I can’t believe I’m already writing another blog post. This week flew by so fast, but we did learn a few things.
Monday started off with a mission devotional, and one of our apartment floor mates, Gerald Roberts, spoke. He told a great story about how when he and his wife served a mission a few years ago scanning documents in Indiana, he was assigned to scan old yearbooks. He didn’t see much value in that, but then one day ran across a two-page tribute to a teacher that he thought was quite remarkable. He was impressed to copy the entry and then went and looked up this person, Wladyslaw Sokolowski from Poland, in FamilySearch. He found him and attached this tribute in his
memories section. Four years later he was
contacted by a relative of Wladyslaw’s, Marek Bierkenmajer, who thanked him for attaching this memory and then asked more about using FamilySearch and why we do this work. He explained about connecting families and added some information about temple work and sealing families forever. He loved that idea and asked if he would do this work for his family. He also asked if he would tell him the day that they were going to take these individuals to the temple so that he could fast and pray for them. Elder Roberts organized some other missionaries from his zone to help him do this work and they indeed did let Marek know and had a wonderful experience in the temple that day. Super cool experience!
Our day in the library was pretty normal with not much new happening, same ol’ same ol’ for the most part. We were busy though and by the time we closed everything down at 6pm we were pretty tired. In fact, we contemplated skipping FHE. But when we got home, Mom got the mail and found this fun package. Thanks Mangelson clan! It lifted our spirits and away we went to FHE. We heard some love stories about how President Nelson and President Oaks met their spouses, their second marriages after their first spouse passed away, and then we played a Valentines game and got more candy. I also agreed to read the transcript of a book one of the missionaries in our apartment is writing. She says it is for her posterity, about what she has learned about the
Doctrine of Christ. She particularly wanted me to look for any doctrinal inaccuracies I saw. So I started that night when FHE was over and finished the next night, but I learned that it was only half of the book. She’s going to give me the other half when she has finished proofreading it, looking for grammatical errors.
Tuesday was Pday and I started it off riding the stationary bike at the gym. Mom went to Costco because it was the first day of our
Zone Luncheon Social Week and she needed some plates and stuff. Mom planned a potato bar, along with salads and desserts. All the missionaries contributed items and we brought a bunch of stuff, pulling it in our wagon from the apartment. I should have got a picture of the loaded wagon, but at least we got some pictures of the lunch spread. Not a bad looking feast. We do these at 11 and 12 every day from Tuesday thru Friday so that every missionary in our zone can participate at least one day. We also invite all of the FamilySearch staff that works on our floor, and the management and guest services people as well. We didn’t do a game this time. Mom learned from talking with people about our previous socials that they like to just have time to talk and get to know people better. It seems to have worked just fine. We also squeezed in a Dutch paleography class where I couldn’t get my mic to work. It had something to do with connecting via the web browser rather
than through the Zoom program. After the luncheons were over and all cleaned up we came home and Mom realized she had signed up to bring potatoes he next day, so she ran off to WinCo to get some. I finished proofing Sister Ganschow’s book and then in the evening went to give platelets. I learned that if I do it in the evening rather than the morning it doesn’t disrupt as much of my day and I can still workout in the mornings and not have to miss a ride or workout. I watched
My All American while sitting in the chair for the hour and a half and learned about a kid named Freddie Steinmark who played football at Texas University. It was a pretty great story, but I didn’t get to see the end because the movie was about 2 hours long, so when I got home I looked it up on streaming services to watch the end. I learned that it was only on
Netflix and
UP Family for free.
UP Family was offering a free 7 day trial, so I signed up and watched the end then cancelled my subscription.
Wednesday was meeting and luncheons and meeting and then getting to work on my France training. While chatting with Elder Vogler, (the missionary holding up his water bottle), I learned that he and his wife love one of my favorite cartoons…
Pickles. In fact he thinks the cartoonist is writing about them. I told him I think they actually look a lot like the couple in the cartoon and they agreed. If you don’t know the cartoon, Google it and see if you agree. Later that day I was actually able to complete all of the assignments for my France training, but there wasn’t anyone there to pass it off to. I have learned that my brain doesn’t retain things quite as well as it used to, so I wanted to pass it off while it was all still fresh, but that was not to be. We finished at the library at 6pm and then went home to relax. I can’t even remember what we did the rest of that night.
Thursday was more meetings and luncheons and then we got to go to the temple with Sister Pruner. I learned that Mom had made a sealings appointment at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, but then she decided she didn’t want to drive all the way out there, so she switched it to the Bountiful Temple. On the way there she said that she wanted to get Chinese food after our session, and I said we ought to go to the
Mandarin restaurant there in Bountiful that we had gone to before and liked. She said, “Exactly my thought!” so we did. When we got there they said it would be a 20 minute wait. A 20 minute wait at 6:15 on a Thursday night? Wow. I said we ought to wait because I didn’t think it would actually be a 20 minute wait and I was right, it was only about 10 minutes. And it was worth the wait.The food was very good again.
Friday was our last day of luncheons and Mom was very excited to be almost through. She loves these things, but it is also a bit stressful and tiring. Also, this was going to be a short day because it was our half day, which worked out perfectly because Scott and Kimberly were flying in and we were picking them up at the airport. Scott originally said that he thought their flight got in about 4pm, but when I went to look it up I learned it arrived at 1:50pm. So it was nice to have the luncheon over at 1pm, which gave us just enough time to cleanup and walk the wagon full of stuff back to the apartment before taking off to get them. When we got home we learned that Cameron’s in-laws had invited Kimberly and Scott to the family dinner that night. Oops, I forgot to tell you that they were in town to attend the funeral of Cameron’s mother-in-law. So they left to go to dinner and we decided to go out to take some Amazon items back and then go out to dinner ourselves at
Tony’s Burgers. After we all got back to the apartment we played 4 games of
Mahjong. It was Kimberly’s first time so it was fun trying to help her learn the game. We then played a couple other games and got to bed at midnight.
Saturday morning the Montgomerys went off to the funeral and we headed into the library. Saturdays are usually pretty laid back, but yesterday was pretty busy. We were getting tons of people coming down to our floor. Mom had about 5 or 6 in a row come down and she was trying to find missionaries to help each one. I thought that would have stressed her out, but I learned from her that she likes the challenge and it’s pretty exciting. I didn’t get to pass off my France training, sadness, but I hope to be able to do that on Monday. Last night we had tickets to see the
Young Ambassadors, BYU’s
traveling performance group. They were really good. I especially liked this kid that they had playing an electric guitar that would come out and go at it during some of their songs. They said we couldn’t take pictures or recordings, but I decided it was ok for me to take this picture because they were taking our picture. Score!
While we were watching the performance we got a phone call from Tori. I declined it then sent a text telling her we were at the performance. She texted back that they were about 10 miles from Park City and would see us soon. Earlier in the week she had called Mom to tell her that she might be coming out with Jordan to buy a car. He had found a VW Golf R32 here in Salt Lake and wanted to come look at it. We learned that he used to own one of these cars many moons ago and loved it and really missed it. So they got here after 10pm and we stayed up and talked awhile and then headed to bed.
We got up this morning and Jordan went off a little before 8am to meet up with the guy selling the car to look at it and decide if he wanted to buy it. We sat on our bed and talked with Tori. Mom took this
Be Real shot while we weee talking. Jordan got back about 45 minutes later and we learned that he liked the car and bought it! Wahoo. We had just enough time to eat some breakfast and head off to church, and Tori and Jordan took off on their 12 hour drive back to Lincoln.
At church we sat behind one of the couples that also serves in the FamilySearch library on the Discovery floor. His brother and sister-in-law were visiting with them. They have a missionary assignment to Japan and are flying out tomorrow morning. Sister Burnett mentioned that I was a CES (S&I) guy in my former life and then asked where I had been. When they found out we had been in the Sacramento area they asked if I had maybe known Bill and Lorna Burnett. I said that I did! They said, he was our brother. He just passed away this last year. He had taught at the Pleasant Hill institute from 2000 to 2005. Wow, small world, especially in the Church.
Mom taught primary today and said her lesson went well. She taught about Nephi and his people having to leave his brothers and how after that they were industrious and they “lived after the manner of happiness”. One thing that made their lives happy was that they built a temple. So Mom brought blocks and had the kids build a temple. Cuteness overload!
So that is what we learned this week. There may be more tonight, but this week was so busy and flew by so fast that I am ready to just kick back and veg on the couch for the rest of the day.
Love you all!
BE GOOD!
Dad and Mom
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