Week Seventy-eight…Mom’s Squash Won’t Pollinate

If news about Mom’s squash plant makes the headline, you can guess what this week was like. Here’s what we learned…

We began Monday morning with a mission devotional where Sister Brown, wife of the second counselor, spoke. She talked about change and quoted from CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” That inspired me to read Mere Christianity again, so I went to Amazon and got it for my Kindle app. I have learned that I have forgotten a lot of what he wrote, and I’m glad I’m reading it again. 

After getting to the library I worked on missionary extensions and then was asked to help a guest with some Swedish research. She was trying to verify that a woman she found was the actual sister of her ancestor. Well we looked at what sources she had and to me she had enough already to verify that she was indeed her sister, but she wanted more, so we spent over an hour looking for and finding a bunch more records and then I left her to do the attaching and verification notes. I have learned that some people are very casual about their research and other are over analyzers, never really satisfied that they have it correct. Oh well. The rest of the day was fairly

relaxed until just before we closed when a French family of 3 came to our floor. I was asked to help them and their English wasn’t super good, but good enough with my few French words thrown in to help them do some searching. We found a couple of connections on Geneanet, but not a lot and so I showed them how to do more research using the archives en ligne and they said they would get more info from family members when they got home and see what they could discover. Then the dad asked if he could ask me a question. I said sure. He said “This is the Mormon Church, yes?” I explained that the name of the Church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but for many years people called us Mormons because of our belief in The Book of Mormon.  So then he said, “Is it disrespectful to call you a Mormon then?” I told him that we preferred using the name of our Church, but saying we are Mormons isn’t exactly like name calling. He then said, “I don’t want to offend, but how are you different from the Amish?” I explained that we are very different

than the Amish. I gave him a brief history of who they are and where they live and how they dress, and then gesturing around our floor to show that we don’t practice not using electricity or dressing in black or having long beards. Then I mentioned that there were very few Amish, but many members of our Church all over the world. He asked, “Are there members in France?” I told him of course and there was even a temple in Paris. They were so surprised. So I showed them on the computer a picture of the temple and also where the closest FamilySearch Center was near their home. They were dumbfounded. They left amazed and happy. Success! We then closed down the floor and headed home and since there was no FHE we decided to watch a movie. We started watching the new My Spy movie on Disney+, but it was not what we thought it was going to be, so we quit that one and watched Non-Stop instead. It was pretty good. 

Tuesday I got up and had my maiden voyage on my new mountain e-bike. It was amazing! I was able to get up every hill using just the Eco mode. No stopping. That is after I figured out how to turn the motor on. That was a bit embarrassing, having to stop on the side of the trail and look up a video of how to turn it on. I did also have my first lay down of the bike when I didn’t quite make the second 180° switchback turn. Luckily it was just a lay down of the bike and run down the hill a few steps…no falling or crashing and burning. I made it home with no other problems. After showering we went to the COB to have lunch with the Carpenters and then they and Sister Pruner came to our place to play mah jongg. We had already taught the Carpenters how to play, so I just sat out and helped Sharon. She caught on fairly quickly, but didn’t get very lucky with her draws so she couldn’t see how it was progressing towards her possibly winning and she kept

wanting to change course. She did actually do that, but it didn’t help and the Carpenters were the big winners. They each won a game and Mom was very frustrated because her hand was like Sharon’s, too many different tiles and none helping her know which direction to go. We then learned how to play  a game the Carpenters brought called Qwixx. It is a little bit like That’s Pretty Clever, where you roll dice and try to check off things on your scoresheet. Mom won that one. I was dead last! Then they all needed to

leave to go to their Elijah Choir practice.We got a short break and then John and Matthew and Vaea and his girlfriend NonaRae came over for pizza and to play mah jongg. It was fun, but Matthew got a bit frustrated when he thought he won, but then learned that his combination wasn’t quite correct for the win. Sadness. Mom was worried that we had overwhelmed him and he wouldn’t want to play anymore, but I talked to him later in the week and he still wants to play, he was just done for that day. They all then needed to leave, but not before seeing the cool sunset. We ended our night with watching an episode of Chosen. 

Wednesday was the 24th of July and the library was actually closed. So was the COB, so I couldn’t go workout. Mom went out for her usual morning walk, but she decided to walk more around our neighborhood and was able to find the street where they were staging all of the floats for the Pioneer Day parade. We decided we didn’t want to go again this year, neither of us are big parade fans, but Mom did take some pictures of some of the floats. This was our stake’s float. We actually had signed up to help put it together, but they texted us and let us know they were having the youth come do it as an activity night, so we missed out on being famous. After Mom got back we talked about what we might want to do…go on a hike, go see a movie, play mah jongg? We ended up just sitting around until the afternoon when the Barneys texted Mom to see what we were doing. When she told them, “Nothing!” They said, “Us too! Wanna play mah jongg?” So we went down to their apartment and played. I think everyone won, so that was nice. We ended the night watching some fireworks and tv. 

Thursday it was back to work. I got up and went for a ride…38 miles. There was headwind coming back so I had to hurriedly get ready. Mom wasn’t feeling well, so I went in by myself. I found a computer and started answering emails. There was a guest in the next row who was kind of looking around, so I got up and went over and asked if they needed help. His wife was on her phone getting info from her mom, so I talked to the husband. He was asking how to enter the info into FamilySearch, so I did a quick tutorial and showed him how to ask for help if they needed it and explained how FamilySearch is a collaborative program and how after entering a few names they may find some cousins who have done a ton of work. Then I headed back to my seat. About 10 minutes later I saw him get kind of animated, so I stood up and peaked at their computer and noticed a pretty full tree. He looked at me with a smile, and I said, “Did it happen?” He said “Yessiree!” They were happy and excited. The rest of the day was fairly quiet for me. We had plenty of guests, and our missionaries

were pretty busy, but none were assigned to me. I have learned that that happens now and then. We get waves of French, or Dutch or German guests and it is constantly changing. In fact I learned that after I left at 4pm to go home (no temple night for us since Mom was sick and only Sister Pruner was wanting to go) that a family from South Africa came into the library. Bummer! Raymon, one of the staff, helped them but I would have loved to have been there. The rest of the evening was spent watching rugby 7’s pool play matches for the Olympics. They were fun.

Friday Mom was feeling better, but I woke up very tired so I skipped my workout at the COB gym. We went in and first thing in our agenda was meeting with President and Sister Brown. It was our monthly stewardship interview. They say it is “our meeting”, so Mom came prepared with a bunch of updates about missionaries and wishes for some missionaries for our zone. We also explained a bit about who our remote missionaries are and who they report to…us mostly…and they were intrigued that we had so many. After our interview we came to the floor and we were there for just a short time when I was asked to help a guest with Sweden research. She was looking for the parents of Olof Gustaf Johansson Forsburg. So we went into the records and discovered some things. Apparently Forsburg was his wife’s maiden name and it seems they adopted it as their surname after they were married here in the United

States, and they changed the spelling to Forsbury. When we looked for his birth certificate we found one with the correct date, but not in the place where she thought he was from, and not a Johansson. So we had to search through a bunch of household records and then finally some moving out records before we were able to eventually verify he was the correct Olof…but his dad was Andreas Johansson, so his actual name should have been Olof Gustaf Andreasson. When these people moved to America they would make a lot of name changes to try to fit in. I can see how it could get confusing. He even dropped the Olof name and went by Gustaf or Gus in all of the census records here in the U.S. With all of that info, I was able to leave the guest to attach all of the sources and make all of the notes to make the changes in his name and birthplace and add his parents and such. BTW, when we searched for the wife we found her first thing and she was simple to add parents to. Weird how some are so easy and

others so much more difficult. I was still helping this guest so Mom made a quick dash to the COB to get lunch and when I was finished I headed home to join her. It was our T/R day so we were off at 2pm. We had a lovely lunch. Mom got me a salad with salmon and shrimp and she got the steak fajitas for herself. It was all very yummy. I then started reading and was falling asleep, so Mom said I should go in and take a nap. You usually don’t have to tell me twice for that, so off I went. I had a great nap and then came out to ask Mom what we should do the rest of the evening…pickleball, concert in the park or Olympics? She voted pickleball, and I was thinking that sounded good as well. So we got ready to go and as we were leaving the building Sister Kunz came out with her pickleball stuff. She said, “Oh, are you going to go play pickleball with the ladies?” So we quizzed her a bit and found out it really is just a group of ladies that play, so I decided to stay home and watch Olympics and Mom went to play. She came home very happy and reported that it indeed was just ladies who came. She also reported that her glutes were very sore. Lots of bending and stretching in different positions than she is used to. 

Saturday was supposed to be a ride day for me, but I slept in. Ugh. Mom went for a walk, sore bum and all. We went in at 10am and worked until close at 6pm. It was fairly busy, but we each only helped once…Mom with Italy and me with France. I did also get to do a tour for a family from Hurricane, UT. For those of you not familiar with Hurricane it is pronounced, Her i ken. They were a fun group with some active boys that I tried to keep interested in the tour by having them push elevator buttons and showing them books with their family name on it and having them see if they could read anything on the microfilm by just holding it up to the light. After they were gone I just worked on my agenda for our Monday meeting and helping to do floor leader stuff. It slowed down a bit and I was able to finish my agenda and get ready to close down on time and get everyone cleared out. We got home and ate a dinner of leftovers and then watched Olympics. I mostly watched the highlights, which showed me all of the major medals and wins for U.S. athletes. It was sad to see that the expected gold medalist for women’s time trial cycling, Chloé Dygert from the U.S., went down three times on the rainy, wet course and was only able to get bronze. Sadness for her. 

Today the Stocktons, Dave and Suzi, came to visit us before they went over to see Music and the Spoken Word. It was fun to catch up with them. They are just living the retired life…driving for Lyft, working at the temple and going for outings in Trixie, their little sports car. We look forward to some of that in the future as well, minus the sports car. Then we had church. The young elder missionaries assigned to our ward spoke. The first one has been out only a little over a month and was very timid, but gave a great talk about conversion. The other Elder has been out a bit longer and was a little more comfortable at the podium, and he spoke about his own conversion before coming out on his mission. Elders Quorum was about ministering and Mom’s class talked about faith. Then it was home to work on his post and then get some cauliflower crust pizza for linner. Yum! 

Oh, and this is Mom’s squash plant. It is growing nicely, but has no squash on it. She keeps trying to steal pollen from other plants and seeing if that will help, but so far no luck! Sadness.

Love you all.

BE GOOD!

Sister and Elder Phillips