Two Temple Trips!

We went to the Temple twice this week, the first one was Wednesday when we worked a 6 hour shift and the second was Friday when we helped escort a group of missionaries on their semi-annual temple trip.

These are pictures of the Manhattan Temple, in the second one you can see the statue of the Angel Moroni if you look at the right hand corner of the front building then go about halfway up the tall building next to it, you'll see the angel!

On Wednesday it was our experimental trip, parking at the church building in Flushing, then taking the subway from there in to the Temple.  That evening we teach a class in Great Neck which is closer to Flushing so we would have less traffic to deal with.  The walk to the subway is a half mile or so ... not so bad unless the weather is sketchy.  It worked well but it gives us a couple of hours before we have to be at class, so we walked around Flushing a bit and went into an Asian Mall where we got these lovely meals of Teriyaki Chicken and Shrimp!  We found a place that sells our favorite CalRose rice, too!  Next time we think we'll spend our extra hours in Manhattan and look around there. 

This is where we teach on Wednesday evening.  It's the Mariner's Chapel at the US Merchant Marine Academy, it's a multi-denominational chapel that we use one room in for our class.  The light at the top blinks on and off and makes it a lighthouse, it's right at the shore.

This is the view from in front of Mariner's Chapel, looking over the water to Throg's Neck Bridge.
                          

This is the traffic coming home from our Friday Temple trip.  It was pretty slow going, but we made it home in plenty of time to teach our Friday class in Plainview which is only 10 minutes from us.

Happy New Year!

Here it is ..... Times Square on New Year's Eve!!  We weren't there but it was really fun for us old fogies to realize that we were only 40 or so miles from where it was taking place.  We had fun helping with the Stake activity that was happening that evening then went home where it was cozy and warm!!

We made a trip to Flushing (part of Queens) to check out a new route to one of the places we teach.  They have a large Asian population there and it was fun to see all the stores.

We had a fun "Minute-to-Win-it" activity for FHE.  The 2 people in this event have panty hose on their heads, there is a tennis ball in the toe and they try to knock over the water bottles swinging their heads around.  Pretty fun to watch!

This one is balancing M&M's on 2 pencils glued together, placing the attached yarn over your ears and pulling the balanced candy up to your chin.  There were several other games, all fun and creative!

We'd been having unseasonably "less cold" temperatures until that all changed.

We've had a couple of snowstorms that drop an inch or two each time, but we've had some really cold temperatures with pretty stiff winds that make me glad I brought some warm clothes!!

We started working in the Temple a couple of times a month and decided we wanted to try and take the train in.  It's convenient but pricey so we won't do it often, but it was fun to try.  The train station is right by our house and while we were waiting here for our train the temperature was about 16 degrees with 25-30 mph winds.  It was not fun!  Thankfully there was this little enclosure and we didn't have to wait long.

This is looking through the back of the enclosure at our apartment building.

This is in Penn Station, after our Temple shift we took the subway here to catch the train.  This picture doesn't capture the vast numbers of people there.  They're all watching an electronic board and when the train they are waiting for is assigned a track they take off toward that track.  Elder Bushman was in his "let's get there fast" mode and when our track number was assigned he wanted to RUN, but we restrained ourselves and just walked fast!!