Week Seventy-two…Brittany’s Birthday Hullabaloo!

Happy Father’s Day to all of the great fathers in our family. Thanks for making that a priority in your lives. Here’s how this week went for us…

Monday started with a walk for Mom and me going to the gym. Then it was off to the regular Mission Devotional. This week our new Church History Museum Zone presented. All of the presenters were staff members, no missionaries, but we learned some fun stuff about how they acquire and preserve and present and store the different artifacts in the library. As you can see in this picture they have over 280 what used to be called docents and now called missionaries. We learned that many of them only work one day a week for four hours, but now that they are Church Service missionaries that will change, as CSM are required to work a minimum of 8 hours per week and the usual standard is 16 hours per week. After the devotional we went to the library where there wasn’t a whole lot of meetings or

anything we needed to do, but we were busy just the same. I hadn’t been there too long when I was asked to go down to the B2 floor to help a lady with France research. When I got there I learned that she was a little mentally impaired. She let me know that she had just received communication that she was not to pursue any of that French line, but she wanted pictures of the area to put in her Memories folder. So I helped her search Google for some pictures of a random area in France because she didn’t know where her ancestors were from. I taught her how to save them on the computer and then upload them to

Memories. I did somehow in the midst of my busy-ness find time to finish my final case study for France Advanced training. Wahoo. The rest of the day was pretty normal and we ended it by going home and me teaching a lesson for FHE. Mom made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting…yum!…as well as bringing some cookies she bought from the COB cafeteria for treats. Yes you heard it here, Mom bought cookies. My lesson was showing them the video (which was very poor quality) of Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s talk Our Creator’s Cosmos which he gave in 2002 at the CES Summer Symposium in Provo. I was amazed with it then and still am now and learned more as I watched it again. It was a little long, about 34 minutes, but I couldn’t see any way to really edit it in a way to do it justice, although this link (which has the full video as well as a highlights video) tries to do that. https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog-our-creators-cosmos-neal-a-maxwell-2002/ 

Tuesday Mom got up early to go walk/hike Ensign Peak with Sister Pruner and Sister Hirama. They met over by the COB and walked up to the Capital and were supposed to turn into the neighborhood that leads to the trailhead to hike up to Ensign Peak, but they missed the turn and went quite a ways past their intended route. When they realized what they had done, Sister Hirama was worried it was going to take too long, so she headed back. Then when Mom and Sister Pruner made it to the trailhead Sister Pruner decided to turn back because she wanted to view the DNA class we were doing in the library and didn’t think she would make it in time if she hiked up to the

peak. So Mom did it alone. That picture is her view from the top, the same view (without all of the buildings of course) that Brigham Young and the early saints had when they first came to this valley. The other picture is the monument that they put there to commemorate Brigham’s statement that this new home for the saints would become an ensign to the nations to gather them here. While Mom was hiking I was going into the library to set up for the DNA class, but I got a message from the person that was teaching the class that she was running late as there was major traffic on the freeway. So it ended up that we cancelled the class. Mom had come to the library by then and let me know that the Montgomerys (plural) had gotten to our apartment and left their luggage there and had gone out for a walk. Why I emphasized “plural” was because we thought it was just going to be Scott there. They just got back from a trip to Boston with Katherine and Josh and had stayed for Cameron and Kjerstin’s baby blessing and were supposed to be heading home, but Kimberly had decided to

go to Colorado to help Laura with her new house and had a standby ticket on Frontier for a 5:45am flight. Scott’s flight wasn’t until 2pm so he was going to hang out with us until then. Well Kimberly had a bit of a fiasco at the airport and missed her flight. So they were both here now. When Mom and I got back to the apartment they still weren’t back from their walk, but arrived shortly thereafter. We chatted and heard Kimberly’s story and fed them some lunch. Then I took them to the airport for Kimberly to try again with an afternoon flight and it worked this time. And of course I didn’t get a picture with them. Ugh. I then headed out on a bike ride, which wasn’t as bad (hot) as I though it was going to be. I did 28 miles and still only used one water bottle. After cooling off and showering I listened in on Mom’s phone call with Tanya Grebe, our neighbor from Hawaii that now lives in Michigan. She is the friend that taught Mom how to play Mah Jongg. We then headed off to Nancy and Jim Butler’s house for dinner. It was a wonderful evening of getting to know them better

and hearing/telling each other about what our kids were doing. And of course I didn’t get a picture. Ugh. Nancy is a school teacher, I think in Draper where they are living, and Jim is the Director of Global Sourcing for the Church. He was telling us how he ended up with this job and told us he had wanted to be a seminary teacher and did the Opt Teacher experience when he was in college. Pretty cool. After dinner we came home and crashed from our long day of activities. Mom checked her Fitbit and she had 21,241 steps. I learned from Google that that translates into about 11 miles. That’s a pretty good day of walking for Mom. She was saying that she can only remember one other day where she had more steps than that and it was when we went on a hike with the Kimberly and Scott at Pinnacles National Park. That was a fun trip. BTW I checked my watch and my step count for Tuesday was below my average per day, but I did do a bike ride, so I think that makes up for it.

Wednesday was a zone leader stuff day in the morning and then we got to go to lunch at the COB. We sat next to two of the young specialists from our floor, Kelly and Jalyse, and got to know them a little better. We learned that Kelly loves chocolate and Jalyse loves cookies. We’ll have to try to remember that for their birthdays, if we find out when their birthdays are. When we got back to the library I learned that Lauren was on the floor. She is one of the staff members that can pass off French training, so I was able to sit with her and do that. Wahoo, France training is officially completed and I passed. Not long after that I was asked to go help a guest with reading French documents. They were both death records and I thought the first one said that the young boy had passed away when he 7 years old. But as I read the second one I realized that I had mixed up jaar and jour. Jaar is year in Dutch and jour is day in French. The first little boy had passed away when he was 7 days old, not 7 years, and his sister had passed away when she was 6 days old. Sadness. Infant mortality was so high and common back in the 1800’s. I then was asked to go help a guest on the main floor with Egyptian research. Ugh, I knew there wouldn’t be much. The guy was probably in his early thirties and he was super cool. When I showed him what little we had he said he was surprised there was that much. We actually were able to find his family name mentioned quite a few times in the British records that were there. We got to go home at 6pm and we were really tired. We both headed to bed early.

Thursday was supposed to be another ride day for me, but I woke up very tired. Mom said I was breathing kind of irregularly so I probably didn’t get any restful sleep. Friday, Mom was going to be gone for Brittany’s surprise birthday party and I had the whole day off because it was our T/R day, so I figured I would just go for a longer bike ride then. I have been thinking I need to do some climbing and want to ride Emigrant Canyon up to the Little Mountain Summit. So I just read and waited for Mom to get back from her walk and we went to the library. Mom had a meeting and then we went to a lunch with Steve Valentine who is a Senior Vice President of FamilySearch and in charge of marketing and outreach as well as overseeing the operations in North America, Europe and Africa. His presentation was mostly about statistics of users of FamilySearch around the world. Wow, the numbers are on a steady climb. They have a 15 year plan to try to get where President Nelson wants them to be, which is to have at least 20% of searchable records available for every temple district that is

announced by the time they open the temple. Pretty big goal when you think about places like Mongolia, India and Dubai. After lunch we went back to our floor and helped, I got to help an older guest with his Swedish line. I showed him how to find records in the area he was searching for and then how to add those records to his sources. I then asked him is he thought he could do it himself. He said that he did think that he could do it now, but he was tired and was going to call it a day and wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to remember when he came back in the next time. I told him that it was ok, to just ask for help again and we would walk him through it. I then remembered

that I needed to take some pictures of missionaries for President Holme’s fireside talk next week. Here’s the one I got of Mom. We ended our shift at 4pm and took our sister missionaries to the temple. We went to Bountiful and did sealings and then went out to dinner at the Olive Garden restaurant. I got my typical Olive Garden meal of soup and salad and breadsticks and Mom got chicken fettuccine. It was a yummy way to end our day…but the day really wasn’t over yet! We took the sisters home and then I got ready to take

Mom to the airport for her flight to Las Vegas for the birthday weekend/hullabaloo. I dropped her off at the airport and was just getting home when she called to let me know that her flight had been cancelled. She had gone in to get her boarding pass and seat assignment and there was nobody at the counter. So she checked around and found this on the departures board. Cancelled. Way to go Frontier. She didn’t even get a text or email stating the flight had been cancelled. So she went to some of the other airlines and learned that Southwest had an early flight out in the morning that would get her there just fine, but would cost five times the amount she paid for the

Frontier flight. Ugh. I guess that is what you get for going with a budget airline. So I picked her up and we had a short night’s sleep and headed back to the airport at 5am. Mom of course made it on this flight just fine and I headed home to go back to bed. I was so tired that when I woke up I didn’t even feel like doing my bike ride so I just read and got some breakfast. In my reading of Saints Vol II  I saw a reference to a publication that the Church sent out back in 1907. It was sent out to try to help correct some of the incorrect views of the Church, of what we believe and teach and how our people live. So I decided to find that document and read it. It is pretty in depth and has a bunch of fun facts and statements about the Church. I spent the rest of the day going on a short walk to exchange a shirt I bought at the Deseret Bookstore and watching a movie called Command, the true story of a Russian submarine that sank in 2000 and the efforts that they went through to save part of the crew that survived the initial crash. Interesting movie. I’m not sure how much of the Soviet Navy’s reaction was true or just created for the movie. 

Saturday morning I got up at 6am and headed out on my bike by 6:30 to climb Emigrant Canyon to Little Mountain Summit. According to Google Maps it was about 28 miles and had 2100’ of climbing. I was able to ride it in 2 hours and 17 minutes. I averaged about 7-8 mph going up and about 28-30 mph coming down. It’s kind of sad that it took me about an hour and forty five minutes to go 14 miles uphill and only 32 minutes to get back down. Of course I didn’t get a picture at the summit like Mom did, but here is a stock photo from Google. I got home in plenty of time to shower and get ready for the day and went in at 10am. I learned that it had been a very quiet morning so far, and it kind of stayed that way most of the day. We were just moderately busy. I didn’t get asked to help anyone during the morning so I worked on my own line. I was searching for records of Rhoda Rowell and George Henry Phillips. I found a tree on My Heritage that claimed they knew Rhoda’s parents. So I went looking for any records that verified this guy’s claims. I think I found some, but need to really check them out before I add them to my tree. Pretty cool though. I then was asked to help a guest with a French document. It was a marriage application and

had some words I didn’t quite recognize. The guy really wanted the whole record translated to see if it held any clues for him to find his great grandfather. So I went and got Sister Rochon who speaks French and she helped with the words I couldn’t figure out. I finished the night being steward and floor leader since Mom was gone and we only had 6 missionaries, 1 volunteer, and 1 staff member, but we survived. It took a little creative juggling of usher assignments and such, but we were able to help everyone. I then took Sister Beeseley, Sister Docherty and Sister Pruner out to President and

Sister Holme’s house for a farewell dinner for all the full time missionaries. They have a 6000 sqft home on an acre and a third in 

Farmington. Very nice! The grounds are very well done and I could see doing some of what they have done at our place in Bellingham. Theirs is a bit more “manicured” than I  see for our place, but I love all of the lawn areas between trees and other structures that they have created. By the way I hope you all have heard by now that we finally got approval for our lot division from the City of Bellingham. We just need to take it to a notary and get our signatures on it and send it back to Burley to file with the city and we are

on our way to the next step of getting a building permit. Wahoo. Finally! It has taken so much longer than we thought it would, but hopefully things will continue to move forward without too any complications in the future. I say “without too many” because I know there will be complications, I just hope they aren’t many. 

We got home from the farewell dinner a little before 9pm and I was able to watch the new episode of Alone before I headed to bed. It was a long episode though and I was later to bed than I thought I would be. 

Today was walk to church day and not much exciting happened there. I attended and walked back home. I saw Keith’s little Fathers Day treat and thought it was interesting that our ward didn’t do anything at all. They did some chocolates for Mothers Day, but nothing today. Hmmm. Well I have just been working on this blog post and plan to make some baked beans and polish dog for dinner. 

I hope you all had a wonderful Fathers Day and Happy Birthday to Aaron on the 12th and Brittany yesterday. 

BE GOOD!

Love you all.

Dad and vicariously Mom.