Arlington Cemetery

17 August 2015

 The guard and the lieutenant and the new guard presenting arms.

 The carriage pulling a casket. We're pretty sure it was empty. :)

And this is the lieutenant checking the new guard's rifle, making sure it's up to snuff. You have to look into the fuzzier part. Sorry! But It made me really happy because it was like he was doing a few color guard spins. :)

So, this week, we went to the temple visitors center on Tuesday with an investigator who's getting baptized this Sunday and a member. The investigator loved it! We saw a cute little video about family. 

Then, Wednesday, we had district meeting and appointments-we were running around crazy. Por todos lados, as they say in Spanish. 

Thursday, I have no idea what happened with Thursday. We were visiting places, trying to find people to teach. 

Then Friday was weekly planning, and by the end of it, Hna. Tate had a migraine! (But not from planning. :)) so, we went to the two appointments that we had, and then came home so she could sleep it off. 

Then Saturday was correlation, and afterward, they asked us to help set up for an open house that evening. We got almost everything set up, and then there was a problem--the couple was stuck in Las Vegas! There were no flights coming in or going out of the D.C. Area, including Baltimore, the two airports here in Virginia, so they weren't going to be there, so we said, "why keep setting it up? They're not even going to be here!" There was a big debate about it, but in the end, we decided to take it all down, fridge the food, and do a smaller dinner-like thing on Sunday. So we took it all down. That was an evening also where we had a hard time finding people to teach.

Sunday, after the last English ward got out, we told the deacons to not take down the chairs in the gym, and we reset everything up, ate, and then dashed off to a charlafogonera (fireside), where I was playing piano. But! I had told them the wrong number for the opening hymn, because it's different between the Spanish and English hymn books. I meant for us to sing, "La Alba ya Rompe" (the day-dawn is breaking, #52 in the English) and instead we sang "Guíame a Ti" (Guide Me to Thee, #52 in the Spanish). I was so embarrassed. We couldn't change the hymn because there weren't any Spanish hymn books, the words were already printed on the back of the programs. So everyone learned a new hymn last night. It all worked out. It's fine.

So today, we went to Arlington Cemetery and saw the changing of the guards by the monument to the unknown soldiers. It was really neat to see. But it was really hot-sweat was running down my back. I felt bad for the soldiers. But, they're only there for an hour, and the ceremony takes like 15 minutes, so by the time it's over, they're only there for 45 minutes, so they're probably fine. 

The cemetery is HUGE! I had no idea it was that big. It has 400,000 gravestones there. All of them military people. Chaplains, médicos (what's that word in English?), lieutenants, colonels, etc. It was really cool. We also saw a horse-drawn casket! We're pretty sure it's empty, though. :) 

Then after the cemetery, we did our grocery shopping and came to write. We'll be heading out pretty soon to go wash our car for zone conference tomorrow and do our laundry. Hopefully there will be some time for a nap somewhere in there...