Here it is April and my tulips are so brave and beautiful to survive the winds and the freezing temps every night. I love them.
This is my birthday month so I had Clive take a picture of me on the day I turned 74. Our Tongan Elder was transferred along with another of our Elders so we had a mutton stew dinner to celebrate my birthday and had 6 Elders to dinner to help us celebrate and to say goodbye to those leaving and welcome to those arriving.
Mutton stew and Navajo fry bread are the signature Navajo meal as sheep are treasured and to have sheep is part of being Navajo. Our ward has a mutton stew cook-off every year and this year much to everyone’s surprise the winner was a Belagona (white man). Women aren’t allowed to participate in the contest, this is a man thing. I have thrown in pictures in of Elder G. making his mutton stew. I also have a picture of the three Navajo sisters who judged the contest. All three gave the top number to the same stew, and guess whose it was….yes, Elder Grimmett’s. There is a picture of him coming up to get his prize and his certificate for making the winning stew. He’ll now go down in history in our ward. For years people will say, “do you remember the time a Belagona got first place,” and they’ll shake their heads in disbelief.
You can see the picture of a window pane all tapped up to hold it together. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I had a notion to come home 20 minutes early at the end of our work day. I went into my sewing room to do something and then came out into the living room. When I arrived I had put my cell phone on a little tv tray stand by the window, which is unusual. I would more than likely put it on the credenza by the coat hooks. Just as I stepped into the living room, I heard a loud cracking sound and the drapes flew clear up to the ceiling. I was able to get to the window in three steps and put my hands on the shattered pane. The wind had been blowing hard for three days at 35 mph with gusts up to 50 mph and it finally got the better of a little bb hole in our window. I pushed towards the outside and the wind pushed towards the inside. My phone was right where I could reach it, so I called Clive. He came running home and got some tape and started taping on the outside and then the inside. We were so blessed. If I hadn’t been here to hold the window together until Clive got it tapped, we would have come home to glass shattered all over our living room floor, and we would have had an open window in a very bad wind storm.
Jingle dresses are used for dancing in powwows. The metal trim dangling around the dress makes a jingle sound. I thought the little grands and greats in Coeur d’Alene would like to dance around and jingle away so I sent some up there. I’ll have to do a little adjusting for size when I get home. The stew judge the farthest from the camera made the jingle dresses.
You might wonder who the guy is with the cowboy boots. I actually can’t remember his name, but he came into our office wearing some cool boots so I asked him if I could take his picture. Unfortunately you can’t really see the boots well enough to think they are special, but I thought they were.
This past weekend was stake conf. and I’m the one who put the choir together, sent out the information, arranged the music, and then conducted it. It was a lot of work and lot of sleepless nights worrying about if it would work out because we were only to have one practice. But, the Lord loves it here just as we do and it couldn’t have turned out better because of HIm. In all my years of choir directing, I’ve never felt the spirit so deeply as I did when our Navajo choir sang at conference. My prayer was that they would have a meaningful and spiritual experience as they sang and I can honestly say that they did because so many came up to me later to tell me that very thing. Our Stake President got up after the choir number and said, ”tabernacle choir, here we come.” He said that with a great deal of reverence in his voice for what had just transpired.
Thank you all who sent me birthday cards and those who called on the phone. No matter how many birthdays have gone by, it is still nice to have friends and loved ones take the time to wish you well on your birthday.
