On Monday Aaron joined one of our zones for their pday to watch them play basketball. The Missionaries play half court to reduce the risk of injury. This particular zone has several tall elders and most can dunk without much problem. One of our newer elders was trying to dunk and just wasn’t able to put the ball in the hoop. Aaron pulled him aside and showed him how he could be more effective with two hands and on his next attempt he threw it down with no problem. He has been trying for two years and in 30 seconds he was dunking with the best of them. On his last attempt of the day he went up and had too much forward momentum and his legs swung out from under him. His hands slipped off the rim and he came crashing down and braced himself with his arms as he landed. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this he snapped both of his wrists! Aaron ran over to him and the elder asked if his dangling hands looked right almost immediately turning green. ;) Needless to say, he was off to the ER and both breaks were bad enough to require surgery. Sad but the surgeon put in titanium plates and won't need casts so he will be ready to go in less than 3 days. Amazing! My Monday consisted of making appointments, writing emails and running errands. I got a lot accomplished but little to show for it. Typical.
The kids headed back to school on Tuesday. We had a lot of tired bodies and grumbling, even mine. I attended an Alief’s district council meeting on Tuesday and Sienna Plantation’s on Wednesday. Both the district leaders did really well facilitating and extending invitations to act to those they work with in the district. The focus was to establish their purpose as missionaries in the how-to-begin-teaching. I saw lots of good things. Prior to the Sienna meeting, I meet with the Sugarland sisters for comp study. We were able to come up with a lesson to help members, less active or recent converts on one way that they will increase their faith in the Savior this year by doing something each day. We also planned another lesson to extend an invitation of baptism to a 17 year old that lives with his grandma who is already a member. He comes to church every week with her, participates in YM and comes to seminary, just hasn’t accepted the invitation to be baptized. The sister’s would like to see him receive the promised blessings from being baptized. Zac had a game after school. A close game but not a win.
Jessie was back at gymnastics on Wednesday after a 3-week break. She had Activity Days too. After I dropped her off, I headed to First Colony for Bode’s basketball game. The two teams are big rivals. The Falcons were in the game until the very end but lost by 4. Zac made it over to YM’s despite only getting home from basketball practice at 6:45. I appreciate the effort he makes to be involved. I know it isn’t easy.
I have been working with Zac’s counselor to make a change with his Spanish class since mid October. I have really tried to follow the school’s procedures in resolving concerns in a class. We are just not seeing a change. I finally got to talk to someone in person after left messages and emails back and forth. I am hoping for a new schedule on Friday. The schools……..are just so hard to work with. Blah! After being a little bit fired up with that I headed to another comp study of three sisters. I had studied on how to find out of Preach My Gospel and the sister’s role played some ideas we came up with afterward. We also did their weekly planning for the upcoming week.
Allie is getting ready for Spring semester this week at UVU. She called me wanting to help her figure out some new classes after determining a couple of them weren't going to work out. After her talking with an academic advisor at UVU and me making some calls to WSU she made the needed changes to her schedule. She is pretty sure she will go to WSU next fall so she wanted to make sure her classes from UVU would count towards general requirements at Weber. Fun stuff.
Zac’s game on Friday was against Hightower. They were really holding there own until half time and then the other time full court pressed and the Rangers just basically fell apart. It was a very physical team and a lot of smack talk was going back and forth on the court. They ended up losing by 30. Zac really played aggressive. He was not happy with the sportsmanship of the other team, fans or coach. They had the full court press up until the last minute of the game with that huge lead. On a positive note, I have noticed a lot of improvement and confidence in his playing.
I look forward to Saturdays, they are always a nice break at home with the kids. I got a book Jessie needed for her upcoming book report that was required to be from the Arts and Leisure section of the library. I found a book about how to do Eric Carle like art. Jessie liked the book but was told that the book couldn’t actually be doing art. I’m so confused. In that process Aaron called me to inform me that the visiting authority for the stake conference that Aaron was at wanted me to join them for dinner. I quickly got ready to head there. We had a nice dinner and as we were going into the adult session I was informed I would be sharing my testimony on what blessings I have received because of my baptism. I was nervous but grateful for the opportunity. The conference was filled with so many uplifting messages and testimonies. I am glad I was invited to attend even if it was last minute.