Back at Work - Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009

It was an absolute gorgeous day outside -- not a cloud in the sky, low humidity, a high of 79, and zero percent chance of rain. We went to the Estancia one day too early. Darn!! Because of the rain yesterday, we were unable to see the horse show/rodeo type performance that was included in the ticket. And the same thing happened when we went to see the Gauchos several weeks ago. It had rained for a few days before we went, and they had to cancel their rodeo activities because of too much mud. Hopefully, we can return some day to see what we missed.

It was interesting to get "up close and personal" with this Tucano, a South American Bird. We had never seen one of these live birds before. They are really pretty, but it looked like they were carrying a heavy load packing those beaks around.

This is a display of stirrups that are used by the gauchos. These are antiques, but the new ones seen today look similar. They have the same design. Interesting, we thought!!

While walking to the office this morning, I realized that the last day I put in a full days work was last Wednesday. On Christmas Eve, I took off a half day to bake a pie and get things ready for Christmas dinner. Then, Monday was zone conference, and yesterday we didn't go to work because of our outing. So, I was anxious to get to the office today and start catching up on all I had left undone.

The first thing I did was call Elder Stoker. Sister Argyle told us yesterday that his father had passed away on Christmas Eve. He is from North Salt Lake, and the family was on an outing at Bear Lake where he had an accident on a four wheeler. His father is an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor/surgeon. His name is Kelly Stoker. Elder Stoker has decided to stay here and complete his mission. He goes home in March. His father would want him to do that, he said.

The thing I felt bad about is that we were with him at our zone conference on Monday and we knew nothing about it. He is even in one of our pictures on our blog that day. I talk to him all the time. He is really friendly and we have good chats when he comes into the office from time to time. I expressed my heartfelt sympathy and asked if there was anything we could do for him. All he requested was having his father's obituary from the Deseret News website emailed to him. That was no problem, and Elder Kroff took care of it immediately. We feel so sad for him.

Tomorrow is the last of the zone conferences for this transfer. I packed up mail and supplies for Zarate's conference and then breathed a sigh of relief. But, a bigger sigh of relief will come when I have all the baptisms entered that are sitting on my desk. So much to do!

Elder Kroff worked on financial matters most of the day, then had to troubleshoot about three or four emails from parents who could not get through to their missionary on Christmas day. He located the problem, corrected it, and called the parents back to advise them how to do it on New Years Day. Hopefully, all will go well.

We left the office around 5:00 and after dropping me off at home, Rich went to our local fruit market down the street in search of oranges, bananas, and any other fruit or vegetables that looked good. Our supply was depleted.

Our daughters checked in on Skype, and then Rich was excited to help his brother, Bryan, get Skype figured out from his end in California. They had a long and welcomed visit.