我的祖先的心可能很感动。。。

Hi there!

So it's been over a week since my last ramblings.  The most exciting thing that happened in that week was our tornado on Saturday night!  Saturday was on the whole pretty normal; the kids went to Maple Grove Days and got lots of free stuff, I slept in and ran a few errands, and we were going to go to the fireworks show at 10 pm.  Around 7:45, however, the tornado alarms started going off.  I had no idea these even existed until that point, but now I'm a believer.  Everyone headed downstairs; I grabbed my computer and a few other things to do and followed suit after a minute of not grasping the seriousness of the situation.

Once downstairs, we turned on our emergency radio only to hear that there were in fact two tornadoes that had been sighted, both within a few miles of us.  The Twins game had just finished, and thousands of people were just leaving the stadium.  That probably worried me more than our situation.  Madison, Chelsey, and I continued with our card game (Spaced Out, a classic that Chelsey found at D.I. for $1.50), Uncle Matt listened to the radio, and we waited.

Thankfully, the storm blew over and the warning lifted after about half an hour.  It was intense while it lasted, though.  Afterwards, Chelsey, Madison, and I went outside and took pictures and splashed in the puddles; huge streaks of lightning were still flashing horizontally across the sky and completely lighting it up.  When we first came up, the sky was a strange dark orange; the sun hadn't set yet.  In the park, we saw amazing oranges and pinks and yellows and blues with the sunset, and the clouds were all kinds of colors.  Bizarre yet beautiful.

Sunday was my last one here; I'll be sad to go.  I've really enjoyed my time here, especially being in a really good ward.  I was corralled into playing a musical number in sacrament meeting, so I played an arrangement of "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go" and "The Army of Helaman" that I started writing last Sunday.  I started it before they asked me to play, but I knew it was coming, so I headed them off at the pass and volunteered instead.

Today I got in the mood for family history, so I researched some of my ancestors and learned things that I had either forgotten or never knew, which was fascinating.  I wish I had my own personal book with a chapter about each of my ancestors; I guess I'll have to make it myself!  One that I read about today was my great-great-great grandfather, Christian Daniel Fjeldsted, who joined the church in Denmark and moved to Utah, returning five times to serve missions for a total of seventeen years, serving as mission president three times.  He was also one of the original Presidents of the Seventy.  I also learned that a great-great-great-great grandfather was a sharpshooter under the Duke of Wellington and fought at Waterloo.  He also played the french horn, violin, and bugle, apparently very well.

I haven't posted my itinerary for the next few weeks yet, so here goes!  This Saturday I leave for Phuket, Thailand.  I leave here at 6 in the morning on Saturday (blecchh...) and finally arrive (after four connecting flights) in Phuket close to midnight on Sunday night.  My family and I will be there for a week, then returning to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  I'll be there for a little over a week, and then Hannah and I are going to Cambodia (2 days), India (Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra, 6 days), and Guilin, China (4 days), followed by a flight to Minneapolis and the drive back to Provo!  If it sounds grueling, it probably will be.  I don't care about that, though; I'm so excited!  I've never been to Cambodia, India, or Guilin, and I can't wait to go to China for the first time in probably ten years.  I saw a Taiwanese family at a restaurant eating lunch yesterday, and talking to them made my day.

I definitely won't spend much time on my blog while I'm gallivanting about, but I'll write at least one post on each place I go.

English title: The hearts of my ancestors may be very moved...