Here we are, another week is “in the books”. I’m getting a late start on this post so I’m pretty sure my title will come true, if not later than that. Well, let’s get started. Here’s what we learned this week.
We headed into the library at 8am Monday morning and learned that they had ripped all of the flowers out of the flower beds around the library and Church History Museum. Mom is soooooo excited. She is certain that hey will be replacing them with more Fall and Winter types of flowers…pansies and chrysanthemums and….we shall see. Once in the library we both went to work on our training, Mom on Italy and me on Norway. We also had an interview with our Zone Leaders and then we interviewed a couple of the missionaries in our zone. Semi-annually they do these interviews to see how everyone is doing, and since we are assistant zone leaders we are asked to help with the interviews. It’s fun. We get to sit for a half an hour with a missionary and get to know them better. There is a form with questions that they fill out before they come to the interview and then we just chat about their answers. So we had some good interviews and neither of us made any huge headway in our training and the. We headed home for a quick dinner before our Mission Devotional.
We then decided to go work out in the COB gym before the devotional. We got in about an hour workout and then we’re able to shower and change and go downstairs for the devotional which was in the COB auditorium. The Mission Devotional featured Elder Brian Taylor of the Seventy and his wife Jill Featherstone Taylor. Yep, she is Vaughn J. Featherstone’s daughter. They spoke about the
Doctrine of Christ. He put it into context with the
Plan of Salvation and how it brings power into our lives. That power can help us succeed in anything we are asked to do.
Tuesday we headed in early to the library so that we could leave early to go to our Hale Center play,
Around the World in 80 Days. We made sure to arrange everything to not miss another performance. When we got to the library they were already starting to plant new flowers. We aren’t sure if Mom was right on the types they would plant, but she pretty sure those flowers in front are pansies. We came in and got to work. Mom made some progress on her Italy case study and we learned that all the switches we had made with other missionaries worked out just fine. Sister Dunn agreed to come in later and stay later so that there would be someone to do floor lead and steward during the last two hours when we usually do. She is so nice and we are very grateful for her willingness to swap with us. I was also able to train a new missionary in the library in the
Escape Room. She is a new Church Service missionary who will be serving in the US/Canada zone. I think she will do well.
Then we headed to our play. We were able to stop at Crown Burger and grab a burger and shake and fries to share while we drove down. The play was fun. Not the most exciting one we have ever attended, but they added some fun parts to it here and there to liven it up. They had lots of circus type performers doing
drop-from-the-ceiling routines on hoops and ropes and aerial silks. They also had one part where this guy did a cool trampoline routine. I think Passepartout was the funniest character, but the guy who played Phileas Fogg did a great job of acting his part.
Wednesday was Pday. Mom had a procedure scheduled in the morning to remove a plantar wart from the bottom of her foot. It went well and then she had an appointment with an orthopedic doctor a couple hours later to see about getting another steroid epidural, which he agreed ought to happen. Then she came home to rest. I went to the COB gym to work out again and when I got home it had started raining outside. We spent the rest of the day just hanging around the apartment and watching another Christmas movie. Mom made more sourdough bread. I think she makes about 4 or 5 loaves a week now which she shares with neighbors or mostly takes into the library and puts it out up in the 3rd floor lunchroom to share with all of the missionaries in the library as well as other staff who work there. They all love it of course. It’s fun to watch missionaries take off as soon as they hear there is bread up there just to make sure they get some before it is gone. I am guessing that is not surprising to many of you.
Wednesday night we had been given tickets to the opera,
La bohème by Puccini. It was raining and since Mom had just had her procedure that morning I planned to drive, even though the theater is only 4 blocks away. But Mom said her foot was feeling fine and she thought she could make it just fine. So we broke out the new umbrellas and headed off tot he theater. We made it just fine and had a great time. We really liked the performance. We were worried that we wouldn’t understand anything since it was in Italian, but when we arrived we learned that they had subtitles on a screen above the stage so that we could understand all of the
recitativo and songs and the performers were great. It was a wonderful evening at the opera. Look at us, all cultured and everything. We then walked home, not needing our umbrellas because the rain had stopped. All was well until we got home and Mom checked her foot and found that it had bled a little. So I changed the dressing and she hobbled around s bit and said that her foot was hurting quite a bit and she probably shouldn’t have walked that far on it so soon. Oops.
The next morning we learned that Mom’s foot was quite bruised and swollen all around the incision and she couldn’t put any weight on it at all. She sent a message off to the zone leaders letting them know she wouldn’t be able to come in and I went in alone to be floor leader for the morning. Mom stayed home and watched movies and rested. In the afternoon I had my
training lessons revamp meeting where I learned we are officially finished with phase one. Wahoo. After the meeting I ran into one of the specialists who used to work on our floor, Camille, and she asked if I would be willing to help with a project she is heading called
tree building. Basically we go in and help people with their trees. Adding hints and sources and people wherever we can. She especially wants me to help with people in the Netherlands. Cool beans.
I came home to learn that Mom was doing better, but that she had canceled our temple appointments for that night. So we just sat and chatted and listened to Christmas music and watched more tv and worked on the
Concordia Project and did nothing much more than just rest the rest of the night. It was nice to just spend some quality time with each other. 😊
Friday is our going in later day. I went and worked out at the COB gym and then came home to run to the stores to get some things for upcoming meals and things. I went to WinCo first and then to Costco. I got home just in time to get ready to go into the library and learned that Mom was feeling better and wanted to go in as well. So I showered real quick and headed in a little early because I was supposed to help with the
Escape Room. But when I got there I learned that the group that had booked the room had about half of their people leave so they didn’t need two rooms. So I headed downstairs and waited for Mom to come.
She drove so she wouldn’t have to walk too far on her foot. We worked as stewards and floor leaders and it was a pretty quiet evening. We closed the place up at 6pm and headed home to have dinner with the Henkels.
Saturday we went into the library and learned that the schedule had missed assigning floor leaders for quite a few hours of the day. So we filled in and helped in lots of different places. It made the day go by pretty quick. In the afternoon we had a group come in to do the
Escape Room. Mom did one room and I did the other. It was a fun group of YW with their leaders. They seemed to really enjoy it and both groups were successful in solving the room. We came home and I learned that BYU got blown out by TCU, so I watched the highlights on YouTube instead of the whole game. I also watched the end of a couple other games.
This morning I woke up and saw that a text had come in rather early. I learned it was from our ward council explaining that they had a cancellation on their sacrament meeting speakers and were wondering if Mom and I could fill in. They had one sister missionary who was still going to speak. So I came out to the living room and asked Mom if she had looked at her text messages. She said she hadn’t so she looked. “Whaaaaaaaat? Ugggghhhh!” But then she realized she would only really have to just introduce us and bear her testimony about scripture
study and didn’t have to spend the whole week agonizing about speaking in sacrament meeting so she was ok with it. So we spoke in church and then went to teach our
Learning Pattern Journey class. From there it was on to the
One Heart gathering. We got home and I learned that Mom had asked the Barneys if they wanted to play Mah Jong. They texted back and said yes. So off we went to play Mah Jong and some game they play with Rook cards. I was the biggest loser! Mom won twice in Mah Jong and also won the other game. Biggest winner! Surprise? Not!
So then I finally got to sit down and start this blog post. I knew since I was starting so late it would be pretty lat when I finished, thus the title. Well it is almost midnight now and I am tired and ready to head to bed.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Elder Dad and Sister Mom
PS I was tired so I skipped adding what my talk was about in church, but feel like I need to add it. I started by greeting everyone with Aloha. Then I explained that we lived in Hawaii the last 4 1/2 years and that I had studied the word Aloha a bit. It means literally translated alo..."presence"
and ha..."breath" or the "breath of life". I talked about how the Hawaiians would greet each other cheek to cheek and breathe in "the breath of life" acknowledging they see their existence, their breath of life, and love them. Then I shared this quote from the director of Avatar about why he had the Avatar greet each other in the movie. with "I see you".
"About 20 years ago I was on a safari in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda). As we traveled through the villages and Serengeti savanna I noticed a recurring event. When one of the indigenous people would approach another, they would pause, face each other, look directly in each others eyes for 5 -15 seconds, say something and then continue on their way....After a couple weeks of noticing this I asked one of our guides from the Samburu tribe what the natives were doing. He said they were greeting each other. “How are they doing that? What are they saying?” I asked.
“One of them says, ‘I see you.’ Connecting through the eyes, the other replies, ’I am here....
My Samburu guide told me something else that I didn’t get at first. He said that in their language the greeting also meant something like, “Until you see me I do not exist. When you see me, you bring me into existence.”
This speaks toward our deep connectedness and that we are in fact All One." (Connecting To The Soul by Terry Tilman)
I also shared that I learned something about the greeting "Sawubona".
It's an African Zulu greeting that means "I see you." It has a long oral history and it means more than our traditional "hello."
It says, "I see your personality. I see your humanity. I see your dignity and respect." In the African village context, where everyone knows one another, it's an exceedingly powerful representation of understanding."
I closed my talk by sharing that as a boy I always had the desire, and somewhat of an expectation, that I needed to see God as Joseph Smith and so many others have. As I have grown older, and learned to love studying the scriptures, I have come to realize that I have "seen God" many many times. I have seen His presence and love as He serves His children. I have seen how He gives understanding and helps me see why He does what He does in my life and the lives of others. I see Him. I love Him. I know He loves me.
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