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Valencia! The City of Oranges, Conferences, BurgerKing, and more...

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  This week we spent several days in the beautiful city of Valencia.  It is a long 4 hour drive that occasionally rewards you with a breathtaking view of  Montserrat, the Mediterranean Sea, or abandoned castles atop a distant hill. We drove down on Tuesday and booked a room at a Holiday Inn Express which ultimately provided a false sense of security that seeing something familiar brings. Small room and no water pressure was offset somewhat by it's proximity to the church and Burger King (which was totally legit and I actually made two visits to get my fix of American cuisine). We had a wonderful zone conference with the 24 missionaries of the Zone Sur.  We are down to only two zones, the North and the South. Lunch was a fast-food place's paella that included snails which led to a lot of challenges to see who was brave enough to eat.  We also were able visit all the missionary pisos in Valencia and help with small repairs that will make our young (and old) missio...
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Clean Coops and Cussing Chickens

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When I was looking for potential ideas on how to build our chicken coop a number of things always seemed to pop into my head as I perused different options.  (Fun Fact #1: the word peruse actually means to study carefully, which is the opposite of what most folks think it means) There were a lot of creative architectural ideas on YouTube but I could never quite find one geared towards making my chicken husbandry life easier.  My list included: I did not want to have to remember to close the coop door every night, I wanted to be able to gather eggs easier and not have to hunt for them, I wanted to make sure I never forgot to water them, and most importantly, I wanted to be able to clean the coop fast and easy. I found a nifty product from England that opens the coop door at first light and closes either at a set time or at dusk (I have it set at 8:45 PM each night).  The chickens all file into the coop around 1 or 2 minutes before the door shuts.  My cousin, Cliff, ...
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Thanks for the Memories!

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My three sons (wasn't that a TV show?) have a unique game they like to play whenever we are lucky enough to all be together.   It's called (or more accurately, I just named it) "Let's get Dad to say...[insert over-used Dad-ism here]"! Some of the Dad-ism's the Olson boys try to get me to say include but are not limited to: - "Well that's totally inefficient..." - "Killing the drill!" (a baseball coach term for whenever a practice drill gets messed up) - Any kind of sigh . - Any mission, work, or life story that they have heard so many times that hearing me tell it once more makes their ears bleed. They set the game (me) up with a series of trigger questions, descriptions, or conversations aimed at getting me to say one of my Dad-isms.  Bonus points are awarded if I used more than one in the same game.  I only catch on when they yell, "YES!!" when the Dad-ism is finally uttered.  BINGO. My sons can be real brats sometimes... ...
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The Virtue of Patients

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Aristotle taught that one of the 12 characteristics of Virtue is Patience...  If patience were the sole characteristic of virtue I would truly be an unvirtuous individual.  When we received our mission call to Barcelona, Spain back in August 2020, we were hopeful that by the time our original departure date of January 2021 rolled around the COVID pandemic would be over and we would be in our piso (apartment) and strolling to the mission office about 2 km (1.25 miles) away.  Then, when our start date was officially delayed an additional three month, I was an unvirtuous soul. When March 1st finally came we were eager to begin our MTC (Missionary Training Center) training bright and early on Monday morning at 7:00 am.  We, along with around 4 other couples, were all going to receive the same training remotely in the comfort of our own homes.  However, there were a lot of glitches with the ZOOM connections, and other technical translating challenges issues that dela...
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