Busy again

Somehow we missed last week … I am not really surprised.  While the temple has not been super busy, we have.  Our Sundays are gone.  Attending church in Mt. Pleasant requires a lot more travel time and we are becoming more involved in the branch when we go.  I have been asked to translate for the Hispanic members in sacrament meeting.  That is indeed a challenge since my vocabulary is still pretty much a missionary vocabulary and does not branch heavily into other topics.  Becky has been asked to teach an upcoming YW lesson, and we have been asked to think about helping the members better understand how to live within their means.

Last night we went to a group FHE at the arrival center.  There are several missionary couples that we never get to see since the five shifts we work and the five they work have nothing in common.  We don’t even get to go to church together anymore so these monthly FHEs that we go to are essential to our getting to know them.  Last night was a Barbeque dinner.  But about the same time that we arrived, so did the storm.  It started all of a sudden and amid bright streaks of lightning, the thunder roared and cracked in our ears.  It sent us all scurrying into the building to keep from getting drenched.  We were crowded inside and several of us were soaked.  Other activities were forgotten and we tried to use lulls in the storm to scurry home.  The “lull” we chose was not much of a lull as we arrived home quite drenched and with a great memory of our “rainy days in May” that we still talk about from last year.

Tomorrow, we are shift coordinators again.  This time we were asked to substitute for the couple that currently have that position.  When substituting, we actually have more to do, since we have to start from scratch to prepare the line assignment sheets that are to be used.  I think this is the only assignment in the temple that requires “homework”.  Therefore, all of this last week we have been busy preparing for tomorrow: figuring out which ordinance workers are going to be there, and the history of where they have been so that we don’t ask the same ones to officiate that did last week, etc.  Lots of fun.

Another “extra” chore that was given to me was to provide the Nauvoo Pageant president with photos of every temple missionary couple along with their names so he could provide us with a personalized invitation in the form of a webpage to which we could direct our friends, relatives and other contacts to inform all of the upcoming pageant.  When his executive secretary completes the personalized webpages, he sends the link for each couple back to me and I then send an email to each missionary couple informing them of their link and instructions on how to use it.  This requires a lot of individualized computer work.  So far I have completed the work for 47 of the 60 couples and hope to finish the rest tonight, assuming the webpages for them will be completed by then.

On our last p-day, we went with others sharing the same p-day to Pella, Iowa, a Dutch town that puts on a tulip festival every year.  We missed the festival held the previous weekend, but the tulips were still there.  We also got to tour a Dutch windmill that is used to grind wheat into flour.  We used an elevator to get up to the fourth floor which was where the platform was located above which the windmills blades hung down to.  In essence, this windmill is huge, made with woods from dozens of different type trees found all over the world, each with its specific characteristics.  Obviously I was impressed.  We also toured several museums and reconstructed homes all depicting Holland and Dutch life.  We even saw a miniature model town showing how the Dutch had reclaimed their land from the sea and where canals were used to get from place to place.  Our day in Pella was enjoyable and the travel time to and from was fun as well as we were with friends we don’t otherwise get to see very often anymore.