8/13/17

Before I start on this week's activities, I have to share a video that I forgot last week.  When we were at Cassie and John's we went to a museum.  Outside there were "trompas" to ride on.  Rachel loved them.  Then she decided to give her parents a ride.  It was a lot of work, but she kept it up for quite a


while.  I would title this "The Trooper Pushing the Trompa".  I hope videos work on a blog.  :)

Now, I will tell about this crazy week.  When we returned to the temple we discovered (rather quickly) that they hadn’t been successful in repairing the A/C unit.  Long story short—they’d fix one thing, only to discover a new problem and have to order a different part.  Unfortunately the floors affected were 5^th and 6^th:  initiatory, endowments, sealings, etc.  It was really tough during sessions.  On Wednesday one of the workers had symptoms of heat exhaustion.   They were monitoring the temperature.  When Spencer and I finished a session on Wednesday we learned that the rooms were 92 degrees—hotter than outside, but just as humid.  President Bench called SLC and told them he was closing the temple for the rest of the week.  I hope it is fixed when we return on Tuesday.  If not, they may have to replace it—but that is an enormous hassle with city permits to bring in huge cranes and shut down the street. 

 

It actually took most of the next day before we felt like we had recovered from the draining exhaustion.

Thursday afternoon we rode the subway to the tip of the island and took the ferry to Liberty Island.  It is overwhelming how large the Statue of Liberty actually is.  It was educational and

informative.  There is a free audio tour. 

From Liberty Island we rode the ferry to Ellis Island. We could have spent many, many hours there, but it was too late in the day.  I can see why this is a favorite spot for our grandchildren Daimon and Ellie.  There is history dating back to the beginnings of settlers coming to America, not just the years that Ellis Island was in operation.

Hmm, I seem to have lost Spencer's picture here.  I'll try once more.

We definitely will be returning to spend more hours there on another day. 

Neither one of us had ancestors come thru Ellis Island.  It opened in the 1890's and (sometimes centuries) before the pioneers crossed the plains.

Friday night I went with several other missionaries to visit the Morgan Library (as in Pierpont Morgan and J. P. Morgan).  I wanted to see the Gutenberg Bible on display.  I astonished at the beauty and the collections there. The library, which was part of the private home previously, has three floors of books in one room.  There are 15,000 books there and another 5,000  in other rooms--primarily the den.

 I kept thinking how much Rachelle would love to have a library like this! Many of the books are rare and very old.  There are only 150 Gutenberg Bibles and the Morgans own three of them.

There is a library vault off of the den where precious documents were  extremely protected.  The library is filled with statues and precious relics and archeological finds.  I loved the vaulted ceiling of the rotunda.  It was 3-dimensional with sculptures and paintings intermingled.

There were other exhibit areas dedicated to Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson and some that I'm not literate enough to recognize.  There were original paintings of Rembrandt and others I didn't recognize.  Original scores from Mozart, Bach, etc.  It was pretty amazing.

While I was doing that Spencer had a delightful evening doing things he enjoyed!  He worked on his lesson for priesthood and he watched a ball game on TV.  So we were both happy campers!  But it was nice to get back home and be together.

Last week I also forgot to mention that Spencer Raymond is now in Sierra Leone (out of the MTC in Ghana) and Caleb Alexander is a trainer in Taiwan.  Jacob Dike is enjoying the work in Branson and Ashley Judd is a great missionary in Oregon.  They are great examples for both of us.  We love and miss all of our family and friends.  We appreiate your prayers.  And we ESPECIALLY LOVE EMAILS OR PHONE CALLS.