So this week has definitely revealed whether or not I have ulcers. I was sick at the end of last week…much belching and bloated stomach…and it carried over to the beginning of this week. I was a little worried that I might have an ulcer and it was acting up, but the stresses that came during this week let me know that it isn’t an ulcer, or I would have felt that way just about all week long. Here’s what happened this week.
Monday I awoke still feeling ill, so Mom went off to the devotional on her own and on into the library to work her shift. The devotional was given by President and Sister Howes, First Counselor in the Mission
Presidency and his wife. They spoke about Section 121 of the Doctrine and Covenants and in specific what it teaches us about relationships with others. But they also mentioned verse 33 of the section, the verse that is in the picture here. I have always loved the idea that our Father in Heaven desires to “pour down knowledge from heaven” upon us. I have always loved to learn and get more knowledge. It doesn’t matter to me what it is that I’m learning, I just love to learn. I hope my brain stays capable of learning right up to the end of my life. Not having it work well enough to learn would be difficult.
On a side note, Mom and I have been asked to speak in the devotional tomorrow. Here is the link tot he zoom broadcast if you’d like to watch, but it is at 8am MDT, so that will be at 7am for most of you, just not Tori for whom it will be 9am. https://zoom.us/j/92659301163pwd=ZTRON1JzTUpYa1FKRVAwd2xDL1R1Zz09
Well I spent the day not eating and just burping and wishing I was sleeping, but for some reason I couldn’t sleep. I did spend most of the day working on creating my route for my ride across the U.S. I got it all figured out and decided the first day of riding will be May 5th with hopes of riding an average of 80 miles per day and finishing in Bellingham 53 days later on June 25th. I was excited to get that finished, it makes it even more real to me. Actually seeing places and miles and looking at the maps and figuring out places to stop and sleep and to go to church on Sundays and what sites might be “visitable” (not a word, but sounded fun) along the way was really cool. I’m looking forward to finding out if it will be harder or easier than I am imagining. Mom got home right after I started watching the Monday night football game between the Bills and the Jets. I really wasn’t into the game much and just chatted with Mom and looked up more things for my ride.
Tuesday was Pday and I slept in, but when I woke up I felt much less bloated and was burping less. Wahoo. I decided though that I wasn’t feeling up to a ride yet, so spent most of the day hanging around the apartment just relaxing. Mom had a doctor appointment to see about getting another epidural for her back. She has been having more cramping in her legs and numbness in her feet. When she got back she let me know they had done an X-ray and determined she now has two damaged discs and that they had given her an appointment near the end of the month to go in for the epidural. But later in the afternoon she got a phone call telling her that they had a cancellation for the next day, so she would be able to get it done much earlier. BTW the X-ray here is not her actual X-ray, just one that is similar.
I can’t really remember doing much else that day. Oh well.
Wednesday I was feeling better so I went into the library. We had interviews first thing. We are supposed to have interviews with all of our missionaries on a “regular” basis, so the past history was that they did them twice a year at conference time and we decided to continue that pattern. We split them up between us and all of our Assistant Zone Leaders, so we don’t have to spend all day, every day for the whole month getting them done. It is always fun to sit with each missionary or couple and get to know them a bit better. You learn a lot about someone when you can sit one on one and just chat. We have the Swedish American Genealogy group (SAG or as Savanah
calls them SwAG…she says it just sounds nicer than SAG) here this week and they fill up most of our floor. They bring their own experts with them so they don’t ask for a whole lot of help from our missionaries or specialists, but hey do need help with microfilms and copy machines and things like that, so it makes us a bit more busy. Fun times. We had our LPJ class and then took off for the COB to have a late lunch. While we were eating we received an email
saying that the devotional we were asked to speak at is not on Monday, October 28th, it on Monday October 21st. What?! we were planning on more time to prepare, especially Mom who likes to write and rewrite her talk about 50 times before she gives it. So we walked over to the NOB, where we were having a meeting at 3pm, to talk tot he “powers that be” to see if that date was correct, or if someone just got mixed up and it was actually on the 28th like we had been told twice before. Well they said that was the agreed upon date, but maybe they could ask the zone that was doing it on the 28th to switch. While we were waiting to hear Mom decided she were actually rather just do it this Monday so that she didn’t have to stress out about it for another week. So she went in and told Elder Moulton, the executive secretary for the mission presidency that we would just do it this coming Monday. I must admit that my stress level went up pretty quickly then, because I had not
yet totally outlined what I wanted to do with my talk yet. Thus, if I have an ulcer I should have started feeling ill again, but nope, I felt fine. Our meeting went well and we went back to the library for one more hour and then home. We both got working on our talks. Mine came together pretty quickly and so did Mom’s. Nice blessing, since we were both a bit concerned that we had less time to prepare. On Monday I had emailed my ride across the U.S. itinerary to Scott to see if he wants/can go with me. He called me and I explained my reasoning and route plan as well as just talking about logistics. He let me know about his situation and what might get in the way or not get in the way. We shall see if he is able to come or not. Either way I am planning to ride next May. Mom has graciously agreed to be my SAG driver. SAG doesn’t sound so bad in that connotation I don’t think. She loves me, she really loves me to be willing to spend that long driving a van out in the middle of nowhere waiting on the side of the road in case I need help. We do plan to try to do some site seeing on the way out as well as along the route here and there. Fun times ahead!
Thursday morning Mom got up early and took Sharon Pruner to the airport for a 6am flight. She is going to Canada to sign the papers for her new house. After that Thursday was a fairly normal day. We were in at 10am and helped around the library a bit. It was still packed with Swedish genealogists and I actually got to help one of them. She was trying to track down someone who immigrated to Oregon and I was able to help her find where they were from and showed her the household records and how to search through them once you have figured out what farm or village they lived in. She was happy to learn. We did our LPJ
class at 1pm and then kind of chatted with folks until it was time to leave at 3pm. Today was a R&R day where the specialists took over the library while all the missionaries got a two hour break. Since we were off at 4pm we just got to leave an hour early. So off to the Bountiful temple we went with Sister Docherty and Sister Rol. We did sealings first and ended up in a room with only us as patrons and we should have brought more name cards, but we ran out. Sister Docherty had more though and she was able to get quite a few done. After that we went to an endowment session and then to Costco. I got gas and then went in and found everyone. Sister Rol was excited because of the cheap prices in Costco. She said they were much cheaper than in he Netherlands. We then headed home and to bed for the night.
Friday morning we were in at 8:30am and again the Swedes came and packed the place. It I got to help two KLM flight attendant ladies. They started off just wanting to see what we had, but both ended up creating accounts and saving documents and finding already created family tree lines and were very excited to continue when they get home. I have learned that if a guest asks to just go see what we have if I can find an original document or two for them to look at and explain how they can keep it and attach it to a name in our FamilySearch program, they will usually want tot do that and once they have learned how easy it is they usually want to continue after they leave the library. I then went and taught the LPJ class for Sharon, since she is in Canada and when I was finished we were finished for the day, it being our T&R day. So we ran off and barely made it to the COB for lunch. After lunch I went and got my hair cut and then came home to work on my talk some more. I timed it out and it may be a bit long. I will have to figure out where to cut. I usually don’t actually write out anything, just an outline and then I adjust as I go wherever I feel
prompted, leaving out a thing here or here or sometimes adding something and totally skipping something else. We shall see. Then it was watching college football time. I watched the end of the Florida St. vs Duke game and then all of that wild BYU game. They sure didn’t look quite as good as they have looked, but that ending was amazing. Wow. The only problem was that it ended near midnight and I was really tired.
Saturday I was going to get up and go walking but slept in because of being up so late the night before. So we went in to the library at 10am and had interviews right off the bat. There were less Swedes on the floor, but we sat near the back anyway to give them computers closer to the front. I spent most of my time working in our agenda for our zone council meeting on Monday and fixing the photos of our zone members for our usher folder. We keep them there so people can get to know the different peoples’ faces in our zone. Then I went after creating a PowerPoint of all the quotes I want tot use in my talk Monday
morning. Some are from the scriptures, but many are from different prophets. I got all of that finished and it was just about time to go home. Wow, I couldn’t believe how fast the day had gone by. We got home and had dinner and then I watched the Utah vs TCU game. Sadness. Utah played very poorly. They had their freshman quarterback in there, which of course made it a little tougher, but their offensive and defensive line play was weak! They deserved to lose playing that bad. They other sad thing was that the game ended at midnight again so I was super tired by the time I got to bed.
Today we walked to church in some nice crisp Fall weather. Our new ward of two combined family wards without any older or younger single people or couples without children is pretty interesting. The chapel was quite full and there were definitely lots more children. I was asked to be the Gospel Doctrine teacher until we leave, but I will be sharing duties with Sister Cox so I probably will only teach two or three times max before we are finished. We came home and had a small lunch then I started working on this post. The Kunzs invited us for dinner at 5pm along with the Smiths from Australia. It was a nice evening, chatting and getting to know them better and then playing a new game, Take 5. We got home here bout an hour ago and now this post is finished. I’m going to go over my talk one more time and head to bed so we can be up bright and early and get over to the COB auditorium by 7:30 or so to get set up.
Love you all.
I hope your week was as alrighty as ours was.
BE GOOD!
Elder and Sister Phillips
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