Week of November 27, 2016

Monday it was very snowy and cold. Ted and I drove another missionary to the library in her car. She has trouble walking and was afraid of slipping on the ice. Ted taught today and did a good job. After lunch I drove the sister missionary home. It was snowing fairly hard so it was tricky driving. I had planned to return to the library to work, but I decided not to brave the cold and wind and snow and stayed home to work.

Young Elders and Pres. Tate at Hail and Farewell Dinner

Tuesday I was able to find the parents of one of Ted’s direct ancestors and take the line back an additional generation. I needed to have someone help read a document for me. The mother of one of the parents was listed with the family and I wanted to know who she was. She was the mother-in-law, so she was the wife’s mother. I also asked about the cause of death. Three people had died within a short time of the same cause. It turned out to be Typhus or Typhoid Fever. As I looked later at some of the death records, there were pages of people each month that died of the same thing about that time. Very sad.

Wednesday we had staff meeting in the morning and a class in the afternoon. I was given some good teaching assignments for the next month so I’m looking forward to that. We were told they would probably be calling a new couple out of the new full time missionaries in December to take the place of our Assistant Zone Leaders. I’m not looking forward to Barbers leaving—they have done a wonderful job of getting us better organized.

Young Elders Singing "Called to Serve"

In the evening I reviewed again for my lesson Thursday and realized there were some major things that I needed to change. I had to find some good examples for the demonstrations I wanted to do. I was glad I had done the extra review. It is tricky trying to keep up with the FamilySearch engineers—they are always updating the program.

Thursday I taught a class on FamilySearch Partners. We had 12 students and several told us how much they appreciated the class. That is always nice to hear.

Friday our group met at the temple for the 9 am session. It was good to be in the temple together. Afterward we all went to The Lion House Café for lunch together. We enjoyed a good visit and had a good experience doing something together outside of the mission.

Saturday we had the Swap Meet so we were out about 9:15 getting things set up. It was still very cold so we were all bundled up. We had a good group helping us. We had a good-sized group of new missionaries and there was a lot of stuff for them to take. We had a missionary couple write us a thank you note in the form of a poem about our service dong the Swap Meet. It really does help a lot of missionaries. It seemed like we had several that actually told us how much they appreciated us doing it today. That always feels good.

I worked on my lesson for next week on External Sources. I needed to find good examples to use again. We separated the sources class into two classes—Internal Sources and External Sources—so this will be the first time I teach the new course. It will make it much easier to help the missionaries understand.

Social Group at Uncle Elliott's home

In the evening we went to Uncle Elliott Richards’ home for our social group to hear him speak. He did a wonderful job. He was concerned about his voice holding out, but it lasted until he was finished. He shared his experience teaching the Satos in Japan, his experience being prompted to pray for Dad, his meeting and work with Boyd K. Packer while in Japan. They studied and prayed together while they were in the same area for several weeks. He also shared some experiences as mission president in the Philippines and spoke of the almost continuous flow of direction of the Spirit in the operation of the mission. At home as I lay in bed I reflected on the thoughts Uncle Elliott shared and I realized I have a ways to go to be what I want to be.