Warm Sunday

Sunday was a beautiful day, fairly sunny with high temps above 65 degrees. I almost didn't need a coat going to church. My wife's cold has taken a turn for the worse, and she feels weak and tired. Usually I am the one who gets sick like this, while she has much milder colds; maybe the germs are just different here. Anyway, she wasn't up to going to church and didn't want to share her germs, so I went alone. Everyone asked about her, and I explained that she was home with a cold; Dee later suggested that I should have joked that she had been transferred!

Being fast Sunday, I also bore my testimony (which is not a very frequent occurrence for me) briefly about the joy of serving others, particularly after hearing a story Saturday from my mom helping out somebody in a wonderful way. My parents raised us in an atmosphere of serving, for which I am grateful. There was a wonderful spirit in all the meetings, and it's great getting to know these members. I took a bunch of things to church to distribute:

• a USB combo cable (iPhone/Android) for Ugo
• a big block of cheddar cheese from Metro that the Peregos asked us to buy for them
• several letters received at the mission office for Sorella Manning and Sorella N'zoungani
• a replacement battery for the Spragues' laptop, which I ordered for them on eBay
• an old Verizon SIM card (and the tool to install it) to put into Sister Sprague's old iPhone. She uses it as a music player, not as as a phone, but apparently without a SIM card you can't run iTunes to install apps (?)
• my laptop and a USB flash drive to back up Sorella Manning's photos from her tablet's SD card. She is probably getting transferred this week after over four months here, so this had to be done right away
• an SD card (and holder) for Sorella N'zoungani's Samsung tablet, to hold her photos. Having a removable copy makes it much easier to copy the originals
• two boxes of Ikea Ziploc bags as gifts for the Sorelle. Dee's idea, and they were delighted!

You can see that it was a very busy day for me at church! I collected a bunch of cash as reimbursement for what people had asked us to buy.

After dropping off our Anziani at their apartment, I drove home, where we spent the rest of the day. I have been experimenting with a slightly different way to get to/from the mall and freeway; it seems somewhat shorter and lower traffic than going by Lidl on the way, and I think I have it down now. In the afternoon I did a little prep for the four lessons coming up this week: FHE on Monday, Seminary and Institute on Friday, and Sunday School next Sunday. We also did some calendaring together, and I tried to help my wife out as much as possible, though she felt pretty miserable. Hopefully Sunday will have been the worst day of her cold -- may I not get it! It was funny to see her not having an appetite, something which she always thought odd with my colds, since lack of appetite is taken as a possible sign of impending death in her family😉.

I also drafted a long email to Marilyn & Lu with suggestions for their upcoming trip. It's amazing how many useful travel tips we have accumulated over the years, and we are happy to share them to make things easier/better for visitors. Dee will review the draft before we send it out, as she has a lot of great tips too.

We are really looking forward to getting back to our full-time job here. It has been nice to have a break, but we miss "our" GANS kids!