This was a busy week! Here’s what we did and learned.
Sunday night I got a call from Scott telling me he was coming the next morning to attend a funeral for his aunt up in Heber on Tuesday, and wondering if he could stay with us. I said “Of course” (which now I am wondering where that saying came from, so
of course I looked it up. Here is what I found…
Adverbial phrase of course "by consequence, in regular or natural order" is attested from 1540s, literally "of the ordinary course;" earlier in the same sense was bi cours (c. 1300). Matter of course “something to be expected" is by 1739.) Anyway, Scott flew in Monday morning and we gave him the codes to get into our apartment as we were already at work. It was kind of a bummer, because Monday is a long day for us. We did meet him for lunch at the COB cafeteria, but then it was back for meetings. This particular Monday started at 8am going into the library, working and doing meetings until 6pm then heading over to the COB auditorium for a devotional with Elder and Sister Ringwood. We learned that Sister Ringwood is President Nelson’s 8th child. She spoke about what it was like to grow up in his house. She talked about how her busy Dad tried to make time for them and do things with them, like going skiing and such. Just a typical family. Elder Ringwood talked about hymns, and we learned that he heads the department that is working on the new hymn book, but he didn’t give us any insights into what was going to be in it or when it was going to be finished. Sadness. We then finally got home and were able to sit and talk with Scott for a couple hours before heading to bed. BTW the picture above is from when we were at Philmont together. I’m using that picture because I didn’t take a picture together when he was here. Fail.Tuesday I got up early to take the car over to Big O Tires to get my flat fixed. I got there a little before they opened at 7am and it only took them about 35 minutes to get the job done. When I went to the counter to pay them I learned that there was no charge! I’m not sure why it was free, because when I had called them last Saturday they said it would cost $20 plus tax. Nice way to start the morning. Then I ran Scott up to Cameron’s mother-in-law’s house in Woods Cross so he could borrow their car to drive to Heber. After that we ran to Costco and then got home in time for our Dutch paleography class. I have learned that I can definitely read the Dutch documents pretty well, but I don’t have a good Dutch accent. Afrikaans is just different enough from Dutch that I mispronounce words all the time. We decided not to go to the COB for lunch, instead Mom went for a walk. She saw the first signs of Spring while walking up City Creek Canyon, these flowers. She came home very excited. I was going to go for a bike ride, but wimped out. Instead I started watching Arctic Ascent, a documentary with Alex Honnold, the guy from Free Solo, where I learned that he and this British climber did a first ascent of this huge rock face in Northern Greenland. They were part of an expedition team researching the glaciers up there and planned this climb as part of the trip. In the afternoon I decided to go knock on the door of one of our missionaries who we have not seen for a couple of weeks and have not had any contact with. I had tried calling and emailing and texting for the last few days and got no response, so when I learned that he loves just a couple of blocks away from us I decided to walk over and see if I could make contact that way. On the way there I learned what our pumpkins would look like if we didn’t throw them away after Halloween. These pumpkins were sitting just outside an apartment doorway. Pretty cool. I wonder if he plans on leaving them there for next Halloween. They would be he perfect decoration, don’t you think? Anyway, when I got to the missionaries home I learned that he lived in a very nice older home that they had converted into apartments. It was a two story home with a basement. The main floor was their home and the upstairs and basement were now separate apartments. They had three different doorbells out front. I rang them all and knocked on the door, but nobody answered. So I walked on home. We spent most of the rest of the day just lounging around and reading, answering emails, talking about zone leader stuff or watching more of Arctic Ascent, it’s a 3 episode series. When I was finished with that I decided to watch more of Alone. That ended my night.
Wednesday morning we got up to go workout and learned our Spring had sprung and it was snowing.We went and worked out and then headed into the library with our trusty umbrellas.
Our first task in the library was doing the orientation presentation for the new missionaries for this week. Mom came and helped out and I think it went pretty good. Then we worked on calendars and stuff for RootsTech, that was mostly Mom, and other fun ZL stuff. At 3:15pm we had a meeting with all of the zone leaders in the mission over at the NOB. That meeting lasted until a little after 5pm. We then walked home and found something for dinner. Mom made some toast and it was in her opinion “burnt!”. She started to throw it away and I rescued it. My definition of burnt and hers do not match. I found this piece of toast to be just fine…a little bit of burnt taste on the edges, but overall it was very tasty. I have a baggy of cookies in he freezer right now as well that Mom labeled as burnt but I find are not even close. I have been enjoying them each night. Hurray for burnt cookies!
We then headed off to see Fiddler on the Roof. When we got inside the theater we found this little set up they had done for people to take pictures in front of. This couple was standing there and asked if we would take their picture and they could take ours. This was the couple. Recognize them? If not, that is Lloyd Newell and his wife Kramel. He does the spoken word part of Music and the Spoken Word with the Tabernacle Choir. So we took their picture and then they took this picture of us. The musical was excellent. I really liked the guy who played Tevye, he was fun and had a good voice. The woman who played Golda had a nice voice as well, but she didn’t have the Yiddish accent down for the speaking parts. Thursday was an early day and we woke up to snow again. We were floor leads most of the day, so we didn’t get to work on too much other than that. But I did get some more done on my French training and Mom on her Italy training. We learned that of the 30 something new full time missionaries that started this week we were getting none for our floor. Sadness. We always love getting new missionaries. Of course, we aren’t losing any until the end of the month, so maybe we’ll get some then. We had a pretty slow day on the floor and only one meeting, so it was an easy day. We then met up with Sister Pruner and Sister Hirama and Sister Docherty and headed off to the Jordan River Temple for an endowment session. Mom was able to be proxy for my 4th great grandmother, Ana Pärsdotter. After the temple we did a Costco run. One of the sisters (one from Canada, one from Japan and one from England) have a Costco membership, so Mom had to card them all in and then get them through the checkout line as well as letting them order food. While they ate I went and loaded the car. I should have take a picture because it was a bit of a Tetris job fitting all of their items in the back end of our car, especially with two cases of water, but I did it with space to spare. Friday was our we are tired and really don’t want to do much day. We didn’t get up and go to the gym in the morning, even though we weren’t scheduled to be into the library until 10am. Then we also had our TR (temple and research day) so we were off at noon. We walked over to the COB and had lunch and then went home and vegged most of the rest of the day. I kept telling myself that I should get up and go workout, but I didn’t. I just sat and read and watched Alone. Lame. I did notice that they changed the artwork out in the hallway outside of our apartment. I guess they are planning on a long winter.
Saturday we went in early and I set up the computer room for our morning prayer meeting. But I went back out on the floor and started chatting with the other missionaries that were there and slowly everyone that was there gravitated to our group. So I decided to just have prayer meeting right there to start our day. We had a prayer and a couple of announcements, and then I asked if any of them have done anything special or different in their lives since President Nelson has asked us to Think Celestial. I learned that most of them had indeed made some changes and had especially felt like they had become more patient and kind when dealing with others. We then took some time to talk to our new assistant zone leaders, the Kopps from Switzerland. They will be great. She is worried that her German side will come off as being rude, but I am confident that she will strive to have the spirit with her and it will soften her nature and all will be well. We had a very quiet day in the library so I worked on and almost completed my France intermediate training and Mom got to work more on her Italy advanced training. We came home at 4pm and immediately ran to Costco to get Mom’s thyroid medication and bought a dog for dinner. We wanted some ice cream to go with it, but their machine was down. Major bummer! We got home and I started working on taxes while Mom watched Guardians of the Galaxy. I finished our taxes and we then watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 together. I’m not sure if that qualifies for thinking celestial, since his dad is a celestial being, but we had fun watching and enjoying the great music. I had forgotten most of the storyline for that movie, so it was almost like watching it again for the first time. Kind of like being able to hide your own Easter eggs. I especially liked the ending…spoiler alert if you have not seen this yet…where his adopted father, Yondu, saves him and gives up his life for him. True fatherly love shown there which was opposite of the fake love that his biological father claimed to have for him. Also the sisters relationship at the end was really cool as well. Nice job Marvel! Today was church and it was 29° when we walked there this morning. We had a good discussion in elders quorum about the talk from this last general conference by Jan E. Newman entitled Preserving the Voice of the Covenant People in the Rising Generation. He talked about the importance of teaching your children about Jesus Christ. I hope we did ok with that for you. My favorite phrase from the talk was, “Taken individually, a single home evening, scripture study session, or gospel conversation may not seem like it is accomplishing much. But the accumulation of small, simple efforts, repeated consistently over time, can be more powerful and strengthening than an occasional monumental moment or landmark lesson.” We may not have had huge lessons, but we did try to be consistent with reading and praying and trying to be like our Savior. We then walked home and got ready for the One Heart Gathering. Our apartments were in charge of the food after the gathering, so Mom was working on that with one of the other sisters. We drove down to the COB with all our stuff and set up the food tables around 3pm, then went in to the meeting which lasted an hour and a half. With food and cleanup afterwards we didn’t get back here to our apartment until after 6pm. We got to rest a bit then went down to the lobby to help celebrate one of our missionary’s 70th birthday and learned that it was also one of the other sister’s birthday as well…the one on the far left of this picture. The birthday boy is the guy at the back by the tv with his hand up. We had fun teasing him about being super old and his wife brought us all black balloons to help celebrate the night along with some Costco cookies. We are now back in our apartment and Mom was talking to Brittany on messenger. They were watching the Super Bowl so Mom turned it on here. Can you believe it? But sadness, the Niners lose in overtime.
Love you.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
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