August 8-14, 2022

We attended Zone Conference on Tuesday.  Sister Harkness used Minerva Teichert's painting Return of Captive Israel to teach us about freeing ourselves from bondage.

The painting was completed in 1945 and it hangs in the Relief Society building directly across from the Salt Lake Temple.  Sister Harkness first noticed the painting when she was in the building attending a training session.  She was so impressed with it that she started to research the story behind it and then purchased a copy that hangs in their home now.

Here is the information from the Church website about the painting:  After the Jews had been held in captivity for 70 years in Babylon, "the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia," and the king allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

King Cyrus said, "Let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem... All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred.  And these did Sheshbazzar [the prince of Judah] bring up with them of the captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem." (Ezra 1:1, 4, 11).

Sister Harkness asked us to look at the picture and determine where we might fit into the scene; we are all captive in one way or the other and our only way out is through Jesus Christ (meaning are our habits, addictions, apathy, attitude, etc. preventing us from making personal progress?).  Am I in the back of the line waiting?  Am I moving forward in haste?  Where do I desire to be?

This is a picture of the chapel during a break.  Missionaries carry around a lot of "stuff" so that they are always prepared.

And then there was lunch.  It took 30 extra-large pizzas to feed all of us.  Plus salads, carrot sticks and cookies.

We were invited to the chapel to have dinner with the young missionaries and a few other ward members on Wednesday evening.  Mo is a single man who wanted to cook for the missionaries and this was the best way he could think to do it.  He is a chef by trade and had a boardwalk restaurant in Atlantic City for awhile.  I don't know all the details but in brief, Mo is from Pakistan.  He is 60 years old and joined the church when he was living in New Jersey.  He was allowed to leave Pakistan as a young man train as an Olympic boxer.  He moved to Paris to qualify for the Olympics.  He never did qualify for the Olympics but did seek refugee asylum status and has never been allowed back in Pakistan.  When he joined the church his wife said she couldn't do it.  She returned to Pakistan with their four children.  Mo has not seen his children for 20 years.  His youngest daughter, who was born in the United States, is currently in medical school in Texas.  He is hoping to see her sometime in the near future.

Mo made pizza for us (think I've had my fill of pizza for awhile).  Everything was homemade and fresh.  He made a margarita pizza, butter chicken, barbeque chicken and seafood pizzas.  They were all very good.  Mo has been working hard and saving so he can open his own restaurant again.

Mo went to the temple at the end of July to receive his endowments.  When we were teaching him about the temple, he got teary and asked why no one had told him all these things before?  It's all in the Lord's timing - he is in the right place and ready at this time to make those covenants.

We were able to mow the Monette's lawn on Friday and help with some other yard work.  Joce was at the hospital receiving his chemo treatment while we were there.  It felt really good to do this simple service for the family.  Last week when we had dinner with them, we ate liempo ng baboy, or grilled pork belly.  It may have different names in the various regions of the Philippines.  John fell in love with it.  Today Joce brought over a container of baboy just for John.

The pork belly is marinated (we need to find out in what), then grilled.  It is pretty tasty.

John and I went different directions on Saturday and we both had a great time!  John connected with his old friend Emil (that he helped teach and baptize when he lived here in the early 70's and was the best man at Emil's wedding) and they went out for smoked meat sandwiches.

Emil will be 88 on his next birthday.  He drives a big Lincoln Town car and still gets around pretty good.  After lunch they toured the city a bit.  It was good for both of them to spend some time together.  Emil said they "talked like old ladies" and it brought back a lot of memories.  I think I should take offense at his reference to old ladies!

Sister Corbett (senior office sister) and I went to the Jean Talon Marche.  The market started in 1933 and is situated in the center of Little Italy.  It is huge and stays open year round.  It is supposedly one of the largest Farmers Markets in North America.

At one of the entrances of the market

You can find just about anything at this market - food related things, that is.  Fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, seafood, pastry and bread, honey, jams, sauces, books and cards and on and on.  It reminded me of the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

We had lunch at one of the seafood markets.  We both wanted a lobster roll but saw it was $24 so we settled for fish and chips, which were very good.

I was excited to see this store and want to go back and check it out.  You can't see it in the photo, but they had cevapi!  It was a little fatter than we were used to seeing in Bosnia, but it was indeed cevapi!

We feel so blessed to have all these great experiences.  Once in awhile we feel a little guilty to be having so much fun and so many adventures while serving a mission.  But we won't let a little guilt stop us!