Week Nine…Ended Divine!

Wow, week nine already?! It seems to be going by faster and faster. So what did we learn this week?

Sunday, we were heading to church in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB) and we ran into former Elder How, who served in the Sacramento Stake a few years back when I was in the stake presidency. He recognized me and we stopped to talk for a bit. I asked what he was doing here in Salt Lake City…he is from Malaysia…and he told us that he was here to sing with the Tabernacle Choir. I asked how that came to be and we learned that he is one of 10 people from all over the world who auditioned and were chosen to sing with the choir (you can read about it here… (https://ksltv.com/536418/international-members-to-join-tabernacle-choir-in-singing-at-general-conference/ ) We congratulated him and said how nice it was to see him and then went on to church. Well he messaged me later that night and asked if maybe we could meet him for lunch the next day at the Church Office Building? We said sure! So we had lunch with him Monday and got the inside scoop on this opportunity for him and he 9 others that were chosen, and actually got to meet them all. Wonderful young people from allover the world. Unfortunately we only got a picture with Jonathan. It was fun to notice him throughout conference the last two days whenever the camera was on his section of the choir.

Tuesday we learned that temples in Utah are even busier than we thought. We already told you about how they limit the numbers of sealings you can do in our previous blog entry. Well Sunday we were asked by our missionary neighbors across the hall, the Henkels, to go with them to the Brigham City Temple to baptize her grandparents. She has some medical devices attached to her that won’t allow her to go into the font and be immersed in the water, so she asked mom if she would be baptized for her grandma and me if I would do it for her grandpa…her husband would do the baptizing. We said of course, what an honor! Well on Tuesday she called us to tell us that there were no appointments available at the Brigham City temple on Wednesday, the day we had planned to go. So I said, “Let’s just try another temple.” Well a half hour later after checking every temple between Brigham City and Payson, (10 temples in all) I had to call her back to tell her that there were no appointments available on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, for any time of the day, for the next two weeks. Wow, the first available time was April 12th, but she is going in for surgery on the 11th and wouldn’t be able to go. So we have put that trip on hold for awhile until she lets us know when she is ready and able to go. Busy temples!

Wednesday I learned that my lungs don’t like cold air! The weather was finally nice enough (translation…no snow or ice on the roads) that I felt comfortable enough going out for a ride. I didn’t have a lot of time because we had an endowment appointment at the Bountiful Temple, so I decided to do a shorter ride, but with lots of climbing. I have heard good things about the road up City Creek Canyon and so I ventured out. Unfortunately, although there was no snow or ice on the road the temperature had not changed a whole lot and the cold air was stinging my lungs. The first steep climb from our apartment, up the hill to the capital building, about “done me in”. But I survived and continued on up the road past the capital and onto the “walkers and bikers only” trail. It was quite nice from there on up the hill, but I wasn’t able to go to the end of the road, which would have been about 7.5 miles. At the 5 mile mark they had a sign that said the road was closed to hikers, bikers and dogs. I should have taken a picture, but I was bummed I couldn’t finish my planned ride and just turned around and coasted on home. Just 10 miles total.

Here is a sign I should have paid attention to earlier on on my ride, then I would have been prepared for the limited access further up he road. I spent the rest of the week coughing up gunk from my lungs that I am sure got in there because of the cold air that I was sucking into them while riding the canyon road. Oh well, it was still a nice ride.

We were able to go to the temple in the afternoon and had a pretty casual rest of our Pday. Thursday was a normal day and not too much exciting happened. 

Friday we had a fun day in the Library. Mom was doing the ushering job when 2 KLM pilots came into the library.

I can’t remember if I have previously explained what an usher does, so here’s a quick description. When a guest comes onto our floor they are greeted at the Reference Desk and then are assisted by an usher in finding a computer station. The usher then asks a little about what they hope to accomplish with their visit and shows them how to sign into the “WaitWhile” system to request help in a certain country or language or just getting started with Family Search. So mom got them seated and showed them how to get started on Family Search and then I was called in to help them with their Dutch research questions. The one guest, Stian, had already found about 1300 names using a paid genealogist through the MyHeritage site and was wondering what more we could offer. We were able to help him transfer all of his information from his former site into our site and then see what was available. Bam! There was a whole new line of ancestors that he was able to find with tons of source records attached. He loved looking at those original records. The other guest Matthieu only had the names of his grandparents on his mother’s side and although we searched and searched we couldn’t find anything for him. Sadness. But he told us how happy he was to learn about our free website and how to use it and the records links and that he was going to go home and find out who his great grandparents were and find the information on there. It was so fun to get to know them and help them with their research. 

We learned this week that the Family Search Library doesn’t close for Saturday General Conference. So we were in the library from 10-5 and only got to watch a few bits and pieces of conference between helping guests and filling assignments. It was very strange to me to think that I was missing conference, which I hardly ever miss, because I was doing a Church assignment. But we had a great day in the library.

We were able to meet some wonderful people. One was a friend of the two KLM pilots that came in on Friday. He flew over here from The Netherlands to go skiing with his buddies. They told him about their experience the day before so he came in to see what he could learn about his family. Another helper was assigned to him and was able to get him started, but then they came and got me because he had a specific request. He was trying to find out if a famous pirate from the mid 1600’s, Jan Baert from the Netherlands, was related to him. We were able to do some searching and sure enough found him. He is descended from a pirate…well a Corsair de Roi, which were privateers working for the King of France to take out foreign vessels that entered French waters…so yeah, a pirate! Fun times. He was excited about that news. 

Mom also kept the conference tradition alive by making cinnamon rolls and bringing them to the library and we learned that she hasn’t lost her touch when it comes to cinnamon rolls. Everyone raved! Surprised? 

Saturday afternoon mom got a message from Eve Nagareda, one of mom’s young women from the Honomu Branch. Mom only served in that calling for a short time until she moved over to serve with me in the YSA branch, but she grew to love those young women. Eve especially was close to mom as she asked if she could come over sometime to learn how to make bread. Of course mom was more than happy to show her how to do that and then Eve shared some of her family’s recipes with mom. Well Eve is now attending BYU Provo, after completing a mission in Provo, UT. From her message we learned that she had come up to attend the Saturday afternoon session of conference and was going to a dance later that night with a friend and was wondering if she could come watch the Saturday evening session of conference with us. We were thrilled to have her come. We had such a great time reminiscing and watching conference and eating chocolate and playing Mahjong. What a great way to end our day!

Today we were able to go help with the translation of conference. Well, we helped the translators of conference by cleaning their booths between the morning and afternoon sessions of conference. We had a great team, 6 of us, and were able to clean the booths (about 65 of them) in just a little over a half an hour.

We then got to go eat lunch with the translators. We sat at a table with some brethren from Samoa. We learned that this brother, Junior, went to school at BYU-Hawaii with my former colleague Aaron Shumway. He actually competed in canoe races with him and called him his “canoe boy”. We didn’t get a picture of the other two brethren, but learned that they all had attended BYU-H together. In talking with them a little more we learned that the one brother used to attend he Samoan branch that was part of our Liberty Stake, back when mom and I were first married and living here in Salt Lake. We may have played basketball against each other way back when. Then we learned that the last brother is a coordinator for Seminaries and Institutes in Samoa and we started to talk about the area directors he has had in Pacific Area, a couple of them who I knew and had associated with when I was area director. What an amazing Church and world we live in. To sit down at a random table and find out you have so many connections with people who you just met is amazing to me. 

We finished our afternoon by attending the Sunday Afternoon session of  General Conference in person. We learned that our mission is given a number of tickets, just like stake presidents get for their stake, and we missionaries can take advantage of that. We had great seats and we loved the messages we heard. What a divine way to end our day! I especially was touched listening to Elder Ballard talk about his sweetheart Barbara and the saying on her gravestone, “What matters most is what lasts longest.” His loving tribute to her and then using her teachings to teach us about what should matter most in our lives was a great example to me. What a great servant of God! 

We know we have Parents in heaven that love us. We know this Church that has been restored in these last days is the Lord’s true Church and those that lead it are called by Him. We have learned these things for ourselves and know them to be true.

Love you all!

BE GOOD.

Sister and Elder Phillips

PS We actually had a PS to our day. We drove down to Pleasant Grove to Carolyn and Adam’s house, to see Matt and Cindy who were here visiting. We also were able to get from them a bag of old mini digital movie cassettes and vhs cassettes that contain home movies of our family. We have learned that the FSL has a placed called Memory Lane where anyone can bring old photos or videos or films or audio cassettes and convert them to digital files. We plan to use some of our upcoming Pday time and other time off to convert all of our old videos to digital files. Look for a link soon where you will be able to view them.