Week of April 16, 20017

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.