A “somewhat normal” week

Postscript to our 5 guy’s story: (Elder Swope & Elder Gonzalez, from the Logan Square Ward, met with the young man and his family the next week.  After the 1^st lesson, his wife, his son, and his brother committed to be baptized in January!

On Monday of this week, they had us join them for the lesson on the Plan of Salvation.  It was an incredible experience and they all committed to attend Sacrament Meeting with us in the Logan Square Building!  Sister Beck and I got to actually participate in the teaching.  Sister Beck shared the story of how Christ acts as our Mediator with the Father to allow us to return to him.  This was very beneficial for the wife to help her understand Christ’s role in the Atonement.

As our Stake President discussed with the Lake Shore 1st Ward and Branch leadership the week we arrived, we are to "Gather & Strengthen Thousands of Souls unto Christ... one by one."  Through this miracle, we are doing just that.  

A “somewhat normal” week in the life of Senior (title only) Missionaries, Elder & Sister Beck:

Every week changes, so I’ll just give you last week.  Sunday, up at 7:30am, light breakfast, get ready for church, and leave the apt by 9:20am to walk 0.2 miles to catch the “Red Line” train at Clark & Division. Take the train north, one stop and get off at North & Clybourne.  Walk 0.4 miles to the Newberry Academy School where we hold church.

Attend Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School (Gospel Essentials) in the Lakeshore 1^st Ward, and then attend the Lakeshore Branch Sacrament Meeting.

Walk the 0.4 miles back to the “Red Line,” back to Clark & Division, walk the 0.2 miles back to the apartment. If we have any appointments with Inactives or Prospective Elders, take the car to church and go visiting right after. Eat dinner about 4:30-5:00 pm.

Spend the rest of the night in the apartment, unless there is an activity or meeting in either the ward or the branch.  Last week, it was driving over to the Logan Square Ward (5.5 miles away) to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional with members from the Ward and Branch.

Lake Shore Trail

Monday, up at 7:30am, dress warmly (morning temps are currently about 10-15 degrees). Leave the apartment by 8:15am and head out for our morning walk.  Most of these walks are to the Lake Shore Trail, however, frequently we head off to the post office or to the store.  This morning walk is usually our exercise for the day and is usually done for about 1 hour (which we usually walk about 3.2 miles). The trail is usually clear of snow and ice which makes it so enjoyable. If the wind is blowing hard off the Lake, we’ll find another route.

Cool Apt with Stained Glass Windows

We like heading up a street we’ve never been before to check it out.  The little 2-3 story homes have the coolest old architecture.

Home after our walk, we have morning prayer and breakfast.  We read our scriptures during breakfast.  Then, we study and plan our day.  If we have previously scheduled a visit to one of the members we are working with (Brother Ortiz or Sister Proudian) we focus our studying on what we’ll discuss with them that day.  If not, we’ll plan our visits based on the list we have been given by the ward and branch to visit and the location of them members.  We try to group them together so we can minimize either our walking or driving.  It’s not unusual to walk to Brother Ortiz (about 1.5 miles away) or Sister Proudian (0.7 miles).

Frequently, Monday’s are a ½ day “preparation day” where we’ll go do our laundry, but only late morning or early afternoon.  Sometimes everyone is doing their laundry on Monday and if so, we move our day to Tuesday.  We carry our 3 clothes baskets up 3 flights to the top floor of our apartment building where the laundry and exercise room are located.  We try to fit 3 batches in the washing machines and then 5 dryer loads.  If they all fit, we get our weeks laundry done in about 1 ½ hours while we study and plan our day. It costs us between $12-$15 each week to do our laundry.  This past week, Monday was our laundry day.

Based on who we are visiting and what their ages are we’ll visit mid-afternoon if they are retired or early evening if they are not.  We prefer mid-afternoon if possible since parking is so much better.  Even with that, if we have to park on the street, it usually costs between $2-$5; only to find out they aren’t home.  Very few do we call in advance for fear of them NOT answering the phone, some we do call but not many. 

Monday nights we started holding our “Empty Nesters FHE,” however, we found this was really the wrong time of year to start that… too many people out of town or too busy with the holidays.  So after a couple, we pushed it until after the first of the year.

Tuesday, same thing for our exercise.  If it is snowing or raining we’ll go up to the apt’s gym on the 32^nd floor and use the treadmill and bike to get our hour’s worth. Once a month on a Tuesday night, we meet with all the other Senior Missionaries and the Mission President and his wife at the Mission Home for dinner.  This is always a great time.  That was the case this past Tuesday.  All the Senior Missionaries take an assignment for dinner, this month I had volunteered Sister Beck to do the deserts.  She made Cheese Cakes and Éclairs.  Needless to say, they were a huge hit and someone recommended that she be in charge EACH month of the deserts, however, in January she has the main course. After dinner, we always play a game or something.  This month, we sang Christmas songs and told of our favorite Christmases.  Of course, ours was last Christmas when all 18 of us spent Christmas Eve together at our old house.  It will be a Christmas we’ll never forget.

Wednesday, same thing again for exercise.  You think we’d grow tired of an hour’s morning walk, but the city and the Lake Shore are so fascinating that we don’t.  Plus, the Lake Shore Trail is one of the places the city keeps clear of ice and snow, so it’s a good place to walk without killing yourself.  But for the first month or so, my feet took a while to toughen up, but I no longer have any blisters.

Wednesday afternoon we were scheduled to meet with Ben Ortiz, the Mexican man we are working with to get prepared to go to the temple.  He’s the one that has had a stroke and the left side of his body doesn’t work very well. Ben is a very visual kind of guy.  He loves reading (about all he does).  He especially loves reading church (ours and just about anybody else’s) literature on religion.  A week ago we had left him a couple of the conference talk Ensign and assigned him to read President Monson’s talk on the 3 R’s. 

Because he is so visual, I wrote out the Temple lesson on “Worthiness” and gave him all the scriptures to read regarding it.  We made that part of our lesson preparation after breakfast. 

We visited with Ben on Wednesday afternoon.  He not only read President Monson’s talk, he also read several others, including one on faith.  When we asked him to tell us about them, he said his 24 year old son’s girlfriend had taken the magazine and left him some religious DVD instead.  His son, Steven is inactive and so we are thinking the DVD’s are probably “anti-Mormon.”  He wanted me to hook up his DVD to work on his TV and I “on-purpose” forgot to.  We are planning to get him a subscription to the Ensign, so he’ll have good stuff to read.  However, he ALSO wanted us to get him a subscription to the “TRUMPET,” which I believe is a Jehovah Witnesses magazine.  We told him he needed to STOP reading all these other churches magazines (he also has several Catholic ones that I think his brother brings him by or he subscribes to.  He says all churches have good parts of them and we told him we agreed.  But we reminded him of what the Savior said to him in the Sacred Grove and if he believed Joseph Smith was a Prophet and that he had the first vision, then he needed to JUST read the restored gospel and NOT everything else because it was confusing him.  He agreed to try.  We’ll bring him December’s Ensign next week and hopefully the son or his girlfriend won’t take it.  He also wanted us to watch some religious DVD’s or VHS tapes with him (i.e. The Ten Commandments, The Bible, The Greatest Story Ever Told).  We told him we would bring some DVD’s with us when we came next week and watch them with him.

Wednesday night, we also tried to reach a Prospective Elder (P.E.) we have been having trouble getting to for some time because of never finding a parking place.  We finally made it to his address (after finding a pay parking spot about 3 blocks away).  His address was a rehab facility that said he was no longer there and he didn’t know where he had gone.  We also tried once more to reach another P.E. we have stopped by 3-4 times.  His name is on the buzzer that lets you in the building but he never answers it.  I had called him earlier in the day to let him know we had been trying to reach him and at least got his voice mail, so we know his number is correct.  Once again though, there was no answer.

We then dropped by Terry Proudian’s rehab facility and visited with her for about an hour.  We made sure she had a CD player (which she does) because we have purchased for her the Book of Mormon on CD’s since she has such a hard time reading with her MS.  We invited her to Christmas brunch and had a nice visit with her.  She needs some more clothes (she is always cold) and her doctor is getting her a new power wheelchair, her current one is SO outdated.

After meeting with her, we tried to contact another P.E. that lived close to Terry’s facility, but couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere so we decided we’d just walk up to his place another day from our apartment.

Then we headed right downtown to attempt to visit a P.E. that was a convert to the church.  We had a hard time getting through his doorman (it’s a real classy building).  The doorman kept telling the P.E. (Kevin Herman) that I was “Mr. Elder” from his church.  Finally, I got to talk to Kevin and explained who we were and he said we could come up for a few minutes.

View from Kevin's Apt

Kevin lived on the 58^th floor of this classy building.  He greeted us at the front door and invited us in.  Kevin is 55 and single.  His apartment was just a studio (about 600 sq ft) apartment with just about room for his bed, a small couch, TV and tiny kitchen, but oh what views.  He looked north and with a direct view of the Hancock Building and the Lake.  He also looked down on the top of several smaller cool building downtown.  He said if we thought the view were good from his apartment, we needed to come back in the summer and go on their sundeck on the top of the building where you had a 360 degree view of the city and lake.

We talked with Kevin about his relationship with the church.  He said he was converted about 10 years ago in Battle Creek, Michigan (where he grew up about 170 miles away) and then came to Chicago shortly thereafter to take a job and the Drake Hotel where he is still working.  He said he really didn’t have a need or time for the church right now in his life.  He goes home (to Battle Creek) almost every weekend to visit his two daughters and two grandchildren.

We told him about the Lake Shore 1^st Ward and how it was located more downtown than the previous ward and invited him out.  He didn’t commit, but we had a really nice visit with him.  He is really a nice guy and we hope to visit him again, either at his apartment or at the Drake (since we walk by it almost every day on our walk down to the Lake Shore Trail). We left him a small banana cake, Heidi had baked and iced and headed off home.  It would be really great to find someone in the ward that had some of the same interests as Kevin and have him make a new friend, in the ward.  We think he just came to the big city 10 years ago and got lost from the church.

Thursday, same morning activities as always.  While we were studying for the day, our Elders (Bryner & Buckway) stopped by.  We asked them if they had dinner plans for that night and they said no, so we invited them and thought it might be a good time to invite an investigator from our building.  The Elders had met this lady from Bosnia one night when they came over to coordinate some of our activities and member rosters.

Yasna was moving from a two bedroom apt in our building to a one bedroom because her mother had died in July and she no longer needs the bigger place.  The Elder’s helped her move and then she had them back to dinner where they gave her a discussion.  She said she was Christian, but had never been baptized in any church.  Heidi had gone down to visit her with the Elders after she moved and took her some turkey noodle soup and homemade rolls.

The Elders went down Thursday night and invited Yasna to join us and them for dinner at our apt.  We were just having Lentil Soup, Rolls, and Salad, so it was easy to fit them all in.  She joined us and we got to know her a lot better.  She is really suffering from the lost of her Mother.  She has a sister and a couple of nieces who live in Chicago.  We need to have them all over sometime for a dinner.  While we ate dinner, the Elders gave her a short discussion on prayer.  She also wants to quit smoking so Elders are going to come back and give her a discussion on that as well.  She has committed to go to church with Heidi and I, but didn’t this week, hopefully next week.

She left just in time for us to head off to our Ward Missionary Coordination meeting we do each Thursday.  We thought it was going to be held at our apt but it ended up being at one of the Ward’s Missionary’s home.  We ended up walking there with the Elders, it is about 1 ¼ mile away.  It was a good walk, but because our dinner with Yasna went a little longer than we thought we should have really drove since walking made us a little late.  The ward missionary who hosted the meeting was the only one that attended from the ward (out of 5 ward missionaries), so we and the Elders gave him an update on our activities.  He told us the Bishop had authorized us to spend up to $100 on items for Terry Proudian for Christmas.  Since she really needs clothes we’ll have to see if we can find a way to figure out her size to get her some. We walked home down Michigan Ave in a pretty good snow storm.

Friday’s morning was the same.  With several visits to P.E.’s in the evening.

Saturday morning we headed out to Hoffman Estates where Kathy Fernandez lives.  Sister Beck had left her winter coat there when we stayed with the Fernandez’s our first night in Illinois before our apt was ready to move into.  Since Kathy’s house is “kind of” near the temple, we went there on our way to the temple to get it.  It’s actually about 30 minutes more north and west than the temple, but not too far out of the way.

We had a nice visit with the Fernandez’s before heading off to the temple.  It was fairly crowded this Saturday, so we only did initiatory since we needed to get back in town to attend the 1^st Ward’s Christmas Party.  Also, we stopped at the “This is the Place Store”, kind of a Seagull’s – Deseret Book place and had a set of scriptures Elder Bryner had purchased for his baptism next Friday engraved with the girl’s name.

We took several (five, I think) of the small iced banana cakes, Heidi had made and enjoyed a Chicken and potluck dinner over at the Lincoln Square Building. There was plenty of food and we had a good time getting to know more of our members.  We left a little early because the Elders wanted to get home.  We made it back to our apartment about 9:00 pm to get ready for the next week.

Most weeks are similar to that with visits in the Ward, we also visit the Inactive Singles throughout the Stake.