This week was filled with busy-ness. Here’s what we learned along the way.
I don’t know if you remember, but last week our devotional was so crowded that they had all of the zone leaders sit up on the stand. Well, I guess a lot of people saw that and decided that this week they would just watch online because there was plenty of room in the auditorium this week. Lots of empty seats. People learn by experience. After the devotional we went in and spent our day FL’ing and ZL’ing and meetinging and helping. Lots of
ings. We had 3 different meetings we had to attend, which actually were all pretty productive and then Mom spent some time helping our new missionary, Sister LeFevre (Marie) get set up for training. The floor
itself kept pretty busy and right before we closed I was asked to help a guest who I had helped before doing research in Sweden. He was trying to determine if a second husband to one of his ancestors was really a second husband. We searched a bunch of records and verified that this second husband was actually a brother of the first husband. Could he also have become a husband? Well we found a record showing him married to a different lady and together they had 12 children. It did show that she passed away before he did, but there would have been only 3 years between her death and the time that his brother’s wife died, so we gathered all of that information together and made a note that we were about 99% sure they were not married. The guest mentioned to me when he was leaving that he was pretty confident in what we had found and if we were wrong he was sure God would sort it out later. Interesting thought.
We ended the night having a zone FHE with President and Sister Holmes…actually the whole mission presidency was there. Previously they held these at the Holmes’ home, but this time they did it in the NOB (North Office Building) and they asked me to do the lesson. I had 45 minutes. Then that changed to 35 minutes so that Pres. Holmes could take the last 10. Well we had a light dinner and then I taught. I had learned that they didn’t have a whiteboard, but I really wanted to have a place for people to come write stuff, so we tried an easel pad. Well that didn’t work well because the people in the back couldn’t read the small writing so Pres. Faerber came up and
wrote everything on his laptop and projected it on the large monitor. That worked. Anyway, the lesson went pretty well. I had divided them up into 10 groups and asked each group to take a different paragraph from the document
The Living Christ and search for a characteristic of Christ that they learned from their paragraph and then be ready to explain how if we were to work on having that characteristic in our lives it would help us
Think Celestial, which has been our zone theme this month. There were great comments as I knew would happen, all I needed to do was connect together their thoughts with scriptures and quotes from prophets and each other and we would learn together how to
Think Celestial more easily in our lives. Afterwards we had cookies and chatted with some of the missionaries and their spouses and then we walked home with the Ng’s who live in our apartment as well.
Tuesday was Pday. We did the normal things, shopping at Costco and Walmart and then our paleography class and going to the COB for lunch and then I went to get my hair cut. After that I went for a bike ride. Yes, an actual outside on the road bike ride! It was above 45° outside, so I bundled up and went.
This was a video that Google Photos put together of me trying to take my picture as I rode. I learned that my camera button on my phone doesn’t respond well to my wearing gloves. I kept trying to take the picture and moving the selfie button to take a more wide angle shot and couldn’t get it right. I guess Google thought they should make a short video out of all my failed attempts and put it to music. Whatever. I had a great ride…27 miles…and I got home just before dark. The only negative affect was a sore neck.
Then Mom and I watched the new, and last episode of
Percy Jackson. We liked it. We think it is better than the other movies that have been done, even thought it still isn’t true to the descriptions of the characters in the books.
After that we watched this movie called The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music which told the story of the von Trapp family from the perspective of the oldest daughter, Agathe (I learned that that was the actual name of their oldest daughter, not Liesl as in The Sound of Music.) The Sound of Music was based on her story that she wrote, but more loosely based, as Hollywood usually does, in order to tell a more exciting story. This movie is closer to the real story of the von Trapps without all of the songs and music. In fact Maria is not even a huge character in this movie. She is there and they do sing, but really only at the end when they do that performance at the festival. We liked it and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes a good story, even if it is missing a lot of the musical side of the story.
Wednesday started with a trip to the COB workout room and then into the library at 10am. We worked on zone leader stuff and then tried to take off to meet John for lunch at the COB cafeteria, but we were delayed by a guest who couldn’t find a microfilm and I went in search for it. I couldn’t find it and left him in the hands of one of the staff that would check with the
Collections Team to see if they could find it for him. Anyway we were late for lunch and then had to leave early to get back for a 1:00pm meeting, so I felt bad that we didn’t get to spend much time with John. I like our lunch visits and fun topics that he usually brings up.
We hightailed it back to the library for our meeting and then had an interview with the Faerbers right after that. We then got to go down to our floor and just work on some Italy and French training. Wahoo. Our shift was over at 6pm and we headed home to have dinner and relax the rest of the night. I started a new series, History’s Greatest of All Time with Peyton Manning. He hosts episodes where they talk about the GOATs in lots of different categories…toys, daredevils, inventions, etc. It’s fun.
Thursday we went in early to the library and had a short day because they also gave us our
Temple Day as well. So we were at the library for only 4 hours and then I headed off to give platelets. I had a 1:45pm appointment and hoped that I could get there a little early so that I could get finished in time to get back to go to the temple. Well, they took awhile to get me in and get me stuck and bleeding, so when I was finished I only spent about 5 minutes in the recovery station and then headed home. I realized I was going to be late getting back, so I called Mom and asked her to meet me at the library with a white shirt and tie so I could change to go to the temple. We took Sister Pruner and Sister Docherty with us to the Jordan River temple and had an appointment to do initiatories. We made it on time, whew. When I got there I learned that one of our missionaries from the library, Elder Gehring, was assigned to work in the initiatories and was asking to have me assigned to his station, which they did, so that was really fun to have him there doing the ordinance for me. Afterwards we just came home to eat and veg and watch more GOATs.
Friday we were on the 10-6 schedule. Our schedule was so crazy that Mom ran over to the COB by herself to buy food for lunch and we sneaked in a lunch together in between other things. We closed down the library and then ran home to grab a quick dinner before heading over to the Conference Theater to see Vocal Point and Noteworthy. This was part of their opening number.
We learned a couple of months ago that all of the BYU performing arts groups come to the Conference Center Theater in February to do what they call
Winter Fest. It actually is their practice performances before they head off on tours. They were both pretty good, but you could tell that they are still working out kinks and vocals and getting in shape for their songs that they do a bunch of dance while they are singing. They were a bit out of breath. I think I was most impressed with the beatbox guy. Here’s a sample of what he could do.
Saturday we had the early shift. I got most of my ZL duties out of the way in the morning and was able to work on some of my French training, which I learned that I did not save one of the documents that I had searched for about an hour to find the last time I worked on. Ugghhhh! So I tried to find the document again, a marriage record, but kept getting interrupted. Then I went up to do the
Escape Room for a youth group. I ended up staying and doing the second group as well, so when I finally got back down to the B1 floor I had barely enough time to find that document before heading home. I am learning that I need to check and double check that I have saved my documents on my thumb drive before I pull it out of the computer. Mom meanwhile passed off two more sections of
Advanced Italian. Wahoo!
We then took off to go home and Mom needed some stuff from the store, so I ran to Walmart to get it. As I was getting on the freeway the
low tire pressure light came on. I made it to Walmart ok and did the shopping, but when I came out to the car I learned that the right rear tire had gone flat. So I had to learn where all of the stuff was to change a tire for this car and went after it. While I was changing the tire a guy came over to ask if I needed help. I guess I looked like
an old guy changing a tire. Oh the joys of old age. I got the tire changed and got home just in time to make it to the symphony. It was a good one. They
did some Strauss and Prokofiev and they put up some dialogue on the screen to tell the story of the music. The first one was about McBeth and the last one was about Eulenspiegel, who was a mischievous knave. Interesting music. Afterwards we came home and Mom worked on sourdough bread and I started watching another season of
Alone where I learned that they were doing pairs this time, but they started out alone and one guy had to hike over 10 miles to reach the other guy. Interesting twist.
Today we went to church and Mom taught her primary class, which she said went pretty good. After coming home Mom chatted with some of you and I worked on this blog post. Then we did our apartment break-the-fast which was really good. We have 5
new couples in the building so we ended up with 46
people at our
break-the-fast. A new record. The picture to the left is our smorgasbord spread, and that picture was taken after everyone had gone through the line. Those are leftovers. We have learned that just about everyone loves to bring items to our potluck. That equals lots of food. Yum!
Well now it’s time to relax and rejuvenate and gear up for another busy week.
Love you all very much.
BE GOOD!
Sister and Elder Mom and Dad
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