Week Sixty…Lots of Little Fixies.

This was a strange week. Here’s what made it strange.

We started Monday morning getting ready to go in for the Mission Devotional with Elder and Sister McKay and I suddenly remembered that the Atkins, who always are the floor leads on Monday and make sure the devotional is on the screen in the computer lab for those who don’t go to the COB for the devotional, were out of town and wouldn’t be there. I quickly looked at who was taking their spot as floor leads in the morning and realized they would probably not know they needed to get the devotional going there or even how to do it. So I took off and went down to the library early to get that all fixed and set up and ready for the 8am start. Mom followed a bit later. I was able

to get it up and going and we had a great devotional. Elder McKay, who is the current Church Historian, is an especially dynamic speaker. I particularly enjoyed a couple of things he said…1) We are all a part of Heavenly Father’s take-a-child-to-work day. 2) From the Hymn Nearer My God to Thee, the line “e’en though it be a cross that raise to me” teaches us that we all need to give up our old selves on our crosses and be risen, “new creatures in Christ.” 3) When he was a mission president he had a missionary share with him the idea that, “A mission has not changed who I am, it has simply gotten rid of who I am not.” All were pretty cool thoughts I thought. 

As I was walking to the library I learned that that they have one more spire on the temple finished and uncovered. So I had to stop and take a quick picture. The rest of our day was pretty normal. I had a meeting for the Missionary Training Council which is the committee that works on all of the library training. They are planning to revamp all of the Tier 3, or as they plan to call it the Geographic Training, and want other missionaries on the team. That will be great. I ran from there to our Zone Council meeting and then to I can’t remember what, but it seems like I did not stop all day. I helped two guests read a French document, which I am happy to report I was able to

do. I guess I really did learn something in those French classes at Hiram Johnson High School and one year at BYU. I then went and helped another guest downstairs who was also doing French research. He was looking for a marriage record of grandparents around 1902. Unfortunately everywhere I looked did not have them available for that time period, and I learned that the department online site for that area wasn’t working. I went and grabbed Beatrice to verify we were looking in the correct department and learned we were in the right place and there wasn’t anything we could do but try another day to see if their website would get fixed. So I left the guest with the info of how to find that site again and

moved on. The last thing I helped with was a guest’s Swedish line. One of our staff specialists had been helping him and said “the whole thing is a mess.” Oh joy! I learned he was right…it was a mess. The household records showed people moving in and out and dying and having illegitimate children in other cities and then moving back home, and, and…. I suggested to the guest, since the library was about to close, that he get a piece of paper and start writing down names and drawing lines to the connections before he tried to add them all to his tree, in order to sort out who belonged to who and how they were all related. Then he could take each individual person and look for individual documents and records to verify their information and add them later to his tree with the families they belonged to. That would help fix a lot of the inconsistencies he had in his tree. What a mess! 

We got home and were super tired. I learned that with the time change I can’t estimate what time it is by how light it is outside. I used to do that well, but as we were catching up on emails and then watching tv I suddenly realized it was after 7pm and we were missing FHE. Mom said she was too tired anyway, so we skipped it. 

Tuesday began with me going to the post office to pick up a package that Tori’s boyfriend Jordan had overnighted to us, but I was not at home to receive, last Saturday. I got the package and headed home and was able to get back in time for our paleography class. After the class was lunch at the COB, and we learned on our walk over there that they have turned on the waterfall feature at the Conference Center. They also filled up the reflection pool in front of the temple. Nice! I think they are getting ready for conference in April. It was such a beautiful day I decided to take an

afternoon ride. What, an outdoor ride? Yes! It was beautiful Spring weather, so off I went. Mom went for a walk and saw flowers and squirrels. I think the temperature got up to about 67° which was a perfect riding temperature I think. I only did 26 miles, but it felt great to be out on the bike. When I got back I helped Mom clean the apartment because Scott was coming to stay with us so we could go to March Madness together on Thursday and Saturday. We also watched the last movie in the LOTR saga. Not too bad of a Pday.

Wednesday we went in early to be there for prayer meeting so we could say goodbye to another missionary who was finishing her mission. But when we got into the library we learned that she wasn’t scheduled to come in until noon and the little farewell for her would take place in the afternoon prayer meeting. Oops. So we fixed our mistake by asking the assistant zone leaders who would be doing the afternoon prayer meeting to do the farewell. Then I just stayed there and Mom took off to a doctor appointment. She got back just in time to do our presentation to a new group of missionaries, which went well. We then did floor lead until Scott and Allison (his sister) came into the library. They had flown in together from Sacramento. So we took them to the COB cafeteria for lunch and had a nice leisurely chat until we had to take off for our monthly zone leader meeting at the NOB. I failed to get a picture with them, ugh, so I fixed that by stealing one from Scott’s FB page. After our meeting I went home and turned on the “First Four” MM game and watched until Scott got back from Cameron’s. We then chatted until just about midnight. 

Thursday Mom went into the library at 10 and Scott and I watched the BYU game until it was time for us to walk over to the Delta Center for March Madness. We knew that our seats were going to be pretty high up in nosebleed territory, but we learned that they were also in partial view blockage territory. There were these business boxes right next to our section and they obscured the view of the lower right hand corner of the court. I pretty quickly got used to looking up to the big screen whenever players went into that area so that I wouldn’t miss any action. We also pulled up the BYU game on our phones to watch their progress and during timeouts at the Delta Center they put the BYU game up on the big screen. Of course BYU blew it and became the first story of March Madness upsets. They put a stat up on the screen where we learned that BYU has participated in the most tournament games, 31, without ever reaching the final four. Sadness. Our games had no upsets and only one was a close one between Dayton and Nevada. Dayton won, which was a bummer because I picked Nevada. I forgot to tell you that it wasn’t just Scott and I that went

to the games. Allison and her son Robbie came, as well as two of Cameron’s brothers-in-law. We got to watch the first two games and then had to clear the building and re-enter for the last two games. We thought we were going to have time to go get something to eat between the two sessions, but the games ran a little long and we only had about a half hour so we just chatted and waited until they opened back up. We all just got food from the vendors in the building. I got a J Dawg which usually cost $6 but were $9.50 there. The last game ended a little after 10pm and we walked home and got some snacks and headed to bed. 

Friday was the Go Forth meeting and I learned during the basketball games the day before that we would need to attend that meeting. President Holmes sent out an email informing us that we were going to get two new sister Church service missionaries in our zone. Wahoo. So off we went. We were able to meet Sister Jenni Atkinson, who grew up in New Zealand, but moved to the U.S. about 40 years ago with the intent to move back to

New Zealand in about 5 years, but never did. The other is Sister Regina Orchard who was born in Germany, but her family joined the Church and immigrated to Utah in 1954. She grew up speaking German in her home and looks forward to learning about German family history research. After taking them to the library and doing our orientation with them, we came home and caught up on emails and I started watching MM games that were happening elsewhere. There were a couple exciting ones, and a bunch of upsets. Unfortunately I hadn’t picked all of them but many I had. I thought for a brief moment about trying to fix my bracket by re-picking teams based on the ones that were still left in the tournament, but that is cheating. So I watched until late. Yawns.

Saturday was more MM games with Scott and the crew. Just two, though we learned that they started much earlier than we thought they were going to start. The first game was Dayton and Arizona and it went back and forth, but Arizona then moved away and kept the lead until the end. The second game was between Gonzaga and Kansas. At halftime they were one point apart and then after halftime Gonzaga went on a 17-0 run and never let the lead go. They ended up winning by 21 points. There were other games going on that were close and they kept putting the live stream up on the big screen, but when they would stop the whole stadium would boo until they put it back up. It really wasn’t kind to the teams playing in our stadium because they kept hearing the crowd cheering or complaining for the teams we were watching on the screen rather than for them. Anyway, I was happy that Gonzaga won as I had picked them for my bracket. This pic is them celebrating at half court at the end of the game. After the game Scott headed over to Cameron’s for dinner and I just relaxed and watched more MM games until late. The last one was a double overtime game which was exciting. 

Today Scott got up and went to Cameron’s for church. We were going to walk to church, but it started to rain so we decided to drive instead. We had the two missionaries that are assigned to our stake, Elder Clark and Elder Tawit, speak in sacrament meeting. Elder Clark told us a cool story. Most of you have probably seen the movie called The Saratov Approach. Elder Clark told us about one of those missionaries, Elder Propst, who was from a small town in Oregon. When his parents learned of their son’s situation they asked for people in their town to pray for him. The full time missionaries in that town came to their home one afternoon to lend support and pray with them and saw a family there that they did not recognize from church. They were the Krebs. They decided they needed to go and introduce themselves to them. Between the time they had learned about the Krebs and going to visit them, the local news station interviewed them about being missionaries and what they were feeling after hearing about Elder Propst and his companion in Russia. Well when they went to visit the Krebs the daughter opened the door and recognized them immediately. She told them to come in quickly and brought them to her tv where the interview they had done that day was being shown on the news. She said, “That’s you!”. They admitted it was and then told them a little about themselves while waiting for her parents to get home. When they arrived they invited them to begin having the discussions and to learn about the Church. They accepted and were baptized not long after. That daughter is Elder Clark’s mom and her parents are his grandparents. He talked about how something horrible happening way on the other side of the world led to him being on a mission today. Cool story.

After church we came home and I started on this post. I looked out the window and this is what I saw. (1st pic) You can’t see it very clearly, but it was snowing pretty good. Now, 2 hours later this is what it looks like outside. (2nd pic) I have learned that the weather here is schizophrenic. It doesn’t know if it wants to be winter or Spring. I am hoping it chooses Spring as I would like to ride more. 

Well that has been our week. I hope yours was great. We love you all.

BE GOOD!

Sister and Elder Phillips

PS It’s raining again and fixin’ to snow any moment.

PPS It’s now snowing again!

OOPS, I forgot something and need to add something. 

Last night after I got home, Mom remembered that one of the missionaries in the library had told her that here was a free performance of the musical presentation called The Lamb of God in the tabernacle that night. So I changed into a suit and we went. It was an interfaith choir that performed it with a bunch of very good soloists. I thought the whole thing was a little too much of a “production” and not as much of a musical presentation of the last week of Christ’s life, but it was very well done. We especially liked the fact that they were easy to understand and had great harmony.

Then tonight we went to hear the Lux Choral Society Singers perform a Palm Sunday celebration of Christ. They sang a number of songs acapella and also with an orchestra, but they were a little more difficult to hear the actual words and sang some interesting songs. But it was also good. Mom and I both agreed that we liked last night’s performance better than tonight’s, but I think our Sacramento Stake’s performance of The Garden, many years ago, was as good or better than this.

There.  Now I’m finished.