Our mission assignments

Our mission President is David Melonakos.  He contacted me a few days ago to set up a time for a conference call.  Today we hooked up and he and Sister Melonakos talked to us about what assignments we will have during our mission, and to answer any questions we might have.
Of course, we are already assigned as Assistant Area Auditors, so we will have that work to do.  These other things are in addition to our auditing assignment.
    The brother I am replacing has been serving as the 1st Councilor in the Branch presidency, and as the 1st Councilor in the Elder's Quorum presidency.  President M. said they are discussing giving one of those assignments to a brother who has been a member for only a short time, but is doing well and would benefit from that kind of calling.  So my assignment will be settled after they make their decision and interview the brother.  I feel good about that.  My job is to support the members and the leaders in the little branch of the church there.  A calling like either of those is a great way to teach a new member how the church works, and how to grow into a spiritual man of God.
    Liz is being assigned a big responsibility!  She will be the 1st point of contact for any medical issues the missionaries in the whole mission may suffer.  There is a mission doctor, and a mission nurse, but they don't like paperwork, so Liz will fill the administrative role.  She will schedule doctor/nurse visits, coordinate with the insurance company, and make sure everyone knows what is happening.  It sounds like a very big job.
    And then there is an assignment for meals at the mission home.  We will be in charge of the meals once per quarter when the mission transfers take place.  Those are times when new missionaries arrive, old ones go home, companionships are adjusted, etc.  Lots of movement.  We will have another senior couple to assist, but we will plan the meals, buy the food, get it prepared, clean up after, put everything away, and find a home for left-overs.  Mission transfers will begin with the gathering of affected missionaries to the mission home (which has beds for 35). 
Day 1:  We will serve dinner that evening. 
Day 2:  We will put out a light breakfast for the departing missionaries who will be shuttling to the airport.  New missionaries will also be arriving and shuttling to the mission home.  That evening we will serve a full dinner for them. 
Day 3:  We will serve a hot breakfast to get their first day started, and a hot lunch before they head off to their assigned areas.  After lunch is cleaned up, we will drag ourselves home.
    There is one other thing.  We will be the mission historians and compile an annual history of what happens in the mission, including photos, testimonies, stories from the missionaries, etc.

So those are our assignments.  They also told us that we should take some time off occasionally to do things we enjoy, and see the country.  You can be sure we will do that.   Actually we had decided to try to do that anyway, so there you go.  We are in synch with our leaders.

Writing your Memoir

One night during the recent reunion, we presented "TED Talks".  I was hesitant to participate as I;ve never listened to them, or worried about them.  However, everyone else seemed to be excited about it and I decided to give one about How to write your Memoir.

I started by pointing out that I had just given them copies of Volume 1 of my memoir, which covers growing up in a small, Mormon town.  The project had taken me 15-20 years, and was a lot of work, but I learned some things as I went.

• You need to decide on your purpose for writing it.  Some examples:
• You might just want to tell your story.  I found it very difficult to pin down the sequence of events that happened in my life.  It might not be terribly important, but a story is most often told as a sequence of events leading to a conclusion.  Since I couldn't do that to my satisfaction, I gave up on a strict sequence and instead told my story by subject.  But you may want to use this approach, and many people do.
• You might want to teach lessons, based on lessons you've learned during your life.  I heard a talk recently expounding this approach.  The man giving the talk had decided to leave a book of stories from his life that could be told to children.  So his stories were fairly short and simple, and each story was followed by a lesson like you might teach in primary class.
• You might want to publish your memoir and make a million dollars.  If that is your goal you will need to apply some strict rules to your work, including making sure dates are correct, perhaps referencing them, and be very strict in getting it right.  You will need permissions from people you describe, especially if you name them.  I was having enough trouble just getting my story down on paper, so I didn't want that kind of  restrictions.
• You may be describing how your life fits into history.  In that case, what I just said about making money is even more true.
• Or you might just want your family to understand your life.  That is what I decided to do.  I wrote what I remember, knowing that my memories might not be the same as other people's memories.  That is the difference between a memoir and a history.  A memoir is what you, personally, remember.  A history is written with less passion and more academic rigidity.

• How to write a story (of any kind)
• Start!  The rule of thumb is:  Writer's write.  People who don't write aren't writers.  So get started.  When you are writing, don't worry about spelling, grammar, sentence structure, or anything like that.  Just start putting down your thoughts, gathering your stories.  I found that as I wrote I thought of other things to write, so I put what I had into an outline form and added ideas into the outline before continuing with what I was writing.  Later I expanded the ideas into the story.
• Write every day.  I've heard that advice often.  I try, but I fail most days.  They say set apart a time of day and spend some time writing every day.   I'm not that disciplined, so I decided to not have any guilt over it.  I wrote when I could and felt like it.  That's part of the reason it took me 15-20 years.
• Don't wait!  I had an interesting experience as I was editing and preparing my memoir for publishing.  I read things I'd written early on, and I had no memories of the story I was reading.  I still knew they had happened, but the actual memory was gone.  So when I do volume 2 of my memoir I won't have as much material to work with as I'd like.
• It helps to have a theme for your memoir - something to give it a structure so it doesn't become a bunch of random events.  I used a couple of gimmicks for this:  Early in the book I told about a horse who started stepping on my toe when I was saddling it.  I found ways to refer back to that several times during the memoir.  And the title came from that story.  Another recurring theme was what we called our animals.  That theme led to the ending for my memoir - another important thing to have.
• Get help when you need it.  I wasted a lot of time trying to find someone to edit my story.  Some were willing to do it if I paid them for their time.  The ones who didn't expect to make their fortune didn't have the time.  In the end, my overworked wife was my savior.  I couldn't have finished it without her help.

• Editing
• As I said before, when you write just get the story down.  But in the end you absolutely have to edit your story.  I edited my story over and over, and over again.  My spelling is pretty good, but my typing has deteriorated as I've gotten older, so that has to be fixed.  Sentence structure also has to be adjusted.  I write the way I think, which is also the way I talk.  Written things need to be written so your meaning is clear without voice inflection and body language.  So you use a different part of your brain when editing.  If you think of something to add to your story as you are editing, stop editing and switch into writing mode.  Just get it down and edit it later.
• Things to address during editing:
• Spelling - it's amazing that if you mis-spell a word you tend to not see it afterwards.  You need a fresh pair of eyes.  It took me a year or more for me to see spelling errors after I'd made them.
• Sentence structure -  I tend to write very long sentences.  I spent a lot of time getting a single thought into each sentence.
• Paragraphs 
• Grammar
• Get someone to go through it for you if you can, other people can be great helps.  But the final decision is yours.  Don't let anybody else write your story.  Stick to your guns and make the way you want it to be.

• Publishing your memoir
• You can use web-based tools to get your book into final form.  They will give you a book that looks professional.  They will also cost you the most to get it published.
• If you are going for the million dollars, and your work is actually valuable, you'll need to submit it to a publisher, get it accepted, and edit, edit, edit.  They'll have you traveling, doing book signings and other publicity stuff.  You might make a million dollars, but it will cost you a LOT of time and effort.
• You can use a word processor to format your own book.  You make all the decisions about how it looks, but it will be YOURS!  This is the approach I took.
• I wrote it using WORD.  I put the page breaks where I wanted them.  I added photos where they made sense.  I put in white space if I felt it helped with the story.
• When I was happy with the final product, I saved it as a PDF file.  That works pretty well, but it changed some of my page breaks, so I had to adjust and try again.
• I took the PDF file to Staples (just because they are near by) and had one copy printed on heavy paper with a coiled wire binding and clear, plastic covers.  I read through it and used a red pencil to do another editing round.
• I took my revised PDF file back to Staples and had them bind it into hard covers (a stock item) with color printing on pages with photos.  I also brought a file with a photo I hadn't included in the book for the front cover which had a recessed area for a cover page.  They cut the photo down to fit the space and glued it onto the hard cover.  I had them make 7 copies.  One for me and one for each of my children.  That is all the copies I intend to make.  It looks good and everybody was happy to get one.

Family Reunion

For the past couple of weeks we have been consumed with our tri-annual family reunion.  We drove our Subaru to Bernalillo (just past Albuquerque) on the first day and that was fairly uneventful in a good way.  Second day we headed up the mountain to Cuba NM and entered the snow band.  It gradually got worse as we went along.  By Dove Creek it was getting bad.  The problem was that we had full control in our excellent Subaru, but others didn't.  We saw lots of cars in the borrow pit.  We were held back by folks going too slow.  And then we came to a halt at "Hole in the Rock", where a truck spun out on a grade and blocked the road.  We were stuck there for about 1.5 hours.  Fortunately there is a rest area right there. 
     We got to Wallsburg shortly after it got dark and all was well.  People started arriving shortly  after.  As the house filled up, the small kids became a moving force.  At least three times they were all downstairs when the word came for them to come up for a meal or whatever.  Suddenly they were boiling up the stairs like fireants coming out of their mound after you kick it.  They just kept coming, and coming, and coming.
   Our kids did a fabulous job organizing fun activities.  Example:  we had a karaoke night.  Liz was excited by that one and she ordered costumes for us.  She got dressed up as Cher, with a long, black wig and a black sequin dress.  I got a hippy outfit, also with wig, flowered bellbottom pants and matching jacket.  It had fake mustache, but I forgot to put it on.  After we sang "I got You Babe", little Chase came towards us slowly, leaning forward while staring and finally said, "Grandpa????"  He was really confused, but he felt a lot better when I took the wig off.
    We had two nights of TED talks.  First for the adults.  My topic was "So you want to write a memoir?"  Liz presented good info on Religious Freedom.  Mark discussed metrics - how to measure things.  Angela gave a great talk on how to analyze plots of movies and books.  And so on.  The next night the teenagers and little ones took their turn.  That was fun too.
  There was lots of snow, so we had sledding outings.  And, of course, we had to shovel the stuff.  Friday was the big day where we roasted a lamb on a spit over a charcoal fire.  The food was amazing.  The lamb is a cultural heritage thing for us.  Liz's father was born in Croatia, in the former Yugoslavia, where roasting lamb is a traditional celebration feast.  We had it with Pogacha, Aurignacha, and salad.  We left out the sarma, and polenta this time, but there was plenty for everyone.  That night we had over 50 people eating with us.
What a wondrous thing to have everyone together for almost a week, and all were happy.