Sunday, September 11, 2016

Dad just catchin up

Hi all,

I haven't written for awhile (Bad Dad!! 😫) so thought I'd catch up a little.
I had an odd but actually fun experience on Friday.  Late in the afternoon I got a call at work from two of my Hermana (Hermana = "Sister" in Spanish) missionaries.  They were in rush hour traffic at a particularly busy intersection in town and their car stalled!  Well, I got a tow truck called for them and a garage ready to receive them once we got the car towed to them.  I headed to them myself in our Mission pickup also.  I called the police to see if an Officer could go there and help block traffic but they asked me if this was really an emergency because they only had one officer "available" and he was headed to a call where someone had a gun!

So I got there and they had put on their flashers but were just sitting there like I told them to.  I pulled up behind them in my pickup, parked, and put on my flashers.  At least now if someone crashed us from behind, it would just be the pickup and not them!  But then I put on my old MP personna and got out and directed traffic around us!  I was standing there in traffic and directed two very busy lanes of traffic to go around us for probably 20 minutes or so!  It was so much fun!  I had two people flip me off but I also had several people compliment me, laugh for (at?) me, I had brief (like 20-second) conversations with a half dozen drivers, one turned up his radio music just for me, and three drivers that wanted to quickly change lanes when I was directing them to stop and I had to move right in front of them to stop them!
I was hoping that I was looking odd but sort of official; a big guy in a dark suit with white shirt and tie and some kind of "badge" (missionary name tag) on. 

Finally an Officer arrived and he helped stop some traffic so that we could push the car off the road (across three lanes of on-coming traffic), to a parking lot where it was much safer.   Anyway, it turned out fine and we go the car to a garage without me or the Hermanas being hurt!

I ALMOST got to swim with dolphins!  We were invited to a member's beach house for a BBQ/swimming a week ago on Saturday.  While there, I was out swimming kind of with the kids. They played in shallow water.  It's still a curious thing to me that Californian's just typically do not actually go swimming much.  They eat and socialize on the beach, play with their little kids with sand castles, or boogie board or surf, but don't go out swimming!!  But at one point I decided to just swim out into deep water just for fun.  Later, they told me from on shore that they had been watching me and they saw that a pod of dolphins had appeared about a hundred yards or so out in deeper water and they thought that I had seen them and was swimming out to be with them.  But I had not seen them; Dang, I would have swam out there if I had known they were there.

Yesterday, Sister Iverson and I went on a temple double date withe Floyd's (the other senior couple in the Mission Office with us).  Just by chance, we happened to get into a session that was Spanish-speaking!  And it was a huge session - probably 200 people!  We, along with several other English-speaking people, were given headphones.  One channel in the headphones was the session in English but there were 8 channels and each channel carried a different language (German, French, Portuguese, plus others). One effect on me was that I needed to really concentrate more than I have before and so this session was one of the best I have attended.  Partly, I've come to learn or realize that when Adam and Eve were married in the Garden, that at that time, there was no time limit to their lives; they were still immortal.   So they were married for "all eternity"; now, of course, we are mortal and so we are married "for time (and for all eternity.)".  

Later we were able to talk for about 10 minutes with a Temple Presidency Counselor and he answered a couple questions for us.  

I have had experiences in my life when I came way from them with this intense feeling like I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to never sin again.  It's intense and I love it.  But I've had more such experiences while serving on this mission than any other span of time in my life.  Now my task is to develop that intensity of righteous desire to be with me all the time!  

We had kind of a downer night last Thursday that I'm trying to make more positive for me.  we held out first Stake Self-Reliance training meeting.  We felt we "advertised" it enough and were trying to think of how many handouts to make, chairs to set up, etc.  Should it be 30 or 40 or whatever??  But we were ready and 7:00 came and went and no one wa there! ?Finally at 7:15 one person showed up.  We did teach him what we intended (I had a "Me in 30 Seconds" job search tool to teach) but only one person from a total of 8 wards showed up1  😒 Mom observed that maybe that's a sign that no one in the stake needs a job!!!  Good news!!  

Had a talk with our Stake Presidency Counselor today.  I think we just have not laid a good enough "foundation" for Stake Self Reliance Specialists or bishops of what we're trying to offer and who should do what.  We're going to order more supplies, talk more with the bishops - we are now on the agenda for next Sunday evening at a Stake Bishopric training meeting, to give a "Us in 300 Seconds" lesson to them all!   This is the typical way new start-up ventures go.  We agreed that the doctrine of true self-reliance needs to be taught more to our members.  

Well, gotta go.

Love you all. The gospel is true and Heavenly Father loves each of us. Mom spent 20 minutes on the phone last night with one of our investigators - Lindsay! We also got a really sweet text from Jake Miller's mother who said that our efforts with her son to prepare him for death in the Plan of Salvation has positively affected not only Jake (she is sure) but many many others, especially her.  We have not received a reply from Devin's mother yet; I pray for her to soften her heart a bit to let us socialize with her son.

Dad/G-pa

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