Week Eight…Spring is Great!??

 So what did we learn this week!?

We learned that Utah doesn’t know what Spring means…flower blossoms, sunshine, warmer weather, bees buzzing around, that’s Spring…and we have had none of that here this week. It’s been cold and rainy and snowy, especially today! We missed Music and the Spoken Word last week so we wanted to go today. We looked outside and almost decided not to go, but we are glad we did. The choir from BYU-Idaho was there to sing with the Tabernacle choir. They are very good. You should watch the broadcast, I highly recommend it. We really enjoyed the performance, even though it was treacherous walk in the snow!

              Mom thought it was funny how so much snow accumulated on top of my head, turning my hair white. Of course many would say that my hair is already white and I didn’t need any help from the snow to turn it that color. 

Since I started with today I will go backwards through the week. Yesterday we worked at the library and had a pretty good day. I was particularly busy because they are training me to be a steward. The steward’s job is to sit at the reception desk and greet patrons as they come in. Then he hands them off to an usher…a missionary assigned to help people find a computer and get started with what they have come to the library to do…then when the guest indicates from their computer what they need help with…beginning Family Search, research for a certain country, etc…it pops up on he steward’s computer screen. The steward then searches for who is available to help (the computer assists with that because each missionary and staff member is entered into the computer with their country and language capabilities identified) and then he picks who will be assigned to help the guest. He then sends that usher off to find the missionary and deliver their assignment to them. I’ve learned it’s kind of fun to do until there is nobody available to help with a specific language, or the person who can do it is already helping someone else and you have two more people that come in wanting the same country. It all works out though, even if you send a newby like mom and me to go sit with them and show them the little that we know. Usually it is enough to get them started and they are grateful and happy.

After our shift was finished we hightailed it over to Abravenel Hall to enjoy a performance of the Utah Symphony. The concert hall is just across the street south of the Family Search Library so it didn’t take long to walk there. One of the missionaries here has a connection with the concert hall folks and gets a bunch of tickets free for the performances (if there are any available) for the missionaries to be able to attend. We listened to Bruckner 5 conducted by Thierry Fischer. I learned that Anton Bruckner was a composer from Austria in the mid 1800’s. He was from a poor family and worked mostly in obscurity. His Bruckner 5 was the capstone of his career and was said that “it sounds like a cathedral looks.” He never heard it performed. Sad. Mom thought the first movement sounded like a bunch of fairies playing, flitting around and flying across the water, enjoying life. Then the middle movement sounded like something ominous coming to attack them and the last movement sounded like an army of fairies coming to the rescue. Wow, mom is deep! I was just trying to stay awake and figure out why the composer kept having the orchestra stop and start and change volume so much. It was nice none the less. 

Thursday mom woke up with a sty in her left eye. She learned that “Ouch! That hurts Charlie!”. It really bugged her all day and the next and the next. Finally this morning it was feeling better, but still very annoying. We worked at the library that day then came home and mom went off to teach her sewing class. They did pajamas this week. She said that everyone successfully made a pair. Wahoo. I stayed home and watched March Madness. It truly is madness this year and I learned that my bracket is sunk! I only got 2 of the Elite 8 correct…Kansas St. and Gonzaga…and they both lost and so I have none of the final 4 correct and of course my overall winner….Arizona…wrong! Ugh. But it has been fun, as always, to watch the games.

Wednesday was our Pday so we headed off to another temple to do some more sealings. This week was the Draper Temple and we remembered to take a picture there (after we had already started to drive away, mom remembered and we went back). 

We learned that we like the Draper Temple for doing sealings. They don’t have a limit on the number of names you can bring, only a limit on the length of the sealing session. We were able to get a ton of sealings done and when we expressed our delight with that the sealer told us to come at 8am on Wednesday mornings and there is nobody there and we could do even more! Good to learn. After doing sealings we stopped at Costco to get a few things and learned that there was a Quick Quack car wash right next to that one, the Sandy store. So we got our car washed, even though it was raining on and off and headed back home to do a Zoom call with a lady who is interested in our van. We learned that not everyone learned how to use Zoom during the COVID shutdown. She struggled, so we had to switch to my iPad and use FaceTime instead. Thanks to Shaunna for helping out with the walkthrough on her end. After seeing the van the lady decided she probably isn’t ready for something like that, and Burley agreed, saying if she couldn’t figure out basic technology to do a Zoom call, she would be lost in that van.

Tuesday is our “go in at noon and work until 8” day, so that is what we did. But we got off an hour early so that we could get to our next Hale Center Theatre performance, See How They Run. We learned that it was a British play, the beginning of many such plays and movies where British humor and silly mistaken identity are the central part of the production, that began back in the mid 1940’s. It was funny! Not a musical, but still very enjoyable. We learned that the Hale Center Theatre has two stages. This production was on its smaller stage, (Titanic is still playing on the main stage).

Monday was work as usual in the library, but then I got to go to a Jazz game. Last Saturday I was looking through Facebook posts and a Utah Jazz ad popped up asking if I wanted to buy tickets. I thought, “no, I’m really not a Jazz fan.”, but I clicked on the link anyway. Well what did I learn? I learned that they were playing the Sacramento Kings Monday night! I mentioned it to mom and Sister Henkel, our friend from across the hall was there too, and she said, “You should go!” and Sister Handel said, “Yeah, take Jeff (her husband) with you!”. So I decided to do it. Tickets were only $20. Of course they were in the “nosebleed section”, but we were at the game.

I also ran into Cole Jensen outside of the stadium. He and a bunch of his buddies from Sacramento were going to the game with their Sacramento Kings jerseys on. Some crowd control guy got on his megaphone and was saying that anyone wearing a King’s jersey would have to pay an extra $20 to get into the game. They had all stopped and were proudly showing off their jerseys. I gave them a “way to go” Shaka and Cole noticed me before I recognized him. It was fun to see someone from Elk Grove. BTW, the Kings lost.😩

Well that’s what we learned this week.

Love you all.

BE GOOD.

Elder and Sister Phillips

aka Mom and Dad

aka Grammie and Paka