From St. Michaels, AZ, our new home

   We just got online this afternoon and it’s kind of late at night, but I wanted to say hello and that I will send pictures and information as soon as I have time.  We will be very busy tomorrow  and Sunday, so maybe Monday night I can post a lot more. 

We are both happy and well, however,  a week ago tomorrow, which was our first Saturday here, we awoke to a snow storm.  Clive got up to fix some breakfast and had a sudden pain in his back on the left side.  Within seconds it became very painful and 5 minutes later it was agonizing.  We live just off of a highway across which is a medical clinic.  We hurried out to the car and were covered with snow in just that short distance.  We were alarmed when we found that the clinic wasn’t open on Saturdays so drove back to our house with Clive in such searing pain that I didn’t know what to do and he couldn’t think straight.  Another missionary couple live close to us but they had gotten permission to go to Salt Lake to have a minor surgery on his trigger finger so I didn’t know where to get help. Then I realized that the missionaries would be home so I knocked on their trailer which is just next to our house.  Two of them responded immediately and they gave Clive a blessing.  One of the Elders explained to us that the nearest hospital for us was in Gallup, 30 minutes away.  He gave us directions and off we went.  The storm lightened up somewhat the closer we got to the hospital.  A cat scan revealed the problem, a kidney stone.  To make a long story not quite so long, we came home to wait it out.  The stone was within the size the doc would expect to pass without surgery.  It was so hard to see Clive suffer and he wouldn’t accept the narcotics the docs offered because he had learned from experience that they make him terribly sick, but that evening it finally passed.  The last wave was so painful that he threw up, but that was the end of it.  By the next morning he was good to go to Church and has been fine ever since.

We were so surprised when we checked in at the MTC to find some of our temple friends checking in also.  I’m sorry this pic is so fuzzy, but hope you can identify from left to right, Brother and Sister Wynia, ourselves, Sister Windley, and Brother and Sister Starr, all of whom worked with us in the Spokane Temple.