I didn’t take many pictures this week, so instead I am going to add pics about the Savior and what He is recorded to have done on each day of this Holy Week, and to especially focus on things that brought us joy.
the day before, and came to the temple and cleansed it. This act reminds me of the cleansing that needs to be done in my temple. I have been given a beautiful body to take care of and need to constantly strive to make it a place He would be happy to come to. My body brings me joy. Joy to ride a bike and eat ice cream and, and…
Monday morning we went into the library early to get the devotional up on the screen for everyone. We were floor leads most of the day, which is really a
pretty easy job, since most of our missionaries are so responsible and make it to their assignments before they are supposed to be there. It truly is a joy to work with such dedicated people. The library was semi-busy and both Mom and I got to work with a guest in the afternoon. Julien, from France came in looking for more information about his grandfather. I was able to find a record that gave his birthdate and birthplace, which we discovered was in Italy. So I handed him off to Mom to search for a birth or marriage record there. Unfortunately they couldn’t find one because they were too recent, but he was given more information and some clues of where he needed to look next. Mom told him to go home and contacted family members to get more information. He said he would and left a happy camper.
Tuesday the Savior came back to the temple where he taught many things. He was challenged by the Pharisees about His authority and they sought to trap Him in His words as well. This picture depicts when they asked Him if they should pay tribute (taxes) to Caesar? His reply was classic…” Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” I have learned that joy comes into my life when I put God first in my life and try to do what He asks of me. But I also feel joy as I “render therefore unto Caesar”, or in other words as I strive to be a good citizen and support and try to help my country be the best it can be. I can’t say I am always happy paying taxes that I feel are not always used in the best way, but I am happy to give my support to a country that tries to help its people be free and secure.
Tuesday was Pday and we decided to go into the library to do our paleography class in our office cubicle. Afterwards we got lunch at the COB, which is always nice, and then we headed home where I had planned to change and go work out at the gym…but I didn’t. I didn’t get a great night’s sleep so instead I just watched tv and snoozed on and off. In the evening I left early for my platelet appointment to get Jordan’s title signed and get it in the mail to him. While giving platelets I watched the end of
Operation Mincemeat which I had started two weeks ago. After finishing they gave me a new t-shirt. I’m not sure how much I’ll wear this one as it makes me a walking advertisement for the new Godzilla X Kong movie. I did think it was kind of clever that they put bandage wraps on their arms. I stopped on the way home to get some things at Costco, since we hadn’t gone shopping earlier. I have to confess that I got chocolate milk even though I said I was going to lay off of it for awhile to try to lose some weight. What can I say, it brings me joy so I felt it appropriate for Holy Week.
After Jesus spoke in the temple He took His disciples to the Mount of Olives and gave some more teaching about His upcoming death and resurrection as well as His eventual second coming to the Earth. Then He told them the
Parable of the Ten Virgins. I have always felt joy when I did those things that would put oil in my lamp…praying, serving, studying scriptures, fasting, partaking of the sacrament, repenting, loving others. Those are some of the things that are of most importance in this life.
Wednesday is not talked about much in the scriptures, as far as what Jesus did that day. Most scholars believe that He spent the day in rest and reflection in Bethany, most likely at the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary. Matthew states that He was anointed at that time, but John says that happened before His
Triumphal Entry. Most believe that this was the day that Judas went and made his deal with the Sanhedrin to betray the Savior for 30 pieces of silver. I sometimes wonder why I put the things of this world ahead of my Savior. I haven’t “betrayed” Him to those who wanted to take His life, but I have put Him second sometimes and am sad about that. But when I put Him first I am always filled with joy.
Wednesday we were asked to attend an 8am meeting with the library management. Since we could attend via Zoom we chose to do that and just did it from our apartment. The meeting was to tell us about the upcoming project to remove the majority of the 2.4 million rolls of microfilm from the library. They plan to keep about 500,000 rolls that have copyright restrictions so that visitors can still have access to them, but all of the others have been made available digitally so they are moving them out to make room for expansion in the library. They are anticipating a huge increase of visitors to the library after the Salt Lake Temple is reopened and rededicated and want more space on the Discovery floor and more computers on the research floors. So they are asking the missionaries to help pull all the films from the cabinets and help box them up for removal. Each missionary will only be asked to work one hour twice a month until the project is complete, which they are thinking will take until July. After they are all removed the remaining films will be refiled and house completely on our floor on B1. Big project.
We headed into the library at 10am and again were floor leads most of the day. One cool thing was that I had time to finally pass off my French Beginner and Intermediate training. Wahoo! One of the specialists, Kelly passed me off, and it was great because I was able to learn some things as I did it. That’s the most important part of all of this, to learn how to do the research so you can teach someone else how to do it. Now I can be put into the computer to officially come up when a guest needs help with French research. All of the people I have helped so far, including Julien on Monday, have been the result of there being nobody available in the system to help and either I was there by the steward to tell them that I could do it, or Mom or another missionary who knew I was doing that training told them. Now I can start on the advanced training as well which will probably take me awhile to complete, as our zone leader assignment seems to take a lot of our time.
Thursday was
Passover for the Savior and His apostles. There are so many things that happened at the Last Supper and then going out to the Garden of Gethsemane that it is hard to add them all here. But I want to emphasize two of my favorites. 1) at the supper the Savior washes the apostle’s feet. At this last hour before the ultimate sacrifice would come He was focused on being the example of a servant to His apostles. It wasn’t about Him, it was about them. He shows us that the most joy will come into our lives
when we “lose our life” in the service of others. 2) in the garden it states that He fell on the ground and cried “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” There are two things I learn from this statement, one: He had an intimate relationship with His Father. One that I hope to create as I daily come to Him. He cried Abba. Elder Holland has said this about that cry…” Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.” He is my God, but He is also my Daddy. The second thing I love is that the Savior stated, “not what I will”. That statement is what I have as my goal in life, to come to the point when I can truly do only His will and not my own. I have that desire, I just need to do it.
Thursday I actually went and worked out in the morning. From the gym windows I was able to see that the fourth spire is complete with the metal pointy topper thing on it. They are indeed making progress. They also closed down North Temple to bring in a bunch of cement trucks so they must be completing some underground walls and foundation things as well. We did our normal things in the library and then headed to the Oquirrh Mountain temple to do a sealing session. We had Sister Docherty, Sister Hirama and Sister Pruner with us. They all brought family names like we did, and it was cool to hear all of the different cultures being represented…Dutch, Japanese, Danish, Swedish and Irish. After the temple Mom asked them if they had been to
Tony’s Burgers? They said they had not. Mom told them about how
Tony’s Burgers gives a 50% discount to missionaries and they were all in. So we drove there and
had some great burgers and fries and shakes. Trader Joe’s was across the street, so we drove over there to do some quick shopping. Any guesses what we bought? Yup…dark chocolate peanut butter cups. I guess if I can have chocolate milk, Mom can have those. I almost did buy something for myself. They had their Danish Kringle in the store, but they were raspberry Kringle and I like the almond ones much better, so I passed. I got home in time to watch some March Madness.
Friday is the day the Savior was tried and beaten and crucified and laid in the tomb. There are so many things that I have learned from these events, but one thing that has always intrigued me was Pilate washing his hand before the people. I learned that in so doing he was invoking a Law of Moses ritual found in Deuteronomy 21. If a dead man was found on someone’s property the elders of the city would come out and they and the owner of the property would wash their hands and say, “ Our hands have not shed this blood.” Pilate was using their own law to witness to them that he was not guilty of shedding the blood of Christ, they were. And they understood that as they replied back, “ His blood be on us, and on our children.” I can’t fathom that much hatred in their hearts to come to a point when they would plead for His crucifixion and then willingly accept the blame as well. And the Savior gave up His life so that they and we could have the opportunity to be forgiven of the wrongs that we do. I am forever grateful for His love for me to be willing to do what He did.
Friday in the library we had a pretty relaxed day. It was a short day and we were able to keep it that way. I ran to the COB to grab some take home lunch and put it up in the break room fridge. We helped a few folks and then headed home around 2:15pm. When we got home I learned that Mom grabbed the wrong lunch out of the fridge…I should have described it better since they all look the same…so I ran it back to the break room and grabbed ours. Then we remembered that there was a new couple moving into our apartments, the Kunzs, so we changed and ran down to help them move in. There were other missionaries there as well and it only took about 15 minutes to get their car unloaded and things put into their apartment. We then went and ate our lunch and I got to watch March Madness games.
Saturday is skipped in the New Testament except for a later reference by Peter of His visit to the Spirit World. He doesn’t explain too much of what happened (1 Peter 3:18-20) but fortunately we have Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants which gives a great account of what the Savior was doing on that Saturday. It always brings me so much joy to know that our Father’s plan is all encompassing. He doesn’t forget any of His children. I am still not sure of how this worldly experience is going to be evaluated for each of us as we all come with different circumstances and understandings and opportunities to hear and know about Him, but I believe a lot of it is all about learning for ourselves how willing we are to follow whatever light we are given. Proving to ourselves that we truly do or do not want to completely follow our Father and His Son. On that Saturday Jesus made it possible for all of His brothers and sisters to hear again the plan of our Father and to accept or reject its offerings.
Saturday in the library was a bit slow and busy. We seemed to get surges of people all at once and were using almost all of our missionaries to help, and then it would get very slow and we just worked on our own projects. In the afternoon a sister from South Africa came in. I went up to the steward desk and started speaking to her in Afrikaans. It was so fun to see her light up and speak back to me. She was looking for some books that she heard that we had, family name indexes of families in South Africa. So I took her downstairs to our books and to the section which I had looked up would have books from South Africa and we found them. She was so excited. She was trying to find the actual surname of her great grandmother whom she was named after…Johanna Margaretha. So I left her to search through the books. About an hour later she came up to our floor all excited and said that I must come with her so that she could show me what she found. When I got to her computer instead of showing me in the book the name she had found, she showed me a WikiTree that she had found online by googling her great grandmother’s name. She had found someone’s online tree that had her name…Johanna Margaretha Raath. She knew it was her because it showed her husband and children as well. Fun stuff. Sometimes I forget that one of the best ways of searching for information about someone is just doing a search in Google. I got to get home in time to watch the ‘Bama/Clemson game. March Madness at its finest!
Sunday for the Savior must have been filled with so much joy. The pain and suffering and loneliness was over. Now it was bringing hope and love and joy to those who thought all was lost. As He appeared to many at different places and under different circumstances He shared with them the amazing message that death and sin were defeated and we would all be able to overcome them as well. My favorite moment of His post resurrection visits was His interchange with Mary at the tomb. After she recognizes who He is she calls Him “Rabboni”, “Master” and then apparently reached out to hug Him, because it says that His response was, “Hold me not.” (see JST John 20:17) I’m not exactly sure why she couldn’t hold Him at that moment, for later He bid many people to touch and hold Him, but my mind’s eye can see her excitedly reaching out to hug Him when she saw Him. What a wonderful, intimate moment He shares with us.
Our Sunday was spent at Church listening to and joining in on singing and praising our Savior. We have such wonderfully talented musicians and singers in our ward. It was great. Then we came home and I did this blog post and we are now off to a mission Easter potluck dinner at the NOB. Mom made these yummy rolls for the dinner.
When we get back I will post a picture of the Easter dinner.
Here is the picture. We had about 60 people there. The mission supplied hams and everyone else brought potluck items. Probably my favorite potluck item was the roasted yams. Yum!
So that has been our week. We love you all. We hope you had a marvelous Easter season and pondered frequently on the amazing nature of that great act of love.
BE GOOD!
Sister and Elder Mom and Dad
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