I've missed you, blog

Happy Memorial Day. Another crazy week has come and gone and we've spent just about every spare daylight minute out in the yard. We got the garden planted, planted more shrubs and trees, Rob finished another little retaining wall, etc. etc. Rob got quite the good laugh the other night when I was talking about the new trees in our yard and said, "It almost feels like being up in the mountains!" OK, obviously our pencil thin trees look nothing like the trees you would find up in the canyons, but what can I say, I'm excited! We would have been out there again all day today, but because of the rain we focused on indoor projects and things that we needed to catch up on.

The time that I would usually spend on the computer this week (and blogging in particular) was spent in preparation for my Relief Society lesson. It was on President Uchtdorf's talk "A Matter of a Few Degrees" from the April Priesthood Session. I introduced the lesson by telling one of my favorite mission stories (oh, stop your groaning). My companion and I were serving way up north in a remote area close to the arctic circle in Norway. The town we lived in (Mosjoen) had one member of the LDS church and so we would actually drive about 1 hour and 45 min. to get to the nearest branch each Sunday (this town is labeled on this map as "Mo").

We would also travel around to different towns from time to time to follow up on referrals and on one particular Sunday we were set to visit a family on a little island off the coast. After church had ended we got directions from some members and were told repeatedly that this was to be a beautiful drive. Well, we headed off on our little adventure with our sack lunches in tow and after a while it seemed that the view was getting, dare I say, LESS scenic. In fact, the trees began to look bare as if they had been burned our something. Before long we came upon the following sign, "Velkommen til Sverige." Translation: Welcome to Sweden! I don't know how familiar you may be with LDS mission rules, but "not leaving the country" is on the list. Our reaction may be similar to what you might expect when watching a comedy on TV or movie - two people yelling for several seconds in kind of a slow-motion fashion. We flipped the car around as soon as possible (bummer because now I wish I had a photo of the sign) and flew (well, being sure to follow all traffic laws, of course) to the other side of the country. We did make our ferry in time which was a miracle and my mission president got a good laugh at the story even though he is Swedish (the Norwegians loved to hear my description of the ugly Swedish landscape btw). The point of this story in relation to the lesson is that sometimes we can be way off-track (me driving in the complete opposite direction of where I wanted to end up), but even if we are off by only a "few degrees," the result can be the same.