We began this week with a devotional where Steven Rockwood, who is the President and CEO of FamilySearch International, spoke to us. He started his presentation with the
Bible Video “Feed My Sheep”, where Jesus visits His apostles at the Sea of Galilee and asks Peter three times to feed my sheep. Brother Rockwood asked why we thought He asked three times? One of the sister missionaries said, “First we hear. Second we listen. Third we understand.” I thought that was a great reply. I have learned that you really do need to hear or read or watch something multiple times to really
get it. After the devotional we went to the library. It felt like I was running from
place to place and assignment to assignment all day long. I helped one guest with finding microfiche of all the emigrants from a port in Norway and finished the night explaining how to search for Chinese records and why we do all of this here in the library to a young man from San Diego of Asian descent. He was with this older guy who seemed to be a colleague or friend of some sort, but I learned at the end of our chat, which lasted right up until they turned the computers off on us, that they had just met over on Temple Square and he had kind of appointed himself his official tour guide. The young man asked me right as we were finishing why do we do all of this, and the older guy jumped in and tried to explain about temples and ordinances for the dead, and I could tell he wasn’t understanding that so I just told him about what is printed on the wall on the
Discovery Floor of
the library…how we are all family of God and families are an important part of His plan for us and we feel it our responsibility to help families become connected across the many generations of time. He liked that. He then went outside to catch an Uber ride to the closest
Swig because an old roommate of his from Utah told him he had to try it.
We got home in time to grab some dinner and then go down for Family Home Evening with our apartment “family”. The Hansens taught the lesson about the Come Follow Me chapters for this week, Mosiah 11-17, and we had some chocolate chip cookies for the treat.
Tuesday morning Mom was back at the dentist to get some teeth fixed. I spent the morning answering emails and calling some missionaries about extensions and other zone leader stuff. Mom went shopping after getting finished at the dentist and by the time she finally got home she said she felt like resting for awhile, so I decided to go for a bike ride. I did 30 miles in just about perfect weather. There was a tiny bit of a tailwind coming home, so that was nice. When I got home I learned that Mom had laid down and napped, but got woken up by the guys who were doing the finish work around our windows. So she couldn’t go back to sleep and for some reason she morphed into “nesting mode” and was doing a complete cleaning/reorganizing of the whole apartment. She even moved my bike rack and bikes around and reorganized the closet in the extra bedroom. It was very much like she used to get before babies came, but I am pretty sure she is not expecting a baby. The rest of the day we just hung around the apartment and relaxed.
Wednesday we both got up and felt like we needed to workout, so Mom went walking and I went to the COB gym. We then went to the library and it was one of those “meetings” days. We went from meeting to helping to meeting to assignments to meeting to helping again. We usually finish our every other Wednesday with just heading home after the final meeting because it ends around 5:30, but this week the Faerbers had a meeting at 4pm, so they ended our meeting early after sharing yummy strawberry shortcake with pudding on it. So we got back to the library and Mom was steward while I worked on France training. I learned that she was working on her Italy training and wanted to complete a certain portion of it, so we stayed longer than normal, until about 6:30. I then suddenly remembered that we had our Hale Center Theater play that night, so we had to run home real quick and head off to the play. Unfortunately there was also a pro soccer game that night and the stadium is near the theater, so traffic was horrible. We were stopped on the freeway
almost a mile from the off-ramp with all of the people trying to exit. So I decided to go to the next off-ramp and back track. But there was traffic that way as well. We barely made it before curtain time. The play was well done, with a modern-day twist to the whole story. Afterwards Mom asked if I wanted to go to the Sonic we saw on the way in, and since I had learned earlier that week that Sonic was doing their half-price-on-shakes-after-7pm promotion again, I said
sure! But when we got my shake I learned that the promotion only worked if you made your order on the Sonic app. Sadness. I guess I need to read those ads a little closer when they come out. Well we then headed home and I decided to just go up State Street to 90th South and then over to the freeway, but I didn’t realize that that was where everyone parked for the soccer game and it was just getting out at that time, so HUGE traffic jam. I started following a guy who I thought was trying to move up to get into the left hand turn lane, but it turned out we had to turn left into a shopping center, so I had to drive through their parking lot to the other side and then turn right and go to the light and do a u turn. It was a mess and it took us about a half hour to just get past all of that. We finally got home and all was right in the universe again.
Thursday morning I woke up a little later and just laid in bed and read. I did a little more study on what the phrase “fullness of the Holy Ghost” refers to and then got ready for the day. We got in and took over at 11am as floor leads, but then the Atkins came at 12pm and said they could take over if we wanted to go to lunch earlier. So we took them up on that and were able to go to lunch with Chihiro (Cheerio) Barbara (Bubbles) and Kimball (Spaghetti) who we used to always go with to the COB cafeteria when they changed their pricing, but now we usually can’t because we have a 1pm lunch time on our schedule and they have a noon time. Anyway, lunch with them was fun and we got back and both of us just helped a little and worked on our country training a little until 4pm when it was time to go to the temple. Yoriko was busy doing something else so it was just Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner this week. We did sealings and it was weird that they had each of us pick either two couples sealings, or one couple and 4 children, or 8 children, and then one more of
those as a “second round” if we had enough time, but they only let Mom and I choose one of the options as a couple, we didn’t both get to do those. It was kind of like we were being punished because we were a couple. Well we had a great session and towards the end Sister Pruner had a brother and a sister to seal to their parents. So they did that with me standing in for the brother and a Sister Donaldson who was in our group standing in for the sister. As the sealer spoke the words the Spirit became very strong and Sister Donaldson, who didn’t even know us began to weep. She could feel it too. When it was
finished I got her a tissue and all was well. We just headed straight home after the temple. When we got home we decided to watch a movie. I have identified a bunch of movies on Hulu and Prime that are based on actual events. So we watched
Three Identical Strangers. I won’t be a spoiler and tell you anything about it, only that Mom actually was so into it she stayed awake and watched the whole movie with me. After the movie we tried to go to sleep, but there was a dog somewhere in our building that was barking nonstop. I finally got so tired I just fell asleep, but I have no idea what time that was.
Friday morning we understandably woke up late. I had planned to go to the gym to workout, but didn’t have enough time. So we got ready and went to the NOB for the Go Forth meeting because we had learned he day before that we were getting one new missionary, Sister Lisa Ertel. So we got there right on time at 9:30 and were able to be part of that great meeting. Afterwards we ate a small brunch with her and then took her over to the FamilySearch Library and did an
orientation with her. She is going to be fantastic. She already has started a genealogy credential program and speaks German from both serving as a missionary in East Germany and having German speaking in-laws. Wahoo! After finishing with her we came home and I figured I would go get my workout in, but kept fiddling around with stuff and then Sam showed up. So we played
Skyjo with her, which I won all 4 times, and then Amber, Kim and Tag made it. They came up to stay with us so that they could go to Leland’s birthday party the next day. We had debated back and forth as to whether we should go or not, because we were a bit short staffed at the library, but then a couple of people said they would be coming in so we decided to go. We stayed up until after midnight playing
Fun Facts with all of them. When we finally headed to bed I think I was getting my
second wind and couldn’t fall asleep right away, so I stayed up surfing the internet learning about which smart watches have the longest battery life. Mine has been having issues charging and holding a charge recently.
Saturday morning we all got up a bit later and had a casual morning before heading down to Orem for the party. I went and picked up Sam first and she rode down with Amber and Kim and Tag. Mom and I stopped and got gas at Costco and then drove on down. We got there a little early and I was able to help haul some of the drinks and stuff over to the park tables with Bruce. It was great to just sit and talk and find out how life has been for them and then to see them interact with all of their friends from their apartments and their ward and the preschool that Leland goes to. They have a great group of friends. We talked to Leland for just about a minute and
wished him Happy Birthday and he was off a runnin’ to play with friends. We stayed for pizza and then took off to get back to the library for the afternoon part of our shift. When we got there we learned that it had been pretty quiet so far, so we had not been missed too much. Whew! Just after we got there a couple from the Netherlands came in to find out about what we do. I was the usher and told the steward that she ought to assign Mom to do it. When she found out she was a bit reluctant thinking I would do better, but I kind of felt she should do this one. Well she wasn’t able to find anything on the lady’s family, but she was able to find quite a bit on the man’s side. When they were finished she took him upstairs and printed off the big fan chart for him. Success! My day was spent helping people find books and doing some merging and little things like that, as well as working on our agenda for Monday’s zone council meeting. We came home and were quite tired. Bed was nice!
Today I slept in past 8am, which doesn’t happen often, I must have been tired. We walked up to church and had a very typical day there. One of the speakers in Sacrament meeting talked about the gift of the endowment. I thought that was a bit redundant as I learned many years ago when researching about the Huntsman Endowment for Cancer that an endowment is a gift that is usually invested and keeps giving in the form of interest. After church we walked home and I learned that they have different kinds of biker gangs in Salt Lake City. This was quite the group of bikers all coming from or heading to church together. They actually stretched up the street two or three times the number you see in this picture. You will probably have to zoom in a bit, but you can see they were all wearing suit coats or vests, but at least a shirt
and tie. We then went to the
One Heart gathering and got home with just enough time for me to finish this post before the Barneys get here to play Mah Jongg. Mom took this pic of us singing at the
One Heart meeting and I have to point out that I am not making some “weird or funny face” like everyone says I make when I sing. I knew I was right that I don’t make strange faces, but now I have proof that I am right.
Well I hope all is well with you.
We love you all.
BE GOOD!
Mom and Dad
PS Here a couple other pics I took this week that I didn’t fit in to the post…Mom in her “garden”, Leland’s cake, and Leland with his friends eating pizza.
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