January 21 - This was a perfect day. It was not that everything went flawlessly, nor that plans for the day were completed with utter precision. Actually the latter was definitely not true. It was just a very fulfilling day.
At the beginning of the day, with the expectation of attending the temple in mind, and needing a name or two for Shauna to do family work in the temple, I started putting in names into FamilySearch for temple work - in hopes that some would work for the day. The previous night, I had done some searching in Danish records and found what could have been the father of my 3rd-great-grandmother. As I assembled my notes and started entering the information from what I found in the research, I realized that not only did I have his information, but I also had his wife, who was the mother of my 3rd-great-grandmother! As I checked for duplicates or already existing information on them in FamilySearch, I found that the work has not been done for them, so I next proceeded to print out the Family Ordinance Request sheet, only to discover that we can now print the actual temple cards, so I got them printed and ready for the work later in the day.
Next, we hurried off (after breakfast and our combined reading of the Book of Mormon - Ether 11 and 12), we went to visit our 9:30 appointment. She was not answering, so Shauna thought of going to the other part of the building to visit another less-active sister. It was really a very inspired decision, because she was home and was in real need of encouragement. She was in the depths of depression from a difficult past weekend with family issues following the funeral of her grandmother. Our visit with her was well received and she was visibly brighter as we left.
Normally, we would have been in our Spanish class and mostly finished when we left our visit, and we might not have gone to class since we were so late, but we expected to pick up some used clothing from one of our fellow students (for our Spanish Branch people), so we drove up to Sandy for that purpose. We enjoyed a little Spanish instruction at the end of class and were promised to receive the clothing after our next class with them.
From there, we went to the temple and did baptisms for the dead and initiatory ordinances. Shauna and I did the work for my 4th great grandparents, and others. After that, we helped one of our people get to the doctor office and pharmacy. While Shauna was with her in the doctor office, I did my daily DuoLingo assignment.
After taking the sister home, we went to our appointment with a family where we taught the sixth temple preparation lesson. It was a wonderful lesson. They are ready to go to the temple and are excited about it. He will be presented this coming weekend at Stake Conference to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.
After that, we had our first opportunity to go home and I got a simple dinner prepared and Shauna continued working on some laundry for one of our people who is recovering from shoulder surgery. Mark came home from work and was with us. We talked about our upcoming temple meeting and he joined us for that and the temple endowment session that followed. It was a beautiful ending to a wonderful day.
It does sound perfect. I appreciate your perspective on that. It truly does matter that we look at things from an eternal perspective, not "What a wasted trip to Spanish...the clothes weren't even there!" but focusing on the work that was done. I am grateful to have such parents! Thanks for all the work you do for family history. I am excited to check out that email you sent about family history. Love you!
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