Week of September 13 - 18, 2010

I want to share a fun little experience I had while working on the Visitations of London project a little bit this past week. I was working on a page with the name of Skinner. Daniel Skinner was born about 1651, he went to Cambridge and graduated when he was about 19 years old in 1670. He traveled to Barbados in 1681 and was in France in 1682. He was living in 1684-5. Then I came to this interesting entry....."amannensis to John Milton". Now, I recognized the name of John Milton, probably most of you do too, but I had no idea what the word "amannensis" meant so i looked it up and then it made sense. It is a word for "scribe". Can you imagine how interesting it would have been to be a scribe to John Milton? He may have been the one who wrote down Paradise Lost as Milton was dictating it to him???? There is also a mention that Daniel Skinner's relative, Mary, is a friend of Samuel Pepys. If you have not heard of Samuel Pepys Diary, you should look it up on the internet. He kept a daily diary for some period of months that has become quite famous over the years. So that gives you a little glimpse into the interesting folks we "meet" on paper as we do the London project. Most of our time now is on the Tongan project which I mentioned last week. We are very excited about that one too but I have no stories to tell because it is all in Tongan!

Last Monday the Elijah Choir performed for a Devotional on Tuesday. Marlin K.Jensen was the keynote speaker. He is a member of the Seventy and the Church Historian. We sang "Come Unto Christ" a wonderful Sally DeFord piece. The words are very tender to me and about half way through the performance I started thinking more about the words than the music and I lost it. I couldn't finish and just stood and held the music while I mouthed the words with tears rolling down my face. wouldn't you know I didn't have any tissues with me and the song was the first thing on the program!! Oh well. I do love her music. She seems to put music to words that express my feelings in many ways.

Elder Jensen's talk was wonderful. He spoke about staying close to the Holy Ghost so we can know "things as they really are" taking the title of the Neal Maxwell book as his theme. He cautioned us to live in such a way as to never run the risk of offending the Spirit. He cautioned us to prepare ourselves to go to the other side. He semi-jokingly made the comment that the reason so many of the people who are involved in genealogy are older is because we realize we are getting close to leaving this life and we don't want family members we meet on the other side to be disappointed with our lack of interest in them. It was a sobering thought for me. I am grateful I am here and working on my family work now.

I had my last day of physical therapy on Thursday. I appreciate all that Oryslava has done for me. I do feel much, much better and I am improving each day. Now comes the tough part.....being responsible for my own health!

The sun is beginning to set today so the blinding light is coming through the window to the west in our living room. I love this time of day.

Before I leave this blog, and just so you won't think that everything as a missionary is rosy, I thought I would record the one thing that is the most difficult for me as a missionary. I never thought about it much before, but I am having a hard time with one mission rule. I have not followed this rule for years and I must confess that I am struggling with it each day. I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I have tried to comply. I sit every morning and ponder about it. I have talked with my husband about it. I hesitate to talk to anyone else because I don't want to appear to be weak. I have never struggled over anything so much in my life. But I am obedient and will continue to comply with the direction from the my leaders. But I have to say...I just don't like having to wear pantyhose!