Sep 23

September 23, 2006

First welfare training was scheduled from 8-10 this morning. The first hour was a general intro by Elder and Sister White. Second hour was a testimony meeting where each person was asked to share their testimony. There were about 8 couples and we had one hour so they said for each person to taker about 2-2 ½ minutes. The first 4 people took 30 minutes. The two men were the ones who have a comment to make every time they passed the microphone around, which they did a lot during the week. And they can’t make a comment—it’s more like a sacrament meeting talk every time they open their mouths. Robert coined the perfect description for them today—general authorities wannabes. After the first two couples, everyone went pretty fast but the meeting still went forty minutes longer than scheduled. I might have been OK with that, except we planned to meet Cade and Andi and I wanted time to spend with them. So I was pretty grumpy about people who hog too much time!

When it was Robert’s turn he told them how disappointed he was when he found out we would be working on an Indian reservation because he had his heart set on working with the missionaries in the missionary department. His sweet sincerity was so refreshing. Then he talked about Labor Day when we drove to Bear Lake with Cade and Andi and then went on around to Paris, Idaho. We walked up to the statue of Charles C. Rich on the tabernacle grounds, as we have many times in our lives, and read the attached plaque. Neither one of us remembered that it said Charles C. Rich was “a friend to the Indians.” Robert said that changed his attitude. He felt that perhaps Charles C. wanted his great, great granddaughter to reach out to these people he loved and our mission call was our opportunity to do that. And then he bore his testimony. It was awesome.

Finally the meeting ended and we headed to Brigham City, with a detour to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts and a Wal-Mart stop to pick up some pictures we had developed there. Arrived at Maddox around 2:00, just as Cade and Andi got there. We had a great lunch, loved visiting with them, although I’m sure we were very boring as we couldn’t stop talking about our MTC experiences. We’ll try to do better in the future.

Cade and Andi brought all my clothes! I’m so excited to have something else to wear. I’m fond of the brown skirt and the flowered skirt but may not be able to wear either one again for several months. They also brought all our mail, including e-mail from Veda. It was very cute. We were only disappointed to hear that poor Jaxon got kicked out of day care for being too poopy! He’s been sick, as well as Ethan, Cade and Heather. Also, Beckie lost her Tucker kitty. The good news is that Veda said Shawn has been working hard and making great progress on his dissertation. They close on their house in Arkansas in two weeks.

We planned to be back to Provo in time for the Women’s Conference, but the traffic was terrible…California style traffic jam around Ogden and heavy all the way from Brigham City to Provo. So we went to the mall for a while, got bored there and came back to our little room where we spent the rest of the night reading, writing, relaxing and listening to all the great music I put on my computer this week. All in all it was a good day.