Historic

I kind of like it when I experience something that feels historic. It feels good, and a little strange and uncomfortable. It's like something that is happening around you and inside of you that you can't really explain to others well enough that they can understand. Have you ever been in a situation that someone later wrote about in an article? Sometimes what is written sounds something like what you experienced but almost like something that happened somewhere else to someone else?
When I was a missionary in Latvia, James E. Faust came and dedicated the country for the preaching of the gospel. It was an amazing experience and something I will never forget. When I later read about it in the Church News it sounded similar to what I had experienced, but not exactly. But more than that, it felt different reading it than actually experiencing it. It was almost two different experiences from the perspective of how it felt.
Hmm... not sure if I'm explaining this exactly right. I have heard many people, including myself, try to explain what it was like to be a missionary. I remember others explaining it to me before I was one. The explanation and the reality just never seem to really match up. It is very difficult to give a sense of something experienced, especially something significant, or historic, in a few words. Some are much better at it than me, but I still think that what is sometimes conveyed well is a certain aspect of the thing when reality is much more layered and complex. It is much easier when the other person has experienced something similar, but still challenging. When they have a frame-of-reference similar to what you are explaining it is easier to understand and harder the more you have to explain, though perhaps not impossible.
That is my thought as intro to saying that it has been an interesting and in some ways "historic" week. We broke the record for the snowiest winter on record in this area. But that doesn't explain what it was like to be in it. It meant historic firsts for my life like having-time-that-was-not-really-work-and-not-really-vacation-and-I-didn't-physically-go-in, but my-work-is-learning-a-language-and-I-still-did-my-best-to-keep-up-with-it-and-progress. Some of the things I experienced include: running in the snow in the early morning and having to run in the street because the snow was piled as high as me on the sides of the road and sidewalks; seeing every member of my family nearly all day long for days; trying to study with children running around in our small apartment; outside looking like someone had a giant snow machine on for hours upon hours; my back sore for days because of the hours of shoveling; most of the hours of shoveling was just the space around my car; playing on a ton of snow on a tennis court on a sunny but cold day with my children on what should have been a work and school day; weeks without formal church meetings, which has felt very strange for me after having so many church meetings for so many years; stake conference being cancelled; attending a young single adult ward with my wife and children in Washington DC; teaching a class in that ward with my wife; having a good time on a date to dinner with my wife and our friends who are not members of our church; doing better than I expected on an Indonesian written test I took a week ago and only was able to check a week later; seeing ancient clay figures from China (terra-cotta warriors) on display with my oldest son; feeling far away from family; getting to know my own family; etc; etc. Naming it doesn't give a sense of what it was like, but it is a start. This week was historic. But isn't every week in some way in our own lives historic?