Here is what we learned this week, and it was a great week!
Monday was New Year’s Day…Happy New Year, again. We slept in after going to bed so late and then got up and Mom started making aprons and I watched football. Mom has really learned the art of making aprons. She can whip one out pretty quickly now, and she is good at matching colors and patterns. I have learned that I am good at watching football. I can watch a game and only yell at the tv a few times instead of all of the time. We snacked and rested and had a very uneventful, but relaxing, New Year’s Day. Wow, 2024 already. We can’t believe that we have been here as missionaries almost one full year. When we learned that we would be serving for 23 months we worried that it was going to seem like such a long time to be away from family and serving here, but the time really has gone by quickly and we don’t feel like we have missed a whole lot with the family. We are truly blessed to be in this mission and able to have an assignment that keeps us busy and also have the ability to take time off to be with all of you at some great family gatherings.
Tuesday we went to workout at the COB and then got some things done at home before heading into the library at noon. When we got there we found that it had been a bit more busy already. I guess a new year gets people thinking about goals and priorities and family history work is among those. I am sorry to say that I didn’t write down who I helped that day, so I can’t remember, but I am sure it was great. After closing down our floor we walked home to learn that they have turned off the Christmas lights around the Conference Center. Sadness. Mom particularly made mention, two or three times, how sad she was that the lights were coming down, but how it really needs to happen or else they wouldn’t seem special when they get put up again next year.
Wednesday morning we decided to go for a walk, even though it was very cold outside. We went up City Creek Canyon and learned that we must be crazy people because we did not see very many others out walking. I did learn that I’m not alone in not wanting to bike in this weather, there were zero bikes on the road. I have seen some bikes out on the main roads with riders all bundled up, but I am sure there will be fewer and fewer when the snow starts coming down. I remember I used to actually bundle up and ride even when there was snow when we lived in Kearns, but that was back when I was
young and dumb. We got in a pretty decent walk and managed to not totally freeze our buns off. Wahoo. After our walk we came home and got ready for the day.
We then went to the COB to have lunch with John. When we got there we learned that the COB changed their prices for the new year. They have increased everything by about 25-30%, but we also learned that church employees and missionaries now get a discount. Guess how much? 70%! What?! That is amazing. We’re not sure why the change in prices and policy, but we are liking it. This was our lunch that we bought…salad for Mom with salmon and shrimp and crab, and selections from the
Oriental Bar for me. And the total price? $4.79. We are thinking we may just go to the COB every day for our main meal, it will probably save us money in the long run.
After lunch Mom went down to
Deseret Book to get a gospel art kit for her primary class. She cut through Temple Square and learned that they were taking down all of the Christmas decorations there. Again a pang of sadness went through her heart. When she got to
Deseret Book she learned that they do not sell the gospel art kit anymore, the one that we had in the blue box that had pictures for all of the scripture stories as well as pictures of the apostles and prophets of our day as well as some Church history pictures. Instead they have a smaller version of pictures in a spiral notebook entitled
Gospel Art Book and it only has 137 pictures in it. She was sad they didn’t have the older version, but is happy she will have some pictures for her class.
After she got home we basically kept ourselves busy doing Pday stuff the rest of the day.
Thursday started at 8am in the library being floor leaders. We learned that we were going to be without a lot of our missionaries that day. Quite a few were staying home because they were sick, some were having other health issues and some were not back from visits with family. Anyway, we had fewer missionaries to help the guests that came in. Fortunately or unfortunately we didn’t have a huge amount of guests that day. I did get asked to help a guest from Germany merge some of the duplicates he had discovered on his family tree. I have learned that I have learned a lot about the
FamilySearch program. I can remember when I had to fiddle around or ask
someone else how to do a merge and now it is like muscle memory, I can do it without even thinking about it. My helping bled over into lunch time, so Mom went to the COB to get our lunch. It was prime rib day and we were excited to find out how much it was going to cost. It used to be that you could get a plate of prime rib with a side for $9.50 I think. After finishing with my new friend from Germany, I ran up to the 3rd floor lunchroom and found Mom there. I learned that she got a plate of prime rib with 2 sides and a cookie for desert, and it cost us $7.06. I am liking this new pricing! After our shift we went to the Bountiful Temple to attend an endowment session. We only had Sister Hirama with us again since we learned that Sis. Pruner was still sick and Sis. Karapetyan and Sis. Docherty had made other plans for the evening. We finished our session and decided not to go out for dinner, so we dropped off Sis. Hirama and came home and had a small dinner, since we had a pretty substantial lunch.
Friday morning we awoke to snow. It actually had started snowing Thursday night, but it wasn’t really sticking yet, now it was. I got to drive in it out to the Red Cross building in Sandy to give another platelet donation. My last donation didn’t go very smoothly, this one did. I got stuck in both arms and bled out quite well and was able to watch the Christmas movie that Netflix did this year called
Family Switch with Jennifer Garner (Mom…haha) and Ed Helms. It was the typical switch-type of movie with the kids swapping bodies with their parents and learning about each other’s lives and perspectives. It did have some funny moments. After finishing my donation I came home and lounged around until we went in for our half day at the library. Nothing too exciting about that. I did learn from doing a count on the computer that we officially helped 39 people in the library that day…27 of them on our floor. That is not very many people for a whole day. We hope things change soon and we get more guests coming into the library. We really do like being busy helping, even though when we aren’t we have time to work on our training for different countries.
Saturday we went in at 10am and found the library hopping with guests. Wahoo! We still had quite a few missionaries missing, but we had enough to help all of the people who were there. But in the afternoon there was large group that came in up on the
Discovery floor and we sent a bunch of our Spanish speakers and specialists up there to help them. That left us short on personnel who know how to do Latin countries research, so guess who got asked to learn that in 10 seconds and help? Yup, me. I first was asked to help a lady with her research in Venezuela. She didn’t have a lot of time so I just showed her what records were available and how to use our website to do further research. Then I was asked to help a man with finding an ancestor in Germany who had immigrated to America. Next I helped two sisters with research in Chile and then off to
shadow one of our missionaries as she helped a family from France. It is amazing how many different people we can help because of the great resources that are available online. I have learned that most of them are found on our
FamilySearch site, or there is a link there that can take them to another site to help. Just learning about where to look for the info makes you a resource for so many people.
After our shift was over we got to go to our
Toast concert. We found our seats and sat down and learned that we were sitting next to the in-laws for the lead singer, Jeff Clark. We learned that the father-in-law had been Jeff’s madrigal group teacher in high school. He had always loved the kid, but now loves him because he is his son-in-law. Jeff is a massage therapist, but loves music and had formed the group in 2017 to do a
Toast to Bread concert for fun. After the concert they got so many requests to perform that they put together their band and called themselves
Bread, until he got a call from David Gates one day who told him he was excited for their group and loved their performances, but they needed to change their name or someone was probably going to sue them somewhere down the line. So they changed their name to
Toast. It was a great concert. They played all of
Bread’s hit songs and some songs that weren’t hits. We learned that we are definitely
Bread Heads…knowing the words to almost all of their hits…but we aren’t
Wonder Breads…knowing the words to the non-hit songs. They played the music pretty loud, which I learned was mostly so we could sing along and it would affect our fellow concert-goers. Fun night! Merry Christmas Mom. I wanted to add the one video here but it says it is too big. So here is the link on our Google Photos site.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q3ju6roUBbKCjwHw8 Hopefully that link works for you.
Today is Sunday. We woke up to about 3 inches of snow on the ground and some still falling from the sky. I learned weeks ago that Mom has no desire to try to walk to church in the snow, especially not coming down the hill on the way home on icy sidewalks. So we jumped in the car and drove to church. Mom taught her primary kids today and her lesson went well. I was asked to teach the Gospel Doctrine class, but apparently there was some miscommunication and the normal teacher was there and taught the lesson. We had our break-the-fast this evening and had about 32 people there, a great turnout. I think we have about 45 missionaries total in our apartment, so pretty good percentage. The only thing I failed on was getting a picture of everyone, so I am adding this picture of Mom eating just because.
So it is now time to get ready for bed. We have learned that we definitely need our sleep or we seem to fade a bit in the afternoons, so off to bed we go.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Elder and Sister Phillips
Comments
Post a Comment