On Feb. 2nd we were invited to talk to an “empty nesters” group about our mission in Africa. It was quite a ways away but we found it okay with the aid or our GPS. They had a dinner and then we presented our slide show and told them about our experience there in Africa.
Feb. 3 was our 50th wedding anniversary. We spent the day in the temple as normal, but had a neat experience there. We had invited our friends the Moyles to go out to dinner with us after the temple and Sister Moyle blabbed our anniversary all over the temple. Sister R. was the sealing secretary that day and when Rich came up to serve in sealing the sealer asked if Sister R. would like to go in and serve as proxy with Rich. We did that and it was a neat experience to kneel across the altar on that special occasion.
Feb. 8th was our turn to host the dinner thing that a missionary couple here has organized. We were to invite one couple and 2 single sister missionaries over. The sister of the couple didn’t come but we had a good visit with the others. One of the single sisters, Sister Hernandez, is from Spain. She doesn’t speak much english and understands even less. We should qualify that with the fact that we don’t speak spanish at all compared to her speaking english. But it was fun to try to communicate with her. We learned a lot about her and her family.
Feb. 9th we went on a ward outing to the Capital and Library of Congress. We rode the Mark Train for the first time.
It was another experience! No sitting until we got to Silver Spring. Then some people got off. The train goes to Union Station. There we caught the metro silver line to go to Capital South. We took the Maias with us because they had not been on the metro yet and needed help. They are from Brazil. We walked a couple of blocks to the Library of Congress which was amazing and all the mosaic and pictures and statues were beautiful,
Sister R. loved the décor, it was her kind of décor.
Then we walked through an underground tunnel to the Capital,
had lunch there
and toured the capital. It was very interesting and then we went in to the senate to listen to them discuss a bill about whether or not they should have unions for something. Then we walked several blocks in very cold weather to get to Union station rather than take the Metro back. We bought train tickets to get home and just barely caught the train in time. The train does not run after about 5:00 o’clock. We had a great day but it was very long and we were really tired.
Feb. 10th – We had made arrangements to go to tour the White House and it was approved for that day.
Had we known we were going to visit the capital on the 9th we’d have picked another day. We took Hollinghouses and Moyles with us on the Metro and had to walk 2 blocks to the White House, then stand in line for an hour. There were 400 in our tour group. When we finally got up to the checkpoint, they had our names on the list but the senator’s office had picked the list of family names we sent in November when Scott’s family was here and so they had family names, not the missionary’s names. So we had to wait for background checks and clearances, etc. We nearly froze to death because it was so cold. We waited in a tent for a while but then we got worried we wouldn’t get in time to get through and back to the temple for our shift at 1:00p.m. We made it back in time (missing the preparation meeting however, which is the same every day, so we felt ok).
Feb. 14th we were asked to give our Africa presentation to the Sons of the Utah Pioneers meeting. It was snowing when we left and we had a long way to go. When we got out there was about 6 inches of snow on our car. We stayed on the back streets as long as we could but finally had to get on the freeway to get home. The traffic was horrible and the roads very icy but thankfully people were going slow. We went about 5-7 mph all the way home, but finally made it without an accident.
Feb. 16th, President’s Day, we worked at the temple and it was very busy. It’s alway a very special day to serve on a holiday in the temple.
Feb. 17th, Tue., the temple was closed due to snow. We've had a couple of snow days that the temple has been closed. But they send e-mails asking the missionaries to come anyway for own endowments scheduled, so we went. That makes for an interesting day as we are called on to do many tasks with few people. Sister R. was the name issue director. The escort for one of the OE’s brought family files to do but they had not had initiatory work done, so then she became the Initiatory Director and had another sister help her to get that done. Then after the session began (which had about 24 people on it) she became the Veil Director. It was actually quite a fun day! It's interesting that in the Idaho Falls temple we had about 65 workers on each shift and here we're lucky to have 30-32 (some are as low a s16 and even less for the men) and it's a much bigger temple. So it takes a lot of moving quickly to cover every thing.
Richard got a call that we needed to help a couple as soon as we got home. Their car got towed. They were supposed to make the afternoon shift but she went to the church to practice and he ran an errand to the drug store. Couldn’t find parking after driving around and around so he parked by the hardware store and walked across the street. In 5 minutes his car was gone. He had to walk home and we then needed to go help them find their car. It took about an hour (only about 6 miles away) but cost them $150.00 and would have been more if they had a bigger car or if they left it over night. A great lesson for us to learn without having to have the experience! There is absolutely no parking here. So everything is a premium. Even at the doctor’s office you have to pay to park, $4 per hr. The Potomac Physicians is the only free parking we know of, but we’re sure if we parked there to do something else, we’d be towed.
Feb. 19th - Interesting day at the temple. We are assistant coordinators on Fridays. The coordinators were late because of court. And we had people cancel after printing the schedule. So changes had to be done by hand. There is quite a domino effect when changes are made. We must have a certain number of workers in each area and one change affects each area. So it is hard to keep the balance when someone doesn’t show up. That was a little unnerving. All in all we had quite the day. Richard had to conduct the preparation meeting, and I had to give the spiritual thought which was on Love one another as the Savior loves us.
The film wasn’t working in any of the rooms, they wouldn’t reset and the lights wouldn’t work. In fact the panel on the wall just wasn’t working or lit up at all. About the time the coordinators got there things began to work a little better. But thankfully the Lord worked things out and everything turned out all right.
The Slades (a missionary couple here and second marriage for both) got sealed to one another. Interesting story there that would take too much time to relate here. There were about 45 people with them in the sealing. Pres. Swinton did the sealing and did a wonderful job.
Barbara and Kenny Osborne (friends from our ward in Idaho Falls) started on our shift (we were so excited!) We didn’t have any time to visit with them, but saw them at the end of the day and they both said it was awesome! It will be a great experience for them.
Feb. 20th turned out to be another snow day at the temple. It closed down after the 1:30 session. We considered going out to eat that evening but the roads were so bad we couldn’t even get out of the parking lot. So we invited the Moyles over and ate here at our apartment.
On the 22nd we had another snow storm. That was the day of our Ward Conference. We can get to the church okay but the Stake Presidency and the Bishop have a hard time. This area is not equipped for snow. When it snows like it does in Idaho the government offices shut down. And when they shut down so does the temple and most other public facilities.
Wow, this is a rather long blog posting. Hope not too boring. We will try to have more photos next month.
