Sick Days

Gee, it seems that all of our family have been sick lately, so I thought I'd join the party.  But today I felt a little better and got up for awhile.  Sorry no pictures of the experience - you would have to be there.  Oh that's right . . . you've been there.  So no need for graphic representations.  But I do have a little something to spice up this post.  Not able to do much, I am at least doing a little something productive.  I am scanning in a bunch of paper filling my filing cabinet.  This includes the letters I sent home from my first mission to NYC and Brazil.  In one of the envelopes I found the photo below.  This is of Elder Dalley (Orem, UT), myself, and Elder Bushman (George, WA) with a street meeting board in front of their (Elder Dalley spoke Spanish and his companion spoke English) apartment in Jersey City.  They lived in a basement apartment down some stairs just to the right of Elder Bushman where that wrought iron railing is.  They lived just around the corner from us, so we lived in an apartment on the street you can see in the background, where the Marlow's store is.  Our apartment was on the third floor, over a drug store and next to a firehouse.

And here is a little piece of a letter I wrote about that place on 1 July 1974, just after moving from Jersey City to Greenpoint Brooklyn: "Hermano Collazo . . . was standing out front waiting and whistling for us to go down and let him in.  Elder Bushman went to the window to throw down the keys and as soon as he got to the window this car comes zipping around the corner with 2 cop cars behind it and 2 cops running along side shooting at it.  That was one thing about Jersey, never a dull moment."

Among the other things I remembered as I glanced over the letters as I scanned them was all of the interesting people I got to meet while in the Eastern States Mission, including Elder McConkie, President Kimball, President Benson, Elder Ashton, Allan Cherry, Robert Peterson, Spencer Kinnard, and Kresmir Cosic.  And those are just the ones you may recognize.  Others include Bishop Mabunga, Brother Giani, Hno. Arias, Brother Rose, Bishop Jimenez, Luis Zamora, Tuly and Guido Peñaranda, and a host of great missionaries.  It was a rich experience that I am grateful to have had.