New Month-Mid Winter

Winter is pretty mild here but when the wind blows, it gets cold.  The humidity get really high some days and everything feels wet--especially the sheets on the bed!  

Senior Family Home Evening was Monday and I was so tired I could barely play the opening and closing songs.  The food was especially good this time and several gluten-free options were available.  The Wiedmeiers gave the lesson about enduring to the end.  That was their last FHE before they go home.  She's the mission nurse and he's in charge of the bikes.

Still enjoying the remodeled office with its bright new lighting.  I hang out with Mary and Martha by Minerva Tiechert on the wall by my desk.  I like it because it reminds me I need to be more Mary and less Martha.

Friday, we had the opportunity to hear from Emeritus Elder Lynn G. Robbins on Zoom.  He just happens to be Sister Ella Clark's grandfather!  She is my favorite missionary. She finished her mission the following week and flew home to Bountiful, Utah.

He gave us the assignment to read one of his talks before our Zoom, "Be 100% Responsible".  Wow, that was such a good talk and we're still reminding each other what that means every day.  He said that doctrine always comes in pairs and that one of these pairs is Agency and Responsibility.  He listed 20 ways that we get out of being responsible, The Anti-Responsibility List.

1. Blaming others
2. Rationalizing or justifying
3. Making excuses
4. Minimizing or trivializing sin
5. Hiding
6. Covering up
7. Fleeing from responsibility
8. Abandoning responsibility
9. Denying or Lying
10. Rebelling
11. Complaining and murmuring
12. Finding fault and getting angry
13. Taking offense and not forgiving
14. Making demands and entitlements
15. Doubting, losing hope, giving-up and quitting
16. Self-pity and victim mentality
17. Being indecisive or being in a spiritual stupor
18. Procrastinating
19. Allowing fear to rule
20. Enabling

His talk listed scriptural examples of these and we recognized several in ourselves!  It was a great wakeup call.  He told a story about two employees that worked under him who had consistently made shipping errors on seminars.  They refused to take responsibility for their errors and always blamed others.  Elder Robbins didn't want to see them fired so he started an incentive program with them.  For each seminar shipped correctly they would receive an extra dollar and with 250 seminars a month that could mean an extra $250 a month.  If they made a error, $1.00 would be subtracted.  He told them they were 100% responsible regardless of where the error originated.  They, of course, said that wasn't fair.  Elder Robbins told them that it wasn't fair but that's life! Well, this incentive was enough for the two employees to wake up and be responsible.  Errors finally stopped and they started earning their bonuses month after month.  His talk was given at Education Week in 2017.

We're trying to be 100% responsible now and not resort to the "list".  Elder Robbins said that as soon as you resort to any of the things on the list, you lose control.

Also this week, we cut Week 6 out of the rotation and started Week 1.  Salt Lake changed the day that new missionaries arrive--4 days earlier so they had to move a lot of things around.  

We only have one transfer left and our replacements will be here to learn what to do at transfers!  We'll be home before you know it!  Love and miss you all!