September 28, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
September 28, 2011
The Angel Moroni will Descend upon Philadelphia

The ground breaking ceremony was held last Saturday for the new Philadelphia Temple and it was televised at each of the chapels in the 8 stakes in this area. The event was reported widely and one of the local papers headlined that the “Angel Moroni will descend on Philadelphia.” We picked up a couple women from one of our classes who don’t have a car and we watched it at one of the downtown chapels. There are about 1.5 million people in Philadelphia and we would guess there are at least 10 times that many people in the cities nearby.

As you can see from the buildings in the background at the dedication, the temple will be built right downtown.
Two of the speakers at our summer seminary, Vai Sikahema and Ahmed Corbitt participated in the temple dedication program. They are from the Cherry Hill New Jersey Stake Presidency. Vai Sikahema is a popular sportscaster on TV and Ahmed Corbitt (stake president) is the Church’s public relations director. We were much impressed by their willingness to come talk to the few kids at summer seminary. President Sikahema’s talk about how his family went to the New Zealand temple was inspiring. He is a frequent contributor to the Deseret News.

Vai Sikahema with summer seminary and with Elder Eyring.
We forgot our camera on the day President Corbitt came to our summer seminary dressed in character as a Chautauqua impersonation of Joseph Smith Jr. Here is a photo of him giving a similar performance at a youth conference. To our little band quoted the whole of Doctrine & Covenants section 1 and played a game with them where he would tell them the section from the D&C if they read to him any verse at random.

September 21, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
September 21, 2011

Monday we had our monthly cultural excursion at the Brandywine Art Museum. This museum is built inside an old mill on the Brandywine River in one of the most beautiful river valleys we have seen. Brother Muldowney, our CES director was our tour guide. He still teaches some art classes in the summertime for the National Academy of Arts so we received a wonderful amount of information.
The Brandywine Museum features the art of Andrew Wyeth who is famous for his illustrations for Treasure Island, Kidnaped, The Last of the Mohicans, and many other books. You may recognize these illustrations from Treasure Island. The actual paintings are very large, the size of a kitchen table, and they are most impressive and very colorful.

These next photos are of Nancy standing beside the old Brandywine Mill and of us together by the river. The area near the museum is also a battlefield of the revolutionary war. The British, under the command of General Howe, landed their forces at the mouth of the Delaware and began to march north towards Philadelphia (then the capital of the United States). Washington sent his forces to head them off by holding the fords on the Brandywine River. The British had superior numbers and knowledge of the area and defeated the continental army in this battle. We were told that there were a lot of Tories among the settlers along the Brandywine and perhaps that had an influence on the outcome of the battle as well.

September 15, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
September 15, 2011

We are back to our usual routine, studying making, Power-Point slides, fighting traffic to get to one of the chapels to teach a class, and then coming home late to collapse at the apartment only to repeat it all again perhaps but with an umbrella in hand the next day. Nancy bakes cookies every other day. Nothing invites the spirit like homemade oatmeal and raison cookies. The Elders from next door have a standing dinner appointment every Wednesday. They are such well-mannered and hardworking puppies.

We really look forward to being with each group of students. One young mother broke into tears on Monday morning as she recounted the relief she felt in being able to have a spiritual break in her week by attending institute class. The ladies all rushed to comfort her and Elder B. looked for a door to escape through. On Wednesday evenings we have a large class of mostly elderly students. These geriatric students, as we fondly call them, do share one thing with the younger students in that most of them are single. Many of the women have outlived their spouses. They too crave the feelings of shared spirituality that institute classes provide. We are sometimes a little hoarse after class from shouting because several don’t hear well. “Eh? What did he say?” is a frequent refrain in that class. Our class from the inner city also has unique individuals but the same sense of finding comfort in sharing the scriptures with others. One young man from the city ward has started attending community college. He is a little nervous about his English class and sent us a paper he wrote so we could correct errors. Reading his experiences was a reminder that most of us have no idea of the difficulties of growing up in impoverished cities.

We have our fun days. We went to the movie ‘Contagion’ this week. It made us more conscious of the practice that Mormons shake hands with everybody which pretty much negates opening doors with your elbow and wiping the handles of shopping carts. So we also went to WalMart and got our flu shots soon after seeing the movie.

These two photos are taken from the “Rocky Steps” at the Philadelphia Art Museum after we had seen the Rembrandt exhibit on “The Faces of Jesus.” Next week we will be going to the Brandywine Art Museum. At this rate we shall be some of the most cultured people we know pretty soon. Perhaps we can become more discriminating yard sailors when we get home and find great art treasures.

And this is the view from our apartment window during one of the most recent rain storms. We love the rain. Besides being refreshing, the rain keeps the college kids from partying in the parking lot.

updated email on request for recipes

Wanted to provide a reminder that we wanted to gather recipes by Oct 1 so that I could get them all in a book and printed up.



So start sending them to me via email (spyrah@charter.net or cns9554@charter.net).



thanks!

Start sending me some recipes!

Wanted to provide a reminder that we wanted to gather recipes by Oct 1 so that I could get them all in a book and printed up.

So start sending them to me via email (spyrah@lgifs.com or cns9554@charter.net).

thanks!

September 6, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
September 6, 2011

The last two weeks have been busy. As a friend used to say of his days playing shuffleboard in a wintertime retirement community in Arizona, “I don’t know how someone with nothing to do can stay so busy doing it.”
Jake stayed with us on the weekend before Irene came to visit, Hurricane Irene that is. We packed a lot of pleasant times into 1½ days together with Jake, including stake conference where he graciously endured being introduced to many of our Philly friends and then going to Valley Forge where we are becoming expert Revolutionary War history guides. The streets of North Philly can be more dangerous than a war zone in Afghanistan and we kept jokingly threatening to take him downtown into North Philadelphia at night for a real survival battle but we spared him for his upcoming desert challenge.
Hurricane Irene came and went leaving behind a lot of rain and some downed trees. As we drive through the tree lined streets of Philadelphia we are like kids watching fireworks on the 4th of July – “Ooo, look at that one! Those roots must have rotted away,” or “Look, it brought down the cable TV lines for a whole block.” An arcing power line downed on a driveway on the street behind our building bored a hole in the concrete and left a puddle of green glass behind. Abby, a young African immigrant woman who lives on the 12th (top) floor had her apartment flooded during the hurricane. The ceiling bowed down and her carpet became sour with the water. She has been sleeping on our couch until another apartment becomes ready – today we hope. She is fairly tall and our couch is, as Jake can attest, short and not very comfy. Abby is an ‘Au Pair’, a foreign nanny, who works and is planning to go to school. We have met a number of nannies including Elena, a Russian au pair, who we recently taught the temple preparation lessons, and now who has now left the singles ward to marry some guy she met online from Utah.

For our cultural immersion this month we went to the Philadelphia Art Museum to see “The Faces of Jesus.” The museum was pricey, probably in most part for the security guards in every room, but it was well worth it and worth going again. It is strange and almost overwhelming to be in room after room, many rooms with paintings worth in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. This was a special exhibition of paintings of Jesus, many of them by Rembrandt. It has been interesting for us to see paintings of Jesus as a Black man, a Jew, (as in the Rembrandt paintings), as iconic figures, and as various types of Europeans. Rembrandt’s paintings had the most realism and feeling of expression of all that we saw. He used young Jewish men as models. The many students in his studio and other artists were influenced by his realistic
We have gotten together with the other senior missionaries several times now for dinners and family home evenings. It’s nice to commiserate (that’s a nice word for the scripturally condemned ‘murmuring’) with the other old geezers in the mission field. It turns out that they are all pretty normal folk.
These are the Larsen’s who just went home last month. They traded in their Dodge Caravan and bought a little Sion Box while they were here. It was an impressive feat to get all the way home in it.

This is our latest group: The Johnsons, Houses, Baileys, Smiths, Drinkwaters, Blattmans, Ashbys, Schaefermeyers, and Moyers.

August 25, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
August 25, 2011

Today’s news had an article about the expected Alzheimer’s epidemic in the U.S. as Baby Boomers age into their waining years. So we have discovered a new business plan for Sarah. This business is located on the West block of apartments where we live. When we’ve looked in through the windows there are a perpetual number of elderly folks bent over staring at a plate of food. The expressions on their faces are never evocative of “Yum!” but more of puzzlement, like “What is this stuff, Soilent Green?” If our Sarah had this business there surely would be some brightly decorated cupcakes or something else to brighten their meal.

Sister B. wouldn’t go close to take the photo. Perhaps she thought that someone would rush out and capture her. We thought it would be fun to photo-shop our pictures in the window but it was a step beyond our tech level.

It’s raining again today – 14 inches so far this month. Hurricane Irene is projected to dump a lot of rain by the end of the week to create an all-time record monthly rainfall. That happened while we were in Australia nearly 40 years ago. We are excited to use our umbrellas. Sister Blattman made a demonstration emergency pack for Zone Conferences last week. We may need it this week if Irene becomes belligerent.

Jake stopped in for a visit on the weekend. We picked him up at the airport and whisked him right over to the Liberty Bell and historic area downtown. After stake conference Sunday morning we went to Valley Forge and Bryn Athyn Cathedral. We really enjoyed the visit and break from our routine.

We are studying in preparation for our presentation prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament at the Seminaries and Institutes conference on Saturday. Our lesson may not be very sophisticated but it will be heartfelt. Sometimes we think we are better at demonstrating teaching techniques than explaining doctrines.

August 18, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
August 18, 2011

Summer Seminary is completed this week. It kept us hopping and the summer went by very quickly as a result. At the end two of the boys got up and thanked Sister Blattman for the excellent lunches. We know they liked that part. We had a lot of fun with them, memorizing scriptures, playing games, and eating Sister Blatman’s fine lunches. Tuesday, this week, we went downtown to the State Historical Society where the kids each got to read from an 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon and learn about Thomas Kane who befriended the Saints and who lived nearby in Philly.

Then we went to the Independence Mall where we stood near the place where the church rented a carpet store and held services. The actual spot is now occupied by the Independence Visitors Center where you get tickets to go see the Liberty Bell. On that corner, in 1840, Orson Hyde preached and requested help to send him to Palestine to dedicate it for the return of the Jews. A man came forward and gave him a purse containing gold coins for his trip, requesting only that he be remembered in his prayer. In his prayer, Orson Hyde said:
“Do Thou also look with favor upon all those through whose liberality I have been enabled to come to this land. Particularly do Thou bless the stranger in Philadelphia, whom I never saw, but who sent me gold, with a request that I should pray for him in Jerusalem. Now, O Lord, let blessings come upon him from an unexpected quarter, and let his basket be filled, and his storehouse abound with plenty.”
After that we went by a chapel where Joseph Smith delivered a sermon to 3,000 people in January of 1840. The building is now a Jewish Synagogue and we just looked at it as we drove by.
As part of our final class we had ‘Brother Joseph,’ speak. He was the first member to join the Church in Haiti, the first missionary from Haiti, and then the first mission president to Haiti. He worked for the Church for a number of years as a CES director for the Caribbean area. Before he came we expected an older man but he turned out to be about 10 years younger than us. (It seems like everyone is younger than us nowadays.) A humble man, he now works for Target and spoke gently with the kids about their goals.
There is a lot of brown in the photo. Perhaps we should have chosen a lighter background. The old white guy really stands out.

July 25, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
July 25, 2011

Summer Seminary
Uku is from Liberia and he came and spoke to our seminary class who are also Liberians. There is a large population of Liberians in Philly. There is even a ward that is mostly West Africans. Uku has been a member for a little over a year and he is getting ready to leave on a mission to Seattle in a week or so. We forgot to take his photo until after the kids left but we have the seminary teacher, Alex Alton, in the photo with us.

The next day, while visiting the Morris Arboretum, Sister Blattman is pictured standing on an elevated walkway in the trees. Notice the white knuckles. This is step one of aversion therapy as a way to curing her fear of heights.

Here we are with our seminary class at the Arch at Valley Forge.

Sister B. is either boxing with gargoyles or she is imitating stone carvers.

Prince and Phillip (twins) want to be gargoyle models for sculptors.
The record heat wave passed by for now. The Elders were told to stay in on the 100+ degree days. We did just the opposite and drove around in our car’s air conditioning for relief and then went to the Harry Potter Movie. Senior Missionaries have a lot more freedom than the young Elders. Back at the apartment we finally got the management to give us an air conditioner. The ones we had just weren’t doing the job and we are a lot more comfortable now.

July 18, 2011

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal
July 18, 2011

Senior Missionary Luncheon

Us, the Ashby’s, the Larsons, the Johnsons, Sister Bailey, the Schaefermeyers, Elder Bailey.

We drove to Allentown to have lunch with other senior couples in the Philadelphia mission. We ate at Ruby Tuesday’s and the waitress apparently didn’t know much about Mormons because she kept pointing out the drinks on the menu. The Larsons and Baileys are in the mission office. The Ashby’s and Johnsons are up in the North part of Pennsylvania and Southern New York working on member and leader support. The Johnsons told us they drive 3,000 miles a month visiting people. When it comes to miles traveled, I thought we were trying to give them a run for their money this last Sunday as we traveled downtown three times in one day. It is about a 45 minute trip one way for us to go downtown.

Sunday we attended a fireside by Keith Hamilton, the first African American bishop of the Church and the first African American to graduate from BYU Law School. His parents both died when he was a child and because of that he had a desire to learn more about the doctrine of eternal families when he listened to the missionaries when he was a senior in college. In his fireside he discussed Jesus healing the man blind from birth of whom his disciples asked “…who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind.” He compared this to the often repeated doctrine regarding Blacks that they were less valiant in the spirit world and like the blind man, sinned before they came to earth. Or the similar repeated doctrine that they are cursed because of Cain (their parents sinned). Christ’s answer in John 9:3 is “Neither hat this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” That is, each of us had a choice in our station in life and each of us has a destiny to fulfill. Everyone has certain talents and abilities or opportunities to give and receive service that make us valuable in God’s eyes.