Falling down and standing up

Last weekend when the other kids were all off at various activities, Andrew, Phoebe and I went to the mall to look for a few specific things...but we also stopped by Max and Phoebe and I saw some cute dresses on the sales rack that we liked, so we got them—my dress was only 40 QAR and Phoebe's was 20 QAR. We were the fanciest gals on the block!

Miriam got a dress earlier in the week...which was not on sale...but which was still not terribly expensive (she didn't hop into our picture, though she did wear it to church and looked gorgeous). Poor Zoë couldn't find anything that she liked when we took her back to the store to look.

Qatar's demographics are very interesting. Only 15% of the population is below the age of 15 (Cochrane, 2022).

This felt small to me when I first read it, perhaps because 50% of our family is under the age of 15. Or perhaps because it was lumped in with other (actually somewhat) surprising statistics about Qatar's population: "The demographic context of Qatar is unique in that the majority (∼88%) of the population are expatriates, while a minority (∼12%) are citizens. Another unique feature of the population in Qatar is that it is predominantly male; of the 2.5 million residents, 1.85 million are male (72%) and only 15% of the population is below the age of 15 (Planning and Statistics Authority 2021)."

See how they lumped it in there with statistics that really do cause one to do a double-take? 

While the citizen:expat and male:female ratios might actually be unusual, it doesn't seem like having only 15% of the population be below 15 is a real cause for wonder.

Wikipedia shows the following breakdown for Qatar's population by age:

0–14 years	14.23%
15–64 years	84.61%
65 and over	1.16%

As you can see, in Canada it's about the same (for the 0–14 category):

0–14 years	15.0% (2025 est.)[5]
15–64 years	64.8% (2025 est.)[6]
65 and over	20.3% (2025 est.)[7]

As it is in Austria:

0–14 years: 14% 

15–24 years: 10.82% 

25–54 years: 42.1% 

55–64 years: 13.63% 

65 years and over: 19.44% 

I don't know why some Wikipedia entries have more age categories than others—just because of reasons, probably.

Here's the breakdown for the United States:

Age Group	Percentage
0–14 years	18.2%
15–24 years	13.0%
25–54 years	39.0%
55–64 years	12.9%
65 years and over	16.8%

So perhaps having the population of those 14 and under hover around 15% isn't so unusual after all. I don't know why it sounded so small when I read it. 

The age demographics of India are quite specific (their chart is too long to include here, but it looks like about 30% of the population is 14 and under).

In Iran it's 23%:

0–14 years	23.3%
15–64 years	69.8%
65 and over	7%

China 16%. 

Australia 18%. 

Kenya 39%! 

South Korea 10%. 

Finland 14%. 

DRC 46%!!

Okay, okay, so because 15% sounded like a small percentage to me, I thought it might explain the lack of selection in the kids' section. But apparently they just don't have a great selection of things for a person Zoë's size right now, though she did pick up a few pairs of pants. 

She's grown up in leggings, but those aren't really very fashionable here (or even culturally acceptable here). Wide-legged pants are more the norm. She found three pairs of pants that she liked and they were—blessedly—both long enough and narrow enough for her! It has been a real (and constant) challenge to find pants that are long and skinny enough for my kids in the States, but she walked out with three pairs that fit! She hardly knows what to do with herself (she's used to wearing flood pants).

I need to take Benjamin to find some new Sunday pants as well. I feel like I just got him new pants and yet they already look like they've shrunk in the wash. He is only about an inch shorter than I am now, which is wild...

Anyway, here's Zoë, Alex, and Phoebe all ready to head to church:

It was our ward conference today, so we got to meet the stake president—the first Filipino stake president in our area!—who had dinner with Grandpa and Darla not too long ago.

We're still getting used to the new block schedule, where we essentially have sacrament meeting the first hour, then a half hour of Sunday School, and then a half hour of RS/Priesthood. I think I like it better than how the two hour block was for the past few years (alternating Sunday School and Relief Society every week—because it creates issues if you happen to miss a week and it can end up being several weeks before you attend a class again or, if you come from a family where you spend every other weekend at either parent's house you might never attend a certain class, which just makes things weird). Granted, I've spent most of my time in primary (bliss!) so missed out on the adult classes all the time anyway...but...you know...the logistics were still weird. 

The compressed timeline sounded tricky at first, but today the lessons were really just the teacher mentioning a few scriptures (that hopefully everyone had read already) and opening up the room for discussion and it's felt just fine to have these "shorter" lessons. 

In the training video, Elder Bednar said "When I was a boy, young man, you would go to church on Sunday. You would come home and the discussion question would be, 'What did you learn at church today?' I think that world is gone to a degree. I think now we return home from church and what did you share at church today that you learned during the week? So we study daily, we study personally, we do that all during the week and then on Sunday we have the opportunity to counsel together about what we are learning" (1:11)

Andrew's family used to ask that question around the table during Sunday dinners, and we've also asked our children that question for the past 19 years (or so): "What did you learn at church today?"

We...still asked it today...honestly.

While we appreciate the nature of the question "what did you share at church today that you learned during the week?" it's an awkward one to have at the dinner table after church because even if you shared something you surely also learned something and because we feel that is perhaps a better question to have on the way to church or the night before church or at any point in the week before going to church so the kids can practice voicing what they might like to share. 

It's an interesting change. And it feels like it will be a good change. I was skeptical, honestly, but a couple weeks in and it feels pretty good. 

We've been better about keeping up with the Come Follow Me manual lately as well. 

This summer, I tell ya, we leaned in hard to memorizing scriptures and forewent "actual/real" scripture study a lot. We were running on absolute fumes, trying to get everything ready for this move. I'm not sure our tanks are full yet (even as we're staring another little move in the face) but we've been better about having actual/real scripture study.

That's what our kids call it... 

When we tell them it's time for scriptures and prayer they ask whether we'll be doing "real" (or "actual") scriptures or whether we'll be doing "memorized" scriptures (as if the scriptures we memorize aren't real/actual). 

The good news is that we memorized a lot of scriptures over the summer! 

The bad news is that we fell very behind in our "actual" scripture reading.

The good news is that no one actually keeps track of this so we can just shrug our shoulders and skip up to Ecclesiastes, or whatever, and no one is any the wiser.

As we discussed in Sunday School today (Proverbs 24:15), "a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief." We're allowed to simply pick ourselves up and start from wherever we want to—we're not obligated to play "catch up" or even "measure up." We just have to...get up and get/keep going. 

It reminded me of two rather well-known sayings:

1. The Japanese proverb 七転び八起き "fall down seven times, get up eight" 
2. Chumbawamba's 'Tubthumping': "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never going to keep me down"

That last one is perhaps not especially touching (or appropriate for Sunday School), but I think it's a pretty good mantra to have, so thank you, Chumbawamba, for creating such a lovely earworm.