Redlands, California Temple

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..” 

The week after our last blog post was great!  The mission had arranged for each of the zones to attend the Redlands Temple, which is about 30 to 40 minutes away, depending on traffic.  The missionaries have been to the temple so few times that they look forward to going with excitement and anticipation.  The temple asks that the mission provide a couple to serve as the witness couple, so Liz and I volunteered to do that twice that week, which we enjoyed.

Then on Friday, we had the opportunity to go to the Newport Beach temple as well!  Our friends from Vancouver, the Zundel’s took their daughter, Rachel, to the Newport temple for her first time.  They went there because her grandfather is the temple president and they invited us to join them.  The Newport temple was less than an hour away!  Three trips to the temple in the same week is good for one’s spiritual batteries!  It was great to see the Zundels.  I wish we could have had more time together. 

Zundels and McAllisters at the Newport Temple

The weekend was spent doing normal weekend things, like grocery shopping and getting ready to have visitors come!  Our daughter Christine and her family from Gilbert, AZ were coming to Disneyland for a few days.  We asked for permission to join with them for one day which we did on Tuesday.  We drove over Monday after our day at the office and stayed in a hotel.  Had we waited to drive there on Tuesday, it would have taken 2+ hours!  We made it in less than an hour. 

We thought we were going to breakfast together, but when we learned they had some muffins in their hotel room, we just headed over to Disneyland.  We did some rides, including Space Mountain, after which Liz said she wasn’t feeling well.  Her stomach was upset. Thinking it was due to the jostling of Space Mountain and that we had not had breakfast, we finally took a few minutes to get something to eat, and then continued to take as many of the rides as we possibly could.  As is typical of a Disneyland day, we walked a marathon 8 miles! 

Visiting Disneyland with Christine and her family

We stayed until about 8:30 and headed home.  Even though we were both quite hungry, we decided to eat when we got home, which we did…cold cereal as I recall.  Wednesday was a regular day at the office.  However, Wednesday night we both started to feel a bit off.  When we woke up Thursday, we decided to stay home, which I’m glad we did because we just felt worse as the day progressed.  On Friday I took a covid test and it came back positive.  We called Christine and told them they should not come to Riverside for the weekend as we had planned.

The next few days were just a blur.  We hung out in our apartment, on our bed.  The other senior couples were very supportive and picked up a few things for us from the store.  They made loads of chicken soup.  I think we had 3 difference varieties of chicken soup!  All very delicious!  I am convinced that chicken soup has medicinal properties….as does chocolate pudding!

The following week, we were feeling marginally better, but didn’t want to go into the office for fear we might be “spreaders” and give it to the other Sr. couples, so we would go to the office after hours for about 90 minutes.

We still have some lingering effects.  A little stuffy, with some coughing.  We know we are lacking in the energy department, but we need to get into the office because we have things we need to take care of.  For example, we have zone conferences this week, vehicle inspections, and Liz has travel she needs to coordinate.  The following week is the Sr. Missionary FHE that takes place every 6 weeks, then we must prepare for transfers, and the arrival of about 15 new missionaries on Feb. 8th.

We are happy to be feeling better, and hope that we will be blessed with the energy to ramp up so we can accomplish all that we have on our lists!  It has been years -literally- since we have gone more than 3 days without walking or exercising.  We are a little weak and mushy but hope this week will allow us to get back to our regular routine, and some strength back!

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