Two Months in City (October 3, 2014)

We have lived in New York City for over two months now.  We are amazingly blessed with the friendships we’re developing with YSAs (young single adults), other missionaries, and with a myriad of people we meet at church, at activities, and on the street.

We have grown the size of our Tuesday and Wednesday gospel study classes to over 30 in total.  We learn so much from the comments and interaction with these students.  We provide snacks every week and everyone enjoys hanging around after class eating and getting to know each other better.

Our Thursday evening Pathway study group also has 30 students enrolled.  This is a really diverse group of cultures and ages – seven countries are represented in our class, and the age range is from 18 to 60.  We are so pleased with this group’s desire to excel in both their academic studies and their understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sister Melonakos with Pathway Class

Being involved in other weekly activities with our YSAs is very fulfilling.  In large or small groups, or one on one with them, we’ve participated in service activities, Sunday “Waffle Nights” at their apartments, performances at the Metropolitan Opera, and Julliard recitals. We feel grateful we’ve been able to lend a listening ear, give a caring hug, or have them hang out at our apartment when they need comfort or encouragement. These YSAs are very dear to us.

We spent a weekend with 600 YSAs in a regional conference at the church next door.  Our responsibilities included making countless wraps for a lunch (Dave doesn’t ever want to see another wrap in his life), setting up/cleaning up, serving food, and helping coordinate a service project.  We identified an app (AXSmap) to rate New York City restaurants for their wheelchair accessibility.  YSAs then fanned out around Manhattan, rated establishments, and helped create the data base.

There is such a variety in the things we do. Some highlights: we attended (at the request of some other senior missionaries involved in a UN project) a United Nations conference session on water-related risks (typhoons, etc.).  Some of our children visited over Labor Day weekend (Eric, Steven, Janet, Elise), and we all went to the US Open (Tennis).  This week we volunteered ushering and helping with promo at the NYC 42^nd St and Times Square theater screening of the new film “Meet the Mormons.”

Elder & Sister Melonakos at UN Building for a Conference