It's over

 As I typed, "It's over" in the blog title, my mind flashed back to the end of my mission. I was so miserable to be going home. I cried and cried as we flew over the mountains into Salt Lake City. I ended up going home about a month earlier than I was expecting, and 2 months before I was hoping. :) It was just the way the timing worked out with the number of incoming missionaries. But I wanted to stay in Manila forever, and even though I knew 18 months was all I got, it wasn't easy when that time came. I felt like my heart was being cut in two, half of it staying in Manila. And somehow I was supposed to go home and act normal. 

This time in the branch has been so much like a mission for our family. Our wonderful, extra long mission where we got to learn a language and be part of another culture, all without packing a single suitcase. We hoped it would last forever, we might have even prepared speeches in our heads to give the stake president about why he should keep us assigned to the branch...but in the end, it was moot. 

So, here I am in my living room. There's a ceiling-high row of boxes behind me, a room full of boxes below me, and a mattress on the floor above me. We're moving this week. And I feel just like I did flying home from Manila. My heart has been cut in half. How do other people do this? 

Our sweet friends Meredith and Julia put together a farewell party for us tomorrow. Marriner and I are both pretty sure it's going to be one of the hardest things we've ever done. But also, it feels so special to know that we've done enough good in the world that people want to throw us a goodbye party! :) We're really touched that someone would take time out of their busy lives to plan that for us! Last Sunday, having some extra free time, we practiced some family songs we could "carol" to our friends one last time. 

On that note, Marriner was released last week. Actually, I was released as seminary teacher, too. It caught me off-guard when they started stake business and my name came out first. :) I followed Marriner's advice to keep my testimony short - the new people were the real stars of the show. I couldn't help but contrast my first testimony and last testimony. Both were hard! The first time, because I couldn't express what was in my heart. And the last time, because I couldn't express what was in my heart. For two totally different reasons! There's just no way to share the things one feels at the end of such a journey.

Kylie bore a sweet and hilarious testimony as the wife of the new branch president. She shared a lot of stories about us, actually, and concluded with, "I feel like Harry Potter when Dumbledore dies and leaves him all alone to figure it out himself." I laughed at being likened to Dumbledore - first time that's ever happened! Fortunately, the interpreter missed some of that, and the stake president doesn't know I'm secretly an old man. :) All the testimonies were so beautiful, and I feel like the branch is in the hands of good, mature, knowledgeable and humble men of God. It was definitely a day to remember! One of my favorite parts was in the 5th Sunday lesson, while I was teaching, Marriner came in late. I greeted him, "Welcome, BROTHER Merrill!"

Tomorrow we go to church with no responsibilities at all! Neither of us is teaching or leading anything!

Today, some friends came over and helped break down beds and such. It's amazing how much less stressful moving is with friends to help. Again, just so amazed that people think we're worth giving up their time for! Because they're not doing it because we need it - they're just doing it because they love us. As I was typing this, I was grateful for Kylie, who took down our computers and packed them - and by the end, the internet still works! :) 

Oh - I should mention, we're not ACTUALLY done with everything in the branch - we can't leave until after church next week. Lige has to give his mission farewell talk. :) After that, we'll drive north. For good.

A little real-life parable

 Here's our true story from going to church yesterday....

Martha has not been taking the move well, and she has pretty much turned into a ball of anxiety who hides from everything. Well, going to church, something happened that made her mad (as always, nobody can remember what it was any more.) She was mad before we got in the car, but she got in...then decided she wasn't going to go to church. She tried to climb out of the car while we were driving, she was so mad! We parked about 2 blocks away from the church, and I pulled her out of the car and walked her down the street while calmly and friendly-like encouraging her to calm down - sort of a mix of good cop and bad cop at the same time, ha ha. :) My goal was to get her in the church building, and then we could go sit on the couch together or whatever until she calmed down, but at least I could take the sacrament. 

But as we were walking, a woman coming from the church building passed us, and without missing a beat, said to Martha in the most friendly voice, "Oh, are you going to church? I'm just coming from church. I have this box of candies (milk duds) that I don't need any more - it looks like there's just enough for you and your siblings. Would you like to take them to church with you and share them?" Martha looked at her new friend in surprise, looked at Mom with hope, Mom offered a truce, and we all went to church happily with a little box of leftover milk duds. 

I thought of how Christ-like this sister was - literally. As the mom, I wasn't in a position to be able to offer mercy. Martha required some justice for her actions, and if I offered her candy or something to get her to go to church, that would definitely have been a bribe, and have sent the absolutely wrong message. But this stranger was able to mediate by offering something she had - which made both mother and daughter happy! It was a beautiful moment, and I wonder if this sweet sister, who just a couple of hours earlier had promised to take upon herself the name of Christ, had any idea just how Christ-like she had been that day. 

Rochester, NY

I feel like things are starting to wrap up - and not just because Marriner has been serving for more than 5 years! We have forced the issue, it turns out - Marriner took a new job. No, he did not do that to get out of figuring out what will happen to our family after he’s released! It was actually quite a surprise to our family. I will explain. No, there is no time, I will sum up. :)

Back in the fall, Marriner mentioned one night that he was starting to feel like he should consider a job change. There wasn’t any reason, there wasn’t any problem at work or any discontent with our circumstances. Just a feeling that he should move. He spent some time exploring some various options, he applied for a job at NSF that he didn’t get, and the whole thing felt a bit like trying to find a light switch in a dark room. But in November, he ran into an old contact who worked at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and mentioned his interest in looking at other jobs. That was, it turns out, where the light switch was. It still took a long time to find it, though! Marriner talked to the Dean of NTID, and he wanted to bring Marriner out for an interview. Unfortunately, finals and winter break came, which meant a month of nothing. We went up to interview in January. Then we waited for a really, really long time.  I remember one evening back in March, when one of the kids asked if we had any news. I said we didn’t, and it would probably be better for his mental health if he stopped asking so much. Thus came the quote I’ve been wishing to share on Facebook ever since: “I don’t want mental health, I want answers!” We finally got an offer in April, but some negotiation was needed to make it something we could accept. That took another really, really long time. The final, accepted offer came this week. Now that we can finally tell people about it, we’re exhausted emotionally from all the waiting, uncertainty and suspense, and none of us really wants to talk about it any more! Ha!

The job is very exciting, though! He’s going to be a professor (associate professor, at that!) of Mechanical Engineering. He’ll be teaching in ASL! I will explain a bit about NTID. They are a federally funded college that is housed at Rochester Institute of Technology (which, interestingly, is a private university. Weird.) If a deaf student wants to major in a technical field, they can go to their local university and have an interpreter for their classes. Or they can go to NTID, where all the professors and staff know ASL. Gallaudet is the sister (rival??) institution for students going into humanities/social/business fields. NTID is technically a college of RIT. Currently, NTID offers associates degrees within the college. If you want a 4 year degree, you would spend the last 2 years of your degree “cross registered”, taking your classes at RIT. You’d have an interpreter in class, and NTID professors nearby to provide support. One thing you can see from this system is that advanced degrees in STEM are challenging for deaf people. Right now, none of the other faculty in the ME department at NTID have PhD’s. So they are pretty excited to have Marriner coming. Hopefully, he’ll be able to get a graduate program going and mentor some PhD students (which the current faculty can’t do). And it sounds like at least some of his teaching load will be mentoring and tutoring cross-registered students. Doesn’t that sound like an awesome job?!? At least, it is for Marriner, who has wanted to work more with students for years.

So, Marriner is making a jump from Federal Defense research to deaf education. Which will probably still involve defense research…hopefully… :) Christine, meanwhile, is making a jump from Seminary teacher to…the unknown. Sometimes, the idea of leaving the stressful and annoying things of life behind sounds pleasant. Sometimes I forget how awful packing your whole house up and driving it somewhere new is. But leaving my seminary job is what brings me tears. I loved teaching. I loved my class. I wanted to give them the consistency and full effort that more affluent areas get, but has been a struggle for our ward. I feel like I’m abandoning them. Interestingly, the only person I know in Rochester is the seminary teacher there. She’s amazing, and also not moving. :) Anyway, that’s the hard part of this move for me. I’m sure the Lord has great things in store, but I don’t know what they are yet. All I can see right now is the things I’m leaving. I hope my seminary kids know how much they’ve really meant to me this year. 

So, what does this all mean? I guess it means we get to stay involved with the Deaf community. That’s exciting! They don’t have an ASL branch in Rochester, they have a deaf group in a hearing ward. What is it going to be like to be in a hearing ward, but trying to keep up our ASL? Well, easy for Marriner, maybe trickier for the rest of us! I’m sure both the deaf and the hearing culture will be a little different there, and we’ll have to adjust to that. And what about Lige, who is working on his mission papers? Will he go with us, or will he stay here and keep his job until it’s time to go? There’s a lot up in the air. But one thing that’s not up in the air is what happens to us after Marriner is released. :) 

The stress this whole process has caused on our family was....sorta a lot. Well, it turns out that Lillian found a positive outlet for her stress, and she wrote a song that tells the whole story. And it was so good, we decided to sing it. So here is Lillian's creation, "We don't talk about New York" . We were sad that Lige had to work the night we wanted to record it, but we had so much fun singing this version, and nobody messed up too bad....so we kept it. :)

I’ll share a funny story from Marriner’s interview, that I’ve been saving up for 4 months. :) They had him teach a mock lecture, and invited a bunch of students to evaluate him. As they went to the lecture, they explained that they had an interpreter there. Marriner was surprised, he’d been doing fine without one so far. They explained, “Well…sometimes students are sort of hard to understand, they don’t sign as clearly….” When Marriner walked in and scanned the room, he actually knew most of the students there already. Either they’d interviewed to intern with him, or he’d interviewed them in the WRP program (a government program that helps people with disabilities get federal jobs. Marriner has done mentoring interviews with deaf students for the program for several years now.) One of the students was a girl he was trying to recruit to NRL at that moment! She gave him some raised eyebrows and a little grin. :) They all started chatting and greeting one another, and after about 15 minutes, the interpreter said, “So, I guess you don’t need me?” and was dismissed. Anyway, he got a job, so I guess they were impressed. 🙂

One of the most exciting things in this process was back in March, when we started seeing news reports of a total solar eclipse taking place next April. We looked at the path, and you would not believe it, the eclipse travels RIGHT. OVER. ROCHESTER. Like, we're smack in the middle of the totality path. We watched the last big solar eclipse in Douglas, WY, at Marriner's sister's house. We happened to be coming home from a trip to Utah, and decided to stop there and spend a couple of days to see it. It was SO COOL! Such a blast. I really never thought I'd get to do that ever again - and now, it's going to pass right over my house!! I don't know exactly what this house will be like, but anyone who wants to come out, we can figure out accommodations. :) Hopefully without resorting to tents in the yard in April!

Here's the map, courtesy of NASA:

Updates

 Summer is almost here. Change is in the air. Lige's last day of school is Friday, he's working on his mission papers. We're talking about whether he should stay in the branch for summer or transfer to the YSA ward. Ellis got her drivers licence. Sam is starting to think about getting the Aaronic Priesthood in 7 months, and how he's going to need to understand ASL at a new level when he gets there. Martha realized the other day that she's not bad at understanding ASL, and has been paying a lot more attention than she used to. I mean, you know, at an 8 year old level still. :) 

I'm looking forward to the end of seminary. I love it, and I love my class, and we're having a great time....and I sorta have a lot going on right now, and a couple of months to focus on some other things sounds lovely. Having two real callings is more of a balancing act than I thought it would be. Primary doesn't take a lot of organizing and coordinating - just show up and teach your class, or plan your activity. Relief Society is the opposite. Help people with ministering, figure out what to do with the Temple/Family History committee, involve other people in planning activities, help with self-reliance needs, teach lessons, conduct classes...it's not like it's even so much more to do, it's just more to keep on top of, more mental energy to not forget something. So, I'll be glad to take a little break from seminary and have some time to focus on RS, and getting myself in a groove there...hopefully!

We had a beautiful baptism on Sunday, a woman named Kimberly who just brought a beautiful spirit to the whole day. After the baptism, I was part of a funny conversation that I wanted to write somewhere, because it will make me laugh for a long time. :) Michael was talking to someone, and I happened to look over and see him sign, "Excuse me, I need to grab President Merrill really quick, I need his help to change my life." I took a second to think if I'd misunderstood, but I was pretty sure I'd seen it right....finally, I jumped in, "Did you say change your life?" Michael nodded yes, very casually...then the lightbulb turned on - the sign for life and address are the same. He needed to change in address in the church system, he'd recently moved. Ahhh! It all makes sense now!

(Though, of course, if you want to change your life, talking to your branch president is a great idea.)

(And Marriner was able to tell him how to get his address changed, too. A man of so many skills.)

Hotel pickup duties

 I got a call yesterday from our Stake Primary president. I wanted to blurt out as I answered the phone, "I got released last week, I'm not in Primary any more!" But I didn't, I waited until I heard what happy event brought her to pick up her phone and dial my number. She was in Utah, and she'd just found out that a member of the Primary general board was visiting our Stake conference this weekend, and she needed someone to pick her up from the hotel and take her to conference. I live close to her hotel and was glad to do that. But I did have to confess before she left that I wasn't serving in Primary any more. She was sad, but she still let me pick up our visitor. :)

Getting to the hotel on time was a bit of an adventure. We have a missionary in our branch, Elder Murrillo. He lives in Gaithersburg, a little over an hour drive from us. He needed a missionary haircut - his hair was getting bushy. So he took the bus down to our house (2 1/2 hours, all together) so I could give him a haircut. When he got here, I realized with shock that the hair clippers were in the car - the one Marriner had taken to the stake center for bishop training meeting. There wasn't anything else to do but drive over to the church and get them, which I did slightly more quickly than usual, or than the speed limit typically indicates. When I got back, we had 20 minutes before we needed to leave. I'd told everyone to eat dinner while I was gone, but the kids had gotten in a fight, so they hadn't eaten yet. So I started chopping hair fast, knowing that Elder Murrillo and I could eat dinner in the car if needed. Well, let me tell you, this Elder wins the "Elder with the most hairs on his head" award - probably in the whole church. The clippers jammed if I tried to run them over his head. I had to cut so slowly at first! Once we got the initial mop trim, it went more quickly. But not a fast job by any means. We got the haircut done, then bless the Saturday traffic, we didn't have to leave as early as I thought and had 5 minutes to grab some food. Elder M grabbed some rice, I made a peanut butter and nutella sandwich (easier to eat while driving), and we were off to pick up Sister Snow. As we took off, I realized that it might be against some sort of mission rule for an elder to be driving alone with a sister, but if it was, he didn't know it, and there was nothing we could do about it now. :) We got to the hotel right on time, and it was dark, so Sister Snow didn't see the bread crumbs all over our freshly vacuumed car, ha ha. :)

After conference, Elder M. caught a ride home with some members going north, and I took Sister Snow back to the hotel. We had a great time talking. It's funny how someone you don't know can be your instant friend when you have the gospel in common. What we knew about each other was that we both love the Lord, and we both have a lot of experiences feeling His love and presence in our lives. And once you start telling those sorts of stories, you can go on forever. And it's like Thanksgiving dinner - delicious and satisfying, and you don't stop until long after you probably should have. (Except that with testimony, it's not gluttony to keep going!) We pulled up to her hotel and just kept talking and telling stories - we'd both had a long and busy week, and it was just nice to sit and talk for a bit. I went home past my bedtime, but feeling so close to my Father, and so full of His love. It was lovely. I'm so grateful for the chance I had to make a new friend - the sort who fills your soul with the fire of testimony.

In the course of our conversation, I said one thing that I believe deeply with my soul, and I want to share with all of you. "If there's one thing I wish I could tell everyone in the church, it's that when you give your whole heart to serving the Lord, He takes care of your children." Sister Snow replied with the reverent voice of conviction, "And your grandchildren." What an exciting thing it is to serve a God who will bless my family through the generations for the meager service I render. 

Time flies

 It's been 5 years, guys. Five whole years have gone. Two of them were crazy covid years. Two of them were crazy learning ASL years. This last year has been pretty mellow. :) 

I looked back in my journal. President Sakai came to our house on Sept 28th. Marriner were sustained in branch conference on October 22. Branch conference has come and gone, Marriner's 5th time as the speaker. 

A few months ago, the idea of 5 years arriving had our house in an anxious mess. Rumors were circulating, especially around the hearing ward, who kept letting us know any time we ran into them how excited they were to have us coming back soon. And don't get me wrong - we love them, and we want to hang out with them. But...

I remember some years ago, someone pointed out that for every family formed through adoption, another family had to be broken up. That seemed like a sort of negative way to portray the situation, but it resonates with me right now. Our family moved. No matter what happens next, something is going to be broken. Either our ties with the hearing ward or our ties with our branch. 

Not kidding, I have a new calling.

 Well, it's been a long time. I just spent 5+ years in the same calling (essentially), and I loved it so much. And I was finally getting good at what I did. I know, I've said that every year for every calling. It turns out that there's always more to learn and more ways to grow. But really, that last day of Primary - we had everyone really engaged, and they were such angels, and I thought of all the times they were bouncing off the walls...we've come so far. But now they get to learn from someone else!

I was supposed to be called 2 weeks ago, but something happened to postpone the branch business. This week was a BAD week for it. First off, we had to leave RIGHT after church to get Lillian to her orchestra concert. We don't love Sunday orchestra performances, but we feel like uplifting community events that don't take our mind off the Savior are sometimes important in an area where not everyone feels the same as us about keeping the Sabbath day holy. So as long as they don't interrupt church, we participate. ANYWAY, we had to leave right after church, no pausing to chat, no quick I-have-a-questions in the hall. The other reason it wasn't ideal was because I actually left Ellis home when we went to church. :) She was being quiet up in her room, and we just left without her. When we got to church, I found the text and 3 missed phone calls. But I couldn't go home and get her, I sorta needed to be on time for church that day. :) So in some ways, the whole thing was a little chaotic, and I needed a couple of days to settle down and start to think about what I'm going to do now!

I was called as Relief Society (RS) 2nd counselor. Interestingly, I didn't know if I was 1st or 2nd counselor until 2 days after I was sustained. I don't think Marriner knew, either. :) But I did know that I'm over Temple and Family History work, which makes me happy, because I like family history. And I've put in some work to get a basic level of competency. So I hope I have something to share. 

Later Sunday night, we had our first presidency meeting, and we started handing out assignments. I admit that about halfway through the meeting, I started to feel a little panic. I'm teaching seminary. I'm in a RS presidency. I wasn't replaced in Primary yet - so I'm sure some opportunities to sub there will come up. As the assignments mounted (and some of them not my favorite things to do) I began to feel a little in over my head! But then, a moment of sweet reassurance from the Spirit came to remind me that a.) seminary isn't my "calling", it's my "job" so it's not fair to count that, and b.) I can go forward in faith, and the Lord will help me. So I caught my breath, reminded myself to be faithful not fearful, and stuck up my hand for the next assignment. :) 

For 5 years, I've sort of stayed out of the world of deaf adults. My husband knows everyone and talks to everyone, but I just keep to myself and talk to the kids in Primary. I've loved being in Primary, but one recognized trade-off is that my ASL hasn't developed as much as it would have if I talked to adults more. And now, I suddenly get the chance to talk to adults, but yikes, I have to talk to adults! Despite all the last 5 years, I feel like an outsider or a new move-in all over again. It's going to take some faith to get going in this calling, instead of hiding under the covers and hoping someone will plan my activities for me!!