I had a strange feeling this afternoon when I continued my watching of the Sunday afternoon session of October conference. Since I had slept through most of it when it was broadcast live, this was the first time I had actually seen it. As I pointed out in my last post, both Elder Bednar and brother Merrill had included in their talk one of the points I used in my PH lesson on Sunday. Imagine my surprise when Elder Cardon of the 70 concluded his talk by discussing D&C 121:45, one of the two verses I used in my lesson. I decided if the next speaker talked about not having time to do things, I would be 4 for 4.

If I did not know that I had written the points in my lesson plan before looking at the session, I might think that their talks were the inspiration for my lesson. However it seems that the Lord was just letting me know that what I taught was in keeping with the counsel of the brethern.

One thing I did not mention in my last post was that I bore my testimony during Fast meeting. I think all of this preparation and study for our mission has moved my spiritual awareness up a notch or two. I was thinking about bearing my testimony but because we will be giving talks later in the month, I was not sure. Then during the sacrament I was reading from Micah 4:5 and the last part ‘and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever’ really struck me. I realized I had not listened to the blessing of the bread so I missed where it says ‘that they may always have His spirit to be with them.’ I thought of the great blessing that I have each week too not only renew my baptismal covenant but also I am reminded that I can have His spirit to be with me. I felt that I should share this feeling as well as my testimony, so I did.

Mary and I spent part of the day getting our financial house in order. We are transferring all the bill paying to Tom while we are gone. He will also be able to wire transfer money to our Indonesian bank. At least we will once we get an Indonesian bank account. We are also consolidating our bank accounts and getting rid of credit cards. Hopefully we will be to a point where we will just have our Discovercard and an American Express card during our mission.

I checked with the Deseret Mutual about Mary’s prescriptions and it seems that best way to do this is to buy all 18 months of any prescription that will keep and take them with us. The insurance will pay 75% of the cost if we order from a on-line pharmacy.

We got a letter from the couple we will be replacing and they have shadow leadership responsibility for 3 branches in Jakarta. This means that we will probably have the same branches. It seems that we go to one block meeting each week and then go to the English ward for the other Sunday. It will be interesting to see how this works.

We just finished making a peach truffle dessert to take to tonight’s High Priest activity. We are seeing if there is interest in a regular Monday night ‘Empty Nesters’ family home evening group.