Whoa, 1100 miles later we are in Dallas!
Emma Lynn says, "It was nothing"
Elise, I'm glad to be here!
Will and Caleb and James just wanna be pirates
A one eyed Jack and a Dalley, Caleb says, Oh man!
Jack n Gaye
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
DownTown Dallas n SMU Campus
Heading in to visit the Dallas Art Museum
An interesting section of Dallas to spend an afternoon or a Thursday P day.
Elder Nelson mingling with the crowds at the Art Museum
The Perkins School of Music and Divinity on the Southern Methodist University campus
This is a favorite place of ours to visit, lots of music programs to visit.
The entrance to the Meadows Museum on the SMU campus
The Art Museum of Dallas
lots of nameless faces
Sister Nelson and I visited the sky loft in the Chase Bank Building
More sculptures at the museum of Art
The JP Morgan Chase Bank Tower
The First Baptist Church of Dallas complete with Bell's at noon
The Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas specializing in modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a 2.4-acre site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the heart of the Dallas Arts District.
A view of South Dallas from the Sky Loft
The Sky Loft visit
Jack n Gaye
Sunday, July 25, 2010
July 25th 2010
25 July 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Greetings from Texas. We have had another great and busy week. The Center continues to stay busy. We have many new people coming in and then we usually have some that come back several times a week for several weeks as they attend workshops, work on the resumes and do job searches. At any one time we always have quite a variety of nationalities, we are keeping tuned up on different accents ranging from Asian, Indian, African, Costa Rican, Hispanic etc. It is nice to have a full time sister missionary who can speak Spanish because we usually have a couple each week that come in that don’t know much English.
It is still a great experience to help so many people everyday who need some type of assistance or an encouraging word. Many of the candidates who sign on to the web site don’t complete their profile, less than 20% (of the 2300+). They search for jobs and then are done – especially those that sign on from home. As we get more companies and businesses to sign on – which Jack works with – they are able to search for employees, by job titles and keywords in their profile. There is a big disconnect there – so we make phone calls and encourage people to complete their profiles so it can all work together.
We have several people coming in now who are our ‘friends.’ A couple of them like to come in early and join with us in our morning devotional. They say they like to come in and pray with us. Indeed there is a great spirit and feeling there. We are told that the day the prophet came to Dallas and broke ground for the Dallas Temple he also came to the Employment Center/Bishop’s Storehouse and dedicated it (after a remodel) as a temporal temple.
One morning we had a good discussion – those Protestants really know their Bible. One was very anxious to share and join in the conversation. He tried to press his point to another friend, but he kept saying ‘I like to hear what the Sisters say.’ We were finally able to wrap it all up and get to work on job searches.
Church employees as a whole had Friday the 23rd off. So the Storehouse was closed and our managers could have closed the Employment Center that day too. However they decided that most of the world here doesn’t really know about having that for a holiday so we remained open – and stayed busy. I’m pretty sure that there weren’t very many missionaries that got a day off anyway.
Julie went out and got some Texas BBQ for our lunch to make up for it. All who were in the Center were invited to join us.
Saturday after closing we went out to Mansfield and visited Sister Lyle. Her foot is progressing along nicely. She seems to enjoy our visits, a good friend. She has BYU channel so she recorded the Mormon Tabernacle Choir 24th Program. We were able to watch it with her. It was so good to listen to it, that is one thing we miss out here. It was very different this year, whereas it was celebrating the Choirs 100 years but we thoroughly enjoyed it. Donna, were you and Dennis able to go to it this year?
Jack was also able to hang some brackets for her curtains while we were there. She sure appreciated that. I think Jack was glad to have some tools in hand for a few minutes.
Our piano classes were being taught on Tuesday for a while but we moved them back to Wednesday. During that time they were on Tuesday we signed up to feed the young Elders dinner. We finally thought we had it all figured – Jack could drop me off at the apartment right after 5:00, he could then go pick up the Elders (we live outside our boundaries) while I cooked the pizza. He could be back with them by 5:45, I could then leave and be to the Stake Center by 6:00 for piano class. A ward member was to pick them up at our apartment and go help give a blessing. Great plan, it just didn’t work. The Elders were 30 minutes late in getting back to their apartment after their last appointment. They are just so totally drenched after riding their bikes in the humidity that they had to dry off. They didn’t get here till nearly 6:30, of course I couldn’t leave till they got back – but it all worked out fine. The Sisters took care of things at piano class till I got there.
Our piano class numbers have dwindled down, which was to be expected, especially during the summer. We have about 5 children and 5 adults – which actually is a workable number. We are progressing along. There are several of them that have had a little previous experience in music so they are having to learn not only new music concepts but how to say everything in English. In the Spanish culture they don’t identify the notes as ABCDEFG but rather as do re mi fa sol la ti do, so they are having to transfer their thinking over but they are working hard at it and coming along nicely.
Our P-day activity this week was a trip to Austin, the state capitol, with Charlie and Carla. It was a 4 hour drive so we left at 6:00 am. We visited the State Capitol building which was very beautiful. It has a dome much like the one in Washington DC. The Texans say, ‘Not to brag but it is 30 feet higher than the nation’s capitol.’ Then they go on to say, ‘It’s not bragging if it’s the truth!’ It is a very beautiful building with beautiful wood work. We enjoyed it very much.
Then we went to LBJ Library. It was very good too. There also had a display about Walter Cronkite. So we really revisited the history of the 60’s era. We are at that stage now where you can remember the ‘history’ because you lived it.
Another special treat this week was an evening with the Morrell’s playing music. This time Duane Bryner joined us on the cello. It was wonderful to have the harpsichord, recorder and cello all playing together. All the music that Charlie and I have been playing also has a cello part. He is a very good cellist and it was so much fun to put it all together. I loved the sound of it all.
Duane recently made a trip to St. George and visited with relatives there. He doesn’t know Clair Bryner – Dad do you know who Clair’s father would be?
The Russell’s invited us over to dinner this afternoon after church. It was great to enjoy a delicious dinner with them and spend some time visiting. People our age and a little older have really seen the church grow in this area. It’s always interesting to hear some of the stories.
It sounds like the Nelson’s had a fun family reunion this past week. Thanks for the pictures you have shared with us. Save us a spot for next year!
We hope you have a great week. Our love and prayers are with you – we appreciate the love and prayers that you offer in our behalf. It makes a real difference.
Our love,
Dad & Mom, Grandpa & Grandma, Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson
~CTR~
Jack n Gaye
Dear Family and Friends,
Greetings from Texas. We have had another great and busy week. The Center continues to stay busy. We have many new people coming in and then we usually have some that come back several times a week for several weeks as they attend workshops, work on the resumes and do job searches. At any one time we always have quite a variety of nationalities, we are keeping tuned up on different accents ranging from Asian, Indian, African, Costa Rican, Hispanic etc. It is nice to have a full time sister missionary who can speak Spanish because we usually have a couple each week that come in that don’t know much English.
It is still a great experience to help so many people everyday who need some type of assistance or an encouraging word. Many of the candidates who sign on to the web site don’t complete their profile, less than 20% (of the 2300+). They search for jobs and then are done – especially those that sign on from home. As we get more companies and businesses to sign on – which Jack works with – they are able to search for employees, by job titles and keywords in their profile. There is a big disconnect there – so we make phone calls and encourage people to complete their profiles so it can all work together.
We have several people coming in now who are our ‘friends.’ A couple of them like to come in early and join with us in our morning devotional. They say they like to come in and pray with us. Indeed there is a great spirit and feeling there. We are told that the day the prophet came to Dallas and broke ground for the Dallas Temple he also came to the Employment Center/Bishop’s Storehouse and dedicated it (after a remodel) as a temporal temple.
One morning we had a good discussion – those Protestants really know their Bible. One was very anxious to share and join in the conversation. He tried to press his point to another friend, but he kept saying ‘I like to hear what the Sisters say.’ We were finally able to wrap it all up and get to work on job searches.
Church employees as a whole had Friday the 23rd off. So the Storehouse was closed and our managers could have closed the Employment Center that day too. However they decided that most of the world here doesn’t really know about having that for a holiday so we remained open – and stayed busy. I’m pretty sure that there weren’t very many missionaries that got a day off anyway.
Julie went out and got some Texas BBQ for our lunch to make up for it. All who were in the Center were invited to join us.
Saturday after closing we went out to Mansfield and visited Sister Lyle. Her foot is progressing along nicely. She seems to enjoy our visits, a good friend. She has BYU channel so she recorded the Mormon Tabernacle Choir 24th Program. We were able to watch it with her. It was so good to listen to it, that is one thing we miss out here. It was very different this year, whereas it was celebrating the Choirs 100 years but we thoroughly enjoyed it. Donna, were you and Dennis able to go to it this year?
Jack was also able to hang some brackets for her curtains while we were there. She sure appreciated that. I think Jack was glad to have some tools in hand for a few minutes.
Our piano classes were being taught on Tuesday for a while but we moved them back to Wednesday. During that time they were on Tuesday we signed up to feed the young Elders dinner. We finally thought we had it all figured – Jack could drop me off at the apartment right after 5:00, he could then go pick up the Elders (we live outside our boundaries) while I cooked the pizza. He could be back with them by 5:45, I could then leave and be to the Stake Center by 6:00 for piano class. A ward member was to pick them up at our apartment and go help give a blessing. Great plan, it just didn’t work. The Elders were 30 minutes late in getting back to their apartment after their last appointment. They are just so totally drenched after riding their bikes in the humidity that they had to dry off. They didn’t get here till nearly 6:30, of course I couldn’t leave till they got back – but it all worked out fine. The Sisters took care of things at piano class till I got there.
Our piano class numbers have dwindled down, which was to be expected, especially during the summer. We have about 5 children and 5 adults – which actually is a workable number. We are progressing along. There are several of them that have had a little previous experience in music so they are having to learn not only new music concepts but how to say everything in English. In the Spanish culture they don’t identify the notes as ABCDEFG but rather as do re mi fa sol la ti do, so they are having to transfer their thinking over but they are working hard at it and coming along nicely.
Our P-day activity this week was a trip to Austin, the state capitol, with Charlie and Carla. It was a 4 hour drive so we left at 6:00 am. We visited the State Capitol building which was very beautiful. It has a dome much like the one in Washington DC. The Texans say, ‘Not to brag but it is 30 feet higher than the nation’s capitol.’ Then they go on to say, ‘It’s not bragging if it’s the truth!’ It is a very beautiful building with beautiful wood work. We enjoyed it very much.
Then we went to LBJ Library. It was very good too. There also had a display about Walter Cronkite. So we really revisited the history of the 60’s era. We are at that stage now where you can remember the ‘history’ because you lived it.
Another special treat this week was an evening with the Morrell’s playing music. This time Duane Bryner joined us on the cello. It was wonderful to have the harpsichord, recorder and cello all playing together. All the music that Charlie and I have been playing also has a cello part. He is a very good cellist and it was so much fun to put it all together. I loved the sound of it all.
Duane recently made a trip to St. George and visited with relatives there. He doesn’t know Clair Bryner – Dad do you know who Clair’s father would be?
The Russell’s invited us over to dinner this afternoon after church. It was great to enjoy a delicious dinner with them and spend some time visiting. People our age and a little older have really seen the church grow in this area. It’s always interesting to hear some of the stories.
It sounds like the Nelson’s had a fun family reunion this past week. Thanks for the pictures you have shared with us. Save us a spot for next year!
We hope you have a great week. Our love and prayers are with you – we appreciate the love and prayers that you offer in our behalf. It makes a real difference.
Our love,
Dad & Mom, Grandpa & Grandma, Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson
~CTR~
Jack n Gaye
Friday, July 23, 2010
Austin Tx State Capitol LBJ Library
A visit to the State Capitol building in Austin Texas
Lots of beautiful dark wood and transom windows
The State Court of Appeals
The 3rd floor
What do you mean, "a closed session?"
The Texas Star below the State Capitol Dome
Come on lets visit
The dome
The State Supreme Court
Huge beautiful gold hinges
The LBJ Library on the University of Texas Campus. Lady Bird Johnson
The Grounds of the Library
The Oval office the way LBJ had it fixed
One floor was dedicated to Walter Cronkite
They may make fun of our big ears but at least we can hear the suffering!
Jack n Gaye
Sunday, July 18, 2010
July 18th 2010 Letter
Greetings from Texas,
Our highlight this week was having Mark here for a couple of days. We sure enjoyed him being here. He and Jack had a great time and had so much fun. From the pictures on the blog you can see that they got to see many sights in downtown Dallas, we all got to go out to the Fort Worth Stock Yards, I always think its fun to go out there.
We did some juggling of P-days this week with all of us missionary couples. When it came right down to it they really couldn’t spare both of us out on the same day so we took different P-days this week. I was able to get my hair cut and some grocery shopping done on mine and Jack was able to spend some time with Mark on his.
Sister Phelps had a shoulder replacement 2 weeks ago so she had a doctor’s appointment this week and needed Thursday off, our usual day. Sister Lyle had some foot surgery on Thursday. It ended up being more extensive than what she had hoped for and will be out longer than she had hoped, possibly a month. We will miss her at the front desk and doing office support work. She is a great friend and co-worker. She hasn’t been in the area too long and doesn’t have much family around so we have gone out to Mansfield to see her a couple of times – Saturday & today. We are able to do a few little things for her while we’re there and then just enjoy a good visit. Jack was able to hang some curtains that had fallen down and help get her ice machine set up to ice her foot. Mansfield is about 40 miles away from our apartment.
Last evening we also went to a reception in Colleyville at a home (a very nice home I might add)…………….
--Oh I’m back, the neighbor lady needed some help moving a desk.—
It was a welcome reception for the new mission president in Fort Worth – President Sagers. He is from Idaho and knows where Logandale is so we hit it off great. We also visited with President McKee who was the Las Vegas mission president in 1998.
There are two couples that are going to work with Jack in getting companies to sign on. He spent some time one morning training them on all the ins and outs of it all. One of the fellows is the owner of a club volleyball team here in the DFW area. (His main team just came in 2nd place in the nation) So Jack had him sign on his company then he showed him how to recruit candidates, so he put in volleyball on the key word search and lo and behold --- Jack’s name came up – the first time he’s been recruited as a volleyball coach.
We are keeping busy at the Center. I believe we are the only ones with any job security. We try to contact people in our assigned stakes within a couple of days when they initially sign on to the web site, contact the ones that we haven’t talked to in a while – doing all of this in between working with candidates that walk through the door. There are also the volunteers that come in from their allotted Stake assignments, so we are training them on how to post jobs on the web site if they have computer skills or other tasks, depending on their capabilities.
I try to keep a close check on the emails for jobs posting and listings that are sent to us. Then either Nathan puts them on when he comes in on Mon/Wed, or I put them on Stake jobs or sent out emails to Stake Employment Specialists in the particular area. Yesterday we had a company needing a Turkish translator for a business conference coming up in August and needs to hire someone for one week. I don’t know if we will be able to help on that one but we put the word out and we’ll see what happens.
I worked with a fellow this week who is taking a retirement out of the military, after 24 years of service. You’ve heard the upheaval in the news the past couple of weeks of the military commander being let go because of his remarks about the ‘commander in chief.’ This fellow, a colonel, was also having some difficulties in that regard and decided it was time to get out. Jack worked with a couple, a retired lawyer from California. He put all of his retirement money in investments and has lost all of it. So now at 78 years of age, he needs to go back to work. One of the gal’s, a friend, that has come in quite often the last couple of months, situation was getting quite desperate, losing her apartment, car etc decided to go to Florida to be with her sister and hopes to be able to find work there. At least she’ll have a place to sleep.
One of the skills that we really use daily is our English skills. With Jack having a Masters degree in English and I typed and edited all of his papers for him we had a lot of practice. Pretty much everyday we are checking resumes, cover letters, applications, etc editing, looking for mistakes and offering suggestions.
Julie has now had me start teaching a portion of the Professional Career Workshop about Career Development. It’s a fun section to teach and helps people think outside the box about other occupations or careers that they might be able to transfer their skills to.
Charlie & Carla Morell had us over for dinner and a grandchild’s birthday party this evening. They do much the same as we do for such occasions. We had never met this son and his family so it was good to meet them. They weren’t able to have any children of their own so they have adopted 5 children. The oldest is 11 and the youngest 2. The 3 oldest are black and black/mix and the 2 youngest are Chinese. The youngest little girl was born w/o a leg and now has a prosthesis, she is doing good and really gets around walking. They are a great family and do so good with all the kids.
Charlie and I played recorder/harpsichord Telemann Sonata for them, a little rusty on it since we haven’t played it for a while but it went pretty smooth.
They have a lot of crepe myrtle shrub/trees planted here all over the area. They bloom all throughout the summer and are very pretty. Oh and we saw some dust on a road yesterday, we realized that we haven’t seen that for months.
I haven’t figured out what to call the weather here. In comparison to Nevada it’s not really that hot, but it is equally uncomfortable to be out in, especially if you do much activity – which by the way doesn’t happen very often for us.
We hope you’re all doing well. Thanks for your support, love and prayers. We know this is what sustains us. We are having challenging but wonderful experiences.
Our Love,
Mom & Dad, Grandpa & Grandma, Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson
~CTR~
Jack n Gaye
Our highlight this week was having Mark here for a couple of days. We sure enjoyed him being here. He and Jack had a great time and had so much fun. From the pictures on the blog you can see that they got to see many sights in downtown Dallas, we all got to go out to the Fort Worth Stock Yards, I always think its fun to go out there.
We did some juggling of P-days this week with all of us missionary couples. When it came right down to it they really couldn’t spare both of us out on the same day so we took different P-days this week. I was able to get my hair cut and some grocery shopping done on mine and Jack was able to spend some time with Mark on his.
Sister Phelps had a shoulder replacement 2 weeks ago so she had a doctor’s appointment this week and needed Thursday off, our usual day. Sister Lyle had some foot surgery on Thursday. It ended up being more extensive than what she had hoped for and will be out longer than she had hoped, possibly a month. We will miss her at the front desk and doing office support work. She is a great friend and co-worker. She hasn’t been in the area too long and doesn’t have much family around so we have gone out to Mansfield to see her a couple of times – Saturday & today. We are able to do a few little things for her while we’re there and then just enjoy a good visit. Jack was able to hang some curtains that had fallen down and help get her ice machine set up to ice her foot. Mansfield is about 40 miles away from our apartment.
Last evening we also went to a reception in Colleyville at a home (a very nice home I might add)…………….
--Oh I’m back, the neighbor lady needed some help moving a desk.—
It was a welcome reception for the new mission president in Fort Worth – President Sagers. He is from Idaho and knows where Logandale is so we hit it off great. We also visited with President McKee who was the Las Vegas mission president in 1998.
There are two couples that are going to work with Jack in getting companies to sign on. He spent some time one morning training them on all the ins and outs of it all. One of the fellows is the owner of a club volleyball team here in the DFW area. (His main team just came in 2nd place in the nation) So Jack had him sign on his company then he showed him how to recruit candidates, so he put in volleyball on the key word search and lo and behold --- Jack’s name came up – the first time he’s been recruited as a volleyball coach.
We are keeping busy at the Center. I believe we are the only ones with any job security. We try to contact people in our assigned stakes within a couple of days when they initially sign on to the web site, contact the ones that we haven’t talked to in a while – doing all of this in between working with candidates that walk through the door. There are also the volunteers that come in from their allotted Stake assignments, so we are training them on how to post jobs on the web site if they have computer skills or other tasks, depending on their capabilities.
I try to keep a close check on the emails for jobs posting and listings that are sent to us. Then either Nathan puts them on when he comes in on Mon/Wed, or I put them on Stake jobs or sent out emails to Stake Employment Specialists in the particular area. Yesterday we had a company needing a Turkish translator for a business conference coming up in August and needs to hire someone for one week. I don’t know if we will be able to help on that one but we put the word out and we’ll see what happens.
I worked with a fellow this week who is taking a retirement out of the military, after 24 years of service. You’ve heard the upheaval in the news the past couple of weeks of the military commander being let go because of his remarks about the ‘commander in chief.’ This fellow, a colonel, was also having some difficulties in that regard and decided it was time to get out. Jack worked with a couple, a retired lawyer from California. He put all of his retirement money in investments and has lost all of it. So now at 78 years of age, he needs to go back to work. One of the gal’s, a friend, that has come in quite often the last couple of months, situation was getting quite desperate, losing her apartment, car etc decided to go to Florida to be with her sister and hopes to be able to find work there. At least she’ll have a place to sleep.
One of the skills that we really use daily is our English skills. With Jack having a Masters degree in English and I typed and edited all of his papers for him we had a lot of practice. Pretty much everyday we are checking resumes, cover letters, applications, etc editing, looking for mistakes and offering suggestions.
Julie has now had me start teaching a portion of the Professional Career Workshop about Career Development. It’s a fun section to teach and helps people think outside the box about other occupations or careers that they might be able to transfer their skills to.
Charlie & Carla Morell had us over for dinner and a grandchild’s birthday party this evening. They do much the same as we do for such occasions. We had never met this son and his family so it was good to meet them. They weren’t able to have any children of their own so they have adopted 5 children. The oldest is 11 and the youngest 2. The 3 oldest are black and black/mix and the 2 youngest are Chinese. The youngest little girl was born w/o a leg and now has a prosthesis, she is doing good and really gets around walking. They are a great family and do so good with all the kids.
Charlie and I played recorder/harpsichord Telemann Sonata for them, a little rusty on it since we haven’t played it for a while but it went pretty smooth.
They have a lot of crepe myrtle shrub/trees planted here all over the area. They bloom all throughout the summer and are very pretty. Oh and we saw some dust on a road yesterday, we realized that we haven’t seen that for months.
I haven’t figured out what to call the weather here. In comparison to Nevada it’s not really that hot, but it is equally uncomfortable to be out in, especially if you do much activity – which by the way doesn’t happen very often for us.
We hope you’re all doing well. Thanks for your support, love and prayers. We know this is what sustains us. We are having challenging but wonderful experiences.
Our Love,
Mom & Dad, Grandpa & Grandma, Jack & Gaye
Elder & Sister Nelson
~CTR~
Jack n Gaye
The Plano Bach Society
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A day in Dallas with the Nelson brother's
Like the NYSE only more enjoyable
The gardens of Fort Worth
The bronc buster
The bothers 2
Whoa, I say Whoa
Then the cattle drive
Each end of the Herd
The Stockyards of Fort Worth
What a time!
Hank and Kid Rock decided on a reunion visit
A visit to the Corporate office of JP Chase Morgan to the Observation Deck on the 50th floor.
Dallas Heritage Village
Mark said, "I have one of these!"
The Original Dallas Court House now a museum
Visit to the heart of Dallas
The view from the Sky Tower
A stop by the Center
Two old Bryce Valley Mustangs
This would be Big n Rich
Jack n Gaye
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