Dear Richard
I’m really going to post these letters
now, so that you can hopefully get them before your birthday!
So lots of exam marking, and a bit of
invigilating… But as of this afternoon I’ve marked 105 scripts, and I have 56
to go J I always get difficult marking to do, so
it’s a big relief to be making progress! And the nice thing also is that I’ve
been able to mark at home a few days, so it saves me the travelling time.
My car finally went in for repairs after
the accident I had in September! And after they said it would take 2 days I got
it back after 4 days… But that’s the nature of the shocking service we got from
these people. But the car does look good at least! And thankfully for that time
we still had access to Andrew’s old work car for that time, so it worked out
well J And we decided to draw the maximum on our
bond, which has a lower interest rate, so that we could pay off my car. So our
total debt is the same, but we have it at a lower rate. It feels good to have
my car paid off at least J
I attended a seminar on burn out among
academics, which was really interesting. There are definitely things about
working at a university that increase the risk of burn out, and it was good to
learn more about it.
For the most part things went better with
the kids last week, and especially the weekend was actually great. So I feel
like we’re making progress! We skyped Cindy on Saturday because the kids had
been missing her. They showed her a bunch of their art, and Josh told her about
his talk. They were so excited! J And Josh had a
dress-up thing at school on Friday and he wanted me to make him a mask… A
dinosaur mask… But I managed to make a cool 3D mask – I’m pretty proud of it! J And he was very happy J Last night when I was putting them to bed
Josh also decided that he wanted to pretend to be me. So he tried to do
everything I normally do – sitting/kneeling in my place for prayers and scripture
story reading, being super reverent for the prayer (so he CAN do it!) and then
he wanted me to whisper in his ear so he could read the scripture story, and he
also did a whole page of the Faraway Tree!
On Friday afternoon there was a
fund-raiser braai at the school, so the kids got to play extra with us there,
and I got to chat to some of the moms. I’m developing nice friendships with a
number of them, which is really nice. And then on Saturday Josh went for a play
date with 2 other boys. The mom was one of those that I sent Elder Holland’s
talk to, and she phoned me a couple days later to say thank you and to say that
they have just starting going to church, but her teenage daughter had actually
asked her how to read the Bible, and she didn’t know how to respond. So I gave
her a New Testament seminary manual, with a Book of Mormon, while I was there
on Saturday, and she accepted them J
I’ve been attending the High Priests group
lessons for the last while, and it was really interesting yesterday to see how
they do a duties lesson. So different to Relief Society! It’s been a good experience!
But what I really wanted to comment on was the Sunday School lesson yesterday,
which was on the welfare program. I really liked this quote by Elder Maxwell: “Work
is always a spiritual necessity, even if, for some, work is not an economic
necessity.” And while having down time is so important, Yes, you have to have a
purpose in your life! I was sitting in the lesson thinking about my job, but
then I realised later in the day that it can be work of so many other kinds as
well. A stay-at-home mom is working with her children, a retiree who magnifies
their church callings and assists with their grandchildren is working… So it
definitely doesn’t have to be paid work – but purpose! So pretty profound…
So that’s my week. And I promise I’m going
to post this! Love you lots J
Shelly
No comments:
Post a Comment