Elder & Sister Helser

Wednesday evening May 14th we Skyped Elder & Sister Helser the couple we will be replacing in Albany New York.  We visited for a little over an hour talking about their mission call and the assignments they have been engaged in.  This is their first mission.  We had a video tour of the apartment that we would be living in for a year and was quite pleased with what we saw.  They informed us of what we may or may not want or need to bring with us.

They spent some time talking about their teaching assignments in the Institute program, which from what they indicated is just teaching in the Albany 1st Branch on Tuesday morning and then on Thursday evening.  The Albany 1st Branch is where we will be attending church and doing most of our teaching.  From their description the Branch is surrounded by the Albany 1st Ward - sounds like an inner city Branch.  The Stake handles the Institute program for the YSA's so from what I got we will not be teaching the YSA institute program - except upon request.

Early morning seminary is taught by a local member and we would only teach seminary when the teacher is absent or needs our help.

They seem to do a lot with the missionaries - attending district meetings, occasionally getting them to their appointments and shopping.  We will most likely continue in that direction. We got the impression that the institute classes are very small so we will talk with the CES Supervisor to see what we can do to increase attendance to perhaps combine classes or perhaps join up with the Stake program.  It sounded like there was some down time so I might check into the Self Initiative PEF program and see if they need help in the Self Employment Training like we did in South Africa.

They spent some time talking about their next mission to Africa.  Elder Helser is an architect and has been asked to go to the DRC to help with a program where they teach members the building trade so they can work of building chapels.  They were having some hesitations from what others had told them and I think our cautionary attitude about the DRC just about nailed it that they WOULD NOT want to accept that assignment.

They mentioned that they were in the Boston Temple District and have attended the temple several times.  Our dear friends the Foote's are serving in Boston as S & I missionaries so hopefully we can arrange to meet them at the temple on one of our excursions to the Boston Temple while we are there.

We did find out that there is a YMCA just up the street ( in walking distance)from where we will be living and they accept the Silver Snickers card so we have a place to exercise, work out and swim. From what the Helser's said we would have some daily free time to go and exercise.  That makes Jenee happy as she does her best to keep us both as healthy as possible.

We are still waiting to hear from the Mission President to see if he has any specific responsibilities he would like us to undertake.  We really haven't done much in the way of getting packed but before long we will have to get serious about it.  We just have things we want to accomplish with our kids and grand kids before we leave so they are taking the majority of our time and attention right now!