Week Forty-four…An Aaron Copland Score!

Here we are at the end of another week. Her is what we learned…

Monday we learned that it can get even slower in the library than it has previously been. Since getting back from Thanksgiving it has been extremely slow in the library. We have had some stewards who have not assigned anyone to help a guest during an hour long shift. I counted up the number of people we helped yesterday and it was a total of 32. That’s only an average of 4 per hour, and like I said, some hours go by without anyone assigned. So we have been working on our training…Mom for Italy and me for France…and Mom has been doing lots of planning for the Christmas social which is coming up on

December 19th. 

After our shift ended we went over to the COB to workout and saw all of the great lights outside of the Conference Center. Since we only have the garland above the kitchen cabinets in our apartment as any Christmas lights, it is nice to have those lights so close to help us get into the season. I learned that the little paper luminaries, which I thought said joy in many different languages don’t all say joy. Some say light and some say love as well. The one on the left in this picture says love in Greek and the one on the right says light in Vietnamese. Pretty cool.

Tuesday morning I had an appointment to give blood. I thought I had set it up for a place just north of us, but learned when I looked it up on Google maps that it was about 8 miles away. So I drove up there and learned it was actually a mobile unit parked in a business’ parking lot. So I went in and everything went smoothly. The guy across from me was bleeding slow because his needle stick wasn’t quite right and even though I started 10 minutes after him I was finished before him. Afterwards they told me to get some refreshments and also to take a pair of Elf socks as a thank you for giving blood in December. They also said that they had a ton of those socks so I could take some for my wife as well. Bonus! So Mom and I have matching Elf socks now, which is good because we didn’t bring any Christmas socks with us here. I’m not sure how I overlooked that because I brought about 8 Christmas ties, thinking I would be wearing a suit and tie everyday and would need a few different Christmas ties, but somehow I forgot Christmas socks. Sadness. After giving blood I found a Smith’s grocery store to buy milk and bananas and then I stopped at a do-it-yourself car wash to get our car washed, since it was pretty dirty from our drive back from Vegas. 

We went into the library at noon and found it was still quiet. I had been asked to sit in the specialist’s spot at the reference desk because the specialists were all in a meeting. So I opened my FamilySearch account and started working on finding the parents of Anders Segerstedt. I had previously found this marriage license stating that he was a bookkeeper for the post office in Stockholm and that he was born in Westergötland in 1731. The only problem is that Westergötland is a county and it is difficult to look through all the possible records to find his birth record. Geoff Morris, who is one of the staff specialists who specializes in Sweden saw my record

up on the computer screen and said, “Hey that’s Swedish!” So I explained what I was searching for and he started giving me some ideas of other places I could look, and then he opened his laptop and started looking himself. I then showed him that I had also found his death record, but didn’t see any information on that that would help narrow down our searched.

He took a look at it and as he was looking Savanah Larson, another Swedish staff specialist, walked by and said, “Hey, that’s Swedish! What are you working on?”. So we gave her a brief explanation to bring her up to speed on what I was looking for and what I had already found, and she gave me us some more ideas. Unfortunately I then needed to leave to go do an Escape Room visit for a group and lost my help from both of them, but Geoff told me to find him afterwards because now he was intrigued and wants to find Anders’ info as well. Fun times.

The rest of the day was slow and I never did find Geoff again, nor have I found Anders’ birth record so that I can identify his parents, but I am still looking. I will probably have to do some looking through whole books of records, since I can’t seem to find anything to help me identify the specific parish or city where he was born, but I am pretty confident I will find them even if I have to look through every parish record in Westergötland county.

Wednesday was Pday and we went to workout in the morning. I learned while I was looking out of the windows that they are indeed making progress on the Salt Lake Temple remodel. They have actually finished putting up the two north spires. You can see on the left of the picture that they have installed some sort of support that they attached the stone blocks to and they have just started on that middle support. When we first got here they had announced that the work on the temple would probably be completed sometime in early 2025. We were kind of bummed thinking that we would just miss the rededication of the temple and be able to maybe attend a session therein. But now they have moved the estimated completion date out to the end of 2026, and some people are thinking it may not even be until 2027. But they are making progress. 

After working out Mom was supposed to have lunch with her ministering sister, but she got a text saying she wouldn’t be able to make it, so we headed up to the Christkindlmarkt.

This is a Christmas market patterned after the Christmas markets of Germany, much like the one we saw in the Hallmark movie, A Heidelberg Christmas. Apparently a lady who lived in Frankfurt, Germany for awhile loved the markets there and wanted to create one here in Salt Lake City. We were told that the Uchtdorfs helped in the beginnings of this as well. They set it up at the This is the Place Heritage Park and when we got there we learned it’s a big deal! They had policemen controlling traffic and traffic signs directing us where to go. When we got inside we learned it is primarily a German market, and most of the booths sold German foods and Christmas decorations and trinkets, but they also had booths for most of the Nordic countries and even a booth for Ghana. As we walked around we saw that they also had some people dressed in traditional Christmas attire for the various countries.

Mom and I immediately recognized this lady in her white dress with red sash, and wreath on her head with candles, as a Swedish Santa Lucia Day person. We hope you all have a great Sant Lucia Day on the 13th and are so glad Brittany discovered this day while doing her 5th grade report on Sweden. Well we wandered all of the shops and tried a lot of samples from the food places, but both of us had eaten lunch right before we left so we didn’t buy any food. Mom did find a little ornament that she liked, this little

Christmas bell, which we have hung on our doorknob. I like having bells on our door. There was this one vendor selling really cool bells on some leather straps that he hand carved, but they were very expensive. I loved the sounds of the bells though. Some straps had different sized bells attached so that when you shook it it was a harmony of bells. One of the shops was selling those felt German hats that people put pins allover, do you know what I am talking about? Mom thought about buying one, but then she decided she didn’t know when she would ever wear it and so she didn’t get it. 

One of the other things that was happening there was that they had a stage where different musical performances were happening. They were broadcasting the performances throughout the venue on speakers. When we first got there it was a signing group

performing Christmas songs. When we finally found the stage where they were performing from, we learned it was this group of Swiss Alphorn players. I thought they were pretty cool. I learned from one of the performers that they don’t have any fingering to change the pitch of the horn, it is all done with the lips on the mouthpiece. That pretty amazing that they can make that kind of sound. 

After seeing everything we wanted to see at the Christkindlmarkt we came home and Mom decided she wanted to go down to Deseret Book to look for a Christmas book for the grandkids, and I went into the library to attend a Nordic group study session. But when I got in there I learned that they decided to do the study group as an online Zoom group so that more people could attend. So I just headed back to the apartment and watched it there. This week we learned about Finland and how to search records there. Mom couldn’t find a book she liked, so she ended up wandering around the mall area and finding Christmas decorations and then she walked through Temple Square and gave out candy to the sister missionaries. She took some pictures there as well. 

That evening we watched Polar Express, which I learned I have never watched all the way through. There are so many movies thst I have seen parts of while you kids watched, but never actually 

saw completely from beginning until the end. I liked the part where the kid was chasing the ticket across the top of the train, but I never could figure out the significance of the hobo guy on the top of the train. Any ideas? 

Thursday we learned that the library can get even more quiet than it has been. One of our new missionaries was being trained as steward and the sister that was helping to train her told me that they only had 2 guests sign in for help during the hour and a half that they were there. That is slow! We were floor leaders and kept trying to find things for our missionaries to do. Mom was working with different folks on the program for our Christmas social. It looks like it is going to be fun. Lots of music from around the world and different Christmas traditions shared by people from different countries and a visit from Sinterklaas and his elves. Should be an exciting evening, and best of all we don’t have to set up, cook or clean up! Wahoo.

After our shift was finished we went to the Bountiful Temple. Our usual sister missionaries weren’t able to come with us, but we added Sister Karapetyan. She is a missionary that works on our floor and is from Armenia. She usually goes with some other sister missionaries, but asked is she could come with us that night. We did a sealing session and it was fun hearing the sealer try to pronounce her name. He kept asking, trying to get it right, but never could remember. It actually sounds exactly like it looks…

car-ah-pet-ē-yon. We unfortunately did not get a picture outside of the temple with the three of us, so instead you just get this picture of Sister Karapetyan with Sister and President Holmes. Afterwards we noticed that a lot of the houses up there by the temple, which are huge and beautiful, had Christmas lights and a couple had all of the trees in their yard lit up. I’ll try to get pictures in a couple weeks when we go back. 

Friday we slept in a bit, then got up and went to work out at the COB. When we got there we noticed that there were the nativities from around the the world that they usually have by the tabernacle, set up in the plaza area behind the COB. So we went out and looked at them before going in to workout. After our workout we came out and found that it had started to snow. It was a light snow and didn’t stick but it was the first snowfall of the year for us here. Snow, I have learned, looks very nice and is super helpful up in the mountains to provide snowpack for future water as well as a fun place to ski and snowboard, but on the roads and sidewalks here it is a bit of a pain! But this was just lovely light snow. Pretty to look at and not creating any treacherous roads or sidewalks.

When we got home we just vegged and watched Elf. We are looking forward to seeing Elf:The Musical next Tuesday. We then went into the library and did our short 3 hour shift. Mom was asked to help a lady with Italy ancestors right before we closed, which we have learned seems to alway happen. It will be very quiet, especially after 4pm, and then right before we close someone will come in and ask for help. We wish they would come in earlier so we can help longer. 

After we closed up we headed off to Abravanel Hall to hear the Utah Symphony perform Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland. Sister Eppich gave us the tickets. When we got there we learned that it wasn’t just Appalachian Spring that they were performing. They also did some other pieces by Bach and they had a guest pianist, Awadagin Pratt, who was really good. He played everything from memory, no sheet music up on the piano, and was very moving in his performance. Also, after the intermission the conductor came out and we learned that the next piece we would hear was composed by him. It was a tribute to Mohammed Ali entitled The Greatest. It was an interesting composition, lots of movement and very loud in many parts. He told us it would be that way because it tried to portray Ali’s larger-than-life persona. They finished the night with Appalachian Spring and it was great. I love the way it starts off like little soft noises of nature and moves into all kinds of sounds of Spring. One of my favorites. Mom liked it too. 

When we were walking home we noticed this sign out in front of the symphony hall advertising one of their upcoming performances. They are doing something kind of unique. They show a movie and perform all of the music from the soundtrack live. They have done Black Panther and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2 and will be doing Frozen December 21-23. The last one they plan to do is Casablanca, in February. It sounds pretty cool and I would love to learn if they have to get some sort of special soundtrack from the production company, or if they just mess with the outputs using their own sound equipment so that they have all of the dialogue, but are able to provide the background music with the orchestra. 

Saturday we headed into the library around 10am and learned that the snow did stick a little during the night, but nothing big yet. We had a fun day getting to know a lot of the missionary a little better, since again it was pretty quiet in the library, although a little busier than other days. I already mentioned that I counted at the end of the night and we helped 32 guests. One of those guests was a mom and her daughter from Afghanistan. Any guesses who got to help them? Yup, I have learned that when Mom is at the steward assignment and someone comes in with a request for help with a country in which we don’t have anyone that has done any training, she’s going to assign me. So I went and helped them get an account started and add some of their living relatives. I learned that the daughter was born when her mom was 13 years old. Her father was 17. They had 6 children together and only knew the year of their births. They don’t keep any records in Afghanistan. Then I learned that the mother’s mother was only 13 when she was born. Her father was 26 and was killed in Iran. Wow, we take for granted how wonderful our life is here in this country. 

Today was church. We walked to church in a slight drizzle, using our new umbrellas that Mom bought for us a few weeks ago. I wore my first Christmas tie of the season. 1 down, 7 to go. After church I started this blog post, then had to interrupt it to get ready for our break the fast. I hauled the tables down to the lobby and we set up pretty quickly. Dinner was an hour earlier this month because of the First Presidency Christmas Devotional which was tonight at 6pm. We had to get finished and cleaned up so that most of he people that had tickets, including us, could get over there for that. It was great to see President Nelson come in. He came in in a wheelchair, but walked over about 20 feet to his seat. It was his first public event since he hurt his back. The talks and music were great and afterwards we ran into Libby Reynolds and Grace Brubaker from the Sacramento Stake out in the lobby. It was fun to see them. 

We got home early enough to join the family Christmas story reading. Hurray for the Grinch! Now we’re listening to Christmas music while I am finishing this post. 

That was our week. Hope you had a great one as well.

Love you. 

BE GOOD!

Mom and Dad