Week Fifteen…Nowhere to be Seen!

Welcome to another week of what we learned.

Monday started off with a great Mission Devotional. We were taught by some missionaries who were finishing their mission. One of them told us a great story about 

Tuesday Mom had her appointment with the ophthalmologist at Primary Children’s Hospital. It was an early appointment and they were needing to dilate her eyes so she wouldn’t be able to drive herself home. So the plan was that I go for a ride and then meet her there to drive her home. I was goin to try riding my mountain bike and take the trail over to the hospital, but instead I decided to ride my road bike and go up Emigrant Canyon. I learned why people like to ride Emigrant Canyon road. It is not super steep and it has a great bike lane. Also I was reminded that Hogle Zoo is right there at the mouth of the canyon. We had some fun times going there when some of you kids were small. 

I also saw this…a garage that collapsed because of the weight of the snow load on its roof. I had been hearing reports since we got here in January that the snowfall amounts were huge this year. So I finally went so line to check out the facts and learned that the he 2022-2023 season broke a 40 year record for the snowiest winter ever recorded. They estimate that he snowpack will produce the equivalent of  29.4 inches of water, which of course is the most ever recorded as well. Well, that record snowfall apparently was more than most engineers predicted would fall as well and they didn’t engineer this roof to handle the load that it got this winter and kaboom, it collapsed. Sadness for this homeowner.

I made it back down the canyon and to the hospital just when Mom was finished and was able to meet her by the garage and drove her home. Here’s a picture of her with her cool glasses. 

The cool news for Mom was that she learned that her double vision  can most likely be corrected by a fairly simple surgery. The doctor says he should be able to correct the double vision completely or mostly with the surgery (although he said it might take two surgeries) and she won’t need the prisms in her glasses anymore and she should be able to see much better at night, which has been a huge pain for her. He told her that right now her left eye is focusing up and her right eye is focusing down, thus causing the double vision. He hopes to be able to operate on the muscles that control the eye to make them come back to where they should be. Wahoo! Good news for Mom.

After her appointment we went home and got ready and went into the library. We usually work from noon until 8pm, but tonight was our night to go to see Hello Dolly at the Hale Center Theater…we got the tickets from some great kids who love us and we are loving it!…so we got off at 4pm instead.

Hello Dolly did not disappoint. The actors were great and the stage was great and they kept throwing and dropping from the rafters this pink and white confetti stuff that was supposed to be like rose petals, but the BEST part we learned very quickly was the ensemble. Their dancing in the various scenes was amazing. They were so energetic and the choreography was great and it was just so much fun to watch. It almost made Mom want to get up and dance with them! (She’ll deny that I am sure).

One thing that was sad though was that right at the end of the show I could see that the lady that was playing Dolly was struggling a bit physically. She didn’t seem to have quite as much pep in her step, nor could she hold out the notes as long as you could tell she normally should. And sure enough, when they all came out and did their final bows she was leaning on her co-actor and I could see her tell him she needed to get off the stage and not take her final bows. We hope she’s ok.

Wednesday was Pday and we both started the day outside getting some exercise. I learned my lesson last week and wore both leg warmers and shoe tow covers and my vest, along with my ear cover so I didn’t freeze this time. What I didn’t learn was to listen to my body. Yesterday was almost 2000’ of climbing and my legs were a little weary, but I got out on the trail heading north and was feeling pretty good, keeping about an 18-19mph pace, so I just kept riding. I decided I was going to shoot for 40 miles. Well I made it, but I learned that the final 5 miles up the trail from where I had previously made it to before is a lot less biker friendly. They have a detour at one point and then it starts crossing streets quite often and they have these baffle gates that you have to slow down to maneuver around and the cars don’t watch for bikes at all. It wasn’t as fun to ride that last 5 miles and then turn around and get a small headwind and try to push myself to get back in time to make it to lunch at the COB with John Campbell. But I made it. I learned that Mom was much smarter than I, walking up City Creek Canyon and going about 4 miles. Much nicer to her body, and she loved seeing more flowers. 

After lunch we took off quickly to head down to Provo to visit with one of the Sister Missionaries, Judy Bester (Brummer now, the sister on the left in this picture) because she had stayed close to our mission president’s wife, Sister Wood, and she was gathering up a bunch of files and things that Sister Wood had collected throughout the time they were mission leaders, letters from us missionaries and cards and stuff. When we got there she had some boerewors for us that she got from a local restaurant that makes South African food. It was yummy. She also made us rooibos tea and it took me back immediately to my days in South Africa. We had a great visit with her and her husband then had to leave quickly so I could get back to our mission choir practice.

On Thursday we had our first day as Floor Leaders. That’s where we make sure all of the assignments are filled and the resources are all working and available for everyone and we also conduct the prayer meeting in the morning for the morning shift people and in the afternoon for the evening shift people. I did the morning and learned that I hadn’t paid close enough attention to the format of  the prayer meeting PowerPoint. I kept doing things in the wrong order and saying the wrong things, but we made it to the end and I got lots of comments from different people saying that they hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. I’m glad I gave them someone to laugh at. Mom did the afternoon prayer meeting while I went to a meeting about training revisions. Mom did it perfectly and didn’t give anyone anything to laugh at. 

After getting home Mom went off to her sewing class, but came home a little early, disappointed that only one lady showed up. So to cheer herself up she made bread. I have learned that Mom feels happy when she is serving other people, so she decided she could make bread for the new folks here in our building as well as for the missionaries at the library. It of course turned out awesome and she was asked by three different people for the recipe. We headed to bed a little late, which wasn’t good because we had an appointment to go to the temple up in Brigham City the next morning at 8:30am and it takes about 50 minutes to drive up there. 

Well we got up in time and got dressed and went down to our car, but our car was nowhere to be seen! It was gone. I asked Mom if she had indeed parked to there the night before and she said, “yes, right there.” So we realized our car had been stolen. Ugh! I went back inside and called the police. I didn’t know my license plate number, but I found the VIN and waited for the police to call back. That happened about 2 minutes later, quick response time. I went downstairs and out to the front of the apartment building to meet with Officer Hatch. I started filling out a vehicle theft report and told him about the fact that we have a Drive Safe & Save program with our insurance company and they have a gps tracker thing on our car and could that tell us where our car was? He said it might and I ought to call my insurance company to find out. So I did and of course got put on hold. While I was waiting Officer Hatch gave me his clipboard and asked me to write a brief description of what happened that so far this morning. As I grabbed the clipboard I looked up to see a car driving by on West Temple heading north. I said, “Hey, that looks like our car!”. Then I watched and noticed that the license plate frame was Mom’s red Disneyland frame and it was a Washington license plate. So I said, “Hey, that IS our car!”

So Officer Hatch jumped in his car and did a quick u-turn and headed after it. I ran down to the corner on time to see that the people in our car had stopped on the side of the road and fled the car, leaving the driver’s door open. I got down there and Officer Hatch had observed a woman with three dogs running behind the apartment building right by where they stopped the car. So he radioed his fellow officers that were nearby and they were able to stop the woman on

the street a block north of us. The State Farm Agent finally got on the phone at that point and I told her what had happened and that I didn’t need her anymore. Officer Hatch then asked me to come over to see if anything in the car belonged to us. Well it was a mess inside with a bunch of opened mail and clothes thrown allover and dog prints and hair allover the backseat. Then I went up to the front seat and noticed that Mom’s keys were on the floor on the driver’s side. I said, “Uh, those are my wife’s keys but there’s no way they should be here because my wife left them in my daughter’s apartment in Bellingham, WA.” I was trying to figure out how they got here and the officer suggested I call my daughter to see if they were still at her place. So I called Zoë and as I called I realized all of that opened mail was a clue, and sure enough Zoë verified that she had sent Mom a package for Mothers Day and had included her car keys. So the lady had apparently got into our mail room and stole Mom’s package (because our brand new package lockers in our mail room aren’t working yet) and they found the keys and must have hit the unlock button and figured out which car was ours and took it. Well, while we were standing there the other officer brought the lady and her dogs around in his car. The security officer for the charter school that was right across the street from where they jumped out of the car came over and said that he was pretty sure their security cameras would have footage of the people who fled the car. So he went back inside and came back with it on his phone and showed the officers and they were able to positively identify them…there was actually a second person who turned out to be the lady’s daughter who jumped out of the passenger door and got away, but came back to get the dogs.I realized while they were doing their investigating that Mom’s package was not there at all and neither was my file that Sister Bester gave me the day before. Bummer. So they gathered up all the gunk and we took the car to Quick Quack car wash and cleaned it all up. Crazy morning! 

We then went into the library and did our shift, which was only a half day shift because we had our temple day.  We were going to go to an opera that night, but it got cancelled because the main actress got sick. So instead we came home and played mahjong with another missionary couple friends. Fun times.

Saturday morning Mom and I went waking together in City Creek Canyon, but I started feeling sick and Mom wasn’t feeling great as well, so we cut it short and headed back to the apartment. We then decided we better not go into the library and chance getting other people sick, so we just stayed home and vegged. I slept pretty much all morning long and Mom made more bread. We just hung around the apartment and were bummed because we had planned to go down to Provo again to bring Leland a birthday present and pizza. But illness vetoed that. Ugh! 

So we got up this morning and Mom was feeling much better, but I was not. So she went off to our Leadership Pattern Journey class and I fell asleep on the couch. I learned that I must have had a bit of a fever because I was wearing a sweatshirt and actually pulled Mom’s blanket over me as well. I slept for about an hour and a half and then got up to find texts from some of you asking if your pictures and videos had made it onto our electronic picture frame. We got that all worked out and Mom made it back from church and enjoyed all of your messages and pictures and songs. What a great Mother’s Day. Thanks.

We ended the night with this. I missed the earlier lightning and thunder that was really close and shook the apartment, but it was a pretty good show and even knocked out the power for a minute. I learned I need to act a bit quicker when it comes to nature because it changes so fast.

Well that’s what we learned this week.

Love you all! 

BE GOOD.

Mom and Dad