This week started with a mission devotional where the first presentation went a bit long, so all the following ones got cut short. That first presenter was funny and had some great experiences to share, but she left no time for the rest of them. I am thinking that this week’s post might be that way as well, cut short, but mostly because I didn’t keep track of all the things that happened and I’m not sure we learned a whole lot.
Case in point, I’m not sure we learned anything really new on Monday. I didn’t write anything down about the day and can’t remember much of who I helped or what I did the whole day. We did close the floor down at 6pm and got home in time to grab a quick dinner before going to FHE. The Ottleys did the lesson about holidays and where and how they originated. He started talking about May Day and how that holiday originally was about flowers and worshipping the Roman goddess Flora, but the day had been co-opted by socialist and communist governments to celebrate the workers, and is actually Labor Day in most countries of the world. On my Facebook page I kept getting little popups from people telling me that in Hawaii, May Day is Lei Day! There weren’t many people there, small turnout his week, so we ate a quick brownie after the lesson and came back to the apartment.
Tuesday Mom and I both had dentist appointments. Hers was at 7am and was a cleaning and checkup, mine was to do the three new crowns they determined I needed from last week’s visit. So they actually got us both in at the same time and they hooked me up with these cool safety goggles. They numbed me up and started drilling. Mom finished and walked home while they kept working on me. After about an hour they had me all ready and prepped to get the new crowns, which they actually make themselves in their
lab across the parking lot from their office. But it was going to take about an hour and fifteen minutes for those to be ready, so I went back to the apartment to hang out until then. I got back and they had a dental assistant take some final X-rays and prep my teeth for cementing on the new crowns. I was nervous for a moment because I could tell this young lady was new, as she couldn’t figure out how to do the X-rays at first, and was worried about her ability to cement the crowns correctly. But she just prepped for it and the dentist came in and did the actually installation. I now have no more teeth with silver in them. First time in over 55 years.
After the dentist, since it was such a nice day outside, I had planned to go for a bike ride. But I wanted to wait for the numbness to wear off first and when it finally did I learned that my mouth was actually pretty sore, more sore than I thought it would be. So I just hung around, being a couch potato and trying to find soft things to eat. I finally decided I needed to get some exercise, so while Mom went walking I went to the gym. While working out I noticed that they had taken down the scaffolding around Moroni again, as well as the spires on either side. Wahoo, progress! It is taking a long time to get things done on this temple, but they are getting things done. We spent the rest of the day just lounging around the apartment and watching tv. We watched a movie called
Super Cell about a family of storm chasers and learned a little more about tornadoes and how they form. I kept harkening back to
Twister and all of the great lines in that movie. This one, we learned, was not as witty but did have some great footage of tornadoes, like what Tori had shared with us last week.
Wednesday was a day of meetings. We had three different meetings, the last one being the longest. In between meetings I tried to help a guest find a birth record for her grandfather from Norway named Ole Olsen. Another missionary had begun helping, but had hit a wall so she asked me to help. We went searching in all the different archives looking in a certain parish based on the information in the death certificate the guest had acquired. I ran into the same problem I had the week before with the online website that gives you info on Norway farms being down, so I went to our specialist, Liv, and asked if she could help. I ran downstairs to check out the books that I had learned about the week before, but could not find a farm named Haltagen. I couldn’t stay to find the end result because I needed to go to our meeting. Mom had gone to the COB to get our lunch and so I ran upstairs to join her in the meeting. Afterwards we came back downstairs and I asked Liv if they had found it. They had not. Sadness. So Mom and I went to eat lunch and then head off for the final meeting of the day.
We were asked to do the devotional thought about leadership so we chose this video clip of Elder Soares.
Mom actually did the follow up message from this video talking about how we have so many different personalities and people on our zone council and how it is important to listen to all of them. She did a great job and I am learning that she is more and more comfortable with sharing her ideas with others in a large setting. I ended with the thought that came to me that perhaps the
Council in Heaven before we came to this earth may have actually been a council where we all had a chance to express our thoughts and ideas and concerns and hopes about this life. I can see how that could actually give place for Lucifer to be able to share his idea of how all of this should work. The rest of our meeting ended up being a gospel discussion, since there wasn’t much business that we needed to discuss. President Holmes just asked us about our thoughts on President Nelson’s talk from conference. If you can’t remember it, he spoke about priesthood keys, but more specifically about the blessings that come from the keys restored in the Kirtland Temple. There were a lot of
things shared and then I shared how I remembered President Nelson saying that “we are also promised that in the temple we may ‘receive a fullness of the Holy Ghost’”. I remember when he said that, speaking about promises from the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple found in section 109, I thought, “Does it really say that?” I went and looked right then and sure enough learned that it does say that in verse 15. I pondered what a “fullness of the Holy Ghost” must be. We had a good discussion about that in our meeting, then I pointed out that in President Nelson’s talk, right after he quoted that, he said “Imagine what
that promise means in terms of having the heavens open for each earnest seeker of eternal truths.” I think it is talking about something like what Joseph Smith mentioned when he said it is having “pure intelligence flowing into you”, or as Parley P. Pratt taught, “ The Holy Ghost … quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates, and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature” (Key to the Science of Theology [1978], 61).
After the meeting we dropped off some things to one of our released missionaries and then headed home. We were able to grab some food and then took off to our Hale Center Theater play. It has been awhile since we had one of these and we were looking forward to it. This play was called
May We All and was a country musical about life in small town USA. It was ok. The plot was pretty weak and the acting was that way as well, at least at the beginning, but some of the songs were pretty good and there were a couple of
characters, the boyfriend of the bar owner and the town dunce, that stole the show. All of the actors had great voices though and so that was nice to listen to. One part of the musical had them singing
Broken Halos by Chris Stapleton and they broke off into really great acapella harmony. It was really good. I kind of wished they had continued on with that a bit longer. The ending was predictable, but at least it was a happy ending, which you all know Mom likes best. The musical was one of the longer productions that we have attended there, so we actually got home a little later than normal and headed right to bed.
Thursday we needed to be in early again since we were covering for the sisters that are on LOA, and we actually remembered this time. Most of the day things were pretty slow, but then I was asked to help with a guest who was looking for records from Indonesia. Yikes. When I met he and his wife at their computer station I learned that they were from France, but his family was originally from the Netherlands and he had an ancestor who had moved to Indonesia during the Dutch occupation there and he was trying to learn more about him. He had already done a lot of research and knew the birthdate and birthplace of this ancestor who was his great uncle, but his great aunts never talked about him and he was wondering if he was an illegitimate son, and that’s why they didn’t speak of him. Well I know nothing about Indonesian records so we just jumped into the
FamilySearch site and started looking to see what they had. We couldn’t find anything at first, but then we saw a site mentioned on the Wiki page that reminded me of a site that we had learned about in our Dutch paleography class. So I googled it because I couldn’t remember the name and voila, there it was. We put his great uncle’s name in the search and it came right up and showed him as being
enkenning or recognized, which my guest immediately said “that means he was legitimate!”. He turned and gave me a high five! He was so excited to learn this and also to see about all of the resources out there to do more research.
After our shift was finished we took our three single sisters and drove to the Bountiful Temple, which is open again, and did initiatories. I was able to do them for 5 of my Swedish ancestors. They are all from Grandpa Segerstedt’s mom’s side. I have been working on that side and finding quite a few individuals who we had not previously identified there. It took me a bit of searching in the Swedish records, but I finally found and sorted out who belonged to who and was able to put some families together. Wahoo! After the temple we asked if they wanted to go shopping, or out to eat or just head home. We learned that they all felt like they had had a long week so far…us too…and so they just wanted to head home. We were more than happy to comply with that request. We were able to come home and get some dinner and then just relax and read and watch tv. Sometimes, I have learned, evenings of relaxation are just as important as being busy and engaged in important work.
While we were relaxing we got a call from Scott telling us that Kiersten and Cameron’s baby had come early and Kimberly was on a train to come be with them and help with Lottie. She was arriving at around 3am and wanted a place to crash until she could go up and visit them in the U of U hospital. I didn’t need to pick her up because Katherine had left a car for her to use in the train station parking, so Mom sent her codes to get into the building and our apartment and we went to bed. I woke up about 5:30 and was surprised that I hadn’t woken up when Kimberly came in. Then I got worried that maybe she wasn’t there and something had happened to her. So I got up and saw that the extra bedroom door was closed and the light was off that we left on for her, so I knew she made it ok. I have learned that I am a pretty light sleeper when it comes to unusual noises around the house, but when they are usual noises, or my mind knows that they are not sounds of danger, I can sleep very soundly.
We got up Friday morning and had breakfast with Kimberly then headed to the NOB for the
Go Forth meeting since we were getting a new missionary in our zone, Sister Barbara Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver) We learned from her that her Italian ancestors had emigrated to England many generations ago and had anglicized their name so that now they pronounced it Tolliver. She is from Virginia and is a full time missionary here for a year. We brought her back to the library and gave her a little tour and orientation and were finished a little before 2pm and came back to the apartment. It was a very nice day out so I decided to go for a bike ride. I just rode up the north trail for 10 miles and turned around and rode back, with a nice tailwind. Mom was going to go for a walk, but she decided to do laundry and watch a movie. After I got back we went to WinCo and Costco to get stuff for next week’s zone luncheon socials. I of course replenished my chocolate milk supply as well and we brought it all home to see if we could find enough place in our fridge for it all to fit into. We succeeded and then were able to relax the rest of the day.
Saturday was a busy, but not busy day. What I mean by that is that the library itself was not super busy with people, but we were kept busy filling in and doing assignments and helping guests. Mom was steward for 3 hours, which she really likes, and while she was doing that she had a sudden rush of Germany, Germany and Germany guests. We have learned that sometimes it happens like that. I’m not sure why it happens, but it just does. Luckily we had enough missionaries to cover all three requests. Sister Hawk was great. She is getting up there in years, but is still very capable and was able to help a couple of them.
That unfortunately was not the case later on while I was steward when I got a sudden rush of China, China and China. We only had Sister Vivian Xiang Koler who speaks Chinese and knows how to do the research. I was able to get her to help the one gentleman while asking the other one to wait a bit. The first guest was trying to find in our catalog a jiapu, or family name book, that his uncle had donated to the library back in 1972. For some reason we couldn’t find it. It says in our catalog that it is in the Granite Mountain Vault. Yikes. He then needed to leave and Vivian began helping the second guest. Unfortunately the third guest needed to leave in about 10 minutes, so we just showed him the website and he was happy to learn about that and left soon thereafter. Vivian was supposed to go home at 4pm, but she stayed until 6pm to work with the other guest. What a trooper! Just
before leaving I started chatting with Liv and learned that she had found that Ole Olsen birth record that we had been looking for on Wednesday. She had been prompted to get the guest’s phone number and learned that Saturday the website we had been trying to access began working again and she was able to identify that farm name we had seen, Haltagen, even though it was spelled differently…which is very common since they had no standardized spelling back then…and discovered which parish it was in. As soon as she had that she was able to find the family and Ole’s birth record. Wahoo! We got home here after closing the floor and spent a quiet evening eating dinner and relaxing.
Today we got up and it was super cloudy. The weather report said it was going to rain so we decided to drive to church. By the time we got out it was raining pretty steady. We got home here and I started this blog post and then looked outside and saw this…
…the rain had turned to snow. What!? Where did our lovely Spring weather go? I checked the weather app again and learned that we are supposed get rain mixed with snow until Wednesday. I was just getting myself all psyched up to ride every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and now this. Ugh. I guess I still can on the indoor bike at the COB, but I was looking forward to being out on the bike. I guess I’ll just have to wait until next week when I hope the weather will turn back to more normal Spring weather again.
We ended today with our monthly
Break-the-Fast dinner with the other West Temple Apartments missionaries. Since it was
Cinco de Mayo Mom made salsa and chips and a few other folks did a Mexican theme as well. Yum! We just got back. We had stew and corn on the cob and shrimp salad. Lots of great stuff and Mom brought back a piece of chocolate cake. So now it is time for
Relative Race and wind down time. Just one final thing to tell you about. On Thursday I got a frantic call from the ministering coordinator for our apartments, Scott Engstrom, saying that one of our apartment colleagues, Elder Ganschow had been rushed to the hospital after suffering a stroke and was in surgery to try to eliminate the clot in his brain. He asked me to send out word to everyone to pray for Elder Ganschow. By the time I got his message he had already done it. Well, we found out later in the day that the surgery went well and more amazingly he was already up and ambulatory. He came home yesterday and was with us for our break-the-fast tonight. Miracles still happen.
Love you all. Hope the weather where you are is more Spring-like than here.
BE GOOD!
Sister and Elder Phillips
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