Sunday was just a typical day. We attended the Tabernacle
Choir broadcast. The Relief Society lesson gave me much to ponder. She took
excerpts from the Elder Maxwell talk that I used for my lesson a couple of
weeks ago on being consecrated. Her theme was “Because of Jesus Christ we can .
. .” In the evening we went to tour the Conference Center with my cousin who
hosts there. Since we’d been there before, she focused on the art work. They
have some amazing pieces.
Monday we had a very nice devotional for Easter. I worked on
my Swedish Research class the rest of the morning and had the opportunity to
help one of the new missionaries so that was a good change. I did some personal
research in the afternoon.
Tuesday we started our Capstone class and it went well. We
had a little more time so it wasn’t as rushed as last week. In the evening we
went to dinner and enjoyed it. When it was time to go home we discovered it was
raining fairly hard and Ted’s umbrella couldn’t be found. The coat rack area
had been torn apart for remodeling and we couldn’t find where it had been put.
Wednesday we had a staff meeting. I will miss this group of
missionaries and the opportunity to be with them and serve here. I taught
Descendancy Research in the afternoon Capstone class. I used the landscape
version of the tree to do the descendancy part and it seemed to go much more
smoothly. I had a few reservations about it since all the documentation shows
the Descendancy View. It was much easier for us when we were helping others and
it seemed to be easier for the class members to use. I was impressed with the
work many of the missionaries were able to do. This is a good group.
Thursday a missionary came to get help scanning and editing some
documents. It was fun. She had a relative that gave her a bunch of records and
told her she was counting on her and her daughters to create the story of their
ancestors. She had one ancestor that was a Quaker at the time of the Civil War.
All his neighbors, who were also Quakers, told him he needed to get a gun to
defend their property. He was on his way to buy a gun when he heard a voice
tell him if he was to use carnal methods, he would have to rely on that for his
protection. He took his family and moved away rather than buy a gun. When the
war was over he returned to find nothing had harmed his property. Quite an
amazing story.
I had planned to help a new trainer go over a lesson she’ll
be teaching next week, but she got there late and I finished late with the
missionary I was helping. We were able to spend about half an hour and I think
we were able to cover everything. We went to the COB cafeteria for lunch one
more time before going home. We visited with several missionaries we knew and
almost didn’t get back in time for class.
The preparation of lesson plans went well. We had a few who
didn’t quite understand, but overall it worked really well. At the end I shared
my testimony, a little tearfully because this was my last to the general
missionary population. I am so grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to be a
part of this work and to have the experiences I’ve had. It’s been a good
experience over all.
Friday the husband of the lady I helped yesterday came over
to scan and edit some documents so I was able to help him. Our Capstone class
went well except that the missionary that was substituting in the recording
audio memories class barely mentioned the audio app. At the end our leader suggested
everyone try recording the stories they’d just written to use the app so they
had that experience. In the evening I went to the library to get some help and got
involved doing some research I haven’t been able to do for the last couple of
weeks. In the evening I did a little packing.
Saturday I felt some concerns about the upcoming move. It
seems like more stuff keeps surfacing the longer we work at getting ready. The
piles of stuff look fairly overwhelming to me and I’m hoping we can actually
get it all in the car. When it is time to pack the car it will be interesting
to see what I can get in and what needs to be left behind.
I spent quite a bit of time packing my clothes so I am
officially living out of a suitcase. I packed the food for the trip so it is
out of the cupboards. I did some cleaning and we are almost ready to go. We
went to lunch with friends and enjoyed a good visit. While we’ve been here it has
been good to re-connect with friends from high school and college. I went over
in the evening to visit a friend and ended up doing some cleaning and helping
her out. It looks to me like there is still much to do.
