Sep 18 07

September 18, 2007

Big anniversary day! We went in the MTC one year ago today. We left early this morning and drove to Phoenix, where we celebrated our anniversary and Robert’s birthday by attending an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game. They played San Francisco Giants and the Diamondbacks won, 5-0. Barry Bonds was injured and so we didn’t get to see him play.

The stadium at Chase Field was impressive. There were over 44,000 people in attendance, and they could easily have put another 10,000 in the empty seats. The stadium had a retractable roof so it could be either open or closed, depending on the weather. It was open tonight.

We arrived at Chase Field very early…about 3:30…and the game didn’t start until 6:30. We really enjoyed this time. We went in all the shops, walked clear around the stadium, and got some dinner at Panda Express. They also had 3 McDonalds, 2 Cold Stones, 2 Blimpies, a Pizza place, and a variety of hamburger/hot dog stand, Garcias, and a nice restaurant. It was fun to see all these places before the crowds came, because once the game started there were long lines everywhere and the beer started to flow.

It was kind of hard to concentrate on the game for all the electronic stuff they had. There was a scoreboard, a list of players, batting averages, ball speed, and anything else you might want to know constantly being displayed. Besides that a woman sat a few rows in front of us that we could hard take our eyes off. She was wearing a halter type shirt, which displayed her ample bosom, but that wasn’t the attention-getter. Her shoulders, arms and neck were completely covered in tattoos. Her entire right arm was covered with a tattoo of a naked woman, also with ample breasts displayed. We could have spent hours trying to decode the rest of the very intricate tattoo work that we could see. Who knows what was underneath the clothing. She was really quite attractive, but she reminded us of one of the women described in the Old Testament. We wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe she was a very nice young woman, but the obscene gesture she kept displaying to those around her sort of hindered that open-minded approach.

We left a bit early to avoid the traffic out of the stadium. Other than one near-collision and a few moments when we were totally lost, we got back to the motel without incident. We stayed at a Best Western in Mesa across from the Superstition Springs Mall. We chose that motel because it was the only one we could find that was reasonably priced. We thought we would stay at the Scottsdale Hampton Inn where we stayed last summer for $80.00. Now that their tourist season is approaching, that same room costs $184.00 per night.

We forgot a couple of things last Saturday. One was that when we were visiting with Bonitos they told us that we get out and see more people than any of the couples they’ve known before us. We were really surprised. But they repeated several times that no one else worked as much with the people and got to know as many people.

The second thing is that I forgot to confess a sin. Repentance requires confession so here goes. I didn’t actually commit the sin in the temple. I only planned it there and carried it out afterwards. While we were waiting for the veil Thelma told me they had to go to Walgreens and pick up her medicine for her back. She said she was trying to decide which medicines to get, because altogether they cost $40 and she only had $20 that her sister had given her. So she thought she would get one of the medicines and leave the pain medicine for another time. She has been so obviously in extreme pain with her back and I just couldn’t stand the thought of her not having that pain medicine. So when we got outside I gave her $40. And that’s in addition to the $20 worth of gas Robert put in their car to come to the temple. So if you count the gas, our money giveaway scoreboard reads Robert $40, Linda $90. It’s very sad that I yell at him all the time for giving away money but I’ve actually given away more than he has.