Another week has come and gone. Here’s what we learned this week…
We started this week with saying goodbye to Brittany and the grandkids as they headed back down to Vegas. We actually said goodbye to them at the apartment and headed off to work while they packed up. Sami-mantha came Sunday night from Logan, where we learned she had been hanging out with her
boyfriend, Jorge. I met him briefly. Seems like a great young man. She slept on the couch and after getting up went to the
Minerva Teichert exhibit. She then came to the library and we decided to go to lunch together. We took her to the COB cafeteria. When we got outside we learned that it had started raining. None of us brought an umbrella. At least Mom and Sami had jackets, I was just in my shirt. As we walked it started raining harder. By the time we got to the COB I was pretty wet! We had lunch and then headed back to the library. It was raining even harder. When we got back the whole front of my shirt was drenched and rain was dripping off of my head. I went into the bathroom and tried to dry off a bit, but it was not too effective. I should have got a picture,
but I forgot. Senior moment.
After work, which was very slow…probably due to the rain…we came home and had dinner with Sami and played games and watched the new Disney flick, Elemental. It was pretty good, but there are some “wait, that wouldn’t work” moments in it, but of course just about every Disney movie has those. One of the things I liked about it was the back story they did with Ember’s dad and mom. They weaved it in little by little as the movie went along until you had a pretty good picture of what they went through to get to where they were at that point in their lives. It parallels many immigrant stories, some even very similar to ones I have heard in the library from guests whose ancestors left everything behind in their home country to seek a better or safer life for their families. So many of them gave up so much and worked very hard to make it all work for their families. Amazing people.
Tuesday we hung around in the morning and Mom made smoothies for breakfast. Sami got all packed up and Jorge came down from Logan to take her to the airport. He came up to the apartment for a little while and we learned that he wants to be an Air Force pilot. I think Sami is all in with this guy as she mentioned that she wouldn’t mind having to move around. We chatted a bit more until we needed to head into the library. Again, I failed to get a picture with them. I should have named this post
The Didn’t Remember to get Pictures Week. Since I didn’t get a picture I stole these from their Facebook pages. Sorry Sami and Jorge, but I needed pics for this post.
I did remember to wear a jacket this time going to the library, but it didn’t really rain while we were heading in. We had a good day helping. Mom especially likes that she is being given regular shifts being the
steward. It breaks up the day a bit when you don’t have a lot of people to help, which we didn’t. I guess Tuesday evenings and rain and the FamilySearch Library don’t all go together well. I think we only had 3 guests come in during our last two hours, which is pretty unusual. Mom was up doing the Escape Room those last two hours. The group she was hosting was a half hour late and by the time she was finished it was almost time to go home.
Wednesday was Pday and we had a few things planned. We got a few things done around the apartment in the morning then went to the COB gym and worked out, which we hadn’t done in awhile. You know the old adage, “If you don’t use it you lose it.”? It’s true. I was surprised how much I had lost in my weight amounts on the machines. I guess I better get back there more regularly. After working out we showered and went to lunch with John Campbell. We talked about lots of
second coming scenarios and prophecies. Mom then headed off to another lunch appointment with one of her ministering sisters from the ward. I talked to John a bit more then headed home. I cleaned up some stuff and then Mom came home. She turned on this Christmas movie. So I sat down and watched it with her. It was pretty predictable, but still a fun story. So we have watched our first Christmas movie of the year and have learned that it can be something other than
White Christmas and we will be ok. Whew!
I then went for a bike ride and Mom went to Walmart for a few things we needed, including the fabric for my Halloween costume and some sheets for hers. The rest of the evening Mom worked on her costume and I did some
tagging for the Concordia Project. Tagging looks something like this pic. It’s actually quite interesting to do. I like it. You give the picture or newspaper article a title, then you
tag the people in the picture or article and tie that tag to their PID number (Personal Identification number) in FamilySearch so that the memory can be attached to their details page. In a lot of the articles it will mention other family members’ names or dates of certain events, like births or deaths or marriages, so that people can add those details in their family trees. I have to admit that I have stopped to read quite a few of the articles or obituaries as they are quite interesting. I have learned a lot about the little area where these
Germans from Russia lived and how they lived here in America. They integrated quite well in most cases.
On Thursday we did our floor leader job and helped a few others along the way. I was given an assignment to help some people with ancestors from the Middle East. Wahoo. I don’t know anything about research in those countries, but we didn’t have anyone on the floor that did, so they gave it to me. I went and introduced myself and learned that they were trying to do research for ancestors from Armenia. We just got a new missionary this last month from Armenia, Marieta Karapetyan. So I asked them to wait a minute and went back to the area where the new missionaries train together and found Marieta. I asked if she had done any research in Armenia. I learned that she had, so I asked if she would come help me with this couple. It worked out quite well. Marieta was able to speak with them in Armenian and find out what they knew already. I was able to search the catalog for
records and we found some which Marieta helped them read because we learned that they grew up speaking Armenian in their home but never learned to read or write it. Marieta and I were a great team and we stayed with them for about 2 hours finding tons of records for them to search. Fun times!
After finishing there we took Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner with us to the Bountiful Temple. We did an endowment session and then headed home. We learned that Sister Pruner’s favorite ice cream was from Dairy Queen, so we looked up the nearest one and headed there for dinner. I did a little search and learned that that DQ is the closest one to our apartment. There are none near the downtown area. So if we ever get a hankerin’ for a Blizzard we’ll have to drive all the way up to Woods Cross to get it. I got the pumpkin pie blizzard, which was great. I’m sure it was much better than the Wendy’s pumpkin spice frosty that Tori says is a disaster. I still need to try that one for myself to see if I concur.
Friday is our going in late day. I was going to go for a bike ride, but learned that I had pulled something in my right tricep doing weights on Wednesday and I didn’t want to aggravate it, so I just hung around the apartment. Mom made more sourdough bread and we watched some tv together. We headed into the library in the afternoon and I was given the assignment to help two young ladies from South Africa. Lekker! One of the girls ancestors came from India and I was able to show her some of the records that were available. We didn’t find anyone specifically for her, but found there were tons of records. The other girl had an ancestor that was brought to Cape Town from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He took Amsterdam as his surname, as he was a slave, and that was hers as well. We couldn’t find info for him either, but I told her about this project, First Fifty Years, which documents a lot of the early slaves that were brought to South Africa.
Saturday I wanted to ride, but woke up too late. Mom went out for a walk. She learned that the Fall colors were out. She also learned that it is getting colder and she needs her hoody to keep her warm when she walks. After her walk we headed into the library. We were able to be steward and ushers and also do some helping with some of the guests that came in. Mom really liked being steward and I did the usher job as well. Then we both worked on our Italy and Norway training and were able to get quite a bit done. I talked to one of the staff specialists and I learned that they are totally revamping the Nordic training. I’m looking forward to that. The current training really has too many parts for the activities. I know their purpose is to help us know how to do those kinds of research for guests, but the activities really take way too much time…days and days. It really should only take a few hours so that the missionary can learn how to help a guest and be somewhat proficient, not a staff level helper. If that is needed we can find a staff member to escalate the case to for their help.
We were in charge of closing down the floor and had to wait a bit because we had a couple down on the B2 level that didn’t get cleaned up on time. We had to
urge them to get ready to go so that the library could close up. When we finally went out the front doors we found the Henkels outside and they were talking to two ladies and asked me to take their picture. We learned that they were from Hawaii. Our island! The lady in the middle is the mom of one of our YSA boys, Noah. Wow, small world. It was fun to hear
how he was doing and catch up on some of the news from our Hawaii home.
I spent the rest of the night watching college football with Jeff Henkel. He went home after the end of the Georgia Tech/Miami game which had a wild ending. I can’t believe that Miami didn’t just kneel the last two plays. I stayed up and watched the USC/Arizona game. That was a great game. I thought for sure that Arizona was going to win, but USC put up a great fight late in the game and was able to win it in triple overtime. I didn’t get to bed until 12:30. Yikes.
Church today was great. We had fast and testimony meeting and then Elders Quorum and Relief Society lessons. Our Elder’s Quorum lesson was about Elder Bednar’s talk from this last conference,
In the Path of Their Duty. It was nice to talk about those of the “last wagon” who work behind the scenes so many times, helping get things done but don’t get much recognition. The Relief Society talked about Elder Rasband’s talk from April Conference,
Hosanna to the Most High God. It was about the events of
Palm Sunday. One of my favorite quotes from Elder Bednar’s talk was this,
“If you feel that much of what you do this year or in the years to come does not make you very famous, take heart. Most of the best people who ever lived weren’t very famous either.” It was actually a quote from a talk given by President Howard W. Hunter at a BYU devotional in 1990. I think life really isn’t about fame, it’s about loving and serving and helping and not caring who gets the credit for it. People who do that are the best kind of people.We then went and facilitated our Learning Pattern Journey class which went very well. After that we came home and had our monthly Break The Fast with our fellow West Temple Apartment missionaries and I of course didn’t take any pictures. We ended the evening playing Mah Jong with the Barneys and the men each won a game and the women won none. What? Not sure how that happened. Go men! I am learning that I like this game after all.
Well that was our week and what we learned. I hope you had a great week of learning as well.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
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