Today I am going to recall events that happened on September 11. Last year I wrote a blog post about 9/11/01, so rather than focus just on that individual day, I'm going to write about as many as I can remember.
2011. I honestly don't remember too much besides what is written on the above-mentioned blog. I think the TV might have been on in the kitchen, discussing the anniversary and telling stories of family members of victims. I went to the Bountiful Regional Center ("Turtle Building") for a fireside; I think I sat by some girls, Ann and Jen, from my ward. After eating peach pie, I wrote my blog post.
2010. We were camping near Scipio. I suppose it can be a little difficult to determine what happened Friday night (September 10) and what happened on September 11. I remember a lot of things, but I don't necessarily remember the order. My cousin's kid Damon was playing with my niece Allie's Spongebob Leapster; he was very amused at a game in which he caught underwear. Later one of my cousin Callie's kids said to her, "Mom, I want underwear," referring to the game. At one point we heard a girly cry; we thought it was Lauren, the young daughter of my cousin Brandon, but it was in fact Allie, who was stranded alone on a tiny island in a tiny stream. Once I was with some of these kids at the stream and Allie was afraid to go over the stream. Damon offered to help her across, but being seven years old he wasn't very good at helping and she ended up stepping in the stream and getting her pants wet. We tried to roll them up but they kept unrolling themselves. Once my cousin Alex put a toy in the stream and the current was too fast that it went downstream before we could catch it; I had to keep reiterating to the kids (especially to Alex) that they couldn't put things in the stream. Once I found a fuzzy caterpillar struggling in the stream, so I took a stick and rescued it. My cousins had some autumn mix candy (you know, candy corn and mellocreme pumpkins) sitting on the table and I was sad that it was still four days too early to eat it. My uncle John was talking about how rattlesnakes can climb bushes, and my aunt Michelle didn't want Alex to hear because it would freak him out. We roasted hot dogs on the fire for lunch. That night my mom made some little apple pie things using canned apple pie filling; I think I might have tried to justify eating them. There was significant burning of them. Eventually we put down the trailer and left. Allie was watching a Princess Sing-Along video in the car and was singing along with it; my mom looked in the backseat and smiled with "Oh how cute" amusement. I tried to take pictures of the fall leaves but it was dark and I couldn't get any good ones.
2009. It's thanks to my journal that I can remember anything from this date. We went to Lapwai, and I think this was the time that when we saw the Dennisons, we talked to James in the living room instead of their bedroom. He told us he was starting work at the gas station across the street. I asked him about reading the Book of Mormon; he said that he had already told us he wouldn't read it, but that wasn't true; he had never told me that, and in fact they had done some reading previously. I thought Elder Tamblyn was kind of patronizing to James. Later I was complaining to him about how unreceptive James had suddenly become. This might have been the day we talked to a potential investigator named Kemo; he wanted us to sweat with him, but neither of us missionaries knew what that was, so we kind of hoped the other knew what it was. Our car had several CDs it would cycle through, and as we were just coming back into Lewiston, the Cherie Call CD (He Gives Flowers to Everyone) came on. When the second song, "Believe," came on, Elder Tamblyn asked if it was a CD just of that singer, and he was glad it was. This is my journal entry for that day; there's a lot I don't specifically remember: "Today we had district meeting, and then we went to Jeffrey's. It was fun going to Lapwai; we rode the bikes through the town. James Dennison got a job at the gas station so I don't know how much we'll be able to teach him now.
"We tracted some, and we were able to get in to teach Karen Smith again. Then we had a lesson with the Lameres, and came home. I'm glad that Elder Tamblyn likes Cherie Call."
2008. This might have been the day we were talking to a potential and I could see that her kids were watching The Nightmare Before Christmas; it was the part where Jack performs his experiments. Elder Duncan told me he would let me watch it while we were waiting for the PI to come back to the door. Then we left and were walking down the road and I noticed some spiderwebs on the bushes. I always liked to stop and look at the spiders in their webs, so I stopped and looked this time. I noticed as I was passing that there was a small bee-like insect caught in one of the webs. I pointed it out to Elder Duncan. We watched the spider jump out and bite it, then go back to its hole. It reinforced its web and made circles around the bee. We thought the bee was dead, but then it started to move again. We wondered who would win. Eventually the bee struggled enough that it was able to get out of the web--but it fell out and fell into the web of an even bigger spider. That spider jumped out and bit it, and the bee died. We decided it was time to leave, since we had probably watched it for fifteen minutes. We remarked about how cool it was and that the first spider did all the work but it was the second spider who got the weakened bee. I wondered what the passing cars thought of us Mormon missionaries looking intently at a bush. That night we had a member visit with the Bowmans--the wife was fairly recently reactivated (I think, although maybe she was always active) and the husband had been baptized for less than a year. I think they told us about how Sister Bowman once attended another church with some friends when she was getting back into the LDS Church. These church congregants learned she was Mormon so they started accosting her with questions, such as "Why don't your churches have any windows?" to which she responded "They do!" (I pointed out that it was the Jehovah's Witnesses who don't have windows.) Then they asked about young women having relationships with bishops. Sister Bowman said, "That's not true!" and might have left at that point. After she told this story, Brother Bowman told us how their judgmental attitude indicated that they weren't a true church. The Bowmans gave us some candy and some apples before we left for our lesson with Leslie Couch. We drove to Leslie's and Elder Duncan took an apple in to Leslie's house and ate it, which I found quite unscrupulous. Leslie's son Ashton sat in on our lesson; it was the first time he had ever done so. At some point in the lesson we asked him to read (he was following along in his Bible) and Leslie's body language indicated that she was nervous about us asking him, but he read. That night as we were counting up our numbers, I noted we had a new investigator--we hadn't taught Ashton before and we set up a specific return appointment. This is my journal entry for that day: "Today we were able to contact a few potentials who weren't interested or available at the time. We spent some time walking around. We later were able to see the misfortune of a miniature bee. It was caught in a spider web, with the arachnid watching nearby. The spider gradually came out and bit it. The bee tried to escape, but decided to play dead for a bit, while the spider repaired its web and kept getting on the bee. Eventually the bee escaped from the bottom and fell to another web below, where an even bigger spider darted out bit it, darted back to its cave, then came back out and bit it again and quickly left. The bee was no longer struggling when we left.
"We had a member visit with the Bowmans, then we met with Leslie. Ashton sat in with us, so he's now an investigator."
2007. I believe I had the day off and I started putting up Halloween decorations. I think I put the jar with the Halloween lid in my room and put Peanuts Halloween fruit snacks in it.
2006. This must have been the day I told David Christensen that I heard you were supposed to drive with your lights on (even during the day) because of 9/11.
2002. My mom gave me an early birthday present of a neon-light American flag. It was a birthday present but she gave it to me early because of 9/11.
2001. It started out an ordinary school day. It wasn't until third-period math that I heard anything about what had happened, that a plane had flown into the towers. One girl in the class, Mika Mokofisi, kept talking about how she heard about it in her first-period general music class and that a high school had been bombed (Ah, rumor with her thousand tongues...). In my fourth-period science class I don't even know if the teacher said anything; he just turned on the TV and we watched the footage. Before class ended, he turned it off and we waited by the door for the bell to ring; we discussed the Jerusalem cricket our teacher had in a jar. That day I had to walk home from the bus stop; Sister Craig from our ward was picking up her daughters from Orchard and she stopped and gave me a lift. They asked me if I had heard what had happened; I said I had. Then I got home and brought in the Deseret News (it was still an afternoon paper then) and opened it up to see the enormous headline "America Under Attack!" with a picture of the smoking tower. Later my mom came home and talked about how she was waiting for her carpool and when Linda Larson arrived, she asked my mom if she had heard. My mom hadn't, so Linda made her turn the radio on. If my mom had heard earlier, she said she would have not sent me to school and would have kept me home. After dinner I was sitting on the couch in the living room (the TV was on in the kitchen--of course that was all the channels could talk about) and wrote in my journal. (The entry is on my blog, linked at the top.)
2000. I don't know, but I might have put up two plastic ghosts in a tree outside.
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