Week Forty-five…Ended With a Drive

Another week gone by way too fast. Here’s what we learned this week…

Monday was the first day of missing our workout in the COB, which led to missing for the whole week. Ugh. Not how I wanted it to go this week, but that’s life and I’m sure this next week will be better. We got into the library and of course it was slow. I had a meeting at 10am and then was supposed to sub for someone on Memory Lane at 11am. But when I got into the video conference for the meeting I learned that there was only one other person there. It was Sister Haertel who supervises the Escape Room, so

we chatted about the latest with that and then realized that nobody else was joining. So we looked at our meeting invite and realized it had been postponed until 10:30am. So we logged off and came back on at 10:30am, but that made the meeting end later so I got up to Memory Lane late, but that ended up ok since they really didn’t need any more help. So I finished my stint there and headed back down to our floor. Not long after I got there I received a text from our Zone Leader saying that he had taken his wife into the ER and wondered if we could stay until 6pm to cover their shift. We of course said we could. So we ended up staying until 6pm and closed down the floor after another pretty slow day. Then headed home. We made some dinner and looked at the clock and decided it was too late to go to the gym, plus we had our Family Christmas Storytime at 8pm, and I was doing the story. First day missed!

Tuesday I didn’t get up early enough to go to the gym before I needed to leave for the courthouse. I had been summoned to appear in the case against the lady who stole our car. I had to be there by 9am and had decided to walk, since it was only down on 500 South and State St. So I got there and it was pretty chaotic. Lawyers allover the place speaking with clients, going back into the holding cells to speak with clients who were in jail, and walking in and out taking phone calls with people who were going to appear via video conference. But nobody approached me or asked about my purposed for being there. About 75 minutes into the proceedings, this one lawyer got up and as she was walking out of the courtroom she softly spoke the name of the lady that appeared on my case number on my subpoena. She went out into the hall and came back in awhile later and sat down back up front, but didn’t approach the podium, which each lawyer did when they were ready to bring their case to the judge. Almost every case was a preliminary hearing, which most defendants waved and just entered a plea. Well about 25 minutes later the lawyer got up again and did the same thing as she walked out of the courtroom. When she came came back the judge

was looking at his docket and asked her about the case. She approached the podium and said, “I’ve got nothing.” The judge then said, “Your client is very late. I think she’s had her chance.” And that was it. The lawyer started getting her things together and putting on her coat and headed out of the courtroom. So I got up and met her at the door and told her that I had been subpoenaed for this case and asked what I needed to do. She said, “You can go home.” That was it. She was a no show. I’m sure that’s not good and it probably isn’t the end of his, but I thought it was weird that nobody made any attempt to contact me or let me know what I needed to do or when I could go. So I walked home and changed and went into the library, where it actually was not as slow as Monday. But then it started emptying out about 4pm and for the last 4 hours we had nobody ask for help via our WaitWhile system. That was weird. 4 hours. I wonder if that is a record? So we headed home at 8pm and I wasn’t able to go to the gym again. Second day missed! Plus we missed storytime.Sadness.

Wednesday was Pday and we started the morning by going shopping at Costco. Our Costco opens at 7am and we have learned that if you go early you avoid a lot of the crowds. We didn’t get out the door until about 8am, but it was Pday…no worries about time. We also went to WinCo to get some items we didn’t want in bulk, then home to put everything away and head to lunch with John Campbell. It was a nice day. A lot warmer than it has been so I didn’t even wear a coat and I didn’t change, I just stayed in Pday clothes, which included a hat. Well, we got to the COB cafeteria and John wasn’t here yet, so I waited just outside by the elevators and who should come out? Elder Uchtdorf. He looked at me and we made eye contact and he smiled and said “Hi” and waved. So I said “Hi” back and waved. Then I realized that I was wearing a plaid shirt and a hat with a missionary tag and wondered what Elder Uchtdorf must have thought? I hope he thought, “Oh look, an Elder on his Pday coming to lunch in the COB cafeteria.” Anyway, John came out of the elevator just then and Mom came around the corner and we went into the cafeteria for lunch. 

After lunch we went over to the Conference Center so that Mom could give candy to the sister missionaries. We actually stopped and talked to the sisters a little more than we usually do and found out something about each companionship. We learned that a few of them are visa waiters, and the flag they wear is for the country they are going to. One sister was going home the next day. Some sisters were in the midst of transfers which was happening the next day and it was their last day with that companion. It was fun learning something about each of them. So we got home and I realized I had missed my Nordic study group. Ugh. Consequences of spending time getting to know the sister missionaries.

I had planned to go back to he COB to workout in the afternoon, but I kept procrastinating and before too long it was getting dark and I wimped out at getting dressed and going to workout. Third day missed! We did get to do storytime though, wahoo!

Thursday we went into the library as usual at 8am as floor leaders and learned that we weren’t going to have as quiet a day as it had been all week. Almost immediately after the library opened we had people coming onto our floor and asking for help, which made a lot of our missionaries very happy. They really are most happy when they are helping people find their family. (The picture here is of one of our missionaries, Chihiro, and Savanah, one of the FamilySearch staff) So the day whizzed by pretty quick, even thought we stayed until 5pm, at which

time all of the missionaries left for a special devotional with Elder Rasband. He spoke to us about his last talk in General Conference asking for more seniors to think about being missionaries. He mentioned that of all the talks he has given, this talk came to him by direct revelation more than any other. He knew it was exactly what the Lord wanted him to say. He also talked about our work to find families and help members get names to bring to the temples. He said that “names nourish temples”. Then we learned that in some African countries the members bring their names to the temple in their heads. They sit down with a temple recorder and fill out a family group sheet for each family they can remember. Then they are given temple cards for each individual to be able to take their names through the temple to receive the ordinances. Wow, I love the way everything is so customized and yet still the same. He thanked us for our service and said it didn’t matter if we were serving in the Salt Lake Church Headquarters Mission or in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Lord was pleased with our service. When he said, “Johannesburg, South Africa” I had a little Spirit nudge in my heart that we will indeed go to Africa someday, as Mom was told many moons ago. He ended his talk by giving us an apostolic blessing. Then we headed home about 8pm, too late to workout. Fourth day missed! We did make storytime, but we were late.

Friday morning I got up a little earlier than usual and went off to give platelets at 7:45am down in Sandy. I learned from an email that I got on Wednesday from the Red Cross thanking me for my blood donation last week that I was eligible to donate platelets and that they needed them. I haven’t been able to do platelets for years. As you know I used to give a platelet donation every other week while we lived in Elk Grove and have given over 20 gallons in my lifetime. But then one day they told me that their protocol had changed and because I had a pacemaker I was ineligible to donate. So I only did whole blood after that. Well I figured since they were asking for platelets I’d go see if they would take mine. They did! But it wasn’t like it used to be. When I first started giving platelets they had a machine where they stuck you in one arm and pulled the blood out, then it went through the machine and it stripped the platelets from the whole blood, then they had to also stick me in the other arm and the machine would return the rest of my blood along with some added anticoagulant to my body.

It would take about 2 hours to do the whole process. But then one time I came into the donation center and they told me they had new machines. Now they only needed to stick one arm and the machine was more efficient and much faster, it would only take about 80 minutes. Well this donation center that I went to in Sandy had the old machines. The guy tried to tell me that these machines weren’t old and that they were faster, but it took about 100 minutes to do the donation and I had to get stuck in both arms. Plus I

didn’t feel as comfortable as I usually did before. My lips and nose got numb and had a quivery feeling in my chest. I also got cold, which I usually didn’t have happen before. Anyway, I made it through and they gave me another pair of Elf socks and I headed home. Usually I would go workout before heading into the library, but after donating you can’t do that for 24 hours. So I just ate and relaxed until it was time to go into the library. It was our short day and it was pretty quiet. No guests to help for Mom or me. We just learned more about Italy and France research and took our turns  being steward and floor lead. Mom headed home a little before 6pm to get her salad ready for our ward Christmas party. Then she came and picked me up out in front of the library, after I had closed down our floors and we drove up to the party. We were hoping we weren’t too late bringing our salad, but when we walked in we learned that they hadn’t even started dinner yet, in fact, they hadn’t even started the party. We sat down next to a couple who serves in the hospital branch. They go to the LDS

hospital each Sunday and have a sacrament meeting and then take the sacrament around to anyone who can’t attend and wants to receive it. While talking to them the first counselor got on the microphone and started the party. He announced that we were going to have a presentation by the primary and then dinner would begin after that. Well the primary did the story The Legend of the Candy Cane. Wahoo! That was the story we missed on Tuesday and is one of Mom’s favorites. The kids were very cute acting out the parts of the story. Then we had dinner and helped clean up, so it was after 8pm when we left. Fifth day missed!

Saturday morning we went in at 10am as usual and found it was a little more busy. Not super busy, but we had people on the floor. I even was asked to help a man named Erik, from Finland, on his Swedish ancestral line. He had some information about a grandmother who was born in Germany, but he didn’t know when or where in Germany, nor who her parents were. She had married a man from Sweden and lived and died in Sweden, but he wanted to know who her parents were. We went searching in the records and found a couple records that had her and her husband in them, but they didn’t reveal who her parents were or where and when she was born. So I called in Geoff, our Swedish specialist that works at the library and he looked at the records and was able to decipher a couple of things and get a little more information, but we were still puzzled by the reference to Germany. So we called Doris over, who does German research and she was able to figure out the province in Germany that was mentioned on the record I had found, but it wasn’t enough info to find a birth record. Sadness. 

So Erik thanked me very much and gave me his email address in case I came up with any other ideas and off he went. I learned from working with Geoff to slow down and pull every bit of information from the record as it might lead to clues about where to search next. I was so intrigued, that after I finished helping with two groups in the Escape Room I came back and started looking for more information on Erik’s ancestors. I wish I could tell you that I found his grandmother’s birthdate and birthplace, I didn’t, but I did find that his grandfather was adopted by his stepfather as a boy and actually had a different surname at birth. I like trying to solve these puzzles. I

might keep working on this one. Well we then headed home at 6pm and got changed to go to the symphony. Sister Eppich gave us some free tickets again. This was a mixture of quite a few different works from Sibelius and Ives, then they finished after the intermission with Schuman’s “Rhenish”. They always save the best for last I think, and Mom agreed with me. During the intermission we tried to get on the family storytime Zoom call, but found nobody was there. I think everyone was busy last night and couldn’t make it. Too many parties and other events going on. 

One thing I noticed as I was watching the orchestra was that the trumpet players were doing their fingering on the sides of the trumpet, not the top. It looked very strange, so I looked up to see if there was a different kind of trumpet out there. I learned that there is. It is called a rotary trumpet and has been used mostly in Europe for decades, but is starting to gain popularity in the United States, particularly amongst symphony orchestras. This is what they look

like. Pretty cool. Now I want to try one.  Anyway, we walked home in the cold night air…it was 29°out there. Brrrrrrr cold! When we got home we got jammies and slippers on and tried to watch another Hallmark Christmas movie, but each one we tried was pretty lame. Bummer. We have learned that they do make some good Hallmark Christmas movies, but I think the operative word is some. Most of them are the typical movies and are pretty boring. Only a few now and then are good. Sixth day missed.

Today we walked to church as usual and Mom was sustained as a primary worker. So after sacrament meeting I went to the Elders Quorum meeting and Mom went to primary. She is in a class of 7-9 year olds and has a co-teacher of course…she will only have to teach every other week. She says they are pretty good kids, but the boys are energetic boys. I think she is going to like it a lot. After church we walked home. Mom decided to whip up this little concoction because she was hungry. Salmon with eggs and hash browns? Yes please! It was very tasty.

We then headed down to Pleasant Grove to attend a fireside that John Cassinat was speaking at about his book entitled The Book of Revelation Doctrinal Commentary: Unveiling Jesus Christ. He has been working on this book for years and has finally completed it. The fireside was hosted by John McKinney, so we kind of had a little reunion of our presidency. April McKinney was there as well, but Jan Cassinat was home sick. Jaime was there though. She came down from Idaho to visit her parents because it’s John’s birthday today, the same day as Tori. In his fireside John spoke about how he views the Book of Revelation as a chronological timeline of the earth, from pre mortal time to its eventual celestialization. I’ve read most of his book and he has tons of great quotes from other authors and prophets and scripture, but there is still much of the symbolism of Revelation I need to get a clear understanding of. It was fun to watch him try to get an overview of two books into an hour long fireside. That was our long drive to end the week. 

Well now we’re home and I’m finishing this blog post. I hope you all had a great week. We did. 

Love you all.

BE GOOD!

Mom and Dad