Dialann | Issue 9, January 2013

ISSUE 9 JANUARY 2013

D USTI N ’S M I SS I O N

10 YEARS AGO

ISSUE 9 JANUARY 2013

table of contents 2

THE JOURNAL

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Susan: Storm of the century

Sandy battered the New York City area, but, thankfully, we were virtually unscathed.

COLOPHON Our family Susan Jane Hibdon Joyce Dustin Tyler Joyce Fiona Claire Joyce

4 Dustin: True to the faith

I came home from my mission ten years ago.

But my real mission has only just begun.

6 Fiona: The meaning of family 10

I’ve learned a lot of words since I was born.

“Family” is one of the most important.

MILESTONES

8 July–December 2012 10 Our annual holiday letter

The 2012 edition of our yearly letter to family and friends updating them on our lives.

OUR TIMES

14 Four more years 16

By Dustin | President Barack Obama, a Democrat, wins reelection while Republican numbers shrink in both houses of Congress.

16 I love to see the temple

As Susan and Dustin celebrate five years of marriage, a look inside the House of the Lord where their journey together began, the Manhattan New York Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On the cover Front: Dustin stands on the railroad tracks that marked the southern boundary of his last mission area, in West Jordan, Utah. These tracks today are part of the Red Line of the Utah Transit Authority’s TRAX light-rail system. Late 2002 or early 2003.

Back: Photo by Dustin.

Sans serif text is set in Hypatia Sans Pro. Serif text is set in Adobe Text Pro. This issue was designed on a Dell Inspiron ONE2305 desktop, with 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon II X2 240e processor with a speed of 2.8 GHz. The software used includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, as well as Microsoft Word 2010.

The operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Dialann—Irish for “journal”—is published quarterly at New York, in January, April, July, and October.

Published by Seoighe | seoighe.net Printed by Blurb | blurb.com

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

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22 Do we realize what we have?

By Dustin | The text of the “homecoming” talk Dustin gave when he returned home from his mission in January 2003.

LAST LOOK

24 We dedicate the last page in this issue to the 20 children and 6 adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on 14 December 2012.

Original content is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. Some material in this issue was produced by others; material used under a Creative Commons license is identified by “CC” and the license type and version. For more info, visit dialann.org/copyright

dialann.org

Did you know? Barack Obama’s reelection, with those of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, is only the second time that three consecutive presidents have been reelected. The first? Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, 1801–1825. SEE PAGE 14

THE JOURNAL SUSAN

Storm of the century.

Sandy battered the New York City area, but, thankfully, we were virtually unscathed.

Damage in our neighborhood A tree knocked over by Sandy’s winds lies on its side at the northwest corner of Linden Street and Wilson Avenue, on the block north of our apartment.

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 The cover of the 12 November 2012 issue of New York magazine shows a dramatic—if typically Manhattancentric—view of Sandy’s impact on the city.

DOWNED TREE: PHOTO TAKEN 30 OCTOBER 2012 BY ANDREA

D

uring the last full week of October, we started hearing rumors of some big storm that was headed our way. The news seemed to get worse and worse each day, but we weren’t totally convinced it would be that big a deal, partially because a lot of the reports said it probably wouldn’t be that big a deal. Andrea and Shawn were in town, so that Saturday, we went on a little excursion to Tarrytown (where we did not see the Headless Horseman), took Fiona to the branch Halloween party (where she had a grand old time trying to eat a donut off of a string), and then stocked up on a few hurricane essentials (see sidebar).

The next day, after church, Dustin found out that the MTA was shutting down the entire transit system at 19.00 that night, before the storm arrived to cause havoc. That sounded serious. So we went home and listened for the wind and rain to roll in. I realized later that they had shut down the system at 19.00 not because that was when the storm was going to get bad, but so that they could get people home for the night and get all the trains and buses stashed safely away before the storm got bad.

It wasn’t a big deal in our neighborhood.

We spent the entire day Monday inside because it was definitely windy and rainy, but we never lost power or internet or anything else—we just baked and played games, and Andrea and Shawn rescheduled their cancelled flight.

On Tuesday we ventured out to discover that two (of the approximately four) trees in our neighborhood were down, but there didn’t seem to be much other damage. The airport was still closed, so Andrea and Shawn rescheduled their flight again, and we continued relaxing/ getting cabin fever.

On Wednesday— Halloween—the buses started running again and, as we were all pretty stir-crazy, we went to Brooklyn Heights in the afternoon. As we were leaving our apartment, we saw that a bunch of people were out with their kids in Halloween NEW YORK MAGAZINE COVER: PHOTO TAKEN 31 OCTOBER 2012

BY IWAN BAAN FOR NEW YORK MAGAZINE

costumes, so I grabbed Fiona’s Statue of Liberty costume. When we got to Brooklyn Heights at about 15.00, people were already out on their stoops. We never did figure out whether they started trick-or-treating so early just because school was out, or because everyone was stircrazy like us, or just because they always do that in that neighborhood. Fiona got into trick-ortreating pretty quickly, although she didn’t shout “trick or treat!” quite as loudly or enthusiastically as some of the other kids, and there were some “spooky” houses that made her too nervous to walk by.

We were out of school for the rest of the week, and Andrea and Shawn didn’t manage to get home until Friday, 2 November. Truth be told, it was kind of boring for us, since we didn’t have any real problems and we couldn’t get around very well—a lot of the trains still weren’t running, especially those that went over or under the East River (the L didn’t start up again for another week). And, lest anyone think we would have been better off with a car, most of the gas stations ran out of gas pretty quickly and there were shortages for weeks, and cars weren’t allowed across the bridges into Manhattan unless there were at least three occupants. So, in other words, a car would have been no help.

It was kind of exciting once school started again and I could talk to all my coworkers who live in Manhattan about their adventures in getting to school. Some of them walked or rode bikes, and some carpooled. Since the L wasn’t running, everyone in Brooklyn seemed to be taking the M, which I tried only once—it was way too crowded. So I tried the bus. Unbelievably crowded. We stayed at each stop for three or four minutes to get people off. Fortunately, I only had to ride the bus for two days before the L started up again.

Our neighborhood may have been essentially unscathed, but other neighborhoods, unfortunately, were not so lucky. Lower Manhattan; Coney Island, Brooklyn; Breezy Point and the Rockaways, Queens; and Staten Island, along with coastal areas in New Jersey, were hit very hard. Some of the stories we heard sounded terrifying. Over the next few weeks, both Dustin and I went to some of those neighborhoods with yellow Mormon Helping Hands vests to help out with the cleanup, and it was shocking to realize that our basically undamaged neighborhood was in the same city as these devastated areas. It made us extra thankful to have a safe, warm, dry home where we can eat, sleep, and play every day. d PHOTO TAKEN 12 NOVEMBER 2012 BY DUSTIN USING OUR CELL PHONE

Hurricane preparedness tips  Be sure to have plenty of baking supplies.

Chocolate chips, eggs, and whole-wheat flour are a must!  It’s helpful to have friends over—preferably friends who won’t be able to go home for a couple of days. That way, you’ll have company so you don’t go nuts while trapped in your apartment.  Make sure you have plenty of batteries on hand to power your camera. After all, you’ll want to document all the baking you’re doing.

Seriously, though...  If you’re told to evacuate, evacuate.  Have nonperishable food and water stored up.  Have a batterypowered radio and flashlights.  Check your 72-hour kit and make sure it’s ready to go.

Our group among piles of sand and debris on Beach 128th Street in the Rockaways. The amount of sand carried inland by the storm surge was astounding.

Not-as-Mormon-as-youmight-think Helping Hands A couple of weeks after Sandy, I went to one of my favorite areas of the city, the Rockaways in Queens, to assist in the cleanup. The Rockaways are a low-lying peninsula separating Jamaica Bay from the Atlantic Ocean—land that, at the height of the storm, didn’t exist as floodwaters extended literally from the ocean to the bay. I had asked the missionaries where I could go to help out. I went to the meeting point they had mentioned to me, where I found dozens of elders—and three women. Since I’m at the (sad) age where I’m obviously not a full-time missionary, I was separated off into a group with these women.

The four of us went off to work with a group of missionaries, but as the day wore on it ended up just being me and these women. Around lunchtime, relatives of one of the women joined us.

We were a group of eight, all donning the dorky and attention-grabbing Mormon Helping Hands yellow vests. But then, come to find out, I was the only actual Mormon in the group. The women came to the Rockaways wanting to help and found us, one of the only groups who were actually organized. It was a unique experience. —dustin 3

THE JOURNAL DUSTI N

True to the faith. I came home from my mission ten years ago today. But my real mission has only just begun.

27 January 2013 Shall the youth of Zion falter In defending truth and right?

While the enemy assaileth, Shall we shrink or shun the fight? No! True to the faith that our parents have cherished, True to the truth for which martyrs have perished, To God’s command, Soul, heart, and hand, Faithful and true we will ever stand.1

T

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 Dustin’s mission call, dated 31 October 2000 and signed by Gordon B. Hinckley, then president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

en years ago today, on the morning of 27 January 2003, I went with my mother, my stepfather, and my sister Amanda to Salt Lake City International Airport and boarded a flight to Denver. From Denver we flew to Atlanta, and from Atlanta we drove toward their home in Fort Mill, South Carolina, just outside Charlotte, my hometown.

I had met them at Salt Lake’s airport five days earlier, on 22 January. I remember the scene vividly. They had a few carry-on bags in hand, and Amanda, who had just turned four, was being pushed in a stroller. When they first caught a glimpse of me waiting for them, they weren’t quite sure it was me. I had changed a fair amount since they last saw me: I was wearing contacts instead of glasses, and I had grown up some. But when my mom realized that it really was me, she dropped everything and ran up to me and embraced me, crying. It was the first time in over two years that we had seen each other.

They had come to pick me up at the end of my service as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I wanted to share that experience with them—as well as I could in five days’ time. Cottonwood, Murray, Sandy and Draper, Bennion, Riverton, Kearns, and West Jordan and the people in them were indelibly impressed upon my soul, and I was excited to take them to the places and people they had heard about in all my letters home. I was also anxious to introduce them to a valley and a state that I had grown to love.

That evening we attended a testimony meeting with the other outgoing missionaries at my mission’s “transfer building” on Salt Lake’s east bench. I said my farewells to my fellow missionaries and some of the senior missionaries who worked in our mission office. I had worked on some assignments in the office and had grown to love and admire these men and women very much. After taking some photos and saying our goodbyes, that was that. I was no longer a missionary in the Utah Salt Lake City South

Mission. I was without a companion, and an area, and district and zone leaders, and a mission president for the first time in two years. My transition back to normal life wasn’t quite yet complete; I wouldn’t be released as a full-time missionary by my stake president until the following Tuesday, so I still wore “pross” (our nickname for the white-shirt-and-tie outfit we wore while proselyting) and a nametag, I was still to keep basic mission rules, and I had to be accompanied by my mother or a priesthood holder at all times.

We also had some business to take care of. Almost five years earlier, in August 1998, my mother and I had gone to the Mesa Arizona Temple to be baptized and confirmed for her parents. It was time to complete my grandparents’ ordinance work. So one morning we boarded TRAX and headed downtown. In the Salt Lake Temple my mother and I attended an endowment session together for the first time and received the endowment by proxy for her parents. We also served as the witness couple in that session. Afterward, we went to the sealing office to arrange to be sealed on her parents’ behalf. When we arrived in the sealing office there was Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve chatting with the temple worker. He shortly arose and shook our hands and, with a smile, said, “Congratulations.”

It wasn’t the first time that day we had been mistaken for a couple going through the temple.

But we certainly considered completing my grandparents’ temple work reason enough for an apostle’s compliments, so we accepted them and finished the work we were there to do. It was in every way a capstone to the work of bringing others to Christ that had just consumed the past two years of my life.

It would be impossible for me to quantify the number of people I met in the course of my two years as a missionary. But serving in 7 areas and 10 stakes and over 70 wards, to say it was thousands is not hyperbole. And in those five days it was evident. Virtually everywhere we went we ran into someone I knew. On the train.

On the street. At Hard Rock Cafe, the one that used to be at Trolley Square. Seriously—Elder Galbraith, my final mission companion, and I had eaten Thanksgiving dinner with the hostess’s family just a couple of months before.

(How the invitation to that dinner happened is somewhat unusual. Elder Galbraith and I were grocery shopping one preparation day at the Macey’s in our area, at the corner of 7800 South and 3200 West. While we were next to the

refrigerated section, a woman came up to us and asked if we had an invitation for Thanksgiving, which was coming up in a couple of weeks. Even though we were covering two stakes at the time, we actually hadn’t been invited to anyone’s home for Thanksgiving dinner yet. So she invited us to her family’s gathering. We got permission from our mission president to join them—in Sandy, at nearly the opposite end of our mission.)

Jaunts to Park City and Provo rounded out our tour. The five days flew by too quickly.

Before I knew it, I was looking out over the valley I had called home for two years, unsure of when I would return. Within moments Salt Lake disappeared behind the Wasatch, and with it my mission.

Ten years ago today I came home. But part of me has never left that place; or, rather, part of that place has never left me. Unexpectedly I ended up returning to Salt Lake merely four months later for a completely different experience: college. Though my years at the University of Utah were spent in the same valley, it was a different place altogether, both because of the different nature of that experience and the fact that the U was well outside my mission boundaries—a place that might as well have been much farther than the few miles it lay from my areas in Cottonwood and Murray. During my college years, whenever I crossed the mission boundary at 4500 South or so, a hushed, slightly nostalgic, deeply grateful calm came over me. I was, after all, re-entering the place I had gone in heed of a prophet’s call to proclaim to others that the gospel of Jesus Christ had been restored through a prophet in our day. This was the place where I helped others, fellow children of God, realize that God really is there and that he has a plan to help us be happy.

Those were two really good years. Some people say that they were the best two years.

Now, a decade later, I can’t say that. But what I can say is that they were the beginning of the best ten years. Another decade from now, I hope I can say that they were the beginning of the best twenty. My years as a full-time missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have, as I hoped they would, formed the foundation of everything I am and have in my life. Whatever impact I had on those people and that place pales in comparison to their impact on me. Today, ten years later, I am more committed than ever to the principles I taught then—and now, with Susan and Fiona in my life, my work has only just begun.

True to the faith I will ever stand. d

And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!

DOCTRINE & COVENANTS 18:16

NOTES 1. Hymns, #254

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THE JOURNAL FIONA

The meaning of family.

I’ve learned a lot of words since I was born. “Family” is one of the most important.

T

TOOTHTRACKER Teeth as of 31 January 2013:

UPPER

right

LOWER

26 December 2012

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

he very first time I met Mama and Daddy—or Susan and Dustin, as I occasionally call them—they said that they were my “family.” Which, from what I could tell, meant “servants.” They were the people who bent over backwards to fulfill my every want and need. Whenever 18 I cried and asked for milk, or cried because I wanted my diaper changed, or cried because I was tired—each cry is, of course, distinct and unmistakable— Mama and Daddy, in their fumbling way, eventually got it through their heads left what I was asking for and took care of it for me.

Then they started telling me that “family” can mean more than just having a mother and father (they tell me these words mean the same thing as “Mama” and “Daddy”). They said that a family could have aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. It made sense, I guess—a girl can never have too many people waiting on her hand and foot. But whenever I met an “aunt” or an “uncle,” or a “cousin,” or “grandparents,” I started to get confused.

There were lots of them, and it was hard to keep them all straight. So I picked a favorite—a “cousin” named Charlotte—and memorized her name first.

Also, whenever I was around them, they always did cool stuff with me, coming

25 December 2012 up with new ideas and showing me cool new things. No bossing me around telling me all the things I can’t do or can’t touch, like Mama and Daddy always do. Wow, I thought: these aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents were really fun, and they were really good at playing with me. They were never obnoxious like my parents can sometimes be. I really grew to love them.

Yet I still wasn’t sure what my parents were talking about when they mentioned “family.” Then one day it clicked. A little before Christmas we took the subway to the airport and got on an airplane. I was really excited to get on a plane. We went to a place called Salt Lake City. It’s where Grammy and Papa—I now have their names memorized, too—live, and there were lots of my aunts and uncles and cousins there, too. We were having a great time. On Christmas Day, after Mama and Daddy took me sledding for the first time (which, by the way, was a lot of fun), we all went to visit someone. Her house was a little different; it reminded me a little of the house we lived in in Washington, D.C., with a lobby and lots of people living there.

All of us stayed in the lobby while Papa went to get the person we were visiting.

Mama and Daddy told me that her name was Great-Grandma. When she came out, she looked very different from my other family members. Her skin was really wrinkly, and her hair was very gray, and she spoke pretty softly, especially compared to my loud cousin, Michael. She didn’t do much—she just sat there and spent time with us, and she seemed to like me a lot. I liked her, too. We took this photo, and then we left.

As we drove back to Grammy and Papa’s house, I thought about our visit to

Great-Grandma and meeting her for the first time. Then I realized that “family” means the people you love just because—because of who they are, because they’re there, and not just because they do whatever you want them to do. I like that idea. It makes a lot of sense.

So that’s why I love my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents: just because, no other reason needed. But my parents—well, that’s a different story. I still expect them to wait on me hand and foot, and to do whatever I ask them to do, and to let me do whatever I want. And if they make me mad, I’m learning really well how to let

 I meet Great-Grandma for the first time. Four generations of my family, all in one spot. I’m still not sure what “generation” means, but I understand “family” a whole lot more.

them know. After all, I’m two and a half years old now, and I’ve had lots of practice.

Now, I also hear that a family can include brothers and sisters. I think I like that idea. Maybe I’ll go talk to Mama and Daddy about getting one of those. You can order them online, right? d

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July–December 2012

MILESTONES

holidays events in our lives

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Canada Day Independence Day CERN announces likely discovery of Higgs boson  Family to Long Branch, New Jersey, for Fiona’s birthday (see Dialann 8.2–3) 15 Fiona’s birthday 20 A shooting inside a crowded cinema auditorium in Aurora, Colorado, during the midnight premier of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises leaves 12 dead and 58 injured. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in Colorado since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton on 20 April 1999, during Dustin’s junior year of high school 23 The NCAA announces penalties against Penn State  23 Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, dies at age 61 27–12 August

2012 Olympic Games in London (see Dialann 8.12-13) August 6 7

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NASA’s latest Mars rover, called Curiosity, successfully lands on the Red Planet. It will spend the next two years collecting data and images from the Martian landscape The 40th anniversary of the introduction of Massimo Vignelli’s map of the New York City Subway that heavily distorted the city’s geography in favor of a diagrammatic approach of 90- and 45-degree angles. Loved by designers and hated by New Yorkers (more or less), it was replaced with a more geographically-true map in 1979, a version of which remains in use today (see Dialann 8.9) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that July 2012 was the hottest month since recordkeeping began in 1895. The average temperature across the contiguous United States was 77.6 degrees F (25.3 degrees C), 3.3 degrees F warmer than the 20thcentury average for the month and 0.2 degrees F warmer than the previous warmest July, which was in 1936 at the peak of the Dust Bowl Fiona’s first days at school. They were trial days to see how she enjoyed it. She was exhausted, but she loved it (see Dialann 8.6-7) Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez throws a perfect game in a 1-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

Perfect games are relatively rare—this was only the 23rd in Major League Baseball history—yet this was the third this season (see Dialann 7.10-11) Ground broken for the Tijuana México Temple

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Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, dies at age 82

In more detail …

September 3 Labor Day 4 Susan starts back for the 2012–13 school year

Fiona’s first official day as a student at preschool 11 J. Christopher Stevens, the United States ambassador to Libya, is killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Whether the Obama administration responded quickly enough in calling the incident a terrorist attack was an ongoing theme in the 2012 presidential election 17 225th anniversary of the Constitution 23 Brigham City Utah Temple dedicated by Boyd K. Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve 29 Ground broken for Indianapolis Indiana Temple October 5–7 6–7

Dustin to Virginia for Matthew Brownell’s wedding 182nd Semiannual General Conference. President Thomas S. Monson announces that temples will be built in Tucson, Arizona, and Arequipa, Peru 14 Felix Baumgartner jumps from a balloon at an altitude of 127,852 feet (38,969.3 meters), setting a record for the highest parachute jump ever. During his free fall, which lasted for 4 minutes and 19 seconds, he reached a maximum speed of 843.6 mph (1,357.64 km/h)—the first person to break the sound barrier outside of a vehicle 25 Andrea and Shawn Braswell arrive for a visit. They were supposed to go home on Monday, 29 October, but ...

28 Calgary Alberta Temple dedicated by President Thomas S. Monson 29 Hurricane Sandy makes landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey 31 Halloween November 2 … Andrea and Shawn were finally able to get a flight back to Charlotte, four days after they had originally planned to leave 5 Susan 6 Election Day: Barack Obama is reelected; Susan and Dustin go to The Colbert Report (see pages 12 and 14–15) 22 Thanksgiving December 3 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints creates the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake, notable here because it is the Church’s 3,000th stake 14 A gunman enters Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and kills 20 students and 6 staff members (see page 24) 14–16 Family to Frederick, Maryland, to visit Nana, Randy, and Amanda for Christmas 23–29 Family to Salt Lake City to visit Susan’s family 25 Christmas 31 Newsweek, the nation’s second-largest weekly newsmagazine behind Time, publishes its last print issue

 The front cover of the last print edition of Newsweek, published 31 December 2012. The photo is of Newsweek’s former headquarters in New York.

Higgs boson possibly discovered 4 July | CERN, the European Organization for Nucear Research, announces that scientists using the Large Hadron Collider have discovered a particle whose characteristics are consistent with the theoretical Higgs boson. Analysis as to whether the particle discovered is indeed the Higgs boson remains ongoing, but if confirmed it would be a major scientific breakthrough, finally confirming the existence of a particle first predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics nearly 50 years ago.

The NCAA announces penalties against Penn State 23 July | The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announces penalties against The Pennsylvania State University in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal involving one of the football team’s assistant coaches and university leadership. The penalties included a $60 million fine, a four-year suspension from bowl games, and the invalidation of the team’s wins from 1998 through 2011, which means that the team’s former head coach, the late Joe Paterno, is no longer the winningest coach in college football history.

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

We took this photo in the Borough Hall subway station in Downtown Brooklyn on Sunday, 9 December 2012.

Fiona was remarkably cooperative (relative to her normal behavior when she sees a camera).

10

2012 EDITION

OUR ANNUAL HOLIDAY LETTER NEW YORK ▪ DECEMBER 2012

Dear family and friends,

T

wenty twelve began on a dour note for Dustin. It wasn’t because he turned 30 nine days into the new year, but rather because he realized that he now looks like he’s 30.

Fortunately, February proved to be a lot brighter.

This year was a leap year, which meant that we got to celebrate our real wedding anniversary for the first time ever. We started a tradition of throwing a party for our friends in the years we can celebrate our actual anniversary of 29 February. For the occasion, Susan made a beautiful two-tier wedding cake, and we saved the top tier to eat one year later, on our fifth anniversary.

Since our first official wedding anniversary closely followed a milestone birthday for Dustin, we decided we should celebrate in a big way. Which we did—in Iceland.

Fiona’s first trip abroad was certainly one to remember (too bad she probably won’t). We saw geysers— including Geysir, the first one known to Europeans and the source of the English word—waterfalls, fjords, and other amazing scenery. We floated in the geothermal salt water of the Blue Lagoon. And we saw killer and humpback whales on a whale-watching tour, which also taught us that seasick people really do turn green, just like in old cartoons. (If you are ever offered free seasickness pills on a boat ride, please accept our advice and take them!)

For spring break, we decided to return to our old stomping grounds in Washington, D.C. Fiona had a great time hunting for Easter eggs on the grounds of Washington National Cathedral. She also had fun visiting the National Capital Trolley Museum and the National Zoo and seeing her aunt and uncle and cousins and her Nana, Randy, and her other aunt.

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WE HOPE 2012 HAS BEEN AS GOOD TO YOU AS IT HAS BEEN TO US AND THAT 2013 WILL BE EVEN BETTER.

 The United States Postal Service’s 2012 holiday stamps, “Santa and Sleigh,” which we used to mail Christmas cards and copies of this letter and photo to friends and family.

According to the Postal Service’s website, “Artist Paul Rogers worked with art director Howard Paine to create this block of four holiday stamps. These computer-generated images were originally drawn in pencil on paper.”

They were first issued on 11 October 2012.

12

On 15 July, Fiona reached a milestone herself: her second birthday. In 2011, for Fiona’s first birthday, we started a tradition of taking her to the beach (one of the advantages of having a birthday smack dab in the middle of summer, unlike Susan and Dustin).

But this time our trip to the beach was completely free, courtesy of Google Wallet. All we had to do was watch a quick 30-second demonstration of the app at Penn Station and they gave us free tickets on a chartered express train that went straight to Long Branch, New Jersey, complete with free snacks, drinks, beach balls, and sunglasses.

We all brought home great memories—and the gift of sunburn. Well, it was mostly just Susan and Dustin who brought that gift home.

In August, Fiona began a new adventure: school. It was a little scary and sad at first being away from Mama and Daddy, but Fiona has really enjoyed making new friends and learning lots of new things. She goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays to a preschool a few blocks from our house.

Fiona has even been on a couple of field trips to the farm and visiting bakeries around Brooklyn.

These trips are especially fun because she gets to ride in a school bus and Daddy gets to come along.

For the second year in a row, the weekend before Halloween came with weird weather.

Last year it was a freak snowstorm—the only significant snow we got all season. This year it was more tropical in nature: a hurricane. Here in Bushwick, Brooklyn, we are away from the coast and were virtually unscathed by Sandy; we never lost power or even Internet. It has saddened us to see all the destruction in the city and places we have come to love, from the Rockaways in Queens to the beautiful train station in Hoboken, New Jersey. But we have also had several opportunities to go to hard-hit areas and help in the cleanup, and we have been amazed by the

strength and resilience of this city and its people in coming togther, helping each other out, and getting back on their feet.

We, like many others, were anxious for the 2012 election to be over. But, unlike many others, our reason is that we had tickets to go see The Colbert Report live at 11.30pm on election night.

We figured that, whoever won the presidential race, we could either celebrate or commiserate with Stephen Colbert. We also figured that was our one opportunity to see Colbert and we weren’t going to miss out on it. So Dustin got there at 5.45pm—a full four hours before the cutoff for getting in line—and ended up being first in line. We’re not really sure why, but a staff member gave us a special ticket which allowed us to sit front and center on the first row. It was an awesome experience.

A few weeks ago, one of Susan’s classes decided they wanted to help the victims of hurricane Sandy. Their first idea—to take a field trip to help out with the cleanup—was sure to be shot down by the school administration. So they came up with another idea: making hats, scarves, and mittens to help hurricane victims as the cold weather approached. After brainstorming how to make all these things, they decided the easiest way would be to make them out of fleece. Then the issue became how to pay for all that fleece. The principal said the school would match whatever money they could raise. And the students decided the best way to raise money was through a bake sale. That was a Monday, and at the bake sale that Wednesday they raised $232.

Matched by the school it came to $464, which buys a lot of fleece (71 pounds/32 kilograms, in fact). Now they are busy making hundreds of items to help out hurricane victims, all on their own initiative.

We hope 2012 has been as good to you as it has been to us and that 2013 will be even better.

We have enjoyed the stream of guests in our home in the past year and once again extend an invitation to all of you to stop by if you ever find yourselves in New York. We wish you a merry Christmas and a very happy new year. d

QUOTABLE

And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.

ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE, architecture critic for The New York Times, writing on the demolition of New York’s Pennsylvania Station in an editorial that ran in the Times on 30 October 1963. Ms. Huxtable passed away on 7 January 2013 at age 91.

We note, too, that this year marks 50 years that have passed since this “monumental act of vandalism,” as Ms. Huxtable rightly decried Penn Station’s dismantling, which left a scar on Manhattan and New York City as a whole that has never fully healed. It was an act of intentional destruction surpassed in this city’s history only by the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. background: Penn Station concourse from the south, 24 April 1962.

PHOTO: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, HABS, HABS NY,31-NEYO,78--9

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

OUR TIMES

By DUSTIN

Four more years Tuesday, 6 November 2012 President Barack Obama, a Democrat, wins reelection while Republican numbers shrink in both houses of Congress.

 Mr. Obama’s new official portrait, for his next four years in office.

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

S

usan and I first heard the news straight from the mouth of Stephen Colbert.

It was a moment past 23.30 on election night and the television networks were making their call: Mitt Romney had lost in Ohio, cementing the 270 votes in the Electoral College that President Barack Obama needed to win another term in the White House. The audience erupted in applause and cheers.

On 10 November, the winner of the vote in Florida was determined, bringing to a final, conclusive end the 57th quadrennial presidential election: Barack Obama had been reelected with 65,907,213 votes—51.1% of the popular vote—and 332 votes in the Electoral College. Mr. Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, won the vote in 26 of the states. Oh, and in the District of Columbia, which is so overwhelmingly Democratic, and the outcome of its vote so obvious, that it’s hardly worth mentioning that Mr. Obama won there, too.

Mr. Obama officially received his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention held in my hometown, Charlotte, in September. Though the Democratic nominee eked out a win in North Carolina four years ago,1 he was not to repeat it: the state that hosted the Democratic convention reversed course from 2008, as did Indiana, and went for the Republican, Mitt Romney, this time around.

Barack Hussein Obama, born in Hawai‘i2 to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, made history when, on 20 January 2009, he became the first mixed-race president of the United States. Susan and I were there on the cold, sunny day that it happened. I was standing on the West Lawn of the Capitol—a friend had secured tickets from a member of Utah’s congressional delegation and offered one to me—while Susan was among the more than 1 million people on the National Mall. It is a day we will never forget.

Though Mr. Romney didn’t win the election,

he made history in his own right. When he accepted the Republican party’s nomination at its convention in Tampa, Florida, in August, he became the first member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to run as a major party’s candidate for president. That moment, too—that Mormon Moment, as many came to see the 2012 presidential campaign—is something that many Church members will never forget.

On 17 December, as required by the Constitution, the Electoral College met and formally reelected President Obama and Vice President Biden. In the new year Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice, administered the vice presidential oath of office to Mr. Biden, following which the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, administered the oath of office to Mr. Obama. The oaths of office were administered in private ceremonies to fulfill the constitutional requirement that they take place on 20 January, which this year was on a Sunday. The public inauguration was held on the west steps of the Capitol on Monday, 21 January, marred only by a silly controversy afterwards over whether Beyoncé and the United States Marine Band performed the National Anthem live.3

The presidential election, of course, wasn’t the only election that took place on 6 November.

In the United States House of Representatives, the Republicans’ majority fell from 242–193 to 234–201. The number of Republicans in the Senate also fell as the Democrats strengthened their majority from 51–47 to 53–45.4 Our U.S. representative, Nydia M. Velazquez (D), and our U.S. senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, won reelection.5 So did our representative in the New York State Assembly, Vito Lopez (D), though we voted against him because of staffers’ accusations of sexual harrasment. In other races we watched, Pat McCrory (R), the former mayor of Charlotte, became governor of my home state, while Elizabeth Warren (D) won a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts. Voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved measures to legalize same-sex marriage in their states—the first time gay marriage has been legalized by popular vote in the United States. d OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA TAKEN 6 DECEMBER 2012, PUBLIC DOMAIN FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/WHITEHOUSE/8390033709

E L E C T I O N R E S U LT S

By the numbers

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Numerals indicate the number of electoral votes allocated to each state

WA 12 MT 3

ME 4

ND 3

OR 7

MN 10 ID 4 WY 3 NV 6

CA 55

WI 10

SD 3

PA 20

IA 6

NE 5 UT 6 CO 9

AZ 11

NM 5

NY 29

MI 16

IL 20

IN 11

MO 10

KS 6

OH 18 KY 12

NC 15

TN 11

OK 7

SC 9

AR 6 MS 6

TX 38

AL 9

GA 16

LA 8 FL 29

AK 3

HI 4

THE CANDIDATES

WV VA 13 5

NH 4 VT 3 MA 11 RI 4 CT 7 NJ 14 DE 3 MD 10 DC 3

States Obama/Biden won, including the District of Columbia, are in blue; states Romney/Ryan won are in red. Though both Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral votes by congressional district, in this election the winner in each state won all that state’s electoral votes.

TH E D E M O CR ATS

TH E REP U BLI C ANS

Barack Obama

Mitt Romney

home states

Illinois & Delaware

Massachusetts & Wisconsin

electoral vote

332

206

states carried

26 + District of Columbia

24

popular vote

65,907,213 51.1%

60,931,767 47.2%

 Mr. Obama speaks at an event in Las Vegas in 2007.

 Mr. Romney speaks at a rally in Mesa, Arizona, on 13 February 2012.

& Joe Biden

BARACK OBAMA: PHOTO TAKEN 24 MARCH 2007 BY CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND, CC BY-ND 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/7513136@N05/452460338

& Paul Ryan

MITT ROMNEY: PHOTO TAKEN BY GAGE SKIDMORE, CC BY-SA 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/22007612@N05/6878656169

NOTES 1. Mr. Obama received 49.7% of the state’s popular vote versus John McCain’s 49.38%, a difference of only 14,177 votes of the more than 4.3 million cast.

2. Despite what the so-called “birthers” say, Mr. Obama really is, as the Constitution requires presidents to be, a natural-born citizen of the United States.

3. As it turns out, they didn’t. Beyoncé lip-synced and band members played along with prerecorded music. But, honestly, who cares?

4. These numbers don’t add up to 100, the total number of senators, because there have been two independent senators in each Congress: Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in the 112th Congress and Mr. Sanders and Angus King of Maine in the 113th. They do, however, caucus with the Democrats.

5. Only one-third of the seats in the U.S. Senate are up for election every two years; our other U.S. senator, Charles Schumer, was not up for reelection.

15

HOLINESS TO THE LORD THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

F

ive years ago next month, on friday, 29 February 2008, Susan and I took the 1 train uptown from Times Square-42nd Street to 66th Street-Lincoln Center and entered the Manhattan New York Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There we were married for time and eternity by the authority of the priesthood.

The Manhattan temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley on 13 June 2004, the Church’s 119th operating temple. Like all temples, it is distinct from other structures, including the Church’s meetinghouses, as a House of the Lord. It is a place set apart from the rest of the world—and the noise and tumult of the Midtown streets that surround it—where His Spirit dwells in great abundance and where all God’s children may receive the highest ordinances of the priesthood, including sealing as husbands and wives, parents and children, families for eternity.

But even among the temples of the Restoration the Manhattan temple is unique.

It is one of only two temples—the other is the Hong Kong China Temple—that is inside a larger structure. Other facilities within the temple building include a meetinghouse for three wards and a Family History Center, as well as the Church’s New York Public Affairs Office.

On these pages we present photos of the interior of the Manhattan temple made available by the Church when the temple was dedicated.

We hope they convey the peace and reverence that can be felt in the House of the Lord and the beauty of this place that means so much to us because it is where our family began. —dustin

 The Manhattan New York Temple at 125 Columbus Avenue.

The temple sits at the northeast corner of Broadway, Columbus Avenue, and 65th Street, across from Lincoln Center.

INSIDE THE MANHATTAN NEW YORK TEMPLE OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS 16

 Celestial room. The celestial room represents the peace and beauty of dwelling in the presence of God.

17

 These stained-glass panels, depicting the resurrected Savior with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, greet temple patrons as they enter through the lobby on the street level. (See Luke 24:13–32.)

 Grand hallway on the upper level of the temple, which occupies the 6th floor.

18

background: Detail of a door.

While the beehive motif is common in Latter-day Saint architecture, unique to the Manhattan temple are the door handles, whose torch motif was inspired by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

ďƒŠ Ordinance room.

Murals on the walls and ceiling depict the plants and landscape of the Hudson Valley north of New York City.

ďƒ§ Sealing room.

This is one of two sealing rooms in the Manhattan temple. (It is not the one we were married in.)

19

 Brides’ room.

I love to see the temple.

I’m going there someday To feel the Holy Spirit, To listen and to pray.

For the temple is a house of God, A place of love and beauty.

I’ll prepare myself while I am young; This is my sacred duty.

I love to see the temple.

I’ll go inside someday.

I’ll cov’nant with my Father; I’ll promise to obey.

For the temple is a holy place Where we are sealed together.

As a child of God, I’ve learned this truth: A fam’ly is forever.

“I LOVE TO SEE THE TEMPLE”

BY JANICE KAPP PERRY CHILDREN’S SONGBOOK, PAGE 95

20

 Sealing room. This is the room in which Susan and Dustin were married for time and all eternity.

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

By DUSTIN

Do we realize what we have?

My experience in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission was not only a time to teach but also a time to learn—to learn for myself the truth of this work and the blessing I have to be a part of it.

This is the text of the “homecoming” talk I gave when I returned from my service as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ten years ago, in January 2003.

 Elder Joyce with the Burks in February 2002.

The Utah Salt Lake City South Mission was a wonderful mission to serve in. It is one of four proselyting missions in Utah, including two in the Salt Lake Valley; the Utah Ogden Mission, the Utah Salt Lake City Mission, and the Utah Provo Mission are the others.1 For those of you who are from or are familiar with Salt Lake, my mission went from about 4500 South in the middle of the valley to Point of the Mountain on the southern end of the valley and from the Oquirrh Mountains on the west to the Wasatch Mountains on the east. It also covered Summit County to the east of Salt Lake.

The valley portion of our mission covered an area only about 13 miles by 13 miles (21 by 21

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

T

he crates of Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games souvenirs that fill our house right now tend to be a dead giveaway as to where I served my mission. When many people learned that I served my mission in Salt Lake City, they give me an interesting reaction like, “Oh, my gosh! You served in Salt Lake City?” Or, in the language of my mission, “Oh, my heck! You served in Salt Lake City? For reals?”

Yeah, for reals.

kilometers). In that area we had approximately 200 missionaries, 98 stakes, and 300,000 members of the Church. There were about 1,600 convert baptisms in the mission in 2002.

Serving a mission in Utah is different from serving a mission just about anywhere else, except for maybe Idaho. We were assigned to serve in one or two stakes at a time, so though I had only 7 areas, I served in 10 stakes and about 70 wards. We actually did tracting every once in a while, but while missionaries in other missions can often tract up to 70 hours in a week, I did only about 40 hours—during my entire mission! But with 1,600 baptisms a year we stayed busy. We taught lots of discussions to both nonmembers and less-active members. When we weren’t teaching discussions, we were working with leaders and members in our stakes and wards to increase missionary work.

Having taught and worked with so many people, there are so many stories I could share.

But two in particular always come to mind.

About a year into my mission, my companion and I began teaching the discussions to a less-active family in our area, the Burks.

A discussion at their home was always a spiritual experience, and we had great gospel conversations. In the course of our discussions, the time came to invite them to come back to church. (They were already members of the Church, so there was no need to invite them to be baptized.) I asked, “Will you come to church with us this Sunday?” Well, it was the end of the year, and with the new year their ward would switch from the 9.00am time schedule to 11.00am, and that would make it easier to get ready (even though they lived next door to their meetinghouse) and…. I said, “No, no, no. You don’t seem to understand. See, when missionaries ask a question, it’s not a yes/ no question. It’s a yes question: we ask the question, and you answer ‘yes.’ So let’s try this one more time: Will you come to church with us this Sunday?” “Yes, Elder Joyce.” Actually, I probably got on my knees and begged, but the point is that they came that Sunday. I don’t think they’ve missed a Sunday since. In fact, this past November [2002] they were sealed as an eternal family in the Salt Lake Temple.

That’s the purpose of the missionary work of this Church. It’s not just simply to tell people what we believe or even to see them be baptized, important as those are. It’s to help them make the covenants that will unite them as a family eternally and bring them a fulness of joy together and with their Father in Heaven forever. It’s not just to help others gain a testimony, which is to know the gospel and the teachings of the Savior, but to help them be converted, which is to live those teachings and by living them become more like Jesus Christ.

In my last area at the end of my mission, I had an incredible experience teaching the discussions to a nonmember woman, Denice, who had recently moved with her husband from Denver to her sister-in-law’s house. Throughout my mission, I felt a connection with different people; perhaps we were about the same age or we had had similar experiences in life or we thought about similar things in a similar way. This woman and I had a connection, but I think Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve explained what our connection was:

“Recall the new star that announced the birth at Bethlehem? It was in its precise orbit long before it so shone. We are likewise placed in human orbits to illuminate. Divine correlation functions not only in the cosmos but on this planet, too. After all, the Book of Mormon plates were not buried in Belgium, only to have Joseph Smith born centuries later in distant Bombay.”2

The Lord is personally involved in each of our lives. I knew that before my mission, but I witnessed that again and again throughout my mission. And in terms of my life and my investigators, I’m talking about more than my call to the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission from January 2001 to January 2003; I’m talking about that specific woman’s address at a specific date and time. Each of us is put at a particular place at a particular time for specific reasons and specific people. But it won’t just happen because it’s supposed to or because of “destiny.” We must live worthy of it. As we live worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost, we will have experiences that will increase our testimony and bring us closer to Heavenly Father.

One of the greatest opportunities that we had as missionaries in Salt Lake was to attend a session of the last general conference of our missions. I attended the Sunday morning session of the October 2002 general conference.

President Hinckley was the concluding speaker at the session. In his talk he testified of the Prophet Joseph Smith:

“We declare without equivocation that God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared in person to the boy Joseph Smith.

“…Our whole strength rests on the validity of PHOTO TAKEN 19 JANUARY 2003

that vision….

“That They came, both of Them, that Joseph saw Them in Their resplendent glory, that They spoke to him and that he heard and recorded Their words—of these remarkable things we testify.”3

He closed by saying: “This must be our great and singular message to the world. We do not offer it with boasting. We testify in humility but with gravity and absolute sincerity. We invite all, the whole earth, to listen to this account and take measure of its truth. God bless us as those who believe in His divine manifestations and help us to extend knowledge of these great and marvelous occurrences to all who will listen. To these we say in a spirit of love, bring with you all that you have of good and truth which you have received from whatever source, and come and let us see if we may add to it. This invitation I extend to men and women everywhere with my solemn testimony that this work is true, for I know the truth of it by the power of the Holy Ghost.”4

After I heard the prophet of God on the earth today humbly and quietly but with great dignity bear his testimony which he has received by “the power of the Holy Ghost” in the presence of 21,000 of the Saints, we went past anti-Church protesters who were lined up with their bullhorns and signs along North Temple Street between the Conference Center and Temple Square. Never before had I seen the contrast between them and us as I did that day. I saw them surrounded by the structures where the mind and will of the Lord are revealed to the earth through his prophets today and where families are made eternal, and the Holy Ghost bore witness to me once again, as He had done many times before, that this work is true.

Now at the end of my mission I know better than I ever have before that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.”5 I know that God Himself restored His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that the Lord, who is so involved in our lives, leads and guides us through His living prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley. And I know that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior and Exemplar; that He lived, sacrificed, bled, and died for me. In the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon: “And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which [I] give of him: That he lives!”6 d

 Elder Joyce and his last mission companion, Elder Galbraith, with Denice.

NOTES 1. In July 2012 the Utah Salt Lake City and Utah Salt Lake City South missions were split to create the Utah Salt Lake City Central and Utah Salt Lake City West missions.

An additional Utah mission, the Utah St. George Mission, was created in July 2010.

2. Ensign, November 2002, page 17 3. —, page 80 4. —, page 81 5. Doctrine and Covenants 1:30 6. Doctrine and Covenants 76:22

23

LAST LOOK

On 14 December 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot and killed 20 children and 6 staff members.

These are the victims’ names and ages.

Charlotte Bacon, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Grace McDonnell, 7

Olivia Engel, 6

Emilie Parker, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Jack Pinto, 6

Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Dylan Hockley, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Madeleine F. Hsu, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Catherine V. Hubbard, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Jesse Lewis, 6

Allison N. Wyatt, 6

Rachel Davino, 29

Lauren Rousseau, 30

Dawn Hochsprung, 47

Mary Sherlach, 56

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

Victoria Soto, 27

TEACHER

PRINCIPAL TEACHER

TEACHER

SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST TEACHER

We will never forget them, nor the emotions of that day and those that followed.

J A N U A RY 2 0 1 3

The nametags have yellowed somewhat, but the memories of Dustin’s mission are still vivid—as is its impact on our lives.

In two articles in this issue, Dustin marks ten years since the end of his service as a full-time missionary in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

SEE “TRUE TO THE FAITH,” PAGE 2 & “DO WE REALIZE WHAT WE HAVE?” PAGE 22

IMAGE IN COLOR BAR ON NAMEPLATE TAKEN 2 MARCH 2007 BY DANIEL SCHWEN, CC BY-SA 2.5 COMMONS.W IKIMEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:GOE_PLATZ_DER_SYNAGOGE_DETAIL_2_NOCA.JPG