Wahoo! A temple was announced for Kahului, Hawaii on the island of Maui. I know this is an event at the end of the week, but I had to start here. Their time has finally arrived to get their own temple. They have a had a chapel there since 1852 when the wonderful Pulehu Chapel was built. I have been there and it has a marvelous spirit about it. It would be cool if that is where they build the new temple, but I doubt it. It is “up country” and out of the way for most members. We are so excited for the saints on Maui!
So back to the beginning of the week. We learned that they are getting closer to completing he garden area that is going to be north of the Tabernacle. Mom took this picture while out on her morning walk. We are excited to see the finished product and hope it will be ready for the Christmas lights that will be turned on just after Thanksgiving. The mission devotional was canceled for that morning because the Church Museum had an accidental fire alarm go off that flooded the basement area of the museum where the auditorium is that we were planning to use. So we just headed into the library to help guests and work on our Italy and Norway training.
That night we had FHE and everyone that wanted to got to share their favorite or most memorable conference talk. The first person was Sister Winder and she shared that she was there in the tabernacle when Elder Bruce R. McConkie shared his final talk. She remembers how she felt and knowing that he indeed knew God. Then almost everyone else made comments on that talk. What they remembered and other circumstances that they knew of that surrounded his message. It is amazing to me to see how much one moment can affect so many people so profoundly.
Tuesday I did another ride and Mom went for a walk. When we got into the library at noon we learned that they FINALLY opened the bathrooms on our floor. We are very excited for this. It’s only been about 4 or 5 months since they started and we were told it would take about 2 months to complete. It has been a long time coming, but finally it has arrived. We were able to help some people find family. Mom has been the go to for Italy and me the Netherlands guy. Pretty fun that we have a specialty that is useful and gets used. We were able to work until 8pm and close down the floor. When we went outside we learned it was dark. Mom was so sad that it gets dark so early now.
Wednesday I did another ride and Mom a walk. Then she headed off for a doctor appointment. Her back has been bugging her a bit and she learned that she can get referred to a physiatrist here through our UofU Health plan. So she went in and the doctor took at look at her original MRI and said, “Wow, that’s bad.” He immediately gave her the referral for the physiatrist. We thought we were were going to lunch with John and Mom gave me a call that she was running late and bought we should maybe just move lunch back a half hour, but then we learned that John had a meeting that got rescheduled and couldn’t come. So we just did lunch at home and tried to decide if we wanted to go out to shop or not. Finally we decided to go look for a rug to put in our room at Chris and Julie’s house. They pulled the very nasty carpet out of that room and it is just wood subfloor. When we got to Home Depot we learned that they didn’t have any of the advertised 11x11 rugs in the store, we would have to order online. We learned the same about Lowe’s. So then we just went and bought some things at Costco in preparation for Brittany and her kids coming to visit this weekend for conference…a gallon of chocolate milk and chips and hot dogs. Yummy stuff!
Thursday was our floor leader day and it was fun! We worked on our Italy and Norway training and kept people organized and filling in for people who were missing and helping ad hoc different people who were in the library with different needs. I had a great experience in the afternoon. Even though I was floor leader they needed someone to go help a guest with Swedish research. Usually there are plenty of people that can do that, so I don’t get called very much. I sat down with the guest and learned that he had hit what we call a “brick wall” on one of his ancestor’s line. So I sat down and we started looking at what he did have. We found a source record that had been attached to one of those ancestors that gave us a clue at where he may have been born. So we went searching the records for a birth certificate. We couldn’t find it. But then we looked for a household registry, kind of like a census record that they do in Sweden, and we found his family with his parent’s names and birthdates. Bingo! He got so excited. From that he found the marriage record and said, “I get this now!”. I said, “Wonderful. I’ll leave you to it.” Well he worked on it for a little under an hour and I got called to go back down to help him. When I got to his computer he was all smiles. He said, “I had to show you what I found!” He had found two more generations back on both sides. He didn’t need any help, just wanted to thank me for showing him how to search. What an awesome payback moment!
That evening we took Sister Pruner to the Draper Temple with us. We did an endowment session, then an initiatory session after that. When I came out to the foyer I found that Mom and Sister Pruner weren’t there yet, so I went to sit down. But I looked across the foyer and saw Rick Decker sitting there. He was a Seminaries and Institutes guy who Sherry and I were privileged to have in our group on our Israel trip that we did way back in 1995. I learned that he just retired last year from the Tabernacle Choir and is planning to retire from choir director at Ensign College next year. That’s him there in the middle of the picture. Sherry and Sis. Pruner then came out as well as Rick’s wife, Sonya, and we chatted for a bit bringing each other up to speed on many of the happenings in our families and careers the last 18 years. Seminaries and Institutes (which used to be CES…Church Educational System) is really like another family. It was so fun to catch up with them.
Friday was another ride, and I only did 40 miles. I was thinking I would try to make up for the days I missed when I had a cold, but I just did the 40 and resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to reach my 500 miles goal. I got back home and showered and dressed and shortly thereafter Brittany and the kids came. Brittany brought a bunch of photos with her and wanted to take them to the library to scan them using their super fast scanners. So we headed into the library and the kids stayed at the apartment watching movies and eating chips and candy. Brittany was able to scan over a thousand photos. Whoa! Mom and I were able to close down our floors and head home. We we got outside we saw Brittany ahead of us carrying her tote of photos. We thought she had driven over to the library, but we learned that she tried to park in the museum parking lot, but it didn’t open up to public parking until 4pm, so she had gone back to the apartment and parked and had just carried the tote. Pretty buff. When we got home we had dinner with the kids and watched some football (go Cougs!) then headed to bed.
Saturday I did my final ride for the Great Cycle Challenge. I was only able to get in 25 miles, for a month total of 465 miles. It was fun to have Enzo here to celebrate with me at the end of this month of riding and donating money to this worthy cause that helped make sure Enzo got to stay here for many more years. We then headed into the library and had to go through a group of very noisy protesters who were out by the Conference Center to protest general conference and scream crazy things. It made my heart hurt looking into a few of their faces. I could tell by what they were saying that they didn’t know very much about what we believe at all, only the anti-Mormon info they had been fed. I learned long ago that there are many things out there that can lead people to believe many different things about our Father in Heaven, but the most important way to come to know Him is through His spirit and His prophets. I know through experiences with that Spirit that He lives and loves us and this is indeed His Church on the earth today, led by the best imperfect people He can find.
When we got home I made Swedish pancakes for dinner and we ate pumpkin pie as well. Pretty good dinner don’t you think? We then watched the final evening session of conference. I was surprised to learn that it only lasted a little over an hour. The last few years they have been shortening it to an hour and a half, but just a little over an hour seemed very short. I wonder if they will just discontinue this session in the not to distant future. My favorite message in his session was from Elder Gary Sabin. He spoke about happiness and said, “When nothing is expected and everything is appreciated life becomes magical.” I really like that thought. I really need to show more appreciation in my life for the things I have been given. After that we played some games and watched the end of Haunted Mansion, which the kids had started earlier, then headed to bed. It was early for me, so I watched a couple episodes of Murdoch Mysteries on my iPad then hit the hay as some people say.
This morning we got up and Brittany put the cinnamon rolls in the oven. All the kids and Mom and Brittany went to the morning session in the Conference Center since Brittany had 6 tickets. I stayed home and watched on tv. When they came home we ate cinnamon rolls and some other things for lunch and just hung around and enjoyed each other. Mom and I had tickets for the afternoon session that came from the mission office, so we headed over there early enough to make sure we were in our seats a half and hour early. The Henkels had gone over earlier than us to see where they could it with her scooter and they texted us to say they had saved some
seats for us. So we got in and went around to find out where the Henkels were. We found them and settled in for the final session of conference. If you were able to watch you know what we know about who spoke and what they spoke about. The best surprise was having President Nelson speak as the last speaker. I wonder when they filmed his talk? Any speculations out there? It was a great talk. Thinking Celestial will be quite a few people’s mantras for the next 6 months! I was of course excited to hear him announce the 20 new temples that will be built, but most excited to hear about the Kahului, Maui temple. While Mom and worked in the Kona Temple we met often many wonderful saints from Maui who sacrificed time and money to fly to the Big Island to attend the temple. Many times they would come and spend a whole weekend, Friday and Saturday there, and even provide many of their own temple workers. What faithful people! I am so happy their sacrifices and efforts are being rewarded by our Heavenly Father. We left the session and came home where Mom made us a yummy dinner and now we are watching Ender’s Game, which Jake just finished reading. Fun times.
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