1st stop on our way to Micronesia- Manhattan! (week of September 10th)

We enjoy visiting Manhattan and we've had some great memories here including the fact that its the wedding proposal location (Central Park). This trip to NY is certainly filled with some amazing experiences, great food and reacquainting ourselves with friends.

Met some friends preaching at Ground Zero. They've had many amazing experiences sharing the good news with people looking for answers to the solutions to life's problems.

Anniversary dinner.....yum

Met some recent graduates of a special school called Gilead. This school is designed to train them to become effective missionaries. We met couples from India and Africa. The graduates were from various regions of the world.

Here are the family members of the missionaries from India. Amazingly I happen to know this couple from when I was in a congregation in Sandy Springs! What a small world.

How did we go from eating pizza out of the box on the red stairs in Times Square at about 7pm with nothing to do....to walking the red carpet at a major product launch for Case Mate about 30 minutes later? :) All we can say is THANKS SHARLENE Y!!!

Sorry no pitiful picture of us eating pizza out of a box but here is the red carpet

This definitely beats eating out of a box

Stef taking this red carpet thing way too serious :)

Enjoying VIP as if we had this event on our "calendar" :)

How is it possible that we were able to enjoy The Metropolitan Museum on a budget of $0?

Part 1:So you probably know how cheap (frugal) I can be with money. We wanted to see some of the exhibits at the Met but that entry price was kind of steep. So after looking in the lobby area we walked outside and I (I found out later that Stefany wasn't a fan of this idea...hee hee) wondered if it would be possible to just get someone's ticket who is leaving for the day. I struck up a conversation with one nice family from Australia but I just couldn't transition the conversation to...."hi my name is freeloader..can i have your ticket if you no longer need it". So we were going to give up but then I saw 3 people walking out together and they appeared to be nice. So I approached them, had a little small talk and we tried to very humbly ask them if they were finished with touring the Museum and if we could possibly have their tickets so that we can see some of the exhibits. They said YES! We told them we were trying to save money and didn't want to spend that amount of money. Later I kicked myself for not a least offering them half of the ticket price. They were so nice. We went into the museum and took a walk back into the year 2330 BCE and beyond. We were there for about 1.5hrs and then it was closing time.

Part 2: What is most amazing about this Museum experience is that we bumped into that same couple (James & Courtney) about 6hrs later in BROOKLYN! Lets see....never met this couple before...."beg" them for their tickets outside of the Met in Manhattan on 5th avenue....then around 10pm that night we meet them again in Brooklyn on their way to the train station. Oh by the way....this couple was Jehovah's Witnesses touring Bethel. They were amazed that we bumped into each other again and it was extra special that we were spiritual brothers and sisters. Pretty cool.  Thanks to Jehovah and a very generous couple (James & Courtney) from Alabama. James and Courtney please come visit us in Micronesia and we'll be happy to host you. Maybe we'll even treat you to a museum tour. :)