Week Seventy-three…Lot is Officially Split…Finally!

We had some wonderful milestones this week and here’s what we learned from them…

Monday Mom was flying home from Vegas, so I got up and went to the gym and then into the library at 8:30. We were pretty quiet in the morning and I just helped a couple of people with some simple things, then headed off to a 10am meeting. After the meeting I worked on some zone leader stuff and learned that I need to be a little more forward thinking on our missionary extensions than I have been. I guess the mission office sends out invitations to an appreciation lunch for all missionaries that are completing their missions each month. The lunch is around the 15th of the month so they send it for all missionaries who will be completing before that date in the next month. I sometimes don’t have replies back from missionaries until just before their release date. I am going to need to start earlier with the process of contacting them and finding out their desires. Anyway, I was able to go to the COB for lunch and they had BBQ, so I got a bunch of burnt ends and

brisket and some pulled pork and a couple of ribs. I didn’t eat a whole lot of it for lunch, but saved it for dinner for Mom and I. I had another meeting at 3pm and when I got back to the floor I learned that it had gotten quite busy. We only had 7 missionaries there and two staff people and almost everyone was helping, except for the steward. I helped some French guests. Someone told us that the French all have the month of August off for vacation, but it seems like we are getting a ton of them now. We survived the last hour barrage of guests and Mom met me at the front door as I was leaving as her flight had been delayed

and she just rode the Trax in from the airport. Trax is so convenient for that. I think every city should have that. I know Honolulu has been working on theirs for years. We walked over to the mission fireside, which was the “goodbye talks” for President and Sister Holmes. Sister Holmes talked a bit about the history of the mission. It was fun to learn how it has evolved over the years since it first was created in 2017. At the end the Elijah Choir sang God Be With You Till We Meet Again and the rest of the congregation stood and

joined them. It of course had all of the presidency and their wives crying, as well as most of the missionaries. President Faerber was missing because he had been hospitalized with a freak sepsis infection. We headed home after that and I remember that I had left our BBQ meat in the fridge at the library, so I ran back there while Mom went home. We had yummy BBQ meat for dinner.

Tuesday morning we went to Deseret First Credit Union to get our lot division approval notarized. Wahoo!  We then walked across the street to mail it back to Burley so that he can get it recorded and we will have an officially divided lot. Hopefully that means our builder can get the permit process started quickly and get started on our house. We went from

there to the library, even though it was Pday,  because they are redoing the introductory video orientation for new missionaries and staff which they use during onboarding and they wanted the new zone leaders in it. So Mom and I introduced ourselves and told a bit about why we were on a mission and a short positive experience we had had in the library. We then met John and Vaea for lunch. We learned from John that he might be offered another job in the future and Vaea got his job with the catering crew of the COB. Things are always changing. After lunch mom went walking and then over to Trader Joe’s to use her gift certificate that Brittany sent for Mothers Day to buy more dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Her favorite! I went for a ride. I bought a new, shorter stem for my bike so that I’m not quite as stretched out as I have been. I have learned that as I have gotten older I prefer a bit more relaxed position to ride. It felt good. The rest of the day was spent reading and watching a movie…Oppenheimer. I watched it using VidAngel and it was quite nice. Very interesting to see the history behind the development of the atomic bomb.

Wednesday was Juneteenth and I headed to the COB to workout only to learn that the Church employees have the day off and the COB was closed. So no access to the gym. I just came home and read and then we went to the library, because we weren’t closed for the holiday. It was very quiet most of the morning. We did do an orientation presentation for the new group of Church service missionaries and then I was asked to go up and help a guy on the 2nd floor that was looking for some records from the Netherlands. We tracked down a few, not all that he wanted, but enough to help him verify what he was

trying to verify about his ancestor. Mom helped another guest with Italy research. Then in the afternoon it started getting busier and a whole bunch of French guests came in. We were stretched thin with our missionaries that know French research, but again seemed to be able to help everyone. We did get to close earlier than normal, at 5pm, due to the holiday so we dashed home and changed and drove out to Frank and Dinah Robinson’s house to have dinner with them and the Cassinat’s, who have been called to the Nevada Reno Mission. I of course failed to get a picture with them, so this will have to do. It was great catching up with them. 

Thursday started with a 30 mile ride for me, and was supposed to be a walk for Mom. But just as she stepped out the front doors of the apartment building her nose started to bleed and it was pretty bad, so she went back upstairs to get it to stop. When I got home we got ready and drove to the library (temple day, so we need the car) and made it just in time for our first meeting. In that meeting we learned that the Library Services Zone is working on staffing the Memory Lane area completely and won’t need any of our missionaries anymore. Wahoo! It has been tough

fulfilling that assignment since most of our missionaries go up there and are never needed. They either sit there for an hour with nothing to do, or come back to our floor shortly after going up there and just had an interruption to their schedule. We got to go to lunch at the COB with our German research Friends at noon and as soon as we walked back in they handed me a helper slip to help a lady with Norway research. She was trying to extend her line and find the parents of one of her ancestors. So I went to work and we found a whole bunch of records, but nothing that gave us conclusive evidence as to who the parents were. So after about an hour Forrest, our new staff specialist, came over and asked if I needed some help? I said, I would love it. It was great watching him go after some other types of records that I didn’t know about, they weren’t part of our training. But all of those records kept coming up empty as well. Finally he decided to try the Norwegian church records in

Iowa, where this family had immigrated to. There he found a death record for the ancestor and it listed her parent’s names! Wow, what a journey. It took us about 3 hours to get to that point. We then left for the temple. We only had Sister Pruner with us this week as our other two sisters were busy with other things. We had an oddity at the Bountiful Temple. Our endowment session only had 5 men in it and maybe 10 or 12 women. It was so weird to have such a small group. That has not been the norm for us here in Utah. Afterwards we decided to just head home…no shopping, no dinner out. We came home and found some leftovers for dinner and called it a night.

Friday morning started with a workout and a walk for me and Mom respectively. Then it was off to the Go Forth meeting because we had learned the day before that we were getting two new sister missionaries in our zone. Wahoo. It is always nice to get added help. One of our missionaries is from South Salt Lake but is originally from the Philippines, and the other is from Bountiful. This was the last Go Forth meeting for this presidency and it was a bit emotional for them. So we brought the sisters over to the library after the meeting and gave them an orientation for our floor. We finished just in time for me to dash off for a platelets appointment. I usually give on Tuesday

nights, but somehow messed up my appointment for this week and had it set for a donation center in Lehi! I didn’t want to drive all the way there so I tried to change it to Salt Lake on Tuesday, but they didn’t have any slots open so I had to change it to Friday. As I started out it began to rain, and then it started raining very hard. Traffic on the freeway slowed way down as we couldn’t see well and there was so much water on the road I started to hydroplane at the faster speeds. Mom got caught in the rain on her walk home and got drenched. She took this picture of the street, with water running allover the place. There was also some decent sized hail coming down. She ran off and on the whole way home and got drenched. When I got home I found her wet clothes hanging in the bathroom trying to dry out. Wild weather! I made it safely to the blood center and did my platelets donation. I watched another movie based on real life. This one was called Brain on Fire. It was a pretty interesting movie about a young girl who starts to have some crazy medical issues. Every test the doctors do show there is

nothing wrong with her so they think it is all psychological and want to admit her to a psychiatric hospital, but her parents and boyfriend insist she isn’t nuts and plead for more testing or looking for another answer. I won’t tell you the outcome of the movie in case you want to watch it, but it was intriguing. I was given this fannypack for giving blood. I think I’m going to wear it everywhere, it’s so cool! Not. Just kidding. I am not a fannypack kind of guy. I did wear one twice…once in Disneyland to carry snacks, and then on our Israel trip to carry our headset electronics stuff so that we could hear our guide. 

After I got home we got a call from Sam seeing if we were home. So she came over and we played some Mah Jongg. I won the first game with just the three of us and then Mom called Elder and Sister Engstrom and they came over. I won the second game as well. I have become lucky at Mah Jongg. I then gave up my spot for Elder Engstrom. They played a few games and then he headed home and I joined for the last two games, but didn’t win this time. It was Mom and Sami who won. Sam’s first win! 

Saturday I woke up a little late and tired so I decided not to go for a ride. Mom went for a walk. We got into the library and found it pretty quiet. But that didn’t last long. Things started picking up and the lady that I had helped for 3 hours with Norway research came back, this time with Swedish needs. Any guesses who was asked to help her? Yup. Moi! So this time I was able to find some great records very quickly but, like with the Norway search, I wasn’t able to verify parents’ names. So I asked Tanner, one of our staff Nordic specialists what he thought was my next step. He agreed with what I thought it should be and he showed me a different way to search a birthdate in ArkivDigital. It was very cool and the results were perfect. We were able to find household records which revealed both parents and then grandparents, so it extended her line back two more generations and then I was able to teach her and her granddaughter how to continue using ArkivDigital to continue researching the next generation. She was reluctant to learn as she complained she is no good with computers, but her granddaughter promised she would help her. 

We did a quick lunch and when I got back I worked on zone leader stuff. Mom was working on her Italy Advanced training, which she is close to finishing, but then was asked to help a guest with Italy research. Unfortunately there weren’t a lot of options she could help him with. I was then the usher and afterwards floor leader when it started getting busy again right after 4pm. It seems like all of these guests wait until we have most of our missionaries go home and then decide they should come in for help. So we had a British Isles specialist missionary help a Russian family, and luckily our staff person was an Asian specialist and could help the Chinese family that came in. I was then assigned to help a Swedish family…a dad, mom and young daughter…with just getting them acquainted with what we do. I was able to show them how to use our site and our records and

then also ArkivDigital, but we were not finding any records late enough to find his grandfather. I finally found a record for them using congregation records in the town where his grandfather was born. He and his daughter spoke very good English and when I asked her how she learned such good English she told me YouTube. She said she watched a lot of it when she was young. She is still pretty young, maybe 11 or 12 I would guess. But pretty impressive to have such good English skills from YouTube watching. I guess it must be a thing, since I found this picture online.

Today was church. It was already getting warm on our way there and was up to 93° by the time we headed home. I know that isn’t really hot compared to Vegas, but it got me sweating both going and coming. Mom taught her class and I got to sit in since her co-teacher had a sick child. It is fun to watch them. The bishop’s daughter obviously has Come, Follow Me reading with her family because she knew the story of Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah very well, and she is only 6. Pretty impressive memory. We are now just relaxing and of course finishing this post. I think Mom is hoping to invite someone over for Mah Jongg later, we shall see, but I am going to wrap this up now. 

I hope you all had a great week. 

Love you all. BE GOOD!

Elder Dad and Sister Mom

I forgot to mention that besides the milestone of getting our lot officially divided, we passed our 17 month mark. Less than 6 months left to go. Wow!