Happy in LA

One of the most ridicules creations or statues is this bronze thing in the park on Santa Monica. I suggested we get a watermelon and place on top, so it makes sense and doesn't scare the little kids. Sister Snyder decided that she knew what the obnoxious thing was for!

                  Someone lacked good common sense in making this thing!

                           Okay did you meet Nazreen yet? 

                            Well here she (he) is. 

He wore his hair down, so I asked him to take a picture with Sister Snyder since she wore her hair down also. (She played around, and we were almost late to church thus the hair has to just be.)                                      

In giving the Relief Society lesson on Sunday some old hurtful feeling started to surface and there was a concern about an older sister who could not tolerate Nazreen. This Sunday they had a speaker who spoke on not judging and being the Savior's hands in Ministering to others. We all loved it and hoped that the sister who has brought the contention will learn to love all of Gods children.  Nazreen has brought people to church almost every Sunday.  

We are so happy with our ward. We now have Brother Lifferth coming before his Sacrament Meeting and playing the piano for us. Our Chorister Johnny Mask is happy. 

Johnny is also grateful for help with Family History which he says he knows nothing about (his other calling). The Hursts, that has a mission call to work in the LA Family History building, wanted to attend our ward and so they are helping the ward and Johnny with this. 

Sister Snyder and I help teach Relief Society and the youth from 12-18 and so the bishop is happy. Also, he has the Hursts teaching Gospel Doctrine. What a blessing that the Hurst choose this ward to attend.

 (Just another strange creature roaming the streets with the homeless!)

The last few Sundays we looked like we have a real congregation. 

The back row is filled with a family from Hawaii. They have a cousin that is competing in the American Idol and the results were last night. 

   I wish we could have seen it. (Sister Snyder just looked it up and he won!!!)

Another row is filled with a family from Russia who we don't know if they are staying or leaving. (Investigators are called friends now) We are so lucky to have a member from Russia that can translate for them when they come. 

We also have 3 young men from Utah and Idaho selling pest control for the summer and they often have girlfriends that fly in for the weekend. 

We have Mike that came a couple of weeks ago. He works with sex traffickers and had just finished a long case of a priest who was hiding behind his church while abusing and selling woman and children in the church. Mike said he quit coming to church because he sometimes tried to fit in and drank a beer. He also was wrestling with what he sees going on and God. 

His wife is in the medical field, and he said they have to move every few years when their lives come in danger. 

Mike came back for the third time this Sunday.  Gudrun took him under her wing. (Usually, it's Bart but I think they are working together to fellowship everyone they see especially Nazarene.) 

                         

You just gotta love these people.

Gudrun reminded us of her conversion since it is now two years. She tells how a few years ago she turned back to God. She had given up on Him and if He was real. She began having questions come to her. She then decided to go back to her church, so she attended mass and confession. She said she expected some fireworks, but nothing happened, but she didn't stop. The questions were still there, and she hoped that while attending church the answers would someday come. 

    (I know you've seen this picture, but I want you to see Gudrun again)

One day Gudrun began searching for some good music and came across the Tabernacle Choir. She downloaded some music and felt moved so she looked up the church's website. 

That is when the fireworks began for her. With everything she saw it was like fireworks going off one right after another. Her questions were being answered.  The part you'll all love is that SHE called the missionaries. Imagine getting her call! She was so golden and has been golden ever since. 

Sunday Gudrun took Mike & Bart and they all attended the Hurst's Gospel Doctrine Class. We went to teach our class for the first time but the Area Seventy was there and he wanted to teach and so of course we let him. 

What a wonderful experience to see him get excited and work with the youth. We were sad that we missed the Gospel Doctrine class but felt blessed to be in with the Area Seventy teaching the gospel to the youth.

(Sister Snyder already in Heaven)

On Saturday we had been asked to work with the Lifferths and the Johnsons to help with a Stake Primary activity. As normal we were given the assignment and a little video to watch. Then we were on our own. The Johnsons had gone home for about a week and came back all stressed out. We got together with very little- I mean very little planning and pulled it off. It was such a fun time for us all. We truly know the Lord is watching over us. 

(Sister Lifferth with a group traveling through the wilderness like Lehi and Nephi.

We were lucky enough to have a black railing that came down into this area and we used it as the Iron Rod! This is back of the big Stake Center.)

Still traveling! It's a long, long journey......

Elder and Sister Johnson emphasized the Liahona and the ball with the spindle. They played Simon Says but as "Nephi Says". Once Elder Johnson got the kids, he wouldn't let them go. He was having way too much fun.

         The Lifferths did Lehi and Nephi taking their families across the ocean. 

Sister Snyder was at the end to help them get into Heaven. 

With each correct answer to her questions they would step up one more step to Heaven.

They received a fruit snack here in Heaven. 

I was in the beginning to explain the trip they were taking and where it came from.

Water games was provided at the end to help clean all the chalk off the sidewalk.

One Sunday the Lifferths invited us over for Sunday dinner. Their mission calling is teaching Seminary. They attend the Spanish ward right after us. (We will be teaching their youth on the 3rd Sunday. Seems right since he plays the piano for us.)                         Every Sunday they feed a crew like this.

The young man on the left in the middle came from South America and speaks no English. He had to leave because of the gangs. Mother's Day is hard for him since he knows he will never see his family again. His story, like so many of the members in the Lifferth's ward is tragic. The things he had to go through. There is a member that is allowing him to live with her. He has found a dish washing job but has had no schooling so he can't read or write. Sister Lifferth gets teary eyed when talking of the time that they must go home and leave him. 

Okay one more about our neighbor. This neighbor lives just at the end of the block in the middle of the street!

Her home is these boxes and a umbrella. Don't ask how she sleeps in such a small space because I don't have the answer.

Her sweeping her space or her sweeping the street!

She usually folds everything up and leaves for the day, but we went walking early enough that she was still sleeping. Notice the traffic on either side of her going by?

This is a bad shot but if you look closely, you can see her sweeping her area and her home is not far from her.

                A lesson in “Public Affairs: in the church……

 Meet the Doxey’s. Their mission call is in Publics Affairs here in California and they are from Salt Lake City. Their job is to become friends and work with the General Consuls (a consul is an official appointed by a government to live in a foreign city and protect and promote the government's citizens and interests there.)

They are to work with international leaders of the highest ranking.

 The ranking goes, President of the country, then Prime Minister, then Ambassador, then Consular. 

There are 96 Countries that have a consular in Los Angeles.

San Francisco has 75. New York has over 100.

One million Mexicans live in LA so there is a consular responsible for their needs and rights.

The church has a Public Affairs office like this one set up in New York, Washington DC, in Brussels Belgium, Geneva Switzerland and opening one in London as well as Asia.

Los Angles is the third largest consulate core in the church with New York being second.

While introducing the consular to the church they see what their humanitarian needs are in their countries to see if the church can help.

 They will say, “We are worried about education in our country. We say,” We have BYU Pathway worldwide”. They say, “We’re worried about self-reliance”. (Well Duh! That’s an easy one for us)! They say, “We’re worried about our families (Doxey’s then share the Family Proclamation with them.) Sri Lanka heard it just the other day.

We want to introduce you to our Public Affairs department because they are our neighbors. Doxey's live in our complex. Their office is across the street on the temple grounds right next to the Visitors Center, the Mission Office and the Family History Center. We live as close to Heaven as you can get:)

Last night the Visitor Center, working with Public Affairs, invited the LA Philharmonic to preform for the Consulars.  

We (Senior missionaries) were invited once they knew there would be enough room. There were only 14 members of the orchestra there, but they were excellent. It was such beautiful music. 

We listened to Bach, Mozart, Dvorak, & Grieg. 

The Consler's  General that attended came from Bulgaria, France, Hungary Korea, Latvia, Qatar, Senegal Slovak Republic, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand Togo, Turkey, Ecuador, El Salvador, New Zealand, Azerbaijan, and Finland. 

Now you'll understand why the big map in the Public Affairs Office. Most of us don't even know where half of these places are!

                                                     

The Consular in the Los Angeles area that Doxey's are to work with.

Bulgaria was at the performance last night.

                                    New Zealand was there.

                               Senegal was there. Look it up right!

                                     Slovak Republic was there also.

Do you see on the bottom, Togo? He wanted nothing to do with us because our stand on the gays. Just recently when the church came out with wanting equal rights for everyone, he has warmed up to us. When he came, he brought his husband, and you know he had a warm welcome.

At times they will make a book to give to all the Consulars showing all the events and fun they had. 

This one is where they went to Salt Lake to a ranch. 

Last photo is of our wonderful Sister Clay who works in the office with housing and ordering supplies.

In this photo I accused her of stalking someone. She claims she was looking for a house number. She has to find apartments for missionaries. 

Wow so sorry! This was a lot longer than I thought it would be......

Happy in LA...Who would have ever thought we would say that?  

Our Lovely Little Branch

If you're wondering why I am without my companion, Veva had to fly home to a funeral and was able to attend our brother Ed's 80th birthday party and well as her friend's funeral.

So, this is Elizabeth Child. Her parents are serving their mission in the LA Visitors Center, where Lizzy serves most often as well. On Friday mornings Lizzy helps Sister Snyder and I fill out the orders of household needs and proselytizing books and papers for the missionaries. 

(We had a Sister DeMartini who was teaching Sister Snyder and I how to do it all when she fell and broke her knee and had to go home two weeks early.)

With Sister DeMartini and Sister Snyder gone and since it had been transfers last week, I knew that our 3-hour job would take longer. Lizzy was tired that day and then left to go to the Visitor Center at noon. I stayed until 3:00 pm and finally got all the orders out. It was an exhausting but sweet time as well as a good learning experience.

There are only two wards in our chapel, so we clean the chapel every other month. April was our month to clean so I went on Saturday while Sister Snyder was gone. 

This is our sweet, faithful Monic. She is from France and does not like her picture taken. She is such a faithful member and shows up to clean after catching the bus to the chapel. She may be small but she is a Hoot!

Once I went to throw some dead flowers away and she couldn't stand it. She had to cover them up because she felt sorry for them. That is why, she said she won't buy flowers because she is so sad when they die. If she ever has to throw away flowers, she makes sure they are placed carefully in the garbage and nothing bad touches them (she covers them with newspaper).

This is my friend Johnny Mask. I may have spoken of him before. I didn't dare ask him if I could take his picture today (I'm pretty sure he didn't comb his hair carefully after all he just walked across the street to open the gate and help us clean.)

Later in the day we all came back to a funeral. The funeral was for a Sister Ann Perry as we all knew her (it wasn't her real name).

When we first arrived, several people told us to go check on Ann Perry, but she was in ICU and we never got in. Johnny told me that now that Ann had passed, he would tell me her back story.

At age 15 Ann was convicted of murder. Now her real name is, Juliet Marion Hulme and the movie they made about her life is called "Heavenly Creatures". Look it up! 

What Johnny told me was enough for me to hear. I will tell you at age 15 her and another young girl became closely connected not in a romantic way but in a strange way. Sad to say as the mother tried to separate them (they were moving) the girls couldn't bear it. And so, the gruesome murder. 

When the authorities realized what had happen the girls were too young to be convicted so they both spent 5 years in isolation. 

While in those 5 years of isolation Ann realized what she had done and was so remorseful. 

                     Let's just brighten our day with a flower found here.

Here is the best part.....Ann became a mystery writer. She sold lots of books and wrote beautiful poetry. As I said, look her up, she was well known.

 

As you know, having a past like hers will always catch up to you, but she lived a good life. 

She had neighbors who introduced her to the gospel and Ann was a faithful Latter-day-Saint. Her brother and his family spoke highly of her.

At the funeral her publishers and co-workers read beautiful words or poetry that Ann had written. They talked of how she loved her religion and bore her testimony of the here-after.

One cute story her co-worker told was when Ann was about 5 a big bully boy stopped her on her way home and threatened to beat her with the stick he had if she didn't give him her money. 

At this young age Ann began to cry and tell him how poor her family was and what was to be done with the money she had in her pocket. When she was done the lad then gave her every cent he had in his pocket.

 I just love that. She was a GREAT storyteller even at a very young age. Right?

Sorry just had to add this one because he has so little. Most have a few more things than this. It makes it easy to just stop where you are and go to bed.

We see a few of these cars around. 

I for one don't understand what and how they work.

Now that Ann has passed you may wonder who is left in our little ward? 

(Oh at church Sunday we had a man from another country move into our ward. You can't believe how excited we all are to have someone come into our little ward.)

So who is left? First let me just tell you why they're all gone! (I learned this at the funeral).

Before Covid the Hollywood ward was as big as life. It was packed full of all kinds of people working in the entertainment world. They were close and had wonderful activities. It was booming. After covid most had moved away because the movie industry had shut down and they needed to go find jobs. 

Who is left... let us begin with my friend Johnny Mask. Johnny will never tell you his age. Your age will affect your acting career. Johnny plays parts, he says where he usually gets killed. He said he has killed a few times but mostly they kill him off. He said this last little part was hard for him to learn his lines. I didn't want to remind him of his age.

The next interesting fact is that when Ann Perry had her heart attack our young Brother Bunker was visiting her. He got her to the hospital. Yes, Brother Bunker's family did come from Bunkerville. He says he remembers as a kid going to reunions there.  Brother Bunker and his wife are also in the entertainment business. He is more into plays; Johnny says and there isn't much in that business. His wife is young and pretty so I'm sure she can find work.

I want you all to notice that I didn't have a lot of the homeless in our blog this time (okay there is the one). So instead of homeless I tried to put some nice pictures.  I am sure we overdid it last time and the homeless pictures. There are a couple of sights we could never take a picture and show it to anyone.

                    BUT let us just show you our neighbor down the street.

Notice how clean HER area is? She sweeps all around and you can see some trash bags that are not near her clean area. I assume that this is the woman that our Sister Wycott gave a coupon for M-Donalds to. As Sister Wycott walked away the homeless lady threw the coupon back at her.

The other day as I drove by she had some of those stretch bands and working her legs with them. 

As sister Snyder and I walked back from our walk one day we came upon her and I could see that she was standing behind the bench and was changing her clothes. We were about to walk right through her bedroom. How embarrassing would that be? So we just stepped off into the road and walked in front of her place as not to embarrass her.

When she leaves during the day, she makes sure no one can sit on her bench or take her stuff.

So who's left in Hollywood Ward?

Well we have the Bishop and his wife with us here. On Sunday after the Bishop had asked me to speak in Sacrament meeting, he invited the elders, Bart, Sister Gudrun and I to come to dinner with them. It was then that I told him he had asked me to speak on my birthday. He felt bad and I was glad. 

I must say I felt that maybe I was like my grandson's Layton's wife who was asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting on her due date and with a bad cold.

The Bishop's family is still with us but want to move so bad. They, like so many others often live in a two bedroom apartment. Everything is crammed into that little apartment with all of them. Even the bikes are there otherwise they would be stollen. It is so sad to see this. 

In one of our Relief Society meetings we all were introducing ourselves and one sister said, " I am Sister so-and-so and I own my own home. Really! do you know how rare that is here? I wanted to go up and touch her. The two people in our ward that own their own homes are there because they are old and the city just moved in around them.

So this is Andrea. This is her two weeks ago giving our Relief Society lesson. She opened with a quote from a Buddist Monk but ended her lesson from a quote from one of the seventies. She began with a terrible assault on her when she was young and skillfully brought it into ministering (not judging, excepting people where they are and just being there for them).

She was also very skillful in when someone commented she didn't just thank them, she showed how it tied into the lesson on Ministering. She made everyone that contributed feel good about what they said. It was beautiful how she did that. 

It was not your normal lesson but there was such trust in that room that it was wonderful. Even Nazreen (he is a she) participated. Andrea has a sweet testimony, and we hope to watch her grow in the gospel as she teaches the lessons. 

Nazreen came back to church last Sunday and brought a friend (the second one she has brought to church)

She stayed after church with her friend and worked with the Hurst's on getting on the genealogy site. 

Nazreen told me her mother had all the work done so I questioned her. She then called her mother and talked to her about their genealogy work. As she finished her call she said, " My mom is high-fiving Jesus right Now!" Then she said, "Love You Mom" and hung up. What a happy sight (The Love You Mom and high-fiving Jesus)

Oh, you can't see Andrea's cute little nose ring but it's there. She works with props in the Entertaiment business, so I believe that is why she is dressed like this. That is her surroundings.  

Last we have Bart & Gudrun still with us. Bart was mentioned in other posts. As we said, Bart worked with Leslie Jordon until he passed in Oct. He has been left without a job since but was left in the will, so he is not too worried yet.

Our wonderful Bart was able to attend the temple for the first time since 2004. What a great day! 

Gudrun is a convert who never believed in Jesus and was so happy to know he is real. She loves the gospel.

Oh yes Bart was offered another job and it is assisting P Wee Herman. 

We had lunch with Bart and Gudrun (she never says her first name) and Bart told us that he doesn't feel good about taking this job so he might not.

Gudrun calls me scrooge sometimes. She will say in her text, "Be civil Sister Scrooge!"

I asked Bart not to invite Gudrun to lunch because she picks on me. Bart says that's why he invited her and he has been grooming her for years!

He says, "She is my Princess Leia to your Darth Vader"!  We never laughed so hard as we all tease each other, except for Sister Snyder because they think she walks on water. 

When we ordered our food Bart and Gudrun made us laugh so hard because it was like they were ordering only food that had gluten in it (which I can't eat). 

 Now don't worry, we had plenty of food and it was just so much fun! They both are so witty. 

Sister Gudrun knows I'm not a hugger so she hugs me until I cry, "Uncle" and I have to watch her because she'll run up to me and just start hugging me.

I think I told you that no one offered to teach early morning Seminary, so Bart offered. He still lacked some of his blessing to be confirmed on him, but he offered, and they accepted him.

As we ate the other day, he once again told us of the lesson he was teaching in Seminary. It was the 3 parables, the lost coins, the one lamb that went away and the prodigal son. 

He told us that he had ordered the cutest little lambs and when he got them, they were flat like a pancake. But what a surprise when he opened the bag up. Out popped 3 cutest little lambs.

He's been texting us three girls all morning with pictures of this lesson that he is so excited to give to these teenagers. 

Here is his picture of the "Lost Coin"!

You've got to love his enthusiasm! He even went to the bank and got real dollars. (I'm sure he has a small class, and he was in the will remember)

Fun people who love the Lord and the gospel.

Okay, I'm sure that is enough about the wonderful people here in the Hollywood Ward. 

We just really love them (what little there are of them)

Later!