Week Twenty-two…Time to say, “Whew!”

 We had a busy week and learned some great things. Here we go!

Monday morning started with a Mission Devotional where I was one of the speakers. I had been recording all week some small and simple things that happened in the library so that I would have some things to choose from for my talk. I had narrowed it down to a couple of stories on Sunday night, but woke up in the morning with a definite impression to share the story that I shared with you last week. I learned that the Spirit sometimes lets you wait until the last minute to give you the answers you need so that you will know for sure that you have looked at all of the options. I finished my talk by sharing my testimony in Afrikaans. That was fun.

Tuesday is usually our day to go in at noon, but it was the first day of our week-long Summer Social Luncheon. Mom was in charge and planned for a potluck lunch each day from Tuesday to Friday. We learned early on here that since we have a ton of Church Service missionaries we don’t see all of them everyday and they don’t all come in or go home at the same time as well. The first week we were in the mission we had a breakfast social each day for the week, but there were a lot of missionaries that don’t come in until 10am or noon so they missed out. Mom didn’t want anyone to miss out. So we had two lunches each day to make sure we kept missionaries on the floor while half went to lunch. It was great! We  played a little get to know you game as well and got to learn some cool things about our fellow missionaries…who had served the longest (twenty years) as a missionary, or who has moved the most in their lifetime (43 times!), etc. Very fun!

Tuesday night was our Hale Center theater night, wahoo! This month’s show was Hans Christian Andersen in New York. We learned that it was the world premiere for this new Broadway play. Pretty cool that we got to be part of it. It was very fun with a bunch of songs from the original Hans Christian Andersen movie that starred Danny Kaye, that I remember seeing when I was a kid. They wrote it as a guy living in New York who was Hans’s great nephew. It was well done and had some wonderful child actors that sang and danced. As I watched I kept thinking that we have some grandkids that could do that!

Wednesday was Pday, but we had the Summer Lunch Social so we went into the library and had more fun with our great missionary colleagues. We learned that we have some missionaries that speak 4 or 5 languages and some that have been verified to help people in 35 countries, wow. We also have a missionary that has visited all 50 states and learned that North Dakota is the least visited state by our missionaries.

After lunch we went and did our shopping for the week at Costco and learned that they had received a delivery of chocolate milk. Yay! Happy me. The rest of the day was spent with mom making bread…we have been giving away a loaf of bread as the prize for whoever gets the most guesses right on our game…as well as getting some things ready for the next day. Then we just relaxed the rest of the night. 

Thursday is our Floor Leader day so we were busy doing that as well as getting set up for the lunch. Take a look at those sandwiches on the table there. We learned that one of our missionaries, Elder Atkins, is a sandwich maker supreme! He even made the boards that he laid the sandwiches on. He said he made the little sandwich boards from old Deseret Industry dresser drawer fronts. I believe he said that he used to serve at the DI and would grab the wood scraps from the dumpster when they were thrown out. What a handyman as well as sandwich maker. We are really impressed with all the talents we are learning that our colleagues have. 

Friday morning both Mom and I felt like we had neglected our exercise for the last two weeks, so we decided to get out. I went mountain bike riding and Mom went walking. My legs were pretty tired pretty quick, but I went further up the trail than I have before. I thought by the descriptions that I had read that the trail would be mostly level with little ups and downs after I got past that first major climb, but I learned that it is still mostly climbs after that. So I didn’t get as far as I was hoping to get because I needed to get home for the lunches. Mom walked about 4 miles and saw tons more new flowers. She also learned that she can recognize me on my bike at a glance. We passed each other on the trail in City Creek Canyon. She was coming down and I was going up.

Friday was our last lunch day. It went well and we cleaned everything up and said, “Whew!”. We are glad that is finished, but also glad at how it turned out. Mom as usual had all bases covered.

Saturday we went into the library at 10 and by about 2 Mom decided we ought to have some pizzas delivered. So she had four pizzas delivered and we stuck them in our computer room on the front table where people bring snacks to share. We quietly wandered around the library telling the missionaries and staff that we had pizza if they were “snackish”. That went over pretty well, but we learned we were a little too late because most people had already eaten lunch, so we weren’t able to get rid of all the pizzas and ended up taking one home. Oh well, cold pizza snacks for me!

Today we went to church and I wore my traditional flag tie since the 4th of July is Tuesday. I learned I was not alone in that. I think I saw at least 5 other “flag ties” and one “flag scarf”. We sang patriotic hymns and our chorister even had us stand for the last hymn, My Country, ‘Tis of  Thee. Our Sunday School lesson was focused on the resurrection of Christ and all the people who saw 

Him or the empty tomb that first morning. There were some great comments. In my studies this week I was intrigued with one small line in one of the verses, “…and the other Mary.” in Matthew 28:1. It says that early that morning Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the tomb. I wondered who was this other Mary? So I went looking at the other accounts and learned that Mark and Luke both say it was Mary Magdalene and “Mary the mother of James” that came to the tomb. John only mentions Mary Magdalene. In Mark 15:40 it says that “Mary the mother of James the less and Joses ”was watching at the cross”.  I “googled” it and found a bunch of different opinions by scholars, both from our Church and those who are not, about who this mother of James and Joses is. It seems there isn’t a consensus. Some think she was the mother of two of Jesus’ disciples, James and Joses. Others think she was Mary, His mother. James the Less has often been identified as Jesus’ stepbrother, and both James and Joses are mentioned in Matthew 13:55 as His brothers. It is estimated that about 1/4th of all girls at that time were named Mary so it’s hard to tell which Mary it was. But if the other Mary was His mother, I am super intrigued why she is not mentioned first in all of these accounts. Interesting.

We ended our day having a break-the-fast potluck with the missionaries of our apartment building. I keep forgetting to take a picture of this event, which we hold on the first Sunday each month, but I learned that if I set a reminder on my phone it will remind me to do it. So I did and I did. Here’s my picture of our fast Sunday tradition. We started last month holding these outside in this grassy area on the south side of our building. It is the perfect spot because there is enough room for all of the tables and chairs and there is a tree in the perfect spot to provide shade to the whole area at that time of the evening and there usually is a nice breeze by then. It was very pleasant.

Well that is it for this week. Whew! I’m sure we learned tons more than this, but I won’t try to put it all out there and I’m sure I can’t remember that much anyway. Have a great 4th of July.

Love you all. 

BE GOOD.

Elder and Sister Phillips