Week Thirty-four…We want some more, we want some more, we want some more!

We had a great week and learned that there are some things we love about where we are serving, and “we want some more” of those things!

One thing we don’t want more of is colds! As I mentioned at the end of he last post, Mom caught my cold. I wonder who came up with that term, “caught” a cold? It makes it sound like the cold was running away and we chased it and caught it, or threw out a lure on the end of a line and enticed it to attack the lure then we reeled it in. I don’t think any of us would want to do that with a cold. I think colds are more like this picture, we don’t try to catch them-they try to catch us and attack us!   

Anyway, Mom was in full-blown cold mode Monday morning so I got myself ready and headed off to the Mission Devotional on my own. It was kind of nice that they moved it to the Church History Museum auditorium, right next to the FamilySearch Library,

because they are having leadership meetings in the COB auditorium this week. But I learned quickly when I got to the Church History Museum auditorium that it is MUCH smaller than the COB auditorium. They had the Elijah Choir on the stand and almost every seat in the auditorium was already filled. By the time the meeting started it was standing room only. It was a good meeting. The new training division leaders spoke, as well as President Jackson, 1st counselor in the mission presidency. They all spoke about things they have learned from their assignments here in the mission and it made me ponder again on how much I have learned so far. 

So then I went into the library and had a pretty normal day. I did stop to recognize that I have become very comfortable asking people if they need help with anything, expecting that I will probably know how to help them. That was the case for me on Monday. It wasn’t quite that way on Saturday, but we aren’t there yet so you’ll have to keep reading to find out about that. After completing my shift on Monday I came home and my old brains can’t remember what it was I needed to do, but I had to do something and that made me late for FHE. The Engstroms were teaching and the discussion was on something like experiences in the temple that made a memory for you. There were some great experiences that people shared about knowing that family members were present while being proxy for them in the temple ordinances. Others had some great things revealed to them while in the temple. It was a nice FHE. 

The next morning I got up and decided to ride 40 miles to try to make up for not riding on Friday or Saturday of last week. I was able to do it just fine and had plenty of time to get ready for going into the library. Mom was still feeling sick so she stayed home. I went in and had a “wild” kind of day.

I kept bouncing from one assignment to the next and changing up and filling in for people, especially Mom’s assignments, and then getting assigned to help different guests in the middle of everything. It sure made the day go fast! 

I got up Wednesday morning and decided to do another 40 miles. I felt good and was able to do it fairly easily. In fact, I got to my 20 mile turnaround spot and learned that they had finally paved the road there and so I decided to continue on, however I found that the very next street was being worked on

and the crossing was a pain, so I turned around there and headed back. I got home and learned that Mom had gone shopping. So I ate some lunch and showered and then got ready to go to the Zone Leaders Council meeting. The Deckers were busy and asked if someone could go for them, and I volunteered. In the meeting they asked the question, “What would you do if you had 15% more missionaries in your zone?”. I guess they got a pretty good response from the recruitment flyers they sent out to all of the stakes along the Wasatch Front. We’ll see if we have an increase of missionaries coming to our mission. I went home and Mom told me about the ending of the volleyball match we had started to watch before the meeting and then Mom got a call from one of the other sister missionaries asking about the sewing class that she was going to help with, assuming Mom was helping as well, which actually she is not. She felt overwhelmed with all that she is doing so she decided she couldn’t help with that this semester. But she felt she ought to go to introduce this other sister and see if she could help organize everything. So away she went. She got home not very long after she left and I learned that nobody showed up for the class. Sadness. 

The next day we both went in to the library together. We both worked on our respective training, me on Norway and Mom on Italy. I took this pic of an entry in one of the farm books so that I didn’t have to keep the book off of the shelf in case someone needed to use it. While I was studying that I turned around and learned that Mom was teaching one of the other missionaries about how to do Italy research. Pretty cool. The student has become the teacher! She is good at it too! Our usual specialist missionary that does Italy is on vacation so Mom has become the “go to” specialist. Go Mom! 

That night we came home and I learned that the Thursday Night Football game was the Niners and the Giants. I haven’t watched one of their games for quite awhile. It was a fun game to watch as they played well and they won! In fact they haven’t lost yet this season. They have a great story going on with Brock Purdy, Mister Irrelevant, the last man taken in the 2022 draft and came in at the end of the last season when both of the starting quarterbacks got injured. He led the Niners to the conference championship, but got hurt in that game and they lost. Well he is all better now and has led them to a 4 and 0 start to this season. Wahoo. 

 Mom got up Friday morning and went walking. She learned that they have been working on the water features on the Conference Center plaza and they had them running. They are pretty cool. I went for another ride, but only got in 37 miles. After we got back we got ourselves ready and went into the library for our very short 3 hour shift. We were able to help out as floor leads and closed down the shift.

Saturday morning I was planning to ride again, but slept in until a little after 8am. Ugh! Mom went walking and then came home and we went in to the library. Mom got all of the advancement pins ready to go, which were quite a few…we have had a lot of people working on some great training…and then went in to help. There were some people missing here and there so we tried filling in wherever we could. I was asked to help a guest who couldn’t find some microfilms that were supposed to be available in the library. Well I went to look and was totally baffled why they weren’t there. So I asked three other people in the library and they couldn’t figure it out either. We

were all baffled. Then Mom was working as steward and got a request for someone to help with Japan research. So since we didn’t have someone trained on that, she sent me. Thanks Mom! I sat down with them and told them that I would try to show them what I know about research on the FamilySearch site. So we learned together that there is not much available as far as records go for Japan. To access most of them you have to go to the local office and prove you are a relative and then they will let you look at the records. Bummer for them, but at least we know what they need to do to find records. I guess they’re going to need to go to Japan soon. 

Then a lady came in a little before 5pm and said that she had a group of 49 people from France that were going to be coming into the library at about 5:15 and she was wondering if there was a video about the library, in French, that I could show them. So I went running around the library asking people if they knew of anything like that, and learned that they didn’t have anything like that. So I had to go back to the international floor and tell her we couldn’t accommodate them with that, but they could come into the main Discovery Zone area and do the things there. Then I went and warned the Discovery Zone people. So I failed again, three times in one day. Sadness. But we want some more chances to succeed.

We then came home and I sat and watched some college football, which wasn’t good because I was supposed to be going with members of our apartments to see the Gilgal Sculpture Garden. It is a spot here near downtown Salt Lake City where a guy brought in a bunch of huge boulders and made some sculptures about the different tribes of Israel. I totally spaced it and didn’t even remember about it until this morning. Last night the Henkels came over and were telling us about a great taco truck they go to, so we decided to go get some food. We learned they are right about this truck. It was VERY good and pretty cheap as well. 

This morning we walked to church and then went to lead our Leadership Pattern Journey class. That went well and now we’re home to do this blog post and go to dinner with the Henkels.

Fun times. Hope all is well with you.

BE GOOD.

Mom and Dad