We survived last week and made it through Monday morning’s devotional, so the rest of the week was smooth sailing. Here is what we learned…
Monday morning of course started with the devotional. We both made it through just fine, although I needed to shorten mine a bit to fit within the allotted time. Here is a link if you want to watch it…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qi16FvYV2E6MOVBanQNZI8qzRoMHem4a/view?usp=drivesdkMom was great as usual and we have had many people congratulate us on our talks and tell us we had wonderful messages. Whew. After the devotional we
went into the library and worked doing interviews and helping and prepping upcoming zone events. I can’t remember a whole lot more from that day and I didn’t take any notes to remind me, in fact I didn’t do any notes all week long, but I do remember one thing I learned. Just before the devotional started I needed to use the restroom so I went out in the lobby of the COB auditorium and found the bathroom. But when I walked in there were no urinals and there was a tampon dispenser. So I quickly went back outside since I had obviously gone in the wrong bathroom. But when I looked at the sign this is what I saw. It said “Men”. But when I looked closer I noticed that it had been attached over the original sign which must say “Women”. It looks like they were smart and made two women’s bathrooms (I found the actual men’s bathroom down the hall) in this building and only the one men’s, but during conference time when they have a lot of priesthood brethren attending meetings there, they turn this one into a men’s bathroom to accommodate the increase of men. Smart logistics. Monday
night we had our FHE and the McKinnons were in charge. Elder McKinnon had a pretty long presentation about the physical evidences of the Book of Mormon. I remember as a boy being at Aunt Ramona and Uncle Harley’s house and seeing a book they had about the physical evidences of the Book of Mormon…records written on plates in other countries, places in Central America that fit the description of places mentioned in the Book of Mormon, etc…but I remember even then to kind of feel like that wasn’t important to me. I had already received a witness from my Heavenly Father that this book was from Him and that has been all that I need.
Tuesday morning I went for a bike ride. I had to be back to get to lunch with the Carpenters at the COB so it was just a 28 mile ride. We then went to lunch and came back to our apartment to play mahjong. We had fun playing and chatting and learning a bit more about our friends, the Carpenters. Mom won one of the games before we even got finished with the second wall. She of course had two jokers to help, which she claims she doesn’t get, but I have observed many wins by her with multiple jokers. I think we played five games and Mom and Rob won twice and I won once. My win was with just one joker. I have learned that it is very difficult to win without any jokers. Anyway, we had a fun time playing and then off they went. We then went to do some errands, drop off an Amazon return, buy some Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups, and then stopping to get some fries at Tony Burgers. The last time we got fries there they were not as good as the first couple of times, but
this time they were back to being wonderful and there were plenty of them for us to share. Some of them were pretty long as well. They must use those big Idaho potatoes that you can get here in Costco. Potatoes almost a foot long. Huge potatoes. You can see by the size of the fry in Mom’s hand that there were some long ones. They also must have done their signature fries production process that they post on the wall…something like cut, wash, dry fry, dry, fry again, eat. I think the double frying is what makes them taste so good. Yum! Anyway we finished our fries and came home to relax and watch tv and do mostly nothing the rest of the day.
Wednesday I got up early to go to the gym and got there when I realized that we had two of our sister missionaries whose last day was that day…Sister Docherty (second from the right in this picture) and Sister Patten…and we needed to be there at the morning prayer meeting to say goodbye and present them with their certificate from our zone and a copy of the
Elijah Moments book that has been compiled over the years. So I literally ran home, after calling Mom, who was on her way to Walmart, and was able
to get ready and down to the library just in time. The sisters both shared some wonderful remarks and testimonies. They will be missed. It was
Missionary Appreciation Day so Mom and I went and picked up a little gift from the library, these tote bags, and a stress ball and then we did another orientation for new missionaries starting their missions this week. Mom wasn’t feeling great after that, so she went home. Part of the appreciation day was also having a lunch for us. We had our LPJ class during lunch so the Stapps said that they would go pick up a lunch for each of us and bring it up to the room where we meet. That was nice. Class went well but, I learned that I do better with Mom there than without. When I got back to our floor I was told that Sister Rol had fallen upstairs on the main floor. So I went up and found here eating her lunch. She said she was fine, she had been trying to hurry to get to the lunch before they closed and stumbled and fell on her knees. Her right cheek also had a bit of redness on it so I asked if she had hit her face and she said no, she had stopped that
by putting her hands out in front of her. Well at least she seemed ok and in good spirits so I went back down to the floor and filled out an incident report on her fall. I was asked to help a couple of guests and those were good experiences and then I started working on another line on my Segerstedt side. I have quite a few gaps on that side and would like to get as many as I can filled in before printing my final fan chart before leaving the mission. Then Nancy Black, one of our assistant zone leaders came over to me to let me know that Celine (Sister Rol) had told her that she didn’t think she could do her usher assignment because she was feeling a little dizzy. So I went over to her to see if she was ok and asked if she would like me to take her to get looked at by a doctor. She was a nurse in her former life and let me know she was pretty sure she was ok, but thanks. Feisty old lady! She left a bit early to go practice with the
Elijah Choir. I stayed until 6pm and came home to find Mom feeling a bit better, which was good.
Thursday morning early we got a text from Sister Rol that she wasn’t feeling great and would like a blessing. So I called Curtis Stapp, the Stapps live in the same Brigham Apartments where she is, and asked if he would be willing to meet me to give her a blessing? He agreed and Mom and I got ready real quick and went over there to do that. We asked her again if she would like to see a doctor, but she declined and said she would just rest for the day in her apartment and make sure she got up twice an hour to move around. I texted her later in the day and she said she was feeling better. Wahoo. We then went into the library a little early to make sure everything was set for Kimball Carter’s presentation. He is one of our missionaries and is an accredited genealogist and had written a case study for the
National Genealogical Society and offered to present it for our missionaries in the library. So I went to make sure he was set up in the main floor classroom, but we couldn’t figure out how to have him present there as well as get it online for
those that wanted to watch from home. So we ended up running downstairs to our B1 classroom and setting him up there. We worked on some zone leader stuff and filled in here and there for different assignments, but Mom again started getting a headache so she headed home. Before she left she canceled our temple trip so I didn’t need to leave right at 4pm. I stuck around for about 45 minutes to work on my Segerstedt line some more. This time it was Sven Eriksson and Marget Persdotter from Askersby that I was working on. This is a photo of a farmer in Askersby. Could be a relative. Who knows? It is coming along…slowly, but coming along.
Friday morning I finally got to go to the gym. As I was walking to the COB I checked out the latest work on the temple…they have removed some of the scaffolding around the side towers…and I noticed that there were some lights on inside the temple. Those windows that are a bit greenish blue in appearance are that way because of the light from inside. First time I have seen that. They must be working on the inside now as well as the outside. Wahoo. Progress. After my workout we went into the library for prayer meeting because the Brown’s had emailed us the night before saying that they had spoken with the Stapps about being our replacements as zone leaders
and were going to make the announcement in prayer meeting Friday morning. So we are officially being replaced. Not right away. We are going to work with the Stapps to orient them and do a little training and then turn it over to them sometime in the next few weeks. So that means we will get to finish our mission here just being missionaries on the floor and not having all the other meetings and assignments and paperwork that we have had the past 10 months. Wahoo! They will be great replacements I am sure. It was our T/R day and we helped some people and chatted with the Stapps a bit, then headed over to the COB for lunch before they closed. I had thought about going for an afternoon mountain bike ride, but when I checked online it said they are still working on the trails and most of the trailheads were closed. So instead I took a nap. A NAP! Wahoo. I haven’t done
that for awhile. It was very nice. We then went to the 25th Anniversary Concert for the
Orchestra at Temple Square. Nancy Watson, who was with us in the MTC with her husband Doug, contacted Mom to let her know she had two extra tickets and wanted to know if we wanted to come. We took her up on it, especially when we heard that everyone who attended that night would be given a ticket to the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. So we walked down and met her and her daughter outside and asked where they
wanted to sit. She said she liked sitting up in the balcony towards the back because the sound bounced off the walls back there. Wow, was she right! It was like the music was coming directly form the wall just above us. Pretty cool. The concert was great. They did three numbers…
Ruslan and Lyudmila by Glinka,
Symphony No. 9 by Dvořák and a third number that I did a video of part of that you’ll have to watch and then see if you can guess what it is from. I’ll have the answer at the end of this post. Both of the first ones are pretty popular and I bet you have heard them before. It was a very good concert. Pretty amazing to me that they can play at such a high level being just volunteers and only practicing together once a week. As we left they handed each of us a voucher that we could use to get our Tabernacle Choir Christmas ticket. Wahoo. We really liked the concert last year and were hoping to see it again this year, although they are doing it later this year, December 19th, 20th and 21st, and we thought we might miss it, but we are planning to go on the 19th, the night before we leave.
Saturday morning we went into the library and got to work. I got to help a couple from the Netherlands which was fun, even though we couldn’t find any records for them. The girl was the one interested in learning and searching, and I helped her set up an account and showed her all the resources for searching. I have learned that it is very satisfying teaching someone how to use our site and other sites and hopefully they will remember enough to be able to continue on their own when they return home. I also worked more on my Segerstedt line, this time with a Nils Finström. I learned that he lived in the Ådala Parish which is out on these islands northeast of Stockholm. Pretty cool place to live. I still need to find his parents. I also watched, on and off, BYU beat UCF. Pretty cool for them, 8-0 this season and now ranked as No. 9. We worked until about 5:15 and then
left to attend the Utah Symphony which we had received free tickets to from Maria Eppich. Their performance was entitled
An American in Paris, but that was only one of five different numbers that they did. The last one was Symphonic Dances from
West Side Story. It was amazing. I learned that Leonard Bernstein was a genius. Listening to the intricacies of his music and the subtle little things he added here and there was amazing. It actually made me a bit emotional. I have loved music all my life, but I can only remember a handful of times that it has stirred deep emotions in me, and most of those times have been hymns or other religious numbers, but this
was…amazing! We left the theatre talking about how wonderful that concert was. It was by far the best one we have attended here. We stopped to take a picture outside of Abravanel Concert Hall and then walked home in the chilly evening air. For some weird reason I suddenly got the chills and my teeth started chattering. Really weird. It was chilly, but not that cold. When I got home I got in my pajamas and grabbed Mom’s
Minky Couture blanket to warm up, and sat and watched a couple more college football games before heading to bed.
Today we walked up to church. Our ward is different now with more families with young children. Much noisier, but fun to see so many kids. Mom taught primary. Her lesson was about the name of the Church. After they discussed that, the kids got to build their own churches with blocks. After church Sister Moulton, wife of Elder Moulton the mission Executive Secretary, came up to me and thanked me for the devotional talk. She asked me if I had ever written up my story that I used. I told her that I hadn’t and she encouraged me to write it up and send it into the
Liahona magazine. We shall see.
Well the blog post is now finished for another week. I hope yours was as good as ours was.
Love you all.
BE GOOD!
Sister and Elder Phillips
If you recognized, but couldn’t figure out what the music was from that the Orchestra on Temple Square was playing, it was John Williams’s Flying Theme from E.T. …“Phone home!”
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