May Days

		Dee, Ryan and Delta VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

   May has been a great month with lots of things to do.  No boredom here.  We enjoyed our 55th wedding anniversary,  went to Polacca for a great Zone Conference, the first and the last.  The first for us and the last for our mission pres. and his wife.  Our new president comes in July.  We have endured lots of noisy construction going on outside our office and even had our plumbing and electricity cut off which automatically gave us a two day vacation.  I had a wonderful Mother’s Day thanks to our dear children and to my dear companion.  We enjoyed having Dee here for the eclipse and then a few days later he and Ryan came by.  Ryan had flown down to Chandler to help Dee pack up and head for Sandy.  Our Elders were giving Dee’s motorcycle an envious inspection.

Our computer crashed but between Dee and Mark we are set up again with a laptop.  Dee helped Clive buy it in Gallup at Wallmart and did the initial setting up and then Mark hooked up through mesh and did his magic.  We still have skype, thank heavens.  I’ve spoken at two baptisms, one with maybe 20 minutes notice and the other one with no notice.  Also gave the Sunday School lesson in gospel essentials class with no notice, so extemporaneous is the key word here and that’s okay.

We were just given our list for home/visiting teaching today.  We can’t wait to start going out to visit the folks on our list.  Our only problem is the van.  Dad thinks he might be able to find an old jeep or something as out on the rez you may have a passable road and you may not.  I asked if we could have one more person on our list, Wally Whitegoat.  He was Dale and Renae’s foster son on the placement program and Renae asked me to try to look him up.  He isn’t on our ward roster, but the missionaries  say they know him and he is a Navajo cop.  We were told if we could find him we could visit him so we will enlist the missionaries’ help.

Clive is pretty sun-burned from working in the garden.  We’ve got to get him a larger brimmed hat that will protect his face and his ears, and soon.  Don’t want his skin cancer to come back. 

Thanks for your prayers.  We send love to all.  Ya ta Bene’

Additional Snowflake Photos

Snowflake Temple

Last Monday our mission was given permission to go to the Snowflake Temple as a group, actually it took two sessions, which was the first time that temple had ever opened on a Monday before.  It was just a wonderful experience and what a beautifully appointed temple!  The couple we are standing by on the left are the Hansens from Sandpoint.  They are doing a 6-month garden mission in Tuba City.  They were surprised to see us and we were surprised to see them…what a treat.  We know them from the Spokane temple.  On the picture on the right, you will recognize the senior missionary as Elder Grimmett.  The young elders are the ones who are our next door neighbors here in St. Michaels.  Left to right they are Elder Earl from Idaho, Elder G., Elder Christensen from Philadelphia, Elder Nelson, can’t remember where he is from, and Elder Jones from near Cody, Wyoming.  Elders Earl and Christensen rode with us to the temple and all four of them rode back with us.  Glad we have a van.  I should have edited the photos before posting them.  Sorry about that.

Uncle Dee’s Visit

We enjoyed having Dee with us last weekend.  On Saturday we took him to see the window rock and the statue of the Navajo Code Talker with the window rock in the background.  From there we drove to Canyon DeChelly, pronounced dushay, where we went to almost every lookout along many miles to view the magnificence of the canyon.  The picture on the right of Dee shows ruins of a former civilization and the one on the bottom hints of the depth of the canyon.  At every stop there were venders with jewelry, or pots, or painted rocks all of which were tempting, but Clive and Dee hadn’t thought about bringing much money, so they were kind of disappointed that they couldn’t buy more.  They did each buy a painted rock, however.

On Sunday we all went to Church, but I came home after Sacrament meeting to nurse a cold I had caught from Clive who had a lot worse cold than I did.  He and Dee stayed for all the meetings and Dee came home so impressed with what he had heard and seen.  Monday morning he and his little dog,Delta, ( he says she’s Ian’s dog, but I don’t know if Delta makes that distinction as she adores Dee), well anyway, they left for home which is Ian’s house in Chandler.  As Dee was leaving he said, “I love this place.”  We agree.