Week Seventy-six…Where Went the Ticks?

Wow, Sunday again?! We can’t believe how fast the “ticks” of the clock seem to be ticking off. We only have about 5 months left of our mission, which seems unbelievable. Only 22 more of these blog posts. Well here goes post number 76…

This week started with a devotional in the morning. It was a fairly typical devotional with some good stories shared by the people who presented. Then off to the library where it seemed we became busy pretty quickly. Mom was handed a little request for missionary helpers for three upcoming VIP groups, one a Marine Corps recruiting team, one a Spanish dance troupe, and a group organized by Mitt Romney. They are asking us to send 5 or so missionaries to help the group members start accounts and learn about how to use FamilySearch. Of course they would like us to send as many Spanish speakers as we

can when the Spanish dance group comes, so we are having some missionaries come in tomorrow, on a day they normally don’t come in, to help with them. Mom is good at organizing these groups. Most of the rest of the day was going from meeting to guests to meeting to guests. One guest had an interesting problem he was working on. He had a letter from a family member which stated that an older family member had been working for a priest and the priest’s sailor son got her pregnant and then took off. His guest was trying to see if we could find any evidence in the records that this accusation was correct. So we

looked through quite a few different records and tracked down the girl and her illegitimate son, and who they were living with. Then she died and the boy was taken in by a brother-in-law and eventually went to work for a neighboring farm owner and took that farm owner’s name as his surname. We then tried to track the priest’s son, but couldn’t find much on him, so I called in Forrest to see if he had more ideas. He didn’t really and I needed to go to a meeting, so we gave the guest a list of records to look up to see if he could find more information and off I went. We closed the library at 6pm and went home to participate in our apartment’s Family Home Evening. The Smiths from Australia were in charge. They started with a game, the Animal Game, where you make the sign of your animal and then the sign of someone else’s and try to get people out and move up

to the number one seat. The main difference was that they used all Australian animals for their game. I started out as a spider and Mom as a snake, not unique to Australia but they do have some different spiders and snakes there. The game was fun, but I got out when I made the sign of two different animals at once because I was trying to decide in my head which one I wanted to do. Ughh. They had fudge bars for treat and the night was over, and we went back to our apartment and relaxed before bedtime. 

Tuesday is Pday. Wahoo. I went for a ride and Mom for a walk and then we went to the COB cafeteria for lunch. Prime rib day! We decided to just split the prime rib and mixed veggies, but added some mountain blackberry fro-yo for dessert. It was all VERY tasty. We then decided we needed a Costco run for some essentials. This was the result of that run. Only the essentials…polish dogs, milk, chocolate milk and chocolate chips. It would also have included bread flour, but we got that last week. So then we hung around and watched tv and rested until the Henkels came for dinner. They have been working as KOA campground hosts up in Yellowstone National Park and she needed to come into Salt Lake City for some medical checkups. They are doing well and having fun up there. Mom then texted the Ngs to see if they wanted to come for dessert, so they did and we chatted into the late evening. After they left I did a quick Tour de France update…I’ve been watching the extended highlights videos on YouTube instead of the whole stage video…so I was up for another half hour or so. Tadej is still in yellow. Wahoo!

Wednesday I hit the gym and then we had to go in early because we had a class that was being given by the head of the Collections Department about the new Library Catalog. I am glad we had her come. She explained a lot about why we even have this second catalog and what we can or cannot expect to find in there. She was willing to answer questions and one of our missionaries had a ton of them. Unfortunately for her she was asked to go help a guest and didn’t get to ask all of her questions. I talked to her later and she was very upset that she didn’t get to stay. We did record the whole thing, so hopefully she can watch the rest and get a few more questions answered. We then did our bi-weekly presentation for new missionaries and got back to our floor, where we found it busy again, although this time we weren’t asked to help anyone. There were plenty of other missionaries to handle the requests. After lunch we had our Mission Leaders Council with the new mission presidency. President Craven wants shorter meetings, yay , and 

also focused on some different things, although one of them was very cryptic. He was teaching a topic then said, “Now I want to switch from preaching to meddling.” Then he just said that he wanted us to think about our dress. And that was it! We still are wondering if he is talking about our FamilySearch attire, or what we are wearing in public when we are not “on the job”, or if he means some of what the other zones are wearing to their assignments? It was very weird. After the meeting we were able to get home and get some dinner and then head off to The Nutty Professor at the Hale Center Theater. It was a musical based on the original 1963 movie with Jerry Lewis, who wrote the screenplay and used Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as his inspiration. The guy playing Professor Kelp was very good, so much so that when he first appeared as Buddy Love I wasn’t sure it was the same actor. The songs were fun and the acting was great and there was a group of I believe they were kids from a BYU Drama Summer Program in the audience who had one of their teachers in the supporting cast and kept screaming for him. The kid was actually a

Pretty good dancer and I was kind of prone to watch him dance more than some of the others. Maybe he was just super energized by all of his supporters screaming for him. Anyway it was a fun musical and we got home late and headed right to bed. 

Thursday I didn’t get up in time to get out of the door for a ride. Sadness. Mom did get some bread made. So we just got ready and went to the library to start our day, which was a meeting. That meeting ended and Mom headed off to another meeting and I went down to our floor. For the first time this week it wasn’t super busy. We decided we had plenty of leftovers, so instead of going to the COB for lunch we just ran home and ate some of those. Then back to the library where I went for a shift doing film removal. When my shift was over I asked the staff worker if she had everyone for the next shift. She said they all had not shown up yet, and one of them was supposed

to be Mom. I knew that the movements of this task would probably mess with her back, so I just stayed and did her shift as well. When I got back to the floor I learned that she had passed off Italy Advanced. Wahoo! I was glad I stayed and did the film removal. Then it was off to the temple, sans any of our sister missionaries…they were all busy with different things. So we went to the Bountiful Temple and did initiatories and then stayed for an endowment session as well. We stopped at the DIY car wash and washed our dirty car. We have some construction…a pickleball court and outdoor patio area…going on near where we park, so there is constant dirt and dust in the air. I have learned though that I can do a pretty good car wash for less than $6 at the DYI car wash and I usually stay very dry and don’t even break a sweat. We got home and I had some corn on the cob and Maui sweet onion potato chips for dinner, and maybe a small cup of ice cream. Yum. I’ve been trying to eat better late at night and it is paying off. Down 10 pounds. Only about 20 more to go.

Friday was second Pday, kind of like second breakfast. We get a half day of what they call T/R day (temple and research) which we have on Fridays. But once a month we get a full T/R day which was Friday, so second Pday. Since I missed my ride on Thursday morning I went out Friday morning. I was able to get an easy 34 miles in and contemplated going 40, but didn’t. Mom went walking and had as she says “a very nice walk”. We then chatted about what we wanted to do the rest of the day…a hike, a movie, shopping for fabric, etc…and ended up doing none of those things. Mom did pull out her fabric to see what she had for upcoming baby quilts, but I just read a bit and then watched the new episode of Alone and the TdF highlight video and then I took a nap. Yep, a nap! Sometimes my afternoon naps are rather long, but this one was only about an hour. I know, some of you may be thinking that that is a long nap, but not for me. After the nap was a bit of supper and then we invited the Engstroms over for mah jongg. Scott won once, Mom once and me twice. My luck is coming back! We were

getting ready to head to bed when I reminded Mom that we were going out to breakfast with our S&I colleagues…the Hansens, Hallstroms, and Shields…the next morning. She had talked about making cinnamon rolls for them if they were coming to our apartment for the breakfast, but we had decided to go out to a restaurant so she wasn’t going to make them. But as we were getting ready for bed she decided she wanted to make them after all, so she stayed up making them and I watched some episodes of my other new tv show that I have been watching, Race to Survive:New Zealand, and kept her company. It was a late night to bed. 

Saturday morning we got up and went to meet our friends at Penny Ann’s Cafe for breakfast. It was so fun to see all of them. The Hansens are serving in the Missionary Department, the Shields are finishing their assignment at the MTC and putting in mission papers soon, and the Hallstroms are living in Draper and Kevin is a new teacher at Ensign College. We all caught up on the

latest happenings in our lives and shared some stories and memories. What great friends. Did I get a picture of us…no! Fail! We had to jet out of there at 9:45 to get to our assignment in the library, where we found it to be busy and it stayed that way all day. I was asked to help a couple from Belgium who were French speaking. Their daughter could speak some English, but the language barrier made it difficult. But I have learned to point and slowly explain things about FamilySearch and it usually makes it through. We were able to set up an account and then find some of the father’s ancestors on his father’s side and then also the ancestors of his wife on both her sides. I

showed them how to use our website and records and also the archives en ligne for the French Departments and they were very excited to learn that they could do this from home. I even showed them where in Lyon they could go to find a FamilySearch center. They were très heureux. I was then asked to help a Chinese lady, whose father immigrated to Canada as a young man and she grew up there, but moved to San Francisco in her early twenties and met a man there and married him and is now a US citizen. She can speak Chinese, but not read Chinese, so I showed her how to use our sight and also how to get help from the community page as well as our specialists. Then it was more French guests. There were four work colleagues who came in and I bounced around between all of them showing them how to search and set up accounts and add names and find sources and we were able to find something for all of them. One lady in particular was 

Very good at navigating the different sites and records, so I showed her how to get into the archives en ligne and she found her grandmother’s birth record. She was very excited. While I was helping these folks, Mom was being a steward. I think she did it for about 5 of the hours that we were there, and she was busy most of the time. We had well over 100 guests that we served. The last guests I helped were also from France. A father and a young son, maybe 10 years old. The father could speak pretty good English and asked excellent questions and I was able to teach him a lot. We were specifically looking for one side 

of his family and we found part of them in a couple of different locations, but finding documents to verify dates was difficult. We worked right up until the computers turned off and I sent him home with our little cheat sheet of sites and ways to search so that he could continue at home. We got home and went right over to the Ng’s for dinner. Tim made some awesome Chinese food for us. Actually Joyce made the curry chicken and potatoes, but Tim made everything else. Yummm! After dinner we chatted and they showed us pictures of their house in The Netherlands as well as a house Tim bought in China that he is slowly completing. It is a house not far from his father’s house that a rich man was building, but died before it was completed and none of his family wanted to do anything with it. Tim kept passing it whenever he went to visit his father and finally one day inquired about it and then bought it for about $16,000. Cool project.  We showed them some pictures as well of our projects and then came home to watch TdF and Race to Survive and head to bed. 

Today we got up and walked to church. It was already almost 85° at 10am, but we survived the walk up the hill. Church went well and we came home and got some lunch…I skipped breakfast because I ate so much dinner I wasn’t hungry yet. I then started the blog post and we interrupted that to go to the One Heart Gathering, where some of our MTC mates spoke as they are heading home in the next few weeks. Wow, the time is ticking by so quickly! It won’t be long before we’ll be up there doing that. Our good friends the Haymonds and the Atkins both spoke. They will be missed. Now we’re playing mah jongg with the Barneys, we’ll see if I am lucky again.

Love you all.

BE GOOD!

Dad and Mom

PS we all won one game.