August 8, 2011
Hello Family and Friends,
It has been so long since I have written. We have been so busy with traveling to Christine’s wedding and all the things expected of us that we have been working like mad.
Our biggest news is that we no longer are needed in Haines. They have a new missionary couple who are going to stay there full time and help those wonderful people. We will sorely miss them. Our last night we saw that Momma Grizzly stand up on two legs three times. What a sight that is. The cubs are getting big now too. We will return to tell them all good bye as we visit the youth in Whitehorse in September. We cleaned, again, and gathered our stuff and helped the Powells move in. She said that it smelled so nice. No joke! I was happy to leave it in good condition for her. They are such neat people. They will do a good work there.
Juneau is the same. It is light grey, medium gray and dark grey every day. But it has those moments of sun and when it shines it is beautiful right now. There is a flower called fireweed here (throughout Alaska) that is absolutely beautiful. I will attach a photo. So the beauty of the mountains and the fireweed is magnificent.
We have had youth conference here. They bring about 100 kids from all over southeast AK to spend 3 days of workshops, service, and fun. They stay in people’s homes and are fed at the church and a High councilman is assigned to do the food. He did a great job. He sure worked hard. Baldur and I were in charge of a workshop on Saturday. We had an hour and repeated it 3 times. Boy, I hadn’t done that in a longtime. We taught the line of demarcation that George Albert Smith was famous for. The difference between good and evil and how to stay on the good side. I think it went well. It was amazing to see youth that are in those remote places only one or two from a place and they are so thrilled to meet with other youth is was a very uplifting thing for them.
Then because all the girls are here already they have girls camp. The Stake Presidency requested that I be there. Lucky for me I didn’t have to stay the night. It is a rough camp in some ways. They only had biffys, and they were yuk! The showers were group and you could see through to the outside trees, a real experience. I asked a 4th year girl and she said she never showered at camp. Serious! But then I found a little 12 year old and she loved the showers. I guess it is all relative. It was an incredible place and the beauty of nature was wonderful. We watched the spawning cycle of the salmon. That was just plain gross. The tide comes in and all the fish come with it. Then it goes out and the fish are trapped in little pools. Now they are dying. But still. They become easy prey to seagulls and eagles and bears. At night at the campfire you could hear the seagulls screaming as they picked out the eyes of the salmon and such. Yuk! Poor salmon. They then would swim around and slowly die. There was dead fish everywhere and boy does it smell. I am told that we will enjoy that smell in Juneau too Nice!
We had the opportunity to teach at girls camp too and that was really fun. I made a fool of myself by teaching about a rooster and a duck from a song my Grand Daughter, Chelsea, shared with me. I made stick puppets and used them to teach them about loving each other. (a very necessary thing when you have 68 girls together for a week) Now the wonderful part of camp was a senior (about 7 years older than us) cooked for the girls. My gosh! She has hot cinnamon rolls for the girls everyday for a snack. They worked so hard, and served wonderful food with mice attacking them at night. They put out traps and caught mice each night. I really am a California Girl.
Another fun thing is that I saw a young woman who I thought I knew and sure enough she was one of my young women in Del Mar when I was the Stake Young Women’s President and she was there from Whitehorse with her daughter and one other girl as their leader. She remembered all the things she had done as a young woman and all the programs we put on. Amazing, I guess you do make a difference.
So now we have loved and hugged all those young people to death. We have taught them again and hope it holds and helps them in their life. It surely is not so easy to be the only Mormon in your School and have those standards to live up to. We pray for their strength.
We are super busy right now teaching new seminary teachers how to teach seminary. We have 7 new teachers and somehow we need to help them get ready for the new year. It is almost upon us. School begins here in Juneau on the 23rd of August. They will start the Seminary year on the 29th. Good bye to sleeping in a little bit and back to the routine. We are hoping to have a really good year. New teachers that are taking the church training and will teach well.
We are expecting all things to be easier and more wonderful this year. We will love working with the youth and back to working with the young adults.
Here is a quote by President Hinckley that I love and thought you might enjoy it too. I love this great youth.
“At the same time, this is the season when so many of our youth show such remarkable strength and capacity and resolve to do the right thing. How marvelous is the generation with which you deal. We have never had a generation its equal in all of the history of the Church. They are better educated. They are more familiar with the scriptures. I believe they pray with a greater measure of faith, have a greater desire to do the will of the Lord, are more active in the Church, go into the world as better prepared missionaries, and live to become better parents. It seems to me that the good are getting better and the bad are getting worse.”
Our goal is to help them do this. Our love to you.
May you be bless is your efforts.
Omi, Grandpa, Mom and Dad
Hello Family and Friends,
It has been so long since I have written. We have been so busy with traveling to Christine’s wedding and all the things expected of us that we have been working like mad.
Our biggest news is that we no longer are needed in Haines. They have a new missionary couple who are going to stay there full time and help those wonderful people. We will sorely miss them. Our last night we saw that Momma Grizzly stand up on two legs three times. What a sight that is. The cubs are getting big now too. We will return to tell them all good bye as we visit the youth in Whitehorse in September. We cleaned, again, and gathered our stuff and helped the Powells move in. She said that it smelled so nice. No joke! I was happy to leave it in good condition for her. They are such neat people. They will do a good work there.
Juneau is the same. It is light grey, medium gray and dark grey every day. But it has those moments of sun and when it shines it is beautiful right now. There is a flower called fireweed here (throughout Alaska) that is absolutely beautiful. I will attach a photo. So the beauty of the mountains and the fireweed is magnificent.
We have had youth conference here. They bring about 100 kids from all over southeast AK to spend 3 days of workshops, service, and fun. They stay in people’s homes and are fed at the church and a High councilman is assigned to do the food. He did a great job. He sure worked hard. Baldur and I were in charge of a workshop on Saturday. We had an hour and repeated it 3 times. Boy, I hadn’t done that in a longtime. We taught the line of demarcation that George Albert Smith was famous for. The difference between good and evil and how to stay on the good side. I think it went well. It was amazing to see youth that are in those remote places only one or two from a place and they are so thrilled to meet with other youth is was a very uplifting thing for them.
Then because all the girls are here already they have girls camp. The Stake Presidency requested that I be there. Lucky for me I didn’t have to stay the night. It is a rough camp in some ways. They only had biffys, and they were yuk! The showers were group and you could see through to the outside trees, a real experience. I asked a 4th year girl and she said she never showered at camp. Serious! But then I found a little 12 year old and she loved the showers. I guess it is all relative. It was an incredible place and the beauty of nature was wonderful. We watched the spawning cycle of the salmon. That was just plain gross. The tide comes in and all the fish come with it. Then it goes out and the fish are trapped in little pools. Now they are dying. But still. They become easy prey to seagulls and eagles and bears. At night at the campfire you could hear the seagulls screaming as they picked out the eyes of the salmon and such. Yuk! Poor salmon. They then would swim around and slowly die. There was dead fish everywhere and boy does it smell. I am told that we will enjoy that smell in Juneau too Nice!
We had the opportunity to teach at girls camp too and that was really fun. I made a fool of myself by teaching about a rooster and a duck from a song my Grand Daughter, Chelsea, shared with me. I made stick puppets and used them to teach them about loving each other. (a very necessary thing when you have 68 girls together for a week) Now the wonderful part of camp was a senior (about 7 years older than us) cooked for the girls. My gosh! She has hot cinnamon rolls for the girls everyday for a snack. They worked so hard, and served wonderful food with mice attacking them at night. They put out traps and caught mice each night. I really am a California Girl.
Another fun thing is that I saw a young woman who I thought I knew and sure enough she was one of my young women in Del Mar when I was the Stake Young Women’s President and she was there from Whitehorse with her daughter and one other girl as their leader. She remembered all the things she had done as a young woman and all the programs we put on. Amazing, I guess you do make a difference.
So now we have loved and hugged all those young people to death. We have taught them again and hope it holds and helps them in their life. It surely is not so easy to be the only Mormon in your School and have those standards to live up to. We pray for their strength.
We are super busy right now teaching new seminary teachers how to teach seminary. We have 7 new teachers and somehow we need to help them get ready for the new year. It is almost upon us. School begins here in Juneau on the 23rd of August. They will start the Seminary year on the 29th. Good bye to sleeping in a little bit and back to the routine. We are hoping to have a really good year. New teachers that are taking the church training and will teach well.
We are expecting all things to be easier and more wonderful this year. We will love working with the youth and back to working with the young adults.
Here is a quote by President Hinckley that I love and thought you might enjoy it too. I love this great youth.
“At the same time, this is the season when so many of our youth show such remarkable strength and capacity and resolve to do the right thing. How marvelous is the generation with which you deal. We have never had a generation its equal in all of the history of the Church. They are better educated. They are more familiar with the scriptures. I believe they pray with a greater measure of faith, have a greater desire to do the will of the Lord, are more active in the Church, go into the world as better prepared missionaries, and live to become better parents. It seems to me that the good are getting better and the bad are getting worse.”
Our goal is to help them do this. Our love to you.
May you be bless is your efforts.
Omi, Grandpa, Mom and Dad
