Wow, it’s week number thirty in the books. Here’s what we learned this week. Monday morning was a mission conference and we heard from the counselors in the mission presidency and their wives. President Faerber did a little object lesson. He asked us all to raise our hand up as high as we could. Then he said, “Now raise it a little higher.” I was surprised that I could raise it higher, thinking I already had it up as high as I could. I learned that many times we think we have reached our peak performance in a certain area, but there’s always more we can do. Pretty cool. We went into the library and had a fun day. I was able to complete the revision of the last 1/4 of the lessons that I have been working on as well as help a few people in between. That night was Family Home Evening with the other missionaries in our apartment building and the Ragars were in charge of the lesson. They asked everyone to share how they study and mark their scriptures. I wasn’t going to share anything, but ...

 Well, what did we learn this week? Lots! On our way to the Mission Devotional Monday morning we learned that Mom guessed right about the cherry-pickers that had been parked across the street in front of the Conference Center. There must have been 10 of them that just showed up last Saturday morning. I asked Mom what she thought they were there for and she said, maybe they are getting started early on putting Christmas lights in the trees. So when we headed to the devotional we found that they were all moved to the front of the Conference Center, out on the sidewalk, and there were about 50 people with ladders and boxes of Christmas lights and they were putting lights in the trees. Yay! Christmas in August. Well at least the beginning of Christmas. They of course don’t plan to turn them on until after Thanksgiving, but we are excited for that. So Mom learned she was right, although we both had some doubts that they would begin this early. I guess it is a lot easier to put up lights...

Welcome to what we learned in week twenty-eight of our mission. Monday morning we went into the library as usual and got to work. I was assigned to help a couple from The Netherlands and their 3 teenaged kids. We were successful as we were able to find ancestors on the father’s side back into the early 1800’s. But what was more successful, and what I have learned I love to do most, is I was able to teach him how to search for records and attach sources to his ancestors names. After about 35 minutes of doing this they were ready to move on and he asked how he could print all of this off to save it. I told him he didn’t need to do that as he had created an account and now it was all his and would always be here for him. He was very excited about that! A little before lunch Allegra and Cole from Hawaii came to visit us in the library. We took them to lunch at  J Dawgs  and then they stopped in to the sites on Temple Square while I went back to the library and Mom went to her pre...

 What a great week! It had to be, since we both had our birthdays this week as well as our anniversary. Party!…well as much as a missionary can. Monday morning we were running a little late, so we just went into the library and watched the Mission Devotional  broadcast in the computer lab. We learned that they do that there in the lab so it is available for those who can’t or don’t want to go to the COB auditorium. We had a pretty normal rest of he day and then we headed off to get another document notarized to be able to sell our Sprinter van. When we got home I immediately put it in the mail and sent a scan to the credit union agent, who is helping the lady who wants to buy our van with her loan. Immediately she sent me an email saying, “I hope you didn’t mail that yet, the notary didn’t print his name.” I told her, sorry it’s already in the mail. She said, you’re going to have to do it again. I have learned that this individual is not looking out for the best interests of h...