Nan in July 2014

Tuesday 1st – Friday 4th July was Temple Week.  I found the temple cold.  Or I should say, I felt cold all the time I was in the temple.  I have stopped wondering why they keep it so cold, for I realize the it is not the temple that is cold, it is I who feel the cold so much.  One day a young woman in the row in front of me was trying to fan her face with her name slip while I was almost shivering!  I wore a thick white T-shirt under my dress, and my long bra, and felt as fat as a pig, but not warm enough.  I find my little wool scarf almost good enough but not quite.  I need one of the lovely shawls some of the workers wear.  At home I wear four or five layers, but my temple dress is too tight for that!  However, it could be worse!  It could be too warm. It could have no heating at all!

The first morning I met Glenys and Bill Chadderton. We thought then that the young Chadz would be visiting us later in the month.  I sat at a table with Steve and Ann Hill in the cafeteria.  Ann told me her mother had died suddenly at 69, and Jonathan played at her funeral.  I was shocked, and kept seeing in my mind the pleasant Sister Van Ballergooie (bet I spelled that wrong!).

Nicola had told me there was another new film.  The first session I attended showed the 'first' new film, which I had thought was really good, except for a few bits that jarred with me. The second session showed the newest, which as Nicola had heard, was quite different, and in my opinion much superior.  I never tired of watching it. It gave me insight.  For the first time ever, I could say I learned something new at the temple! People say they learn something new every time. I wonder.    With these longer films there are only four day-time sessions, so I ought to have been able to endure to the end each day, but one day I gave up after three sessions, I was so cold and bored!  

On the way home from the temple – Ray picked me up as usual – we diverted to Pack and Save in Te Awamutu, where I wandered around looking for food to replace that in our emergency packs. I wanted things that would not meet their best before date for at least a year.  Amazing how little there is. Not that it matters much.  We regularly eat food past well its best before date – with impunity as far as we know.  But I like to know I need not replenish the packs for a couple of years!

Pete Treanor came to our home Sunday School again, and with him was his wife Susan.  Our only inactive present, Kelly, had to leave before Sunday School, and fortuitously both Keith and Ann had other things to do. The missionary Elders were with us.  They are not as 'fragile' as the missionary Sisters tend to be.  So Pete, Susan and I - with a little input from Bevin Wright (Dior had vanished with Ann) and Elder Tiere, the Samoan – dug deep and unearthed unexpected principles.  Or rather we deepened our understanding.  At one point the Elder asked something about Satan taking us back by force.  I leaned across Susan to tell him that Satan could not have taken us back.  Susan got quite exited, she had not thought of that.  “So it was all a lie!”  Sure, Satan was a liar from the beginning!  I really enjoy these discussions with Pete, but they would be too strong meat for the in-actives and investigators the class is really set up for.

Ray picked up a pile of almost free magazines, such as New Zealand Geographic, Memories and This England. I was looking through one of the English ones. They should make me nostalgic. I  do have some nostalgia for the mountains of Wales, the Lake District, country villages, and country lanes. But many things are not as they were any more. There was an article on paths that were pre-Celtic. That intrigued me. I wanted to walk them. Not that many are now walkable. I hope sometime in the 'next dimension' I have the opportunity of seeing things as they were in pre-history.  And in historic times too, things as they really were.

Ray and I continue our little outings to Tokoroa, Tirau, Matamata, Cambridge, Te Aroha  .... one day we even went to Mangakino!   We know that these trips will come to an end if Ray loses his driver's licence in December, so we are enjoying them while we can.  We continue fighting with our laptops. We read many books.  We jigsaws.  Thus our lives do.