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 now when the weather is nice, than when it is cold and snowy and windy.
We got to the devotional and decided to sit with the Ramsdens. But then we thought we might be intruding on the new missionary area…because they
always have the new missionaries sit in the front right rows of the auditorium and they have them stand and introduce themselves…so we sat behind them instead. Weird move! We should have just sat up next to them. Anyway the devotional was well done with some great stories from some great missionaries. One of them shared a quote that I liked. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” She attributed it to Harry S. Truman. I wondered if he was the first to say it, so I
Googled it and learned that the first recorded sharing of it was by a Jesuit Priest named Father Strickland back in 1863, although his version was a little different, “A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.” Great thought either way.
We then went into the library. I was an usher first thing and was there when this couple from Italy came in. The steward didn’t have anyone available that knew Italian records, so I volunteered Mom. I told her that Mom was doing the beginning Italy training and the couple looked like they were beginners so she could probably do just fine. Well I learned I was right, even though Mom gave me a death stare when I brought the request to her. She ended up staying with them for almost two hours finding tons of records and she absolutely loved it. She said it was the best part of her day!
Monday night was FHE and the Floras asked us to share our favorite scripture story and one word that best describes it. Mom chose the story of Dorcas, who took care of the widow ladies in her city and was raised from he dead by Peter. I had learned when I read the story a few weeks ago that Dorcas was the Greek version of the Hebrew name Tabitha and they both mean
gazelle. I chose the story of Lachoneus from 3 Nephi 3. Then they gave us some paper and asked us to make a poster or a cartoon of our story. I am pretty sure you can tell from these pictures that Mom chose poster, and her one word description was
charity, and I chose to do a cartoon and chose
poise as my description. It was a fun activity.
Tuesday was our early day in the library and we learned pretty quickly that it was going to be a busy day. Mom was asked to help a lady with fixing things in her family tree. She went to work and had an enjoyable time getting to know the lady and a little about her family and was able to fix a bunch of stuff that was messed up in her tree. Mom said it was actually fun! I was asked to help a lady that was having trouble printing some source documents. I learned that she was 94 years old and drove her scooter to the library from her home about 3 blocks away. She told me how she was 6 years old when Hitler came to power in her home country of Germany and how horrible he was. Her family fled the war-torn area where they lived and ended up in East Germany. She told me how horrible communism was as well and how lucky her family was to be able to make it to America. She is still doing great family history work at 94 years of age and all she needed me to do was save some documents for her so that she could take them home to read and figure out how they fit into her family tree. Wow
Wednesday was Mom’s eye surgery day. We drove up to the hospital, arriving around 8:45am. They checked Mom in and gave me a little card so that I could know what all of the colors meant on the monitor. The monitor had a patient number and updated her progress…pre-op, in surgery, post-op, etc. It didn’t take too long and soon I was invited to come back to Mom’s…what do you call it?…bed with a curtain pulled around it. The nurse said that Mom came out of the anesthesia just fine and the surgery went well. Mom was pretty alert, but I learned later that she wasn’t totally processing everything that was happening and couldn’t remember some of the things that were said. Anyway, we came home and just relaxed and snoozed on and off the rest of the day. Mom didn’t need any pain pills or anything. She said her eye itched a bit, but really felt fine otherwise. She had to keep the bandage on all day and they said she would probably get some bloody
weeping coming from her eye, but she really didn’t experience any of that.
The next day was Thursday, our day as floor leads. Mom of course stayed home and I went into the library alone. It felt weird. I was able to keep everything on track as well as work on the training lesson revamps that I am doing. I ran home at lunchtime to take Mom to her post-op follow-up appointment. The doctor said everything looks great and it went as well as he could have hoped it to go. Mom still has a little bit of double vision, but as the eye heals it will get better and better. Then it was back to the library and to my training revamp committee meeting where I learned that they want me to totally change the format for the lessons I had already finished. Wahoo, more revamping! I came home to find that Mom had pulled out this project she had started in Hawaii and decided to get it finished. I was wondering while in the library how she was doing, but I am thinking that she is doing just fine if she can work on a sewing project instead of sitting around or napping. Pretty tough.
Friday Mom decided she was feeling fine and wanted to go to the temple. I didn’t get up early enough to get a bike ride in before we left and hoped that maybe I could squeeze one in afterwards. Tim Ramsden stopped by and surprised us with some pastries from Eva’s Bakery. Yum. We went up to the Bountiful Temple and did an endowment session. Afterwards we got the car washed and filled up the gas tank at Costco. Then Mom wanted to stop at a grocery store to buy pectin, because one of the missionaries at the library gave us some raspberries. So we found Smith’s and Mom ran in. When she came out of the store her grocery sack looked like it had more in it than pectin. I learned that my observation was correct. She had also bought some sugar and pumpkin. Pumpkin? I guess she was thinking about making jam and the seasons changing and it was getting closer to Fall and she needed to be ready to make something with pumpkin in it. I’m good with that. I love pumpkin bread or pumpkin cookies, just so long as there aren’t any chocolate chips in there! Am I right?
We then went into the library where tons of people were surprised that Mom was feeling ok to coming in, so soon after her surgery. We learned that they made a new policy that we couldn’t have any food or snacks in our computer room anymore. They would only allow food in the designated eating areas on the main floor or up on the 3rd floor. Sadness. It’s hard to take a quick break and run all the way up to the 3rd floor from our basement floor to grab a snack in between helping a guest. The snacks were so nice to get you through until your lunch break or before heading home and having it right there close by made it easy. I guess they are worried that food in these places isn’t good if guests come in, but we haven’t had guests in our computer room the whole time we have been here. Also they are worried about mice being attracted to the food, but we haven’t seen any evidence of that. But we are obedient so no more food. Most of Mom’s bread got eaten, since it was probably the last time we could have it there. But Mom decided she’ll just take it up to the 3rd floor, and even though all the floors will have access to it, she’s not going to quit! She made two loaves of French bread for Saturday
Speaking of Saturday, I worked the whole day on my training lessons revamp. The lessons have to have all of the animations removed from them in order to work on the training site we are using. Also, they had to have new knowledge check quizzes created. I have learned how to do them fairly quickly, with the help of some of my fellow missionaries and library staff, but going through each slide and removing the animations, as well as creating new up to date slides teaching what all those animations were teaching is a bit time consuming. Luckily Mom loves me and volunteered to do my ushering and stewarding assignments for me so that I could just focus on those. I have learned that when you
get in the groove things just really speed up and go a lot easier. These lessons are like anything else that way and I was able to get about 3/4 of the lessons finished by the end of the evening. By that point my eyes were going buggy, so we just headed home to relax for awhile.
Gratefully I woke up this morning and my eyes felt rested and fine. Mom’s too. On the way to church Mom looked up the street and said, “One red truck.” I wasn’t sure what that was all about…some new game? Counting like the grandkids? So when I asked what she meant she said, “I see just one red truck.” Oh, I now understood. No double vision. Wahooo! Not perfect yet, but better and better. At church we heard some good talks about prayer, and the bishop’s daughter who is maybe 7 or 8 years old played the harp. She is pretty good at it. For some reason I hadn’t thought it through before, but watching her I learned that you can play the harp like a piano. You can play the melody with one hand and the harmony with the other hand. Why I haven’t noticed that before is beyond me. Now we’re just relaxing at home.
Well that is what we learned this week. I hope you all had a wonderful week of learning and growing and joy.
Love you all.
BE GOOD.
Mom and Dad
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