Elders Quorum Moving, Inc

My job in our ward (congregation) is to be an assistant in the elders quorum presidency. We're supposed to help our bishop (pastor) to look after the people in the ward, and help with their spiritual and physical welfare, which usually means that they call us when people move in or out of our ward.

Last Saturday I spend a couple of hours helping someone move in, and today we spent about 4 hours helping someone move out. This morning Hal, our quorum president, called at about 9:20 (whoops, I slept in) since nobody else showed up.

Hal later told me that his wife said that he is going to have to keep being president until he stops complaining every time we have to help someone move (which has been very often lately).

It was kind of sad, really. The guy's wife (second) just left him, and he is struggling financially. He just seemed to have a deep sadness about him. Even though I sometimes grumble about these things, I didn't mind doing it. Serving others is always intrinsically rewarding, and it makes you feel good to think about others instead of yourself.

On a side note, moving always make me think about how we have way too much junk. It make me want to start throwing stuff way.

Books, asthma, fences and leaves

Yesterday Melinda, Lisette, Miles and his friend Davis went to Connie's book group at Barnes and Noble. Connie does a really nice job. It's really useful to have a source to find good new books. Lisette especially loves it; the last book they read, Maximum Ride, by James Patterson, really sparked her interest so she went ahead and read the whole series.

Melinda said she was feeling sick since she went downtown to see the symphony. After the book group she wasn't breathing well, so I sent her to see her dad. Looks like she had an asthma attack. She is feeling much better after taking Prednisone and using an inhaler.

I finally got around to staining the wood fence. Our neighbor actually owns the fence, and is very good about getting both sides of it taken care of. In April or May he started staining our side with me, and then he left the rest for me to do. He even left all the stain, a roller brush, and a paint brush. Well now that it's November I finally did it. I have dreaded doing it for for almost 6 months. I had to just walk outside grab the stuff without thinking about it. Actually it was pretty easy. Melinda and I decided that I have this deep seated rebellion about not wanting to do something that someone else tells me. Sigh. Rebellion is so taxing. It would have been so much easier to have just done it then. Oh, well.

The kids helped me rake up the neighbors lawn this morning. Melinda thought it would be good for them to do more service. Really, it's more like minimizing the disservice of our tree dropping leaves on their lawn. But the kids enjoyed it, especially jumping up and down in the trash can to compact the leaves. We took them to the back yard and spread them around the garden beds.