Blood Donations, LA Orff Conference and Temple Trip, Stake Conference, Ben's Birthday, and Football with Marcus

 There have been many things happening within the last two weeks that I wish to talk about. One is that Sarah got her blood taken out from Vitalant. I accompanied her but couldn't get my blood taken out. However, they still let me eat all the snacks avaiable, including juices, cookies, crackers, and the crowning eat: chicken tacos with some good sauce, onions, and cilantro. Also, while I was waiting, I bumped into a nice lady from the Spanish Ward, who was also looking for us at stake confeerence.

The weekend of the 5th, 6th, and 7th, I felt like I needed to go to the LA Orff (Music Teaching) Conference. It was in Hawethorne, pretty close to where Sarah was born. We decided to leave right after Sarah did some subbing at Lakeview Middle School. So we got to the right when we needed to so we could do the last endowment session. It was an interesting session because of so many pauses, one which was caused by me. Sarah bumped into a childhood friend named Faifua. She was so nice and it was a pleasant conversation. We thanked her for raising such fine kids. We were talking in the Celestial Room for so long standing up that we didn't actually get to sit down before they were telling us that the temple was closing for the night. But it was a very good time.

The next day I went the Orff Conference. (For those of you who don't know what Orff is, it is a school of thought for how to teach music to elementary age children. Other modes of thought are Kodaly [prounounced Ko-dai], Suzuki, and the Dalcroze Methods. They are named after the person who created them). At this conference it was an Orff and Kodaly chapter share. So it was going back and forth between instructors. They taught songs like "Welcome to the Music Class," talked about Brazilian and Filipino music, "Tideo," and even some recorder songs with Lynn Kleiner (which my student teaching teacher, Dusty, told me is like a general music teacher celebrity).

I met some cool Orff and Kodaly people, and made some connections. Looked at the books that they had for sale. The people were so nice and the songs were so fun. The space was kinda crowded, but it was because of it being a chapter share and being half the size of a normal multipurpose room at a school. But overall, it was a good experience.

On our way home we saw the temple from afar and got through traffic at Wilshire. We wanted to get home as soon as we could that evening so that we could go to Stake Conference. We weren't dressed for Stake Conference, but we still made it. Elder Peter Johnson was giving a really great "lesson" to us, and he even had everyone ask questions at the end. Sarah asked a question about what we could do to apply the atonement in our lives.  After Sarah asked her question, during the closing song, Elder Johnson came to give Sarah and me a hug from the pulpit. He was just walking around like 70 just do that. It was just amazing. Stake Conference was just really nice. 

They charged us to:

1. Look for ancestors to take their names to the temple.

2. Worship in the temple instead of just attend.

3. Find ways to apply Jesus Christ's Atonement to our lives daily.

4. Invite the one to church.

That Sunday was Ben's 13th birthday. It was quite fun because we had the missionaries over to eat dinner with the Trefflichs. We had bacon and waffles. Then Marcus made a waffle and whipped cream cake with the help of Annabelle and we all sang to him. It was pretty cool. I was surprised when Ben ate the massive cake but not surprised when he said his belly hurt. Part of his birthday is Labor Day Monday he had a bonfire party at the beach. I wasn't able to go because of Coastal Voices. Sarah was able to go, though. The biggest thing is that they got a lot of mosquito bites because when the sun came down, the mosquitos came out it swarms. Sarah had a lot of bug bites on her legs. Even the physical therapists and David commented it on it the night we watched Airplane with the Treffich family and had a scavenger hunt that Ben planned out.

We went to Marcus' first league football game of the season. He is part of the Midshipmen team. I just learned that the Midshipmen are the Navy team in college football sports. Before his team played, there were a total of two games that we slightly watched beforehand. We slightly watched them because we were busy acquiring good seats, and then we struggled to locate where Ben had wandered off to. Ultimately, we found him playing football with a bunch of little kids. Marcus' team did pretty well. Marcus even did some running with the ball. This was flag football, so no tackling. David was even able to come and after the game he took the kids to get some ice cream, I think.