Our week started pretty interestingly. I got awarded employee of the month at Amazon, where I work. It was pretty interesting, because I had been feeling pretty iffy the whole day, and that day I definitely did not live up to that status. They were pretty generous in their description of why I was chosen. You can read it for yourself:
The funny thing is, it is like, how do you act when you are awarded such an honor at your work, especially when you are getting acknowledged for it? I gave everyone a high five at our stations and thanked them, because without my other coworkers, I could not practice the things that I was being praised for. In Fresh, I have been super blessed to meet with all walks of life, and become friends with them. I feel like Fresh is my home, and I am most happy when I am working in that work group, among friends, and people that I would call my family.
One of the perks of getting this award is I found out that I will be able to be treated, On Amazon’s dime, to go to any restaurant in the Area, however poor or ritzy it is. Not only that, but I get to take two of my leaders: one lead (who is over the Fresh and other workgroups) and an AM, or Area Manager. I already have the two picked out. I would like to take my good friend Vita Estevez and an Area Manager that I have gotten to know named Tia Jones. Not sure which restaurant I should choose, though.
Monday was super cool, though. We had our FHE with our favorite teenage girl branch members: Anna Martinez and usually Valeria Lozoya, both whom are recent converts. We love having them over, and just taking the time to get to know them. They both are starting school up again this week. Anna is an incoming Freshman at Dobson High and Valeria is starting Senior year there as well. We’ve been trying to encourage them to sign up for seminary, so we’ll see if that all works out. Valeria was unable to make it though because her home was having an A/C problem. We spent the night just browsing through the Children’s Songbook, and choosing songs to sing with her, seeing as how she doesn’t know many yet.
I got the first textbooks that I have excited about in a long time. Actually, it’s been ever since my freshman year of college that I was actually excited about a textbook, and surprisingly, or not surprisingly, they were the Norton Music Anthologies, that I got for my History of Civilization class that emphasized music. The weird thing is that we hardly used them in class. But I still have them to this day. The textbook that I have now are for my first Music Theory class at MCC which starts August 20th. It’s been exciting looking through it. Before I even bought it, I read the first 2 chapters in the “look inside” section that Amazon provides. I am super excited for what’s to come.
Tuesday at work was more of an on day at work for me than Monday was, ironically. I was in my zone and was able to help a nice lady who is going back to Seattle name Fatima get more familiar with how everything works. Besides a cough and the weird onset of some hiccups, the day was great, having been able to talk to some of my siblings. Later that night, we went to go pick up the second Mission Impossible movie at the library. We explored a little bit more after we checked it out. I found out that on the second floor they have a seed exchange program, where you can check out 3 different types of seeds of different vegetable giving plants a month. While we were by that section, we saw the Hermanas misioneras from another barrio (ward), who were about to teach a lesson to a man that is investigating named Angel. It was super cool because we were like proxy member presents for a sec. He was from a city in the Southern part of Mexico that is experiencing unrest right now and a new presidency. He said if we want to go that way, we should go in five years time, when the government is stable.
We talked to the nonfiction librarian because we were looking for where some books were that had gotten moved. She told us about how the Mesa Public Library follows the Dewey Decimal System, but college libraries do it differently because their nonfiction section is so much more vast. She told us about the irony that the Religious books (which we were looking up) are located in BS section of most college libraries. I could appreciate the irony.
As we started looking for those, I realized that the time was quickly approaching the hour that I needed to be at church for church meetings. I barely made it to church on time, and without my suit. I talked to Hermanas of our rama (branch), and we chose the song Be Thou My Vision for Hermana Rusk to sing in church on the third Sunday of this month. I am kinda wanting to make my own arrangement from the simple hymn.
Besides working, Wednesday was a nice, normal day. We had requested Mission Impossible 2 from the library to watch. We decided to watch it that night. What we didn’t know is that that movie is considered one of the worst in the whole franchise. Which has given us time for lots of discussion in the last couple of days. While there were a lot of good parts, it mostly had a relationship evolve so fast that there was no character development, and no understanding of Tom Cruise’s character nor empathy towards the choices that his fling made. I really liked the “close to the eye” knife shot, and impressed with the daring that Tom Cruise has, especially when we know some of the stunts he does were his daring ideas, and that he actually performs most of his stunts in Mission Impossible.
Wednesday and Thursday they had me bouncing around between stations helping to train new people or old people that were crosstraining. And while I like doing it, it just got old fast on Thursday, and I was feeling a little sick that night. I called my brethren who were going on visits that night, and asked them that if after their visits, they could come over and give me a blessing. Beforehand, Sarah told me to pray to see if there is anything I can do about my persistent cough and headaches. So, when she left for her Relief Society Presidency meeting, I went and laid down while listening to soft Christian music on Spotify and praying to see what is up. I felt like I should work on the commitment I made to myself about one and a half months ago to observe starting to have no screen time after 9:45PM and settling down with the hopes of sleeping at or around 10:30. I also felt like I need to be nicer to myself about things. I’m going to have to work on that one for sure. The President and Carlos ministered to me that night, just listening to what I have to say, and then they gave me a blessing. It was super great.
I’m so grateful for people that minister to us; that Heavenly Father has sent us here to touch certain people’s lives. He only asks that we care for our Brother or Sister. He asks us to share what we know with all we come in contact with. I had an experience Thursday morning with a coworker. She was waiting for her 2nd shift to start. Good friend named Jill. She told me about how growing up she had had experiences with other members of the church that were her friends that went off the deep end. After talking with her, I came to the conclusion that it was because of a toxic control of her friend’s lives as placed on them by their parents. Strict observance of a law, while good, defeats the purpose, if you don’t allow for choice, or understanding of the principles that you are strictly trying to observe, and it can be detrimental to the people that you are “forcing.” We talked about how living to that extreme is what the church has been trying to do since Jesus’ time. This is why he fulfilled the Law of Moses. And the Law of Moses was only given because the Children of Israel were in such disrepair from their time in slavery, that they could not live a “higher law.” It was a really good conversation, and who knows what will come of it, seeing as how she is irreligious and doesn’t see the point of it. Hopefully I helped her understand a little more and that a seed was planted in her heart. And, at least she knows that I’m her friend.
That day I thought I was going to lay low and just work at a station like normal. But instead, I was helping train two stations, while also helping anybody else that needed help that the leads couldn’t help right away. While I like training, I think I overextended myself a bit because by the time I was done with the shift I was feeling tired and a little bit sick from the use I got. Also, I had just talked with the AM (area manager) that I had wanted to invite to my free dinner, expressing my sentiments how I was going to bring my wife to our dinner, no questions asked. While I like this AM very much, at times I think she is rather strict and seems to not like fun over getting the job done. I say this because she first said that this should be only 3 people (me, lead, AM). I told her that one, I do not do things without my wife, and two, that my wife and I don’t have one on ones with someone of the opposite sex withou the other being there. Tia asked if I would reconsider if I chose another lead or manager that was a man. While that would fix the problem, it still didn’t involve Sarah, so I said no. She then later approached me and asked if we could bypass the whole eating lunch with two women by ordering something from the App Grubhub (which apparently gets to go orders from many places) and eating at the building we work in in a conference room or something. Boy, I was feeling less and less special, and a little annoyed, because it didn’t seem like I was going to get what I wanted. I’m going to tell her no, and probably suggest a restaurant called Ruth Chris’ Steakhouse, a suggestion from my friends Carlos and Elizabeth Santos. Sarah looked at the menu and sides of stuff like vegetables are like $12, haha, entrees $50+. Hopefully they won’t turn me down (mostly because it is Scottsdale).
So, I had been feeling sick because of tiredness of work, so I stayed home, instead of going on visits with my presidency. But they did come to administer to me, at my request, after their visits. I explained to them how bad I felt that I couldn’t be out there with them that night, but about how glad I was that they came to be with me. At my request, the brethren gave me a blessing of healing (anointed by the president in Spanish, and sealed by Carlos Santos in English).
Friday was just an interesting day, as my normal shift I was asked to crosstrain in the “Cap Rooms,” an extension of the Houdini workgroups. I had done it only once before. However, it isn’t too hard, and I caught on really quick. With that, I had a lot of down time. My ideas were to read my scriptures, and study some of the Church’s Newsroom (it is a goal that I had for every week, to stay up to date on the current events of the church, seeing as how they are updated almost every day, if not every day), but, instead, I immersed myself in Romans 4, part of this week’s reading. I wasn’t expecting to find it so thralling, but I learned so much studying that chapter. In fact, on first read, I was so confused, because Paul writes in a Shakespeare-esque type fashion. About 2 weeks ago, Sarah suggested a website called biblehub.com, which gives you a good majority of the Bible’s translations, such as the New International Version and others, side by side. Boy has that helped in my study of the complex letters that Paul had written. After studying those and institute and seminary manuals, etc, I learned that of Faith, and how before circumcision was introduced as an outward ordinance, a sign of the covenant we make with God, Abraham had enough faith that it was “counted unto him for righteousness,” showing that people’s faith Is the first principle of the Gospel, followed by works that we can do, the ordinances we perform, that help us enter into the kingdom of God, and that they work hand in hand. That the Law of Moses was fulfilled, and that instead of the circumcision that men use to do, now we need to be circumcised of Heart. We need inward conversion, not just be going through the motions. Great chapter. Lots of time spent on it, til the very last second of my work.
That night we helped building cleaning rep with our week of cleaning the church. It was pretty cool, because we had the sister missionaries helping us and Brother Mora, and there were wedding preparations going on. Boy did the cultural hall look magnificent. Two weeks in a row, who knew? Anyways, Sarah and I worked on the men’s bathroom, cleaned windows, and vacuumed. Sarah got to look all cool with her vacuum. She looked like a modern day (not ‘80s, haha) Ghostbuster...and that was the theme song to our cleaning playing around in our minds. The sisters helped us because they had invited Sarah to an appointment that fell through. And Brother Mora was outside sweeping the leaves from the big tree out front of our building. Pablo, the building cleaning coordinator was there to help lead us to what we should do next, and we got it done in a relatively short time.
That same night we had gotten the third Mission Impossible meeting, and we watched it before and after the cleaning. J. J. Abrams, you always deliver. He was the chosen director for the movie, and it was crazy good. He was one of the directors of LOST which some people like and some people didn’t like (but I liked from my Childhood [actually, early college adulthood]). But he has also directed Alias (which I haven’t seen but was the reason he got asked to do this movie, and recently The Force Awakens: Star Wars 7 (which was a smashing success before-in some people’s perspectives-Star Wars 8 ruined it all). Haha, I personally like the two newest installments in the Star Wars Saga, but I digress. MI:3 Was super good. Great moments, good relationships built, great villains: great all around.
Saturday was our trip to the Gilbert Temple. We went with our Branch, who have tried to make weekly attendance on people’s minds a thing. We have been longing to go back, since the last time we went for an actual session was about three months ago. I will be happy to report (to Aunt Kristen) that not only did we get the Endowment work done for a man and a woman, but Sarah passed out 6 more cards to members in our branch that hadn’t brought any names. Although, I think one of those 6 was from Dad’s family, as well. But not only that, we saw Aunt Ann in the temple a couple rows in front of us, participating in the 8:30AM Saturday morning Spanish session with us. We greeted her warmly in the Celestial Room after the session was over. In that same room, I had a great conversation about Come, Follow Me scriptures with President Castaneda, and Sarah had a lovely heartwarming chat with Sister Casteneda. They were the ones who gave us rides. Afterwards, they treated us to Cafe Rio, one of my favorite after temple restaurants, and then drove us home.
That same day we had the Leadership meeting and the Adult session of our Stake Conference. Wonderful talks and instructions were given. In between, I got to meet the Stake Clerk’s 3 of 11? Children. They were super great kids to talk to. Also met two of the Stake Executive Secretary’s kids as well. Teenagers are fun, especially the bubbly ones. There was a beautiful song that touched our hearts in the Adult session called Because He Lives, which is actually a Sally Deford song I later came to find out. Great duet.
Sunday was just as good. I was asked to be one of three brethren to count the number of people attending the General Session of Stake Conference. I think, with all three of our counts added together, we had about 800 people. Got to meet some missionaries who may or may not serve in our ward in the future. It’s pretty exciting. Our friends, Elizabeth and Carlos Santos, did the Spanish translation for our Spanish speaking members. Both nights Sarah wanted to sit up front near the ASL members, to watch and sometimes participate with them, for Sarah has learned Sign Language in the past.
It’s been a great week. With the writing of this letter, I tried something different that way I’m not spending all my free Sabbath time writing this letter (which is a long endeavor some weeks if I want to do it right). I am also aware that it has the length of probably one of Paul’s epistles. Well, after reading a little from Romans this week, I am inspired to be a better letter writer, with some great experiences, both spiritual and temporal. And for those that made it this far in the letter, thank you for your interest in our lives.
I love you very much! I’m grateful for a church, that if we put in the work, can connect us to the whole world, but specifically: individuals. People that we can touch with just our experiences.
Love,
John
Love,
John
