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 shared how they saw the theme of temples in every talk. They actually found a reference to temples in every talk from this last conference. So I don’t know how you study conference, but here is what I do. These are my bookmarks in my Gospel Library app. I try to study for at least a half hour, but usually an hour, every day and read most of these different scriptures and books. As you can see, conference is one of my bookmarks. I try to read one talk each day, so by the time conference comes around again I have read and marked each talk multiple times. When I ride, I also like to listen to conference talks. By the way, the first bookmark, Section 109 came from President Nelson’s suggestion to read and ponder the blessings and promises mentioned there. After the devotional I went into the library and mom went to brunch with Zoë and her friend. The library was pretty normal as far as busyness and I was kept busy helping here and there. Mom made it in for our zone council meeting and then the rest of the day was helping and interviewing and getting things done. We got home and everyone was back from their aquarium and other visits for the day, and we tried to figure out what to do for dinner. The final vote was for Mexican food from the food truck that the Henkels turned us on to over in the Smith’s parking lot in Rose Park. Mom and Tori went there and got us all some great stuff. So yummy! We had a great dinner and then after Franklin went to bed they all played Mah Jong while I watched a Giants game, which they won. Wahoo! I think in the Mah Jong games that everyone won except Zoë. Sadness. Tuesday morning I had a dentist appointment early. Unfortunately I learned that I had some failing teeth so there is going to be an outlay of $$$ soon. After getting home I headed into the library, even though it was Pday and Mom and Tori went to get massages. Tori gave Mom a spa day for Christmas, so Mom was cashing that in and Tori went with her. I did our paleography class and then came home to find that everyone was just hanging around. We tried to figure out something to do and finally we decided on going to the Gilgal Sculpture Garden. It’s kind of a strange little place. All of the sculptures were done by a kind of eccentric guy, but all have a gospel theme. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there because it is pretty small so we decided to find some ice cream. We had heard about a place downtown somewhere that had good ice cream. We looked it up and found it…Rockwell Ice Cream. We learned that it was like most shops, a bit pricey, but it had good ice cream. Mom had GOAT flavor. It was vanilla/goat cheese ice cream with blackberry, lemon jam swirls and
honey rosemary roasted almonds. I had their Muddy Buddy flavor. Pretty tasty. We then figured we ought to get some actual food, so we went home. Mom and Tori went and got Crown burgers for everyone. I took off and gave platelets. I got to watch another biographical movie, although this one was mostly fictional. It was called
Freud’s Last Session. It was based on a rumor that Sigmund Freud’s last interview was with a professor from Oxford who people speculated was C.S. Lewis. In the movie they debate about the existence of God and His interference or lack thereof with His children’s lives. It was kind of interesting, but moved pretty slowly. I got home and found that there was another Giants game on. So I turned that on and hen learned that there was also a Vancouver Canucks game as well. Aaron is a huge Canucks fan and the Giants had their game wind already, so we switched over and watched the hockey game. It is fun watching Aaron watch hockey. He jumps around at every close play and talks to the tv more than I do. I promise, I am not making this up. He asks the players what they are
thinking and tells the refs how many things they are missing. I knew there was a reason I liked this kid! Wednesday's Tori had an early flight out, so I got up and took her to the airport. Mom made Swedish pancakes for breakfast and I got back in time to eat one before I had to go in a bit early with Mom for a meeting with the Faerbers. After our meeting I was assigned to do a tour, if there was a group that was requesting one. Well no groups showed up so I went back down to our floor and was there for about 15 minutes when someone came and told me that there
was actually a couple that was requesting a tour. So I went back up got the main floor and found a couple that had served in the library back in 2017. They were amazed at all of the changes and are actually thinking about coming back to serve again. We shall see. The tour put me just past the time when I needed to head to the COB for lunch, so no lunch for me. I then worked on some French training, watching some videos that helped learn that I had done the previous assignments, that I had already completed, completely wrong. Ugh. So I got to work on those. When we got home we found Zoë and Aaron’s friends were coming to play Mah Jong and Magic. They had lots of fun and I just vegged and watched tv.
Thursday the Johannessons got up at 0 dark 30 because Franklin woke up, so they decided to get on the road. We said goodbye and then went back to bed. We woke up a little later and Mom decided she wanted to go on a walk, since she had been missing that while we had company. So off she went. I started reading scriptures and suddenly had the thought that I was supposed to go in early. I said to myself, naw we don’t go in until 10am. And then the thought came, “Are you sure?” So I pulled up our schedule on my
phone and saw that we were supposed to be in at 9am. I thought, “That’s weird, why would we need to be in at 9?” Then suddenly I remembered, the two sisters who usually get thing s started with prayer meeting and doing floor lead on Thursday were on LOA. Mom and I needed to do prayer meeting. That starts at 8:30am and it was now about 8:15am. Yikes!! I jumped out of bed and started throwing on clothes and texting Mom to let her know and then grabbing our bag and out the door. Then I remembered it was Thursday and we needed to go to the temple right after we are off. So I ran back inside the apartment to
grab my car keys. When I got back in the hall the elevator was just arriving. Whew! Except it was filled with 2 worker guys and a bunch of door panels. They are replacing the sliding glass doors in all of the apartments. I couldn’t decide if I should try to get the other elevator to come or run down the stairs. But the workers had already hit the button for the other elevator, so I assumed it would come soon. While I was waiting one of the other young residents of the apartments who lives a couple of doors down came out. I said hi and he asked how I was doing. I decided to be honest and told him my current state of angst. The elevator came and we got in and as soon as the doors opened I told him I need to run. So off I went out the front doors and started running to the library. My right knee has been bugging me (I think I might have arthritis in it) so I only ran until about 20 yards from the corner and slowed to a fast walk. It wasn’t until I was across the street and headed towards the back of the building to go in the back doors by the parking lot that I remembered I had grabbed my keys and planned
to drive, not run. Ugh! Frazzled brains. Anyway, I got into the library and found hat one of the missionaries who has been there a long time had started prayer meeting. So he motioned for me to come take over and I of course had to apologize and so I told my tale of woe and they all laughed. At least I was able to get things started and I learned that the Spirit cares about little things, like reminding me of when I am supposed to be in early to the library. For part of our prayer meeting we showed a video about what to do if an active shooter came into the library, which actually happened 25 years ago in the library. More discombobulating stuff for the day! Mom didn’t see my text and came in at 10am. She said she was wondering what happened to me, but she missed the text and was just puzzled as to where I could be. So I of course did not grab any of my temple clothes, nor did I have a suit to wear, so we headed home for lunch to get all of that stuff. We heard that there was a taco truck out front of the library, so we grabbed some tacos and a burrito and took it home with us for lunch. The rest of the
day was just a little less frazzled, not much. When our shift was over we took off with two of our single sisters to the Ogden Temple to do an endowment session. It started horribly because there was an accident and the freeway was at a standstill. I figured, “Well perfect. I’ll be late again today!” But then they cleared the accident and we were able to cruise pretty nicely the rest of the way there. After the session we decided to go to
Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers. It was very good and I nice way to end a wacko day.
Friday we were getting ready for the day when there was a knock at the door. The workers were here to replace our sliding glass doors. We knew they were coming and had moved everything away from the door at least four feet away as instructed, but they asked if we could move it back a bit further…more like ten feet away. So I shoved chairs into the hallway and moved the couch over more and slid the tv over as well. Then it was off to the library. I was asked almost immediately to help a couple with a research problem in Norway. They had a wife of a 4th great grandfather who they wanted to find the parents of. Her name was Tena Olsen. They had a couple of sources on the husband, so we knew where they were from and went in to find her birth record. Instead I found a marriage record for the two of them and it mentioned her name was Taarn and she was from a a farm named Åsen (or Aasen) and that her father’s name was Lars. Well that was weird because they had in their tree that she was an Olsen, not a Larsdatter. Well we then were able to find her birth record and verify her father’s and mother’s names as well as they were from the Åsen farm. So I went online to see if I could find the farm on the Oluf Rygh site and it wasn’t working. So I asked Liv Andersen, who is a specialist from Norway, to come see if she could figure it out. We determined the website was down and so instead we headed downstairs tot he books where I learned that we have a hard copy of everything that you can find in that website. We also decided to look for a farmbook from that area and speeded able to find that Toren’s name was spelled about four different ways…Taaren, Taarn, Tårn, Torun…and that she was probably listed as a Tena Olsen because whoever wrote her name on the census records in the US after they immigrated most likely asked her last name and she told them Aasen, which sounds a lot like Olsen and they couldn’t figure out Taarn so they just used Tena instead. Anyway, mystery solved, hurray! We went to the COB for lunch as we have gotten in the habit of doing since it is so cheap. We got there just in time before they closed at 1:30. We had just sat down and started to eat when an alarm went off. It was followed by an announcement stating there there was an emergency situation in the building and we needed to evacuate. I immediately thought of the Run Hide Fight video I had seen the day before, but they didn’t mention an active shooter, so we just left our lunch and headed up the stairs to go outside. It was raining outside, but we were able to stand just outside the doors where there is a covering. We weren’t there too long before a security guy came and said that it was “all clear” and we could re-enter the building. We never did learn what it was all about, but it added some excitement to our day. We got off after lunch so we went back home. We learned that the Nelson’s from Bellingham who have been called to this mission and Mom has been corresponding with were moving in. So we changed quickly and went downstairs to help hem move in. They are in an apartment just down the hall from us. When we were finished we came back to our apartment and they were still working on the doors. So we just went into our bedroom to read. Then we decided to take our Xfinity Wi-Fi gear back to their store and cancel our contract, since the apartments have installed fiber optic Wi-Fi and are requiring everyone to switch over to it. It’s more expensive and about the same speed as Xfinity, but they decided to add it to our housing contract, so we won’t have to pay for it. The Xfinity store was right next to Trader Joe’s, so Mom went over there to get more dark chocolate peanut butter cups while I waited. When we got back to the apartment the workers weee cleaning up and leaving the apartment. So we put everything back and cleaned up. We ended the night watching movie called Vanished In Yosemite, which claimed to be based on actual events, but we later learned was mostly fiction. The bad thing was that we forgot that we had been given symphony tickets and totally missed that. The movie really wasn’t that great either, but we were pretty tired out from the week and so we were kind of glad to just be able to be couch potatoes and not have to get dressed up and go out anywhere. We are learning that we seem to get tired much easier than we used to. I’m not sure why that is. Oh yea, maybe it has something to do with the fact we are a bit older than we used to be. Hmmm, this getting old thing definitely isn’t for sissys. Saturday we went in and had a fairly leisurely morning. I was asked to help a couple who were trying to save and send a map via email from our large map monitor. They were from England. We started chatting and they were very friendly and nice and we chatted for about a half an hour and they were excited to learn that the London Temple was only about 15 minutes away from where they lived. Then I was asked to go up to the main floor and help a couple with research in Hungary. When I got up there I learned that this couple had a great grandfather who had immigrated from Hungary in the early 1900’s. When he came to America he changed his name from Imre (or Emre) Toth to John Horvath. Wow drastic change, but we were able to find a couple of records, including a draft registration the verified his legal name change. Then I learned that his son, the guest’s grandfather, had also changed his name in America from James Horvath to William Miller. They had him on a US Census with the James Horvath name, but also had a semi-pro baseball contract with his William Miller name. Wild! We were able to find records to verify his father Imre’s birth in Hungary but we couldn’t find a marriage record or a birth record for his wife who was listed in the Census record as Susan Barr. So I called for a specialist to come take over, but they sent up someone from our floor saying there was nobody available. So I stayed with them to look through a bunch of other sites and records and spent over two and half hours with them. Mom came up and told me that they were super busy downstairs and they could use me, so I finished up a final search and showed them some other sources and went back downstairs. Wow! When I arrived down there things had slowed down, but right before closing I was asked to help a guest with research in Fiji. Mom’s revenge. I was able to help him find a couple of records, passport applications for his grandparents, but hen we ran out of time and had to close.
Today we went to church. The little boy who was sitting behind us was talking with his mom and he said something like, “Jesus is the strongest superhero, huh mom!”. That was pretty cool, but I also started th8njing about their age of superheroes and how they all have some sort of superpower or super-suit and you could kind of see how this little boy would think that about Jesus. He definitely has super human powers and goes around rescuing people everywhere. Pretty cool. The first speaker in church was a young married girl who told about growing up in home where her parents were members of the Church, but they were abusive. She told how life was horrible and she never wanted to go home, but everything changed after a YW leader invited her to go with their class to do baptisms for the dead at the temple. She said the feeling she felt there was amazing and she came to realize that with the Savior she could feel peace and power and safety. So she began to read and study her scriptures every day and it helped her become stronger and to endure the abuse. She also taught her siblings what she was learning and how to study for themselves. When she was old enough to leave and go to college she met her husband and was married in the temple where she came to understand that her marriage and family didn’t need to be anything like the one she grew up with and she could make it one that was filled with the same spirit she feels in the temple. She also mentioned that her brother is going on a mission and her other brother is preparing to go. What a great example of how to use the Savior and His word and house as sources of power to overcome the world. Mom taught primary today and taught about King Benjamin. She brought some blankets and a sheet and built a “tent” in her classroom for her kids to sit under while they learned about King Benjamin’s address. She specifically pointed out his verse about serving one another, and challenged them all to find a way to serve someone else this week. The kid’s loved her lesson. Way to go Mom!After Church we came home and Mom had a couple sisters from the library and John come over to teach them how to make sourdough bread. She also taught them how to play Mah Jong. Well I actually was the tutor and Mom played with them. That’s why this is so late. I spent most of the afternoon and evening helping them learn or playing with Mom and John after the sisters left. I did actually win one game so I guess that makes it worth it. Well now it is past my bedtime.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Dad and Mom
…sorry no proofreading tonight. I hope it’s not too bad.
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