Hollywood to Hollywood 4th Ward
In our last blog you were told about the LA temple coming to
be. Now with that background let me tell you about the name.
Back in the day, Hollywood was thought as the rich and famous- living wonderful lives.
It was when one famous person took friends and went to San
Francisco and had one of their famous elaborate parties that the world came to
see them for who they really were. At this party someone was assaulted in a terrible way, and they
died. (I’m sure partly due to drugs).
The world then realized that this
Hollywood place was not so innocent, but instead a terrible and evil place.
The church was calling the temple on Santa Monica street, the
Hollywood Temple, but after this it quickly changed to the Los Angeles Temple.
The temple is closed for two weeks for renovation.
(Pictures of the workers, missionaries and volunteers working)
Just a nice picture!
To carry on...
We have had two Hollywood Wards, the 1st and 2nd
Hollywood Wards, but never a third Hollywood Ward and you may understand why
they stopped there.
Therefore, family and friends let me just announce the
Hollywood 4th Ward of which we are a part of!
This is the poster we made and put up at church.
(Our thanks to our sister-in-law Christine for this cute saying)
Our Hollywood ward has a strong bishopric and a few faithful
members.
In the chapel with us is the Spanish 4th ward.
They have quite a few more members than us but not so strong in leadership because of limited
English. We were using the 4th ward for help with our music,
and they were using our members for teaching classes and primary. Two wards
sharing a building and sharing members for support in their wards.
Last week they combined our two wards. It was a day of strong
and sad feelings.
Yes, No! We can’t, Really? How?
Why? Why didn’t they just change
the boundaries? I think they made a big mistake! I think I’ll go somewhere
else!
The leaders tried to help everyone believe this would all
workout even though they confessed they didn’t know how since it has never been done like this.
The following Sunday a member of the Stake Pres., Brother Thomas
came and took about 5 min. and reminded us of the early saints coming into the
Salt Lake Valley. They were from all over the world speaking many different
languages and they had no headphones or translators and they made it work.
The challenge
comes from the older sisters who don’t want to wear headphone and sit with
people they can’t even talk to. In Relief Society we have a person translating so class takes longer, or we have to go slower.
So
now we have………(headsets)
The leaders are busy picking out translators, teachers and leaders.
Our wonderful Bishop went to 1st counselor in the
bishopric. (He’s still in the bishopric after 5 ½ years). He couldn’t be bishop because he speaks Russian not Spanish.
We have the 4th Ward Bishop now as our bishop
because he speaks English although it is limited and sometimes a little hard to understand. (It's almost like being back in the Lagoa Philippine ward except we have headphones now).
Singing on Sunday was an unfamiliar song. With so many Spanish singing it was hard to know where they were. Bart was by me so every once in a while, he would say a word real loud so I could find the place.
Our councilors in the bishopric now are Sunday School Pres. and
Elder Quorum Pres.
Brother Babcock from our bishopric went to Elders Quorum Pres.
He is an amazing person! He knows the gospel and has such a strong testimony. He had a challenging upbringing but was taken in by good members.
He met and married a girl from a strong LDS home. She now wants almost nothing to do with the church, so he attends everything by himself. Brother Babcock just keeps supporting our ward and members in every way he can. He's such a wonderful example to us all. When asked to serve as Elders Quorum Pres. he stepped out of the room to call his wife to ask her thoughts and support. Wonderful Man!
Our two assigned missionaries are young men to watch. Elder Wirfs has had brain surgery, so his recall takes a while. It takes him awhile to say anything if he can even think of it.
Elder Fullmer is a young man from Idaho that loves the farm. He struggled in school, has a lazy eye and a speech impediment. It really worried us, but we hope to see the Lord make weak things strong through these two elders. We ask for your prayer for these two missionaries.
Later you'll see some of the people that they helped baptized, but first let's move away from the mushy stuff for a bit.
So Zack's family (Sister Snyder's grandson) came to California. We got permission to go out of mission boundieres to visit them in New Port.
Then the Burton's from my home ward in Mesquite came to the Visitors Center and we had a great visit.
We are still walking through the picket lines in the early mornings. They are picketing the Beverly Hilton Hotel, not to be confused with the writers who are picketing. You can ask the Burton's about that picket line since they had to go through it to be on Jeopardy. (I think it was Jeopardy)
Oh, and remember our neighbor down the street that lives in the cardboard box with an umbrella for a roof?
We caught her out walking one day.
Veva (Sister Snyder), caught her at night and hasn't slept well since!
During the day she packs up, carboard boxes and all. She never goes too far.
She usually comes back to her spot just down from us.
Look she is now prepared for "Hillary" and all the rain that we are to get.
On the way to church we noticed this! There was only a drizzle of rain coming down, so the rain wasn't much help to this homeless person.
To end our blog today we would like to share our wonderful Saturday morning with you.
After cleaning the chapel, we had a baptism.
Well, actually, four baptisms!
Ryan is on the left and he is a good friend of Bart's. He came to the gospel to see what has changed Bart's life so much. He knew Bart in his wild days.
As you remember Bart is gay and is a member of AA. Well, he teaches AA now, besides the prison and seminary.
Then you have Elder Fullmer from Idaho. Next to him is Andrey who we were able to give a ride to the Visitors Center one day. What a special person he is who loves learning about Jesus Christ.
Our dear friend Bart spoke and did a beautiful job. He was so down to earth and to the point. I see why he teaches Seminary.
Bart first had the table set up.
Each bag was personalized.
Notice the sheep in every bag. Bart asked what kind or color they wanted. As he spoke, he told them that if they got lost, WE would come find them!
In the bag is this mirror. Bart bought it and wondered why he couldn't see himself very well. He then discovered that you had to peel off the film to see the true you.And of course, he related it to Being a Child of God.
This is what Bart put on the back of the mirror for them.
In their bag Bart had these cards which were of special people. The magnifying glass was focused on the Savior. He told them to keep their focus on the Christ and the Prophets.
Bart was overjoyed to find this water called, "Eternal".
And for the back of the Eternal Water he had this!
To end, Gudrun just lost her only sibling and is struggling with somethings (she is the only member in her family). She is not however, struggling with her testimony. Bart goes after those in need and he is always by her side.
We love hearing Gudrun tell her story of finding the gospel and before the baptism we found her in talking to the friends. They ask about her conversion, and she told them that she would love to share it with them at another time because it was time to start.
But like Bart she is always sharing her testimony and the love for the gospel.
We just love these people!
As we cleaned the chapel Saturday morning Monique said she wasn't letting us go home ever! I told her we plan to kidnap her and take her home with us.
(Our list goes longer each day of those we plan to take home with us.)
I learned an important lesson after teaching our Sunday School class Sunday. We were few in numbers, but an important lesson was taught to me.
I wanted to make sure the class understood about the bible and then go into Paul in the New Testament. I reminded them of Noah which they all knew. We then went to Abraham and Isaac. When we got to the 12 tribes of Israel and Joseph being sold into Egypt it was like seeing the "deer in the headlights" look!
I realized later that I was no longer teaching the youth with Stacy Jones back home. These kids may not have had the gospel very long in their life. Their parents may be recent converts and their knowledge is not like the youth back home.
Even the idea of a simple prayer was not always known. One young man has volunteered twice to say the closing prayer in class but has asked for my help in doing it. We now plan to teach them how to say a simple prayer.
With their limited knowledge I asked the bishop to step in and explain Circumcision to them. I find it hard to teach the Bible without knowing that word. I also don't know the right way to explain it to a group of teenagers. Any thoughts on this are welcome because we had few kids Sunday and it may come up again.
Hillary did not cause much damage in our area. This was the only thing
(Except a lot of water) that we saw on our walk Monday Morning.
I was wondering if any of you have heard of the movement going on at the BYU campus? They are trying to approve the wearing of pants that are cut off at the knee. They have formed a group now called, "The-Anti-Knee-High-Levis" group.
Love you all
