Mar 4 08

March 4, 2008

This was a more typical day for Octopusland. Juliet Collateta asked Robert last week if he would come over and bless the office she works in. She found a prickly pear leaf on the doorstep one morning and was told that meant someone was casting a bad spell. So we went over there at 8:00. She works at the Behavioral Treatment Center and unfortunately just as we arrived so did the psychologist, Dr. Gonzales. He wanted to chat. He likes Robert a lot because people come in and tell him that Robert encouraged them to come to him for counseling. He has told us numerous times that many pastors in the community discourage people from receiving counseling and therefore he is very appreciative of Robert’s support. He knew we were leaving so finally Robert just asked if he could offer a prayer and Dr. Gonzales said great and stayed for the prayer. Juliet was crying because we’re leaving so we told her we’d come and visit tomorrow night.

At 9:00 Maxine was supposed to come over and bring the travel information we need to send to Salt Lake for April Conference. At 10:00 we told Thelma we’d come over and fill out a food order for them. They will have to pick it up themselves. Maxine came about 10:00, and that meant we couldn’t get to Thelma’s until 11:00 and we needed to leave CBQ by 12:00, so Robert ended up doing the food order while I finished some things we were trying to get done here. I wanted to be sure I had all the right information so David and Maxine can check their LDS mail accounts when we leave. The church will not send conference talks to a personal e-mail address, for obvious reasons, so they have to check their LDS mail. I think we got it all cleared up. I checked their accounts tonight and printed out a letter the lady in Salt Lake sent today. I think I’ll cheat and keep checking from home so I can call them and tell them when something important comes. When they get their travel plans they have to respond within 24 hours or the church cancels the tickets. This kind of deadline is a huge challenge to the Apaches. Last October I worked on it for hours to get them there. Maybe it will be good for them to do it on their own this time.

Finally we left for Show Low. Even though Betty cancelled the sealing we had decided we should go ahead and go to the temple so Robert could get all the work done for Betty’s husband, Moyah, and then she could just be sealed the next time someone will take her to the temple. We went to the Family History Center thinking this would be an easy 15-minute job. The foolishness of mortals! The church has now started their new online family search program (new.familysearch.org in case you want to do your genealogy). Before when we went we just typed in the date of death and printed out our temple ready card. Now it cross checks the information you enter with church records. Unfortunately, since this is life on the rez, no one had ever entered the fact that Moyah is dead. So every time we asked for temple records the computer refused and told us he’s still living. We tried every way we could think of to kill him off, but he refused to die. So we couldn’t do any work for him. We decided not to go to the temple at all if that’s the way the church was going to treat us, so we had lunch at Eva’s, cancelled all our appointments at the temple and came home.

Disappointed as we were, we felt there was a message in all this. We had this and the cookie making activity last Saturday that we were just determined to finish before we left. Neither one went well. We think we’re being told that we’re finished. Our work here is done and it’s time to let someone else do these things. Maybe Moyah will be what the Branch needs to keep up with the temple day this month. Or maybe Betty needed to be there when his work gets done. Whatever. It was actually good for us. The mantle is lifting and it’s definitely time for us to move on and leave CBQ in the Lord’s hands.

We got back to town in time to make some visits. We stopped by to see Judy Charles because Robert paid her $50 clear back in December to make us a basket and she has the fifty and we still have no basket. She wasn’t home. Very clever of her. Then we stopped by Cheryl’s. On Sunday she gave me some key chains she made for Pat Madsen. Cheryl thought Pat would come to church on Sunday, pick up the key chains and give me the money for them. Unfortunately, no Pat, no money, and I still had the key chains. Cheryl keeps wanting me to call Pat and tell her to come and pay her. We were happy to inform Cheryl that we can’t call Pat any better than she can because we now have the same limited cell phone coverage that everyone else in town has. Robert thinks Cheryl wanted us to buy the key chains, but we didn’t bite. Then we went to Bonitos and took them all the info I gathered this morning about the LDS mail account. Pray for them. We delivered some of the Thank You notes I wrote yesterday but didn’t have PO Box numbers for and then came home.

We both took off our suits and put them in the give-away bags. We also put in our dress shoes and most everything else in our closets, keeping only enough clothing to wear for the next few days.