Just a couple posts more and we’ll have overtaken the present. As Captain Jack Sparrow said, we’re catching up. [Would’ve been an embedded jiff but that one’s seizure-inducing.]
If you recall from last post, our brief stint in Paris on the way back to Seattle was even briefer than planned, so much so that our luggage didn’t make the trip, so we landed on Monday with an assurance that our luggage would be delivered on Wednesday, and up to $200 reimbursed on purchases made to get through these trying times.
Unfortunately I’d be on an airplane headed down to California on Wednesday for a quick visit with a team I work with. Would’ve loved to get some shoes on Air France’s dime, but didn’t have the time.
The trip was pretty standard, but made more interesting by the resurgence of my back issues. For no reason that I could tell, it got about as bad as it had been the first time it had gone bad, over two years ago. At that time I’d been prescribed some muscle relaxants and had left the unused pills in my backpack, for a rainy day. Never had a use for them till this trip. I think they were still effective? Or it might’ve been a placebo effect. In any case I recovered very quickly, so, woohoo.
I spent the following weekend at home trying to no avail to clean my car. I tried a manual car wash and was dismayed to find that after blasting the car’s surface twice-over with hot soapy high-pressure water, I could still run my hand over it and leave dirty smudge marks. Tried later with an automatic touch-less car-wash, with similar results. (That one was funny though, ’cause I pulled up right behind another Tesla, and saw a third Tesla line up after me. I thought I was in the right spot, but guess not?)
The next day was Third Sunday, and in true Jeff fashion I had avoided dong any lesson prep work until the evening prior. I usually find the Come Follow Me teacher’s manual has a good skeleton for a lesson that I can fall back on if nothing else strikes my fancy, but in this case I found a neat article that emphasized that this week covered the first time Christ’s name had been used in the Book of Mormon. Excerpt:
We can learn something from Nephi as well. Even though he was the older brother and the prophet-leader, he was willing to learn from his younger brother. Nephi did for Jacob exactly what Nephi’s two oldest brothers never did for him. Nephi listened to Jacob. Nephi encouraged Jacob to receive revelation. He then encouraged Jacob to teach and preach what he shared. Nephi was not bent on total rulership as were Laman and Lemuel. Nephi had the humility to listen and learn from his younger brother Jacob. He did not use his position, his authority, his influence, his experience, or his own access to revelation to be beyond learning truths great or small from those around him.
Now, since I read and loved books like the Homecoming Saga, I’m used to wondering what things might’ve been like “on the ground” back then, instead of through the lens of history. Was Nephi perhaps a bit curious why that revelation went to his brother and not him? Absolutely zero use in digging into it of course.
One other thing I found interesting was some of Jacob’s language in 2 Ne 9, when he uses the phrase “I know that ye know”. I wondered how it might sound if I were to use such phrasing in my own lessons or talks, how much more the point might get across. That led me to show the table one of my favorite YouTube vids, about speaking with conviction:
What’s funny is that immediately after watching this together I said something like, “If we were that much more confident in our lessons, I think we could really help bring the Spirit. Or I dunno.” Hard habit to kick. Had to follow up with, “No, wait, yes I do know :)”
The next Monday was a holiday, and I was looking to organize a game night, but then I remembered I’d have the HOA board over for a meeting. Prior meetings had been held down at the local library, and I’ve always thought, why go all the way out there when we could just cross the street to one of our houses?
So I offered to host and hope to make it a pattern. The place had gotten a bit dusty and scattered after all that travel, so I spent the day cleaning it up, put out a nice cheese+meat spread, the works.
Five minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, I check my calendar and yes, the event is scheduled for Monday night. I then idly check my email and notice to my chagrin that I’d made a mistake when creating the event and it was actually for the next night. Cancelled a perfectly good game night for no reason. At least I had a clean house.
So the next night rolls around and while we did have a meeting, it was the quick in-and-out kind, so the spread once again went uneaten. So you all get to enjoy instead.
The next day it was off to Utah for recruiting! Everything went more-or-less smoothly. Very cool to see Mattie and her team at the competition.
As was tradition, the AnderSibs went and got sushi after the event. Too crowded at the restaurant so we went to eat at Mattie’s place, which I’d never been to.
It was around this time that my back decided to make another small nuisance of itself. Oh well.
Sunday was a very fun family get-together.
Caught an exceedingly early flight Monday morning off to Boston for a quick visit with a team I have started working more closely with. Got to see Libby for a quick breakfast meet-up, which was lovely. Looking forward to more work visits there.
Flew back to Washington just in time to meet up with Steve and Lauren, and I’ll tell all about that visit next time.