August 23, 2014

Well, it has been awhile since I have written.  I hope I can remember it all to tell here.  It has been a very busy last week, and an especially tiring one….maybe we are losing some of our extra energy level we had before, I don’t know.  I do know that I didn’t sleep well some of the nights, so that contributed to the tiredness.  Anyway, let me back up to my previous entry and see what I can remember.

Okay, the week of the 11th was a pretty normal week for me to start.  Gary got a new apartment for the Crockett’s, since management here doesn’t enforce the rules about the pool and quiet time and they couldn’t take the noise level any more.  Then he moved them in.  It is in a definitely quieter area of the complex.  There are two sections of this complex, divided by a street (Rosenbaum).  We are in the east section, and now the Crockett’s are in the west section.  Gary said while he has been in that west section, the whole place there seems like a different clientele.  We have the rowdy’s in our section, I guess.  He said that even looking at the parking lot and seeing the cars, you don’t see the outdated license plates like you do in our section.  

On Friday I started entering in the transfer information into the computer, and Gary helped me with that.  We got it done except for the double checking that I like to do to make sure it is all entered correctly.  

Then, on Saturday, we did something we have been wanting to do for awhile now.  We went whale watching in the Monterey Bay!  We had made our reservation to go out on a boat a couple of months ago.  We left from Moss Landing, which is about half way between Monterey and Santa Cruz, in the middle of the bottom of the U that the bay makes, and it is the area where you immediately get into the trench of deep water.  There is this trench in the bay that is like the grand canyon in the ocean, and it is appealing to whales because it is so deep.  We left here just before 8.  We were to meet at the pier at 9:30, and since we hadn’t been there before, we wanted to make sure we allowed time to find the location and get parked.  Plus, you never no how the traffic will be.  We got there okay, parked and got signed in.  Some others in our group were late because of traffic problems, but they arrived in time to depart at 10.  We had both reserved a wrist band that sends electronic pulses and is supposed to be great for sea sickness.  Gary didn’t think he needed one, but decided to get one just in case.  I knew I got sea sick (I had been salmon fishing off the coast of Astoria, Oregon before and got sea sick)….so I was glad to try this route, as the dramamine pills make me so drowsy.  And, it worked great!  Never once did I get nauseous, though others on the boat did.  We discovered later that Gary’s band wasn’t working well, but he really didn’t need it anyway, he was fine.  Well, in going into this day, I had hoped we could see at least 1 whale…..not knowing how many are actually out there!  We saw LOTS!  And, in the distance, you could always see whales spouting all over the place…..these puffs of white vapor rising from the ocean on the horizon.  And, we saw sea lions swimming along with the whales….these whales we saw were humpback whales, by the way.  The sea lions you could see easily because they grouped together in a tight group.  We learned that this is a way to protect themselves from the great white sharks in the area.  When they are alone, the sharks can sense them as a meal, I guess, but when they are huddled together in a big mass, it confuses the sharks and they can’t detect what it is.  The sea lions were following along with the whales, and they were both feeding on anchovies, which were extremely plentiful this year.  In fact, earlier in the month, the news from Santa Cruz was that there were too many anchovies and they were dying off because there were so many they were using up the oxygen in the water.  Then the concern was the dead anchovies floating in the water, and the smell.  

Besides the whales and the sea lions, we saw sea otters, dolphins, and porpoises.  And some birds, one type is called a shearwater.  They fly close to the water, hence how they got their name.  We learned that an incident that happened in the bay area with these birds was what inspired Alfred Hitchcock to do the movie “The Birds”.  Here is an excerpt I found about this in Wikipedia:

“On August 18, 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to a local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller”.”

We enjoyed it so much, we plan on doing it again.  Different times of the year you see different whales out there.  We decided we need to get a better camera before we go again, though.  I will post some pictures we took, but we just can’t zoom in close enough to get a good picture, plus the time it takes from when you click the button till it actually takes the picture is slow (those who know photography I sure know a better word than that to describe it!).

We saw the flukes of the whales (tails) as they went down; we saw their backs above the surface of the water; we saw them blowing from their blowholes; we saw only one breach, but that was quite a distance away.

There were people who were in kayaks paddling along behind the sea lions and whales, following them to watch them.  When our boat got close to them, our captain just turned off the motor and we sat there awhile watching.  It was really a great experience!  Our time on the boat was from 10 to 2, and it went pretty fast, we were so busy watching all the time, since you never knew what you would see next.

Sunday, I taught Relief Society and Gary taught Priesthood.  That evening was the Outgoing Devotional.  It was a wonderful meeting!  I need to type up my notes (and finish typing up the notes from the one before!!).  I just want to share one thing that a recent convert said during the meeting:  “The more you are willing to give to God, the closer you will get to God.”  I thought that was quite a profound statement.

Okay, transfer week number 9 of 13 for us.  And, during the week we hit our 1 year mark as well!  Monday, I worked on the transfers on the computer again, doing my double checking.  I was so glad that Gary had helped me on Friday, because I had a difficult time being able to have it up on the computer…..missionaries kept coming into the office.  I think they were hoping to learn something, but every time they came in, I minimized the page and hid my transfer notes.  Some asked questions, and we just said, you will find out tomorrow!  But, the interruptions would have delayed me getting the information in the computer if I didn’t already have it done.  I got the double checking done and found a few errors.

Tuesday, the actual transfer day.  The 27 missionaries who were leaving this time were recognized.  Then the new companionships were announced, and we got a new AP….we now have Elder Rich and Elder Lundgreen.  We no longer have the traveling AP’s….apparently we aren’t supposed to have them, and President Mella is working to follow the handbook correctly and getting things going in the correct direction.  Yeah for him!  Elder Hullinger was moved back into the Vietnamese program.  He said he was glad to come back to it….being an AP is hard work!  We are glad to have him back, and the members of the branch will be so excited to see him Sunday!  After the meeting, I clicked submit on the transfer information, and waited for it to process, then printed out the temporary phone lists for the office.  Then I had my regular work to do, which is always busier on transfer day…..lots of missionaries in the office paying for things, so lots of money transactions to enter in the computer.  We had arrived to work at 8:40 because we knew it would get crazy fast, and we didn’t leave until 7, and I still had stuff I could have done, but we had to leave because Gary had home teaching with our branch president and was being picked up at 7:45.  We ran home, cooked frozen corn dogs, and then he left.  I had brought home a suit jacket from Elder Hullinger that he needed buttons sewn on, so I did that after Gary left.  We didn’t get to bed until about 10, very late for us.  

Wednesday, we had a pretty busy workday.  We worked from just before 9 till 6 or 6:30, so another long day.  This is the day that the new missionaries arrive, and are in the office from about noon till a few hours later.

Thursday is the day we do our office orientation with the new missionaries.  We start at 8 on that day, and we worked until about 5:30.  I still had lots to do, but too tired.  Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep well Thursday night, so Friday was a killer!  I had told Gary that my goal for that day (Friday) was to be done at 4:59, and that I was too tired to do our grocery shopping….we just would have to fight the crowds in the stores on Saturday!  Well, we weren’t done at 4:59…….Gary had been gone all day, and one of the things he had been working on was getting a new 2 bedroom apartment to put elders in instead of the two 1 bedrooms they were in.  This would also get rid of some of the worst apartment conditions that we had elders in.  The one was actually a garage that had been converted into an apartment, and was more a studio than a 1 bedroom.  It also didn’t have a regular kitchen.  It had a hotplate instead of a stove.  So these elders are going to be very happy!  Plus, the one set of elders was on bikes but the other set had to transport them places they needed a car for, and they weren’t near each other.  This move will save some mileage on the vehicle now.  Anyway, back to the day.  It was around 5 that he finished with the apartment stuff, and said he would need a holding deposit on Monday to take to the apartment managers, so I needed to get back on the computer to put it in, which also meant adding the apartment to the list first.  We were finishing up and about to leave, when the phone rang and Sister Wilks answered it (she was still working too, as was Sister Nedbreberg)….it was good we were still there, as it was the senior couple who are entering the MTC on Monday, and will be here the end of that week on Saturday.  They needed to check on some things with Gary, and Gary gave them his phone number for when they arrive on Saturday to give us a call and he will get them to their new apartment.

Friday night, I was in bed by 8:30, and out like a light!  I woke up at 7, decided to just lay there, and fell back asleep again, waking this time about 9.  Since then, we have showered, dressed, worked on laundry and cleaning (the usual Saturday things), and now I am catching up here.  We had decided to forego any plans for the day and have a quiet day to rest and relax as needed.  We still need to get out and grocery shop, which we will do later, but other than that, we will chill.  We were both so beat this last week.  It was a busy transfer…we sent home the 27 missionaries with all that that entails to us in the office, and we gained 24.  We will get 2 more in a couple of weeks that are in the Chinese language program, as it runs on a different time schedule.  

Okay, I will put in some pictures of the whale watching here on the blog:

humpback whale

whale spouting

The sea lions massed around the whale.

The fluke going down.

The boat we were on.  It was Santuary Cruises.

A selfy of us.

Picture of the road leaving....can you see how much traffic is on the other side?  That is what the roads are like all the time.   Our side was like that too, only I tried to keep a safe distance behind the car in front of me.

Remember we love you all!  Remember why we are here.....because we know the church is true!  Yes, we get tired, but we are glad we have the energy to help move the work forward in our little way.  We will catch up on our rest in 6 months.....haha!

Bye for this week!