27 December 2007

Of langir helgidagar (Overly long Holidays)

Overly long holiday. I have been to work only once in the last five days. It's been a nice break. I am the director of the International Admissions Office at BYU in Provo, Utah. I have three full-time and three part-time staff in my office. I love what I do. This is a picture of my office. I am in the blue shirt in the middle with most of the people I work with.

It's nice to have a break, but probably unlike most people, after five days of just hanging around the house I like to get back to work. I don't like just sitting around for long periods.

I remember a time on my mission when I was with a companion named Greg Hamblin from Brigham City, Utah. This is him at right. He and I got along really well and had a great time working together. He had been in Iceland about three months when I was put with him. I had been there only three weeks. Needless to say, we learned a lot of Icelandic those two or three months. I remember a time though--I think it was during our companionship--when he got really sick. At first we didn't know what it was, but pretty quickly we discovered that it was the chicken pox. He had never had them as a kid and that was before the day when you could get the vaccine. Well, I had heard that if you get the chicken pox when you're older, it is often much worse than if you got them when you were younger. I found out this was true for poor Elder Hamblin. It was awful. But I felt then a bit as I have this week. Then, he and I were the only ones in our apartment. So I studied and read and studied and looked out our 6th floor window (this blueish picture shows you what we could see out our window). That got old really fast. Elder Hamblin felt bad but there wasn't a lot we could do about it. I wrote letters, updated our tracting records, cleaned our apartment, etc. I must say it sure felt good to get back to work though when he was better. If there is one thing most missionaries hate--sitting around. That isn't what we were there for.

Today though I am able to sit around longer without getting ancy (sp?). I think that is mostly because I have my wife and kids around me. But there is only so much cleaning, reading and other stuff a person can do around the house without needing to go out and do something. Maybe its just me....

This last picture is (from left to right) Elders Hunt, Hamblin and Benson in our apartment in 1985. These three represent 1/50 of those who have served in Iceland since the mission began in 1975 (there have been about 160 to ever go there).

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