We loved having Tori, Zoë, Aaron and Franklin visit the last part of last week and the first part of this week. It was especially fun having Franklin here and it reminded us how much we miss being near all of our grandkids. Are you sure you all don’t want to create a Phillfam10 compound somewhere so we can be near all of the family all of the time? I know, I know, it’s not feasible…but it would be so much fun, for us, and would eliminate the need for lots of travel. So here is what we learned this week. Monday was a normal day. We had a mission devotional at 8am, so we got up and headed out early. Tori was already up on a work videoconference call and Franklin was just getting up. The devotional was given by the President and Sister Holmes about The Words of Eternal Life , discussing mostly the words of General Conference and what we can learn from them. They shared Elder Bednar’s pattern to study general conference and asked us to think about our method for study. Then the Faerbers sh...

Week sixty-four started off pretty normal, but then we increased activity and busyness and visits as the week went on, and here’s what happened…. Our Monday started with a mission devotional. Our friend, Lila Watts, sang this great rendition of Lord, I Would Follow Thee as an opening hymn.  Then we heard from some people who will be going home soon. One of them was Sister Jennifer Smith, who was in the MTC with us. She had a great saying she shared with us…”The temple is a temporary cure for my celestial homesickness.” The last speaker was Elder Larry Barney who is a friend and fellow Mah Jongg player who lives in our apartment building with his wife Sandra. He did a great job as usual talking about the things that he has learned being a missionary here in this mission. We then headed to the library where I immediately went to help with the microfilm relocation project, filling in for one of our sick missionaries. We started up on the second floor pulling films from their cabinets ...

Aloha family. Here is what we learned this week… As winter has decided to give-in to spring we have noticed some changes, inside and outside. This picture was sunset on Monday night. We actually have tons of sunsets like this, but I usually don’t pay as much attention to them when it is cold outside and I don’t plan to go out there to take a picture. But the temperature was nice and the sunset was pretty cool, so out onto our balcony I went to get this shot. We started the day going into the library at 8:30 and jumped right into our routine. It is nice to have the light return to our morning walk and it makes us feel more awake and ready for the day.  As we walked to the COB for lunch we learned that they had closed North Temple St. and had moved the large concrete barricades in front of the temple construction area. So I took this shot. They were having a bunch of concrete trucks come in as well as moving in some other structural materials. It is definitely moving along, even thou...