Mid July II

Some recent updates from my life:

• Last week I gave a presentation to two bigwigs of one branch of a very large federal government organization. I talked about our roadmap and did a demo of our new software. I had spent pretty much a whole week getting ready for it and it went well. I felt pretty blessed and that my prayers for it to go well had definitely been answered. The demo software worked (which is rare this early in the process), I had answers for most of their questions, and managed not to do anything embarrassing.
• Yesterday after church I went and did some visits for EQ that I had been assigned in PEC for new move-ins and people I had never met. First we (me and my first counselor) visited a house where two families lived. The lady who opened the door wanted nothing to do with the church. I'll try to get in contact with the other family sometime later. Then the second house we went to the lady whose name we had wasn't interested, but her sister Angelina was there. We told her where the church was and what time it started and she said she'd definitely come when she wasn't working. That was pretty awesome. I also told her I'd get her some info about the big stake single adult activity that's coming up so she can go to that. Then the last guy we went to visit had already moved out, but his old roommate gave us his cell #, which was awesome since that's usually hard to track down. A successful set of visits.
• We did lots of cooking yesterday. Jeanna made onion rings, which were excellent. I made french fries, which I burnt a bit. That was for lunch. For dinner I made mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, smoothie, and mahi-mahi. No recipes were used in the making of this food. Woo! It even turned out pretty good.
• This morning I worked on preparing our fourth-Sunday talk for next week on "We are doing a very important work, so we can't come down". I love that talk from last conference. I'm going to be putting together a little self-assessment sheet for the Elders to write down what they spent their time doing last week. Then they can compare what they did with what they want to do and assess their demonstrated priorities. This morning I also took out the dishes from the dishwasher and took out the trash.
• Jeanna has been doing a lot of editing work for Western Governor's University this month. That means that most afternoons I get to spend 2-4 hours with Coriel playing while Jeanna does her work. We go to the park. We go to the store. We go on walks. We play with Little People toys. We go to the park some more. It's very fun. She's extra cute!
• I still practice guitar from time to time. I finally was able to play a song I like through well enough to recognize it, which was pretty great.
• I spend a fair amount of time reading. I'm re-reading an old textbook on the history and culture of Brazil. It's pretty interesting and fun. I also read fluffy fiction books as well. A few from the library plus some from our bookshelves so I can decide whether to get rid of them or not. Mostly we're getting rid of them. Thank goodness for libraries.
• On Saturday in addition to playing with Coriel I also helped a lady move into her new house in the ward. It was ~ 100 degrees out, so it was hot work, but fun to do some service.
• Last week I went with the missionaries to visit a local investigator. A long time ago she was a member, but then got her name taken off the roles so she could become Catholic because she liked mass better than sacrament meeting (which she thinks is boring). She eventually left the Catholic church as well. She's mad at God for letting her son get a terminal disease. The Elders were just going to read Book of Mormon with her, but I interrupted and asked her a bunch of questions about why she wasn't getting baptized. Then we spent some time resolving concerns. I testified that she would find peace and happiness in life if she would spend a little time praying and reading scriptures each day and start coming to church. Well, yesterday she was at church, which was awesome. I'll probably give her a call this week to see how she's doing. The great thing about missionaries working with local church members is that the local members have more time to work with people and are around long after the missionaries are gone. If the missionaries and members aren't working together, each might be working hard, but neither is working very smart.