Aloha everyone. Here is what we learned this week.
We learned that we could add the
Hallmark TV app to our Roku TV and of course have used it to watch the latest as well as some of the older Christmas movies that we haven’t seen. We usually start these movies at night after everything else has been done so we haven’t been getting to bed at our usual time. Ugh. Late nights mean less sleep overall which translates to be more tired during the day. We really need to be more disciplined with our movie watching. I of course blame it all on Mom who has been playing Christmas music for the last month and a half, but I guess I have to give some of the blame to the groundskeepers at the Conference Center as well. I am sure you remember an earlier post where we learned they had begun putting Christmas lights in their trees. Well, this week they started turning some of them on, I am sure they are testing them, but they forgot to turn some off right across the street from our apartment building. So we had this lovely sight helping us to get into the Christmas mood. Wahoo.
Monday was our early day as usual. We had a devotional in the morning and then our normal library duties as well as working on our training. I didn’t get called to help anyone all day. That is unusual, but sometimes it happens. So we came home and went and worked out, then got ready for FHE. The Ngs were in charge of the lesson. They taught about miracles. Elder Ng told a bunch of stories about miracles in his life and then asked for others to share. Almost everyone shared about some sort of “physical” miracle, like a healing or being kept safe! Except for Mom. She simply shared how she thinks it is a miracle that she came to learn about and join the Church. It is a pretty miraculous story. After FHE we watched a Christmas movie and got to bed late!
Tuesday morning I went for a bike ride and when I got home I was casually getting things put away when Mom reminded me that we were supposed to be going in early for the library’s
Appreciation Day. So I showered quickly and off we went. When we got there we learned that they were feeding us lunch catered by
Cafe Rio, we think. It was good. We had heard that they were also going to give us a little gift of appreciation as well, but after we were finished eating there were no gifts so off we went to start our shift. After we got down to the International Zone floor we learned that they WERE giving little gifts, but they decided to give them out that morning between 10am and 11am and were doing it again from 2pm to 3pm. Mom was serving as a steward at 2pm so I went up to collect our gifts. They had these nice little lunch bags with a cold pack you can freeze to keep your lunch items cool. There was also a little stand of some sort that we’re not sure exactly what it is for, and they had some neckties with the
FamilySearch logo. I just bought one of those last month, but grabbed a different one. When I got back to our zone I learned that they had beanies and scarves and some other things for the earlier group, but I guess they ran out for he later pickups, so nothing for Mom. Sadness.
So in the afternoon Mom assigned me to help a couple that needed help finding family in Indonesia. Thanks Mom! Actually I don’t mind at all when I get these
hard assignments
to help people do research in countries that we don’t have a lot of records for nor specialists. So I sat with this couple and we looked on the
FamilySearch site and a couple other places and couldn’t find anything. And then I had what we call an
Elijah Moment. I can’t remember if I have explained what these are, but basically we believe that
we get help from ancestors…
fathers…who have passed beyond the veil of this world and who
turn their hearts to their children to help get this work done to help unite families. Well my
Elijah Moment was that I looked up and saw one of our Asia specialists, Lena, sitting in a meeting with two of her colleagues. I suddenly had the feeling that I ought to ask her if there was anything I could do to help this couple. So I went over and interrupted their meeting and asked. She let me know that there is really nothing available here for research in Indonesia, but that she has associates that live and do research in Indonesia and if I could get this couple’s email address she would send them the contact info. Wahoo! I went and told the couple and they were so excited to hear that there was someone out there that might be able to help them.
Elijah Moment.Wednesday was a typical Pday. We worked out in the morning and then Mom worked on her Halloween costume and I did some Concordia Project work. We watched a couple of Christmas movies as well. That was about the extent of our Wednesday. We kind of just
vegged and did things around the apartment and watched Christmas movies. We learned that besides
Hallmark TV, HULU has a bunch of
Lifetime movies. Some were pretty good and others were pretty bad. A few that were not too bad were
It’s Christmas, Eve and
Secretly Santa. The latter was basically a rewrite of
You’ve Got Mail and had some fun little twists in it. I guess I really shouldn’t expect too much out of these movies since they are low budget and they crank out about 100 new ones every season, but I keep thinking I’m going to be surprised and find a really good one, but I am getting used to disappointment.
Thursday we went in to be floor leaders and to do a bunch of interviews. We were going along nicely in an interview when suddenly the fire alarm went off and a broadcast announcement came on saying that we all needed to exit the building as quickly as possible. So we went into floor leader mode and made sure that everyone was heading to one of he back exits and that the elevators were not being used. Then one of the staff sisters came down the stairs saying there was no emergency, they were just restarting an elevator and it set off the system. So everyone was able to come back onto the floor. We did learn that our safety training worked and we are ready.
In the afternoon, my friend and former colleague with
Seminaries and Institutes, Henry Kosak came to visit me. He messaged me that he was on his way to the library, so I went upstairs and found him talking to one of the missionaries up on the main floor. I learned that he had served with this missionary in Germany, where Henry is from, and they were catching up. Henry then came down to our floor where we chatted and I told him about what we do and then I introduced him to a couple of the German sisters we have on our
floor. As we were leaving I mentioned we had a sister from Armenia and he got excited and asked to meet her. He was pretty sure he knew her. Sure enough he knows Sister Kareapetyan from when he was Area Director for S&I for the Eastern Europe Area. That is how we met, at our yearly Area Director conventions. What fun it was to see him. I left him with a promise that Mom and I would come to visit him and his wife, Elke, in Germany after our mission.
That evening we went to the temple. We did an endowment session at the Bountiful Temple and then went to dinner at
Texas Roadhouse. We haven’t been to one of those in many many years, but we learned that not a whole lot has changed except their peanuts policy. Sadly, they don’t have them just in a barrel at the end of the isle and you don’t just eat them and throw the shells on the floor. Instead they have them in prepackaged bags and encourage you to keep the mess at your table or just grab a bag on the way out or eat them outside while you are waiting for a table, which is what we did. The steak we had was pretty good, and the rolls were soft and warm and came with honey butter. Yum!
Friday we went to the gym and then out shopping, as well as getting our car washed. We hit Walmart to get some more fabric for my Halloween costume and then went to Costco where we bought some egg nog. What better drink to have while we’re watching all of those Christmas movies, right!? When we got home we got ready and headed into the library where we did some more interviews as well as closed the floor at 6pm. It was a fairly uneventful shift. When we got home we had dinner and then…..watched another Christmas movie of course!
Saturday morning I got up and rode my mountain bike up City Creek Canyon. I didn’t get to go very far because it doesn’t get light until later now and I don’t have a light for that bike, but it was a decent workout. Mom went on a quick run to the store to get ice cream because the Henkels invited us to dinner and she was making an apple pie for dessert. When Mom got to
Smith’s she learned that the
Tillamook ice cream was BYGO, so she got four! I knew I was smart to marry this woman. So we are set for ice cream for awhile. We then headed into the library. Mom was frustrated most of the morning trying to find a record for a person in one of the Italy case studies she is working on, but she finally found it in the afternoon and was so excited. I got to help a couple, of people with Swedish records and also reading an Afrikaans document and Mom helped a lady who was kind of clueless with FamilySearch and needed to fix a bunch of stuff. It’s really fun to watch Mom, who was so clueless herself with FamilySearch and computer stuff, sit down and confidently show someone else just how to do it.
After our shift we went to dinner at the Henkels. She made pork chops and stuffing and corn on the cob, and of course the apple pie. They had so much food we went and knocked on one of the other missionary couple’s door and invited them over as well. So we all got stuffed and sat and chatted until about 8:30pm, then we headed home. I turned on the tv and watched the end of the BYU game…go Cougs!…and then switched over and watched the end of the Utah/USC game…go Utes! That one had an exciting finish. So then we should have gone to bed, but I checked the
Hallmark channel and learned that the new movie they just released Friday,
Checkin’ it Twice, was available to stream, so we stayed up late again and watched it.
This morning we had a pretty normal Sunday. Church at 10am, Leadership Pattern Journey class at 1pm and home to start on this blog post. We did a Zoom call with all of you kids to finalize plans for Halloween and Mom made salmon for dinner. Yum! Now I guess it’s time for a Christmas movie and then head to bed. We can’t stay up too late though because Mom is getting a new steroid epidural injection early tomorrow morning, so we better start that movie right away!! Merry Christmas!
Love you all baie, mucho, muito, lots!
BE GOOD!
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