Week Five…We’re still alive!

We had quite the week! We learned that our older bodies can still do quite a bit of work, but boy do they let you know that you have been working. Sore muscles and weary, stiff joints start screaming when you have been standing for hours at a time. But that’s for later in this post.

We started the week going in for our regular training at the Family Search Library. Mom is finished with the Research Basics and has moved on to the Family Tree Basics Section. I finished Tier 2 and started Tier 3. That’s where you are supposed to choose a language and area of the world to specialize in. I have chosen the Netherlands because that is where Mom’s family on her mom’s side are from, and because I still remember a lot of my Afrikaans from my mission and it is basically Dutch so I thought maybe I could also read Dutch. I started into the training and learned I was right. I can read almost everything so far that they have been showing me. Pretty cool. Mom thinks she is going to do Spanish since she has been doing DuoLingo and we did that Spanish indexing in our stake many moons ago and she did pretty well with that. 

We had our Pday on Tuesday this week and since we have been trying to visit lots of different temples we went to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to do sealing. (I know, I know, you’re saying “That’s not the Oquirrh Mountain Temple!”. Well you’re right, that’s the Provo Temple. I forgot to get a pic of us in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple so I thought I would add this picture of us we took in front of the Provo Temple since I hadn’t added it before and I was talking about our temple wandering.) We learned in our visit to the temple this week that all temples do things a little differently. We signed up to do a sealing session, which we assumed would be about an hour as it always was in the Kona Temple. We brought about 10 couple sealings and 40 children to parents sealings. They let us do 2 couple each, or we could have opted for 3 children each. What?! We were only there for a half hour and they ended the session. So we went and did some initiatories. We learned that they have changed some of the wording for that ordinance, like they did for the endowment. Pretty cool. 

We also got to go to our first Hale Center Theater musical, Titanic. It wasn’t the best musical we have ever attended, but we learned that stage and prop builder people can be pretty ingenious. We wish we could have taken some pictures of this amazing set during the performance, but of course that was strictly verboten. That simple looking stage there was incredible. They had it on some hydraulic lifts and were able to raise and lower and tilt the whole thing allover the place and add “decks” and “dining rooms” and “the bridge”. It was amazing. We were in awe at what they were able to do.

The rest of our week was spent at the Roots Tech Week convention. We were asked to be “ushers”, directing people to the various classes and presentations which were spread out in the Salt Palace Convention Hall. That place is enormous and we ourselves got a bit lost a couple of times, but we learned the layout pretty quickly and we’re able to help tons of people find their way to the classes they wanted to attend.

We got to wear these “cool” green t-shirts which said Ask Me Anything on the back of them. Some people took advantage of that and asked silly things, like “What is the capital of Alaska?” (which of course I knew), so I talked to him for a moment about Alaska and our great cruise that we did with our kids there. Fun memories! We walked a lot, but mostly just stood at our posts directing people, which as I mentioned at the beginning of this post is very tough on our old bodies. My knees and Mom’s back let us know that we were standing much too long and needed to sit…which we only did for about 5 minutes or so every other hour. We didn’t get to really see any of the presentations since we were mostly outside directing people inside, or turning them around because they had come to the wrong classroom or letting them know where the restrooms were, but most of the presenters added a syllabus to their online class description which we can learn lots from and there were quite a few of the presentations that were recorded so we can watch them later. They all will be on he Family Search/Roots Tech website until next year’s Roots Tech Week. So you can go hear what stories Samwise Gamgee shared with everyone as well as Jordan Sparks and Elder and Sister Gong anytime you want.

I was also reminded of how individual and intimate our Heavenly Father’s relationship is with each of us. Yesterday morning I was stationed at an out-of-the-way classroom of in what we were calling the corner of nowhere or the hinterlands. A lady came out of the classroom and came up to me and said, “If they were giving an award to the person who was most helpful with logistics and enthusiasm, you would get it!”. I told her thanks and then started chatting with her. She told me that she was Catholic and had come from Michigan for this event and she was so amazed that a Church and it’s people would be willing to go to all the effort that we were going to for someone not of their faith. I responded that it didn’t matter about faith it matters about family, and we are all family. That’s what this whole convention was about. We talked a bit more and she told me she had gone to the Tabernacle Choir rehearsal Thursday evening and it was so wonderful. She told me that they had performed one of her favorite hymns from her childhood when she used to attend the Methodist Church with her grandparents. It brought her to tears and she said she felt almost like she was praying. I shared with her that we have a scripture in our Church that I love which says, “The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me.” (D&C 25:12). She said, “I believe that!”. It was cool. She then thanked me again and headed off to her next class. Well that’s not the end of the story.

This morning Mom and I decided to go to Music and the Spoken Word again. We found a spot to sit in the tabernacle and I then realized we forgot to grab a program. I went to get one and then came back. A woman had come and sat down next to Mom while I was gone. I sat down and turned to greet her and it was the same lady that I had spoken to the yesterday. She didn’t recognized me at first, so I mentioned that  we had met yesterday…the guy in the green shirt…and she lit up. I introduced her to Mom and then we chatted about her experience at Roots Tech and if she was able to get a fan chart over at the Family Search Library, (I had also told her about how she could get a free poster-sized fan chart there instead of playing for one at the booths). She shared again her gratitude for our service and the way we treated everyone that attended, no matter their religion, and how amazing it was to run into me again. Well I was amazed as well, but really shouldn’t have been. Our Heavenly Father does little coincidence things like that all of the time. I have learned that. We all had a great experience viewing the performance together and then she was off to spend some time with her granddaughter. Wish I would have taken a quick selfie with her there in the tabernacle, but I definitely will remember my reminder of Father’s hand in our lives in so many little coincidences.

Be Good!

Love you all.

Elder and Sister Phillips

PS They had a MyHeritage booth in the expo section of the convention that was doing AI photos of people. A friend of mine, Henry Kosak, who was viewing the conference virtually from Germany posted a bunch of his AI images he had done since he discovered that it is available on the MyHeritage website. So I decided to do it for fun. I posted a bunch of mine on FB. Which one do you like most? I think this is one of my favorites. I’ve always wondered what I would look like with full beard.