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11-2-2010
Miercoles: Multi zone conference with Elder Zwick!! It was held in San Clemente, so we got to go on a little roadtrip and it was so fun! We had to leave pretty early in the morning, but it was fun. The conference started at nine, but we had to be there at 8. E. Zwick and his wife met every missionary personally. While he was meeting everyone, I played piano and it was like for 50 minutes. Long time. The conference was so good, and in the middle I played a special musical number, “I Stand All Amazed/Nearer My God to Thee”. It was really spiritual and it was one of my better arrangements I would have to say. Way spiritual conference, and I learned a ton.
11-9-2010
Viernes: Weekly planning as usual and then we went down to Samuel and taught him. After that we went around and did some stuff in Central but a lot fell through. Then we took the lonely bike trail back home and we think we were being prowled by a pack of coyotes.
Oh yeah to answer some questions. Elder Carey’s mission famous “Cinnamon Roll Sunday”. It really isn’t anything that special just every Sunday I make cinnamon rolls for my companions. I either make Rhodes Rolls or I just get the Pillsbury, it kind of depends on what I feel like. So the tradition is wake up and blast Mo Tab and then cook the cinnamon rolls and eat them. I have done it my whole mission and it is pretty famous now. In fact the other Elder’s that I live with have adopted it and we enjoy lots of cinnamon rolls.
11-16-2010
I AM GETTING TRANSFERRED!! Craziness, I was shocked when I found out. We found out Saturday night that both Elder Colby and I are being whitewashed out of the area. Even bigger news….I AM GONNA BE A ZONE LEADER!! What the heck. I feel like I just barely got here to Oceanside, and now I am leaving. Pretty sad really, especially right before the holidays and everything. But it is for the best. I have learned so much here in Oceanside and from all the experiences. I can definitely say that I have grown a lot as a missionary and I am ready for new and exciting challenges.
11-23-2010
Wow, this has been a whirlwind week. Alright so the results are…..I am in ESCONDIDO!!! AGAIN!! I am in the exact same ward I was in 3 months ago, but I am in a different area. Some new zones got created, and so my companion and I are both serving for the first time ever, as zone leaders in a spanish area. So that is super exciting. It was a shock when he said at transfers that I was going to the Escondido 3rd Ward again. Wow. Crazy.
Lunes: So we got up early in the morning and got ready to go to Zone Conference!! Yeah, the first week that we are zone leaders, and we have to get a zone conference together. We gave our training on inspired lesson plans and it pretty much rocked.
“I love technology”, as a famous movie character says, and we are usually pretty up to date with techy stuff here. But that poses its own problems for me. Scott recently purchased me a new laptop to replace my faulty old one, which is wonderful. However, I am not anywhere near figuring out all the cool stuff on Windows 7 that is available at the click of a mouse, and now I have a new Droid phone to figure out. This is not as easy as it seems, because it’s basically a small computer with its own operating system that differs from any large computer I’ve ever owned. We spent the evening going through tutorials and manuals and haven’t even scratched the surface, I’m afraid. I can call, text, and manage my contacts and email, which I feel is a great accomplishment at this point. But I want to do the awesome stuff without being frustrated. Of course, this applies to my computer and I’ve had that for a couple months. But honestly, how many lame tutorials can a person stomach in one day and remember any of it?
The up side of all this is that soon I’ll be doing cool stuff with both machines. The down side is that once I get them both figured out and am comfortable, there will be new technology to own and learn. It’s a vicious, worldwide conspiracy designed to make techies happy and normal people crazy.
Thursday I went to a boutique and bought a plaque that resonated with me. Of course, I’ve heard this saying many times, but I guess it just really struck me this week and I think I need to be reminded of it often: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…It’s about learning to Dance in the Rain“.
In September 2008 I had some health issues and was diagnosed with a hypothyroid problem. I spent two years trying to learn to deal with a chronic disease, get used to the medication, live with setbacks, and very slowly watched myself able to do less and less. In September 2010 I had a severe setback that prompted me to request a referral to an endocrinologist who immediately tested and diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s disease. This is an autoimmune disease, which means my body makes antibodies that attack my thyroid gland and also makes me more susceptible to other autoimmune diseases. it causes me to cycle back and forth between hypo- and hyper-thyroid symptoms, so life is a crazy carousel. I started having daily headaches, and after 4 months of that, I asked the endocrinologist who said I needed to get that taken care of immediately by my regular doc.
So I am in the midst of lots of medical tests to figure out why I am having the headaches. An MRI showed that I have some lesions on my brain that are permanent scar tissue from the headaches. So I’m tracking headaches on a chart and taking meds to prevent them. A blood test has ruled out lupus antibodies but found super high cholesterol so now I’m taking meds for that. Yesterday I had three ultrasounds to check out my heart and arteries to see if I’m having mini-strokes. An adrenal stimulation test came back fine so my adrenal gland seems to be working OK even though I’m still fatigued. And through all this, my emotions are out of whack from the thyroid, doctors don’t call with test results very quickly, and regular life goes on with legislative meetings and a special session this week. Fortunately for me, I have the best husband in the world who is patient and understanding.
I have been waiting for over two years for the storm to pass, and despite the best efforts of friends helping me cope, I have mostly ignored their good advice and hoped for the skies to just clear up and life to get back to normal. But I have finally realized that I need to stop waiting for the storm to pass, and learn to dance in the rain. That realization made, the challenge now is how to do that.
Ah one and ah two…
On October 26, we went to see Mark play in a concert at the Covey Center in Provo. He is a member of the BYU Symphony Orchestra and they played in conjunction with the UVU Symphony and Chamber Orchestras. They played some arias with special guests Jennifer Babidge and Christopher Holmes, as well as orchestral pieces from Brahms, Janacek, and Delius, ending with the “William Tell Overture” by Rossini. We took a picture of Mark in the lobby afterward but my cell phone didn’t take as well as I would have liked. Boo.