Sights of LA
People often ask us if we ever go “sight seeing” in Hollywood. Well, we do, but sometimes the sights we see are
not sights any person should see in public.
For instance, pants are often too low in the
back and a couple of times it was way too low in front showing more than we
wanted to see.
As usual one person was
questionable whether they were male or female. But when “they” turned around there
was no question. “They” had only a leather vest on and there was the evidence
hanging right before us. I think you’d call that indecent exposure but no one
seemed to care.
Not far up the street we saw
someone who we were sure was a short male with what seemed to be a little
growth around his lips. We were sure until we saw he was wearing only a sports
bra on top and it was clear full. We were confused once again.
The sights here never cease to amaze us!
Lessons
Learned (and Still Learning)
Clean chapel or clean temple
We volunteered in our ward to
help clean the temple because we live across the street. We were scheduled from
6am to 1pm. At one point the Spanish temple worker gave me a long pole with a
cloth on it and told me to go up and down the walls with it. Dusting the walls.
Now you must know we clean the
chapel every Saturday morning and we are getting pretty good at it. We can
clean fast and thorough.
So, this wall in the temple was
nothing. I started quickly going up and down those walls. I was just rolling
along when the man came back and said, “No, No Sister”! He quickly took the
pole from me and said, “Like this Slow, Slow”! We have one hour on this floor.
We go slow and carefully!”
So for the rest of the hour I had to remind myself slow and carefully, temple; not chapel. Slow, slow, slow you have one whole hour to clean this whole floor.
I would love to clean the chapel
like we clean the temple but, in this ward, we are still struggling to get
people out to clean on Saturdays.
It’s usually the same 4 people.
Sometimes people are told different times. We went once and only the bishop was in there and he had all the doors locked. We struggled to even get in. Hopefully we’ll get it together eventually.
Combining Hollywood to Spanish 4th
Ward “Hollywood 4th ward”
Growing pains……
Our Bishop, Bishop Hales, does not speak Spanish. He has been in the bishopric for years and is from Utah, and he knows the church well. When combining wards, they put the 4th ward bishop in as bishop again and Bishop Hales as 1st consoler.
Our bishop now, Bishop Castro, was
in the Hollywood ward when he was first called to be the bishop of the Spanish
4th ward. He is not very social and did not want to be the bishop
but they were in need of leaders. Bishop Castro once again is not to pleased to
be the bishop but because he is bilingual, they put him in as Bishop.
Although bishop Castro speaks English it is very hard to understand him at times.
One Sunday Bishop Castro put a person in a position which was the wrong position. The following Sunday he tried to fix the problem and we ended up sustaining him once again in the very same place. This just frustrates bishop more.
One Sunday he said, “These are the songs we’re singing on page 4 in English..and page 9 in Spanish…now sing in Spanish!
“What?!”
One night on the way to an activity our Senior Sister missionary explained it to me and I asked our Bishop Hale. He reassured me that they had 4 songs and wanted everyone to sing two in Spanish and other two in English.
Trick…..The way to do this is to
sit in front of a strong Spanish singer. That helps a lot.
I mentioned to the bishop that it
would be nice if they explained it a little to us. The following Sunday Bishop
Hales said the same thing but he added, “We would like you to try and
sing this time in Spanish if you can.” (or English, we switch back
and forth).
Once I found out what they were
trying to do I called Johnny Mask the music director and asked if he knew what
was going on and why they had called a young Spanish girl to help him conduct
the music.
He had no idea, so I told him what I knew. He was so surprised because he had no idea why they had called this Spanish girl to assist him. Things started to make sense to him now.
One time he conducted the song and they said, “…To be sung in Spanish. He was using his English song book but when he finished the Spanish folks kept on singing. (Sometimes Spanish songs have more verses than ours.)
Johnny was so embarrassed when this happened, and he just didn’t get what had happened. I told him that the young Spanish girl, I’m sure was called to conduct the Spanish songs and he was to conduct the ones in English.
They have called a translator. Of
course, they are inexperienced and do not have a copy of the talks. When
someone quotes a scripture there is dead silence.
Well, who can quote a scripture? When the speaker says something that is too hard to translate then again, we have dead silence. He is trying his best but it is a struggle. Often, we feel like we are right back in the Philippians.
(Speaking of Philippines, as I
left on my mission, I had a friend that kept saying, "Go over there and do the
work so they will build a temple in Laoag". Did you hear it? There IS going to
be a temple in Laoag. Miracles of Miracles!)
While we are off topic and talking about the Philippines, I want to warn you about California. First, Theron Jensen said after he and his wife’s mission to the Philippines that the yellow line on the road is just a suggestion. We are finding that here in California the RED light is just a suggestion! This is true! Believe me.
Once I saw that the signal said to walk and go across the road and as I was about to step off a bus went pass me going so fast. The next one that amazed us is when Sister Synder was stopped to turn across traffic to her left. The car behind her seeing that there was NO traffic coming BUT it was a red light just went around her and turned. We watch every day as people ignore the red lights.
In church we all have head phones
and use them when it is not in our language. Interesting enough no translation
during prayer or sacrament. They just do one in Spanish and then the other one
will be in English.
In Relief Society we have had
head phones and the Spanish sisters use them. We do have a good translator in
with us. This last Sunday the lesson was mostly in Spanish and even the
translator didn’t realize it was not going to be in English until later. When I
asked the Relief Society Pres. about this, she said one lesson will be in English
and another in Spanish each month. I told her to please let us know so we can
pick up headphone because so many of us English speakers didn’t know that and
didn’t pick up headphones.
What do you get when you cross a Fedex Driver @ a UPS Driver?
Fed Up!
Johnny Mask is a good storyteller
so one day he called to tell me about his temple experience. It was the first
session after the temple had been closed for 3 weeks. They had over 200
missionaries come to the temple that day so they were busy. People were wanting
to get back into the temple.
One session had about 10 of the
young sister missionaries during the session they realized that the sisters had
been given men’s packets. They had to stop everything and go down and get the
girls veils instead of wearing the men’s caps.
With all the people that day it was hectic and slow. During the last session one man got up and started to walk out of the session. He told them that with his medication he just had to go to the restroom. (As we walk from room to room the last room passes by a bathroom which someone always stops at and then we wait) No one knows why he didn’t stop then.
A Couple of times we have been
fortunate enough to be in the temple when Johnny was going through. It has been
fun to be able to worship with him.
For the past two weeks we have
been lucky enough to see Bart coming out of the temple. That man is so busy.
The other night as we went through the temple, we saw many of our Spanish ward members there. It was so sweet. Several of them we can’t communicate with so all we do is smile and hug each other.
This picture was on our early morning walk and we could tell the homeless had been here and had left their mark!
I am referred to as the Head Hunter by Monique. (Not sure I told you this already) Bishop Hale asked me to get individual pictures of ward members. They’re placed in his office with their picture under the heading of their calling. The problem is that some of these people are illegals so they're not sure they want their picture taken.
I'm proud of Sister Snyder and let me tell you why. Most of our Senior missionaries live close. There are two sisters that live way out. One of the sisters told Sister Snyder how bad they have it because they have to drive so much. Sister Snyder told her how we live out of our ward boundaries so all we do is drive. Besides shopping we drive to the Care Center, church, extra church activities, cleaning the church every Saturday, visiting the members, District Counsel, and activities held at the Stake Center. I believe that sister learned that sometimes it's part of your calling.
The other night we decided to divide and conquer. Sister Snyder attended the Senior Missionaries dinner and activity night, and I helped the elders give rides.
The missionaries have an activity night every Saturday night at the college. This night the missionaries from different areas and colleges combined the activities. It was in celebration of an Asian Holliday.
It is like Thanksgiving is to us. The families get together and play and eat. I was able to pick up some Chinese "friends" at USC and take them to UCLA institute building where we played games.
UCLA institute building
The red boxes have "Moon Cake".
This is what my passenger was going for....
Pray for the missionaries!
