mom/Grandma

Hello Everybody,

Guess what!  We are currently under a tornado watch!!  We just had a gully washer that literally created waterfalls all along the front of our apartment complex because the rain gutters are clear full of leaves which we can't clean out since they are on the top of the 2nd floor and we can't exactly shimmy up and do it ourselves.  It's preparation day today and the missionaries all decided to come over here to use our computers so we're last on the list.  Maybe we'll get this done tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day.....unless we get blown away.

So here's what we DID last week:

1.  Took the missionaries to Taugaunack Falls.  It was more impressive than they thought it would be and they took tons of pictures.

2.  Family Home Evening was chair soccer because real soccer got rained out.  It was fun.

3.  Last day of Seminary visits for the spring....so nice to have those done and no more getting up at 4:00a.m.

4.  Senior missionaries like to get invited out for dinner as much as the young missionaries.  Two this week which is 2 more than the last 6 months.

5.  Institute....we spend hours in preparation and we learn more than the students do.

6.  We walked two dogs....actually we walked one and the other walked us.  We've just about got our little upstairs dog and cat off death's doorstep.

7.  Did some major furniture moving in a bedroom and put in an air conditioner for a woman who was just told her cancer is terminal.

8.  Worked at the biggest parking lot rummage sale we've ever been to (the Church parking lot).  $$ "raiser" for Feed My Starving Children.

9.  Bar-B-Que where we just about froze.

10.  FINALLY got Cornell United Religious Work to consider beginning our meetings with prayer.

Here's what we LEARNED last week:

1.  The young missionaries are still pretty young.  They need a little nudge to see some things that they'll never have the opportunity of seeing again.  Better than playing basketball at the Church or writing a letter to their girlfriends.  Told ya so!  They appreciate us acting like their parents occasionally.

2.  Why does it always rain on Monday night?  Maybe so young single adults can learn the importance of having a back up plan for activities....we wonder if they might make the connection that it's the same way in life.

3.  Like we've said before, there is a special place in Heaven for these early morning seminary teachers.  We hope the kids appreciate them.  We hope the kids appreciate their teachers' patience when they come grouchy morning after morning.  We hope they realize that what they learn there can literally save their spiritual lives when push comes to shove.

4.  As in many places in the Church, there are wonderful young married kids with kids who are already learning what sacrifice is and recognizing needs of other people....and how to say thank-you.

5.  The answers to most of life's biggest questions on just about anything comes through the words of the scriptures, apostles and prophets, and from Heavenly Father through prayer....not the internet.

6.  Have I done any good in the world today?  Have I helped anyone in need?  Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad, if not I have failed indeed.

7.  Has anyone's burden been lighter today today, because I was willing to share?  Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?  When they needed my help was I there?  Life is really, really, really tough for some.  Do we know who they are?

8.  People of all faiths can work together and most of the time have a lot of fun while freezing and trying to keep the wind from blowing the dollar bills out of the cash box.  We may differ a lot in doctrine but most of the time, we're on the same page.

9.  A little tiny branch can feel the Spirit pretty fine, whether we're playing or praying.

10.  Asking for divine assistance is just as important on the campus of a secular university as anywhere else....or more so.

Well, Everyone....thanks for the emails and letters this week.....and one was even typed on a typewriter!  A typewriter even!!  We love you all.  We love that you are busy and happy and helping others.  We know that Heavenly Father has answered our prayers for you as we're gone.  

Now that our tornado watch has expired we can go to bed and sleep knowing that we're not in Iowa and that we won't go through the same worry the rest of the summer.  Tornados are rare in Upstate New York.  And we have to wake up early because tomorrow is Zone Conference and it will be our last one with President and Sister Wirthlin.  We will miss them!

XOXOXO  Dad and Mom and Grandpa and Grandma and all the rest of our names