Week Forty…Halloween Visit Was Too Shorty!

Aloha everyone. What did we learn this week? We learned that 6 days isn’t enough when you get to be with your family. We had so much fun being with everyone.

Monday at the beach and In ‘n’ Out afterwards was relaxing and fun.

Tuesday being Jake’s birthday with cinnamon rolls for breakfast and lip sync battles and carving pumpkins, then going trick or treating was awesome as well. Dentists everywhere are rejoicing over that haul of candy they got. 

Wednesday we had to head back to our mission. We got up and packed and drove the rental car back to the Ontario Airport. Our flight back to Salt Lake was on time and we arrived with no problems. While we were waiting at the Trax platform we learned something about Mom. A group of three young girls came up to Mom and said, showing her a picture on their phone, “We think you look like her.” It was a picture of Jennifer Garner. I guess Mom’s new haircut really gives her a new look. She smiled and said, “I’ll take that!” A number of years ago while I was attending a training conference for Institute Councils the presenter called me George Clooney. So I guess Mom and I are in the wrong profession. 😜

We spent the rest of the day unpacking and doing laundry and just relaxing…with another Christmas movie of course.

Thursday we were back in the library and enjoyed our normal day of being floor leads. There weren’t any groups in this week so the library seemed empty compared to last week, but we still managed to stay pretty busy. Mom scheduled us to do an endowment session after our shift and we planned to take along Sister Pruner and Sister Docherty, but we learned that Sister Pruner was home with COVID and Sister Docherty had made other plans, so we went just the two of us. It was nice being back in the temple since we missed last week. Afterwards we went to Costco to pick up some groceries since we had left our fridge pretty empty when we went to Murrieta last Thursday. We grabbed mostly essentials and some Christmas garland and then decided to do dinner there with a chicken bake and soft serve ice cream. We shared those since we have learned that we just don’t eat as much as we used too and can usually get full enough sharing a meal. I guess a slower metabolism is part of getting older. 

Friday we got up and I had planned to go workout at the COB, but Jeff Henkel needed me to take him to pick up their car from a guy who fixed a bearing for them and then follow him as he dropped the car off at a body shop to repair some damage that needing fixing. By the time I got home there probably was time to still go, but I didn’t fell like it. So we had some lunch and headed into the library. I started work on the Norway Advanced training and Mom continued on her Italian training. It was a short evening of work so when we got home we decided to head to the COB to workout. When we got there we learned that we aren’t the only ones getting ready for Christmas early. They have 3 Christmas trees set up in the lobby there. We took this picture in front of the one down by the cafeteria. Wahoo Christmas! We then went and worked out and I decided to also put in some time on the stationary bike as well instead of getting up and riding in the morning. I know I should have, but it is getting pretty cold here already and Murrieta totally spoiled me with its nice weather.

Saturday we went into the library at 10 and it was a pretty normal day. In the afternoon a guest came in from South Africa. I was assigned to help her. As we talked I learned that she has a group of people that she is teaching how to index South African Afrikaans records. I told her that we had a lady from India, Ambika, who comes in every day and is indexing South African records. She was so excited to hear that and wanted to meet her. So I took her to Ambika’s computer and introduced her. She was so sweet with her, thanking her for helping to index those records. BTW Ambika has indexed about 125,000 records this year. What a great lady.

After finishing our shift we went home and I learned that Utah had won big earlier in the day and BYU was losing big time in their game with West Virginia. I turned the game on anyway just in time to watch WV’s running back break off a huge TD run so I just turned it off. Instead we turned on the Hallmark channel and watched another Christmas movie. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would turn off football to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie I would have told you that you were nuts. Times change.

So today was Fast Sunday. Our mission president asked us to fast for the many individuals in our mission who are struggling with physical ailments. I guess we have quite a few people with lots of health issues, form small little turned ankles to terminal cancer. So we went to church with a prayer in our hearts for them. After church we had our Leadership Pattern Journey class and then came home to do our monthly Break the Fast with the apartment peoples. Since it is colder and it is getting darker sooner, especially with the time change, we have moved it indoors. We were worried that we couldn’t fit everyone into our apartment so we decided to try doing it in the lobby downstairs. We put up 3 tables and we all fit. We even fed about 10 or 12 other apartment residents so I hope nobody gets upset and bans us from using that area.

That’s it for this week. I hope you all had a wonderful week.

Love you all.

BE GOOD!

Sister and Elder Phillips