New York, New York City Mission

We are so excited that President and Sister Holmes have been called to serve as the new Mission Leaders of the New York, New York City Mission! They are wonderful! We have been able to meet with them over Zoom several times and we love them already! We are thrilled for their family and know they too will experience blessings as their parents serve.

3 years ago, as we were preparing to come, I remember feeling really excited about coming to New York, but also overwhelmed and not exactly sure what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to do it. The Holmes are way more experienced and competent than I was (President Teuscher was always more confident and competent than me 🙂 but you know, even if you feel like I did and still sometimes do; overwhelmed, under-prepared, not sure if I know what I’m doing–it’s OK, God can still use you and work through you to help others. He is right there to help you every step of the way.

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If ye have desires to serve God, ye are called to the work

Doctrine & Covenants 4:3

Almost the final transfer and… almost done with Covid! 😷😊

We are in the final stretch of our 3 year mission and honestly, I’m not sure how we got to this point already. Time has this crazy way of going faster than we want, but here we are having the “last of” a lot of things. Our last zone conferences, our last round of interviews with all the missionaries, our last Mission Leaders Council, our last Stake Conferences. Next week will be our final trip to Bermuda as mission leaders. But, the “last of” for us also means the “first of” all of those same things is coming soon for President and Sister Holmes and we are so excited for them to get to experience it all! They will be here in just a few short weeks and there is a lot to do to get ready. As we’ve been planning out the transition we have a “how we’ve been doing it during Covid” plan and an “assuming Covid is over and many restrictions are gone by the time you get here” plan. We are thrilled that NYC is at 70% vaccination rates and our mission is over 80%. We are so grateful for modern medicine and technology. NYC is definitely coming back. There is an energy and optimism in the air. The traffic is definitely back! 🚕 🚗 🚙

One thing that we did not anticipate in this final stretch is that we’d be moving the mission home and office from Scarsdale to Manhattan.🗽 🚕 🏢 It is causing us all to scramble a bit more than usual. One thing is for sure–we can never say we had a boring mission!

We love Manhattan and all the rich texture of the city, but this move poses some unique challenges to how the mission is run and pretty much everything logistically speaking needs to be re-thought and re-planned in order to have things run smoothly, which is a big ask for the Big Apple! 🍎 So this past transfer we decided to do a practice run to try and work through some of the anticipated challenges. Ha ha! Glad we did as we learned a few things not to do. We will be changing things up again and try to have a smoother go of it this upcoming transfer.

ARRIVALS-May 2021

This is the second to last group of new missionaries we will greet. We pick up one more group next week. Even though we’ve only known these missionaries for a few weeks now, there is a bond and a love for each of them that is hard to describe. God has truly expanded our capacity to love.

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The May 2021 Arrival group getting checked into a hotel in Queens (above). After a long day of travel and waiting for some late flights to arrive everyone was really tired and I think they were pretty happy to get to the hotel and to sleep. We got them all back to Woodside the next morning to meet their trainers. (pictured below)

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TRANSFERS-May 2021

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DEPARTURES- MAY 2021

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Screen shots from departing testimony meeting above and saying goodbye at the airport below. Several of these missionaries were our Covid champs! They are true pioneers in figuring out and excelling at online and social media missionary work. We are so grateful for their good attitudes, their willingness to try new things and the talents and abilities God has blessed them with. The New York City Mission is better because of their service.

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ZONE CONFERENCE

It is so hard to believe this is our last zone conference. The assistants told us everyone was expecting it to be the best one yet. Ha ha! no pressure there! Luckily, the gospel of Jesus Christ is always the best and you can’t go wrong when discussing any aspect of it. Our focus was on the first great commandment to love the Lord and the second to love our fellowmen. When we get that right, and get our loves in proper order everything else falls into place. St. Augustine had it right when he taught that the root of all sin and the reason so many people are discontent in life is because our lives are out of order; we have disordered loves. Ezra Taft Benson said that “when we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.”

❤️🤟❤️ Our joy increases as love becomes the motivation for the work we are called to do. ❤️🤟❤️

We prepared a little farewell gift for the missionaries and also took photos with everyone. I am working on getting those all sorted and will add them to a separate post here on the blog. Oh my goodness! My heart is full to overflowing with love and gratitude for these missionaries and all who we have had the privilege of serving with for whatever length of time. We are now at just over 760 young missionaries and with senior missionaries that number goes over 800! God is so good to allow us to know and love and learn from each one of them. This mission has been anything but ordinary, from combining two missions at the start to navigating the Covid-19 pandemic and being blessed with some of the absolute best missionaries that were re-assigned to NYC from over-seas missions to now trying to make all the necessary adjustments to moving the mission headquarters. We have been blessed and helped every step of the way by the most loving and willing to serve senior couples, mission nurses, assistants, office elders, social media specialists and so many more. The church leadership and members of the church here in the New York City area and in Connecticut and Bermuda are the best of the best. The Lord keeps sending the cream of the crop in terms of missionaries and senior couples. I sometimes wonder if he has us mixed up with someone who actually deserves all these blessings, but then I remember that God is not a God of confusion and that none of us deserve his grace but he freely gives it anyway and he delights to bless us if we exercise even a particle of faith and try to do his will. When I remember that, I offer another prayer of gratitude and vow to work a little harder, love a little deeper and try to be a little better at truly keeping my covenants.

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These small items pictured above were in the farewell gift bag for each missionary. We also included a sticker of our mission logo which was a much bigger hit than I would have thought. They do love those cool stickers for their water bottles!

I made this video to show at Zone Conference. We talked about the call to serve and what it really means. There is always a lot of excitement and anticipation when missionaries open their call. Those who have served always say that missions are the best, but the hardest 2 years or 18 months of their life. Why? Why do hardest and best seem to go together when describing any meaningful endeavor? We talked about all we can learn from Jesus Christ accepting and completing gloriously his call to serve. His was incomprehensibly the hardest and best mission. He exemplifies to perfection the attributes of Work, Obedience, Love and Trusting in the Lord that we have tried to weave into all we have done and taught the missionaries these past three years. We hope and pray it has become more than a mantra and that these principles have sunk deep into their hearts as true principles that will help them be successful and find joy in any endeavor of life.