On Sophie’s evacuation, covid’s impact on marathon performance, a departed cousin, and how winter in most of Arizona is colder than you might think (Vol. xxv, No. 12)

Dear Family,

One of the teachers at the middle school where Crystal works is from Ukraine. When Crystal mentioned to her a few weeks ago that our daughter was currently serving a mission there, the teacher’s response was unusually curt and brusque. “Not a good time to be in Ukraine,” was all she said.

I learned this month that Sophie and her colleagues in the Ukraine Dnipro Mission, which covers most of the eastern half of the country and extends all the way to the Russian border, had been instructed to keep a certain amount of cash on hand in their apartments for use if an urgent departure became necessary.

The whole thing has a kind of Jason Bourne feel to it and would only be cooler if the box with all the money (in the secret wall safe cached behind the Cézanne hanging in the living room) also contained munitions and fake passports. I don’t know how much Sophie was supposed to have squirreled away, and I only found out about it when she mentioned in an offhand way during our conversation on the Monday before Christmas that they had just been told to double the amount. This is when it started becoming apparent to Sophie that people up the chain were getting nervous about the looming military threat from Russia. 

In reality, the Church is always thinking five moves ahead, and people up the chain have been at least as anxious as the rest of us for the past month. One day after our conversation with Sophie about her cash hoard, on the Tuesday before Christmas, Crystal and I received an email from Sophie’s mission president (a Ukrainian) explaining that all Dnipro missionaries would be “temporarily transferred to Kyiv by mid-January, which will move them further away from any potential conflict areas.” 

The email subsequently explained that “missionaries will stay in contact with those in their current proselyting areas on a virtual and electronic basis. They will continue to focus on missionary efforts in their area, to allow the work to move forward until the situation stabilizes.” 

On the day after that, the Wednesday before Christmas, Sophie called to tell us that the evacuation timetable had been moved up and that she would now be traveling to Kyiv on Monday, December 27th. We spoke with her on Christmas and then again on Monday morning (her time—late Sunday our time). She propped her phone in various places and spoke to us while she and her companions frantically put the finishing touches on closing down their apartment in Dnipro — sweeping the floors, cleaning out the fridge, shutting off the water and gas. She hung up with us as they were leaving for the ward building where they and the last 20 or so missionaries in Dnipro boarded their charter bus to Kyiv (some seven hours away).

She and the other Dnipro missionaries are now living in quarters on the grounds of the Kyiv Temple. I have never seen anything like it the U.S., but apparently some temples have these apartments-cum-dorms-cum-hostels (I obviously have no idea what they are) on site. I don’t know if they are typically used by temple workers and patrons traveling from far away or by whom exactly. But for now, at least some of the ones in Kyiv are home to Sophie and 57 of her fellow refugees from the Ukraine Dnipro Mission. 

Many of the details of this new arrangement remain a mystery to me (and apparently to the missionaries, as well). These include how often they will able to leave the gated temple property, whether they will start learning Ukrainian (since they are no longer living in the part of the country where everybody speaks Russian), and how all of these missionaries will share what I understand to be two kitchens. I imagine these details will be worked out in relatively short order. And if not, then at least the stories should be fun.

If you believe that your prayers can influence major geopolitical events (I believe they theoretically can — I just don’t believe in practice that they very often do)¹ then you might consider praying for the Ukrainians. Most of them celebrate Christmas on January 6th, which means they are still looking ahead to it. I imagine many of them would like nothing more from Santa² than not to be bullied anymore by their giant neighbor to the east. (And I realize I just conflated prayer and Santa, which is a stupid thing to do, but you know what I mean.)

When Sophie told her missionary companions that her family had had its first brush with covid a month ago, the response she got was largely one of surprise. “You mean they hadn’t had it yet?” Interestingly, the only members of our immediate family not to have had it are Hannah, who works in a hospital, and Sophie, who spent a year on a college campus, has traveled more extensively than any of us, and is protected only by a single does of the J&J vaccine, referred to derisively by Grace and her high school classmates as “the dollar-store vaccine” (based on their collective expertise in virology, immunology, and infectious disease). At last report, Sophie was planning to get a Pfizer booster, but recent events have made that difficult. The fact that she’s now basically living in a bubble has also lessened some of the urgency

Our family’s bout with covid started in earnest on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Crystal and I both got our boosters on the day before Thanksgiving. I started feeling a little off later that day, but not in a way I would have given any thought to prior to 2020. I attributed it to the booster. Then on Sunday, after Crystal, Ari, Grace, two boys from the ward, and I performed a song during sacrament meeting (unmasked, which was permitted under Montgomery County regulations since we were “performing” and more than six feet from the congregation) Grace started developing some of the telltale symptoms. I was also starting to feel more congested with a gradually worsening (though still rather mild) sore throat and headache. And so Grace and I both took at-home antigen tests that came back positive. Crystal’s test was negative but a PCR test she took a few days later was also positive. This got her out of work (with pay) for the next week and a half. Grace is still catching up on the school work missed during her enforced two-week absence.

No one was sick for long. My mild cold-like symptoms were gone by Wednesday, which raised a dilemma. I was registered to run the Rehoboth Beach Marathon that Saturday (Dec. 4th). In theory, I was supposed to isolate for 10 days from the onset of symptoms (which, based on the extensive virology, immunology and infectious disease training I received while earning my MBA 25 years ago, seems like overkill to me). But I really wanted to run the marathon — I have done at least one of them every year since 2012 and had not yet checked the box for 2021. Not wanting to break the streak, I convinced myself that whatever it was that I was experiencing on the day before Thanksgiving counted as my onset of symptoms. Consequently, my 10 days were up and I could safely run without posing a hazard to myself or any of the 3,000 other people running the race.

This is what I told myself, and it may have even been true.

But even if it were true, it turned out, of course, to have been a stupid idea. (I have lots of stupid ideas.) As it happens, one of the less-publicized symptoms of covid-19 seems to be an inability to put together a good marathon. Who would have thought a respiratory illness could affect one’s ability to run? Even at a slow jog, I couldn’t keep my heart rate down — I was at my aerobic threshold by mile 6 — and by mile 14, my whole body was hurting the way it does not typically hurt until mile 20 or so. At mile 20 I’m close enough to the finish line to power through the pain. But mile 14 is just too far out, and I wound up walking/shuffling most of the last 12 miles. Instead of the elation I typically feel at a marathon finish line, I felt defeated and more than a little embarrassed as they announced my name over the loudspeaker. I wish there were a way of deleting myself from the race results, but alas, my time is forever memorialized on the internet (somewhere — notice I’m not hyperlinking to it). I thought about asking the organizers to put a “just getting over covid” asterisk next to my name, but I’m guessing they probably would not do that.³   

I have no clever segue for this next part…

I was driving home from the YMCA on the morning of Monday, December 13th (participating in a early work call that had somehow slipped my mind until I emerged from the locker room, turned my phone back on, and was immediately blasted by a half-dozen alerts from Microsoft Teams about the meeting that I was now 15 minutes late to) when I received a text alert from Mom. I was already doing too many things behind the wheel to actually open the message, but the preview banner nearly caused me to drive into a parked car as I turned into the neighborhood from Colesville Road. It read, “Christopher Henrichsen died this morning,” followed by a few additional words.  

Christopher was my 45-year-old cousin and to characterize his passing as “sudden” would be a gross understatement. I drove the rest of the way home, finished my work call, read the rest of Mom’s text, and set about trying to process it. Childhood memories of countless Thanksgivings (usually at our house) and Christmases (often at his) cascaded through my brain. If you have not yet seen it, the short, three-paragraph tribute to him in By Common Consent⁴ is worth reading. It succinctly juxtaposes Christopher’s at times brash public, online persona — that of an outspoken John Rawls disciple and Bernie Sanders acolyte, whose rhetoric resorted at times to gratuitous use of the f word (that word would be fascist) — with the genuinely warm and loving teddy bear that his family knew. (“Christo-bear”— or simply “Bear” — I remember his siblings and parents sometimes called him.) Childhood memories are not always reliable, but I actually remember Christopher, not unlike his late father and despite often having both a strongly held minority opinion and the talent to articulate it well, as among the quietest people at any family gathering. 

Those who knew Christopher only as a grown-up would never believe me if I told them that in his childhood bedroom hung Rush Limbaugh posters and Dallas Cowboys pennants — things that became anathema to him as an adult — but it’s true. People change and are not always who they appear to be. But by all accounts, Christopher was who he appeared to be — a truly good soul.

One of the things that did not seem to change was Christopher’s affinity for Diet Coke. His son Todd loving placed a can of it on the pulpit at the beginning of his funeral remarks. It sat there for the remainder of the service. Then, just prior to the luncheon, Todd handed out Diet Cokes to everyone in attendance. We all raised our silver cans to Chris and cracked them open in unison, collectively creating a sound one does not often hear in a Latter-day Saint cultural hall. (When was the last time you cracked open a can of anything at church?) So R.I.P., Christopher. The world will miss your goodness. And even though I’m more of a Coke Zero man myself, it will be a long time before I can down another Diet Coke without thinking of you.

Finally, I am writing this month’s letter from a charming little Airbnb in the both small (pop. 4,000) and remote (distance to the nearest Costco: 37 miles) town of Clarkdale, Arizona, where Crystal, Hannah, J.T., Ari, Grace, and I have been spending the holiday week. We have been meaning to visit this area with Hannah ever since she finished her mission here in 2017. (She served in something called the Arizona Phoenix Mission, even though it is headquartered in Glendale⁵ and extends all the way up to the Grand Canyon.) For various reasons, mostly having to do with a small number of difficult local church leaders, Hannah did not care much for “the Valley” (i.e., Phoenix and its environs). And she felt fortunate to have been able to spend 11 months of her mission up here in the adjoining city of Cottonwood (pop.. 12,000 — which I guess makes Clarkdale a suburb of Cottonwood).

Despite having what Hannah describes as the worst weather in Arizona — oppressively hot in the summer yet still freezing in the winter — it is indeed a charming, beautifully rugged place. Nearby Sedona (30 miles away) is the crown jewel, but the whole area is pleasant to look at.

I will spare you the travelogue (you’re welcome) but we have had a nice time exploring Sedona (along with about 80 million other people, despite the snow), the nearby “haunted” town of Jerome (which apparently was off-limits to missionaries when Hannah was here) and our quick one-day jaunt up to the Grand Canyon (which had lots of snow and where we ultimately were not able to hike because we hadn’t thought to bring crampons). We also had a great time getting to know some of the people who were particularly kind to Hannah while she was a missionary. Our final dinner in Cottonwood was with a couple who sent Hannah away last night with five boxes of china and stemware. She and J.T. are still figuring out how they will drive it all home to Orem today with the rest of their luggage.

Here are far more pictures than you could ever find interesting…

…from Sedona…

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…from the Grand Canyon….

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…and, for good measure, two from the original “Arizona Temple” (originally dedicated in 1927 by my great-great grandfather) now known as the “Mesa Arizona Temple” to differentiate it from Arizona’s five other temples that have come along since.

It’s been a fun time. Our flight home in the morning is not (yet) among the tens of thousands that have been cancelled this week. We are all checked in and hoping it stays that way.

May the New Year live up to all the hopes you have for it.

Love,
Tim

1. Allow me to clarify: I believe in the power of prayer — not so much in its ability to reliably alter circumstances and outcomes as in its ability to reliably alter me, which is a good enough reason to regularly engage in the practice. People who scoff at those of us who pray in the aftermath of tragic events, derisively pointing out prayer’s admittedly poor track record at preventing certain people from doing bad things, have a remarkably juvenile understanding of prayer and its fundamental purposes.
2. The Ukrainian equivalent of Santa Claus is Father Frost, who brings presents to well-behaved children on New Year’s Eve. According to Sophie, New Year’s is a bigger deal in Ukraine than Christmas.
3. I also felt like I had to tell the people I run with on Thursday mornings that (though I did not know it at the time) I was probably at the peak of contagiousness when we ran together on Thanksgiving. Fortunately, no one else in the group got sick, lending further credence to the theory that this thing just does not seem to transmit outdoors.
4. I understand By Common Consent to be a smart, sometimes funny, left-leaning Latter-day Saint blog. But I don’t often read it (I only have so much bandwidth and, you know, the TV’s not going to watch itself) and so I don’t really know.
5. The Arizona Phoenix Mission is not to be confused with the Arizona Gilbert Mission, the Arizona Mesa Mission, the Arizona Scottsdale Mission, or the Arizona Tempe Mission, all of which are also basically Phoenix