Week of Craziness

I think it's funny I had these grand plans to relive my Europe trip here in my blog, and I only got as far as describing the plane ride over. >< Haha, well, expect more to come out in bits and pieces now and then. There have been times I haven't let myself journal/blog about more recent things until I got caught up in writing about past stuff I wanted to record.... but when I do that, the list of things I need to write just gets longer and longer and I fall so far behind that it becomes impossible to catch up. So, this time I'll just keep blogging as usual, and every once in a while when the mood strikes me, I'll write about Europe. :)

This last week was crazy busy for me. I woke up at 3 am on Monday to head out on a business trip to Jacksonville, Florida. Unfortunately I was flying Delta, and their systems went down worldwide. I made my first flight okay, but I got stuck in Atlanta for 7 hours. They tried to switch me to another flight going out the next morning, but instead I canceled the second leg of the flight and took a Southwest plane the rest of the way.

The conference lasted for 4 days. It was great connecting with my coworkers--both members of Senior Staff were there, and I got to meet Kevin, a BYU Professor we've hired as a Local Evaluator, in person for the first time. It's always good to meet other grantees too, and I met our Federal Project Specialist in person too.

It was kind of funny--at each table during the conference, they provided Play-doh, crayons, and pipe cleaners for us to play with to help us stay focused. I had a lot of fun with those things--sometime when I'm in charge of a conference, I will copy them.

I came home on Thursday night, arriving home at midnight.

At 3 pm the next day, I headed to the church to set up for the One in Christ YSA Conference, my committee's biggest event of the year. I was there until about midnight that night--we had dinner (Brazilian, in honor of the Olympics--we tied that in to our unity theme because they are about international unity!), a wonderful fireside, and a dance. The fireside was presented by Brother and Sister Chatelain, the new seminary teacher and his wife. When they were married about a year, Brother Chatelain had an accident that has left him as a quadriplegic ever since. He was very open in talking about what a challenge that was and still is. Although his life hasn't played out as he hoped, he sees the Lord's hand in it, and it's still good and worthwhile. He shared some of the lessons he's learned from the experience. It was wonderful, and I think it helped all of us put our own problems into perspective.

The next day I was up at 6:30 to get ready and head over to the Evergreen cemetery in town. We did a BillionGraves service project--taking pictures of tombstones for their website, for later transcription, so people around the world can find their family members who are buried there. We had a decent turnout--30-40 people for that part--and I think we did over 2,000 names, although most of the pictures we submitted are still being processed, so I'm not sure. After that, we headed to a nearby park for a picnic lunch. Then back to the church for 3 hours of workshops, an awesome closing fireside by President Brock and Sister Brock of the temple presidency, another dinner, and international unity games (because Olympics is copyrighted. :) We had a better turnout for that part.

I think people had fun. I know of a couple that hadn't been to YSA stuff before who appeared at the YSA wards on Sunday. Another guy mentioned to me that before the YSA conference, he felt like he didn't know anyone, but afterwards, he felt like he'd met everyone. :) I think we did get some unity going and some new friendships formed. I'm calling it a success. And I'm a little relieved it's off my back until next year. ;)

Anyway, so that's what I've been up to of late. It made it hard to find time to blog. :) One of these days, though, I do want to go through all my Europe pictures and try to recapture that experience.