Week Thirty-one…Nature Has Won!”

This has been an interesting week. Let’s see what we have learned.

Monday started with a devotional. There were some great stories shared by people from the Church History Library. One was by a Sister who explained that she had submitted her mission application with a desire to be a proselyting missionary. She was surprised and disappointed when she was assigned to this mission. But then she told about how she was able to share her testimony with individuals who come to the library and one couple in particular who asked for a Book of Mormon after their visit. Mom and I were in the same frame of mind when we first came here. It’s nice to learn that there are others who were surprised by this mission call. I think I shared before what Bishop Younger, our Bishop in the Honomu Ward, shared with us at the end of our missionary application interview with him. He said he felt impressed to tell us that our mission was not going to be what we were expecting it to be and we needed to record what we were learning to help with future assignments. I hope I am getting all of the important things recorded.

That night was FHE with the apartment folks. Elder Steele led the discussion and talked about the same thing that the sister in the devotional talked about…how this mission really wasn’t a proselyting type of mission and asked if we were ok with that? I thought it was kind of strange that he was bringing that back up again. I learned awhile back from Doctrine & Covenants 128:1 that one of the ways revelation comes to us is that the Spirit seems to “occupy [our] minds, and  press itself upon [our] feelings” on a particular subject so that we are led to learn or do or be warned of something He needs us to understand. I wonder if both of these lessons are in that realm of inspiration, something I’m supposed to learn?

Tuesday was a normal day and I didn’t record anything special or take any pictures of anything in particular. I am learning that sometimes I’m not very cognizant of special things that are going on around me. One thing we did do was host a young mens group at the Escape Room. We also had a couple of our international zone missionaries that we trained on the Escape Room come and “shadow” us. They all said afterwards that watching it happen was much better than being shown by us. I think that is always true. I have learned that I learn much better by experiencing and participating in something than just being told about it.

Wednesday was Pday. I went for a ride and Mom for a walk and then her class. After class we thought we were meeting John Campbell for lunch at the COB, but Mom mixed up the dates, it is supposed to be next Wednesday, so we decided to just have lunch there anyway. I decided to go for their coconut shrimp plate. Mom did the teriyaki chicken. We learned pretty quickly that we should have just split lunch. They gave me a dozen shrimp! Wow. And I also got a side of asparagus with that. I couldn’t finish it all and I ended up eating the rest of it for lunch the next day.

We then headed out DI shopping to see if Mom could find a dress that would work for her Princess Rosalina costume for Halloween. She actually found an old white temple dress that she thinks she can dye and alter to make it work. Score! I found a Santa to add to my Santa collection and Mom also found a You Are Special Today plate. We have learned we should probably go DI shopping more often. Except we really don’t want to acquire more “stuff” while we are here. We then hit Costco and learned that they have new strawberry/vanilla swirl soft-serve ice cream. We couldn’t pass that up! Yummmmm! 

Thursday was a normal day of being floor leads in the library. I did get to help two different couples from the Netherlands that came into the library. At the end of our visit they both said that they were excited to keep searching for family and thankful that I had taught them how to do it for themselves. I have learned that that is my favorite response form a guest…they have learned how to do it for themselves. After work we took Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner to the Ogden Temple for an endowment session.

Afterwards Sister Docherty went to visit a friend there in Ogden and we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We learned however, that this was not your typical Mexican restaurant. They didn’t have burritos or tostadas or fajitas or anything that you normally would see on a typical menu. They did have tacos, but also sopes and gorditas, torta loca, salchipapas and pambazo. It was different, but good. We should have guessed from the name of the restaurant that it was not going to be a typical Mexican restaurant, but we thought they were just doing that for fun.

Friday Mom headed out for her walk and learned that they are still working on putting up Christmas lights in the trees around the Conference Center. If you look closely at this picture you will be able to see the colored lights in the tree. Then she came home and went to work on another loaf of sourdough bread which turned out fantastic. She has shared her recipe and starter with quite a few missionaries from the library as well as here in our apartments. I went out for my first ride of The Great Cycle Challenge. I started doing this 4 years ago when Enzo was diagnosed with leukemia. People pledge to ride a certain number miles in September to support childhood cancer research and encourage others to donate to the cause as well. This year I pledged to ride 500 miles in September and raise $1,000. You can learn more about it here… https://greatcyclechallenge.com/riders/DavidPhillips2 

I got in a 30 mile ride and felt really good afterwards when I learned that I was able to keep a 15.2 mph average speed even though there was a pretty strong headwind blowing against me the

whole way home. I took this picture from my bike as I was riding to try to get a little example of how hard the wind was blowing. I should have done a video, then you could have heard and seen it as well. After our morning activities we went into the library for our short 3 hour shift and had a great time.

Saturday morning we both got up early, 6:30am. Mom was going to go walking with another sister in the apartments, but it was raining a bit and they didn’t want to walk in the rain. By the time I was ready to go at 7am the rain had stopped and the roads were already starting to dry up. So I headed out for Day 2 of the GCC. I went around the first corner very cautiously and commented to myself in my head that I definitely did not need to be like Tour de France riders who seem to always take wet corners too fast and have their tire slip out from underneath them. Well I got 8 miles into my ride and was making a right angle turn to go through an underpass on the bike trail, when suddenly my tire slipped out from underneath me and I went down hard. I looked back at the trail and tried to figure out where I slipped, because the road was dry there. I think what happened was that my rear tire hit the yellow line on the road and it was still slippery. Well that messed up the rest of my ride, particularly since it broke my handlebar. If you look close you can see it in this picture. I rode home and washed all the grime off of my wounds and then got ready to go into the library. Mom came back from walking and I didn’t even tell her what happened. But when we started walking to the library and I was limping (my left hip has a pretty large contusion on it) she asked if I was ok and it all came out. My day in the library was not comfortable. Sitting hurt and then made my hip/upper thigh very stiff and it would take me awhile to be able to get moving again. I stood the last two hours at the steward desk.

Mom has become a rock star at helping people from Italy. Even though she has only almost finished her Beginning Italy training we keep getting guests coming in needing help with Italian ancestors and we don’t have someone available who has already passed off that training, so we send in Mom. I know the picture isn’t Mom, but it is a picture of our floor and people who work there and I wanted to show what it looks like when we are helping. Mom has been shadowed by the trainer for Italy, Ali Pili, and she says Mom is really good at this. She is so detailed. Wahoo Mom!

I limped home from the library and plopped in the recliner. I stayed there and watched the BYU game with Tim Ramsden, well the first half of the game at least. Tim went home at halftime. I stayed up and watched until the end. They won, but not impressively.

Today we drove into church because we had some cleaning supplies to donate to the Welcome Packages

that our Relief Society is putting together for refugee families in the Salt Lake area. They are teaming up with Catholic Community Services to make sure they have everything they need to get started in their new home. I was happy that we had to drive. Although my hip is feeling better I’m not sure how good it was going to feel walking up the hill to church.

This evening we had our Break the Fast. It was a bit overcast and we were a little worried that we might not be able to hold it outside, but the rain held off and we were ok…except for the wind that kept gusting pretty good now and then. We had the most people come that we have ever had before, because we invited the visa-waiters (vw’s) in the Garden Apartments to join us as well. I think our final number was right around 39. I learned that one of the couples that are vw’s are going to South Africa so we had a great chat about what I experienced and what I have heard since then about the country. It was fun. Suddenly a whirlwind/mini tornado came in right where our serving tables were and started blowing all of the food off the tables. One of the sister’s Pyrex dishes was smashed to bits on the parking lot asphalt. Luckily, most people had already removed a lot of their bowls and dishes so we avoided any more damage, but it definitely was an adventure. We cleaned up all the food and glass and papers and the parking lot looks better now than it did before.

Well that’s what we learned this week. I hope your lives are as exciting as ours.

Love you lots.

BE GOOD!

Mom and Dad