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.

Garden Time

		garden project VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

On one of the photos you will notice Elder Grimmett on the left.  The Elder with the shovel is demonstrating how to make the rows.  The Church garden projects started 20 years ago in Peru and have been successful in various places around the world.  The soil here on the Navajo reservation is devoid of nutrients so a department at BYU examined the soil and decided on what might work to grow gardens.  Last year was the first year  of the project and it was very successful.  We are signed up this year to have a garden so will send photos during the summer to follow our progress. Right now we just have the sheep manure spread on the dirt.  That will be followed by a thick layer of sawdust and on top of the sawdust will be fertilizer and then comes the tiller which is lent out by appt.  Right now the tiller is in need of repair so Elder G. is thinking he’ll just buy one because time is a wasting.  More to follow.

The Blue House

		Our St Michaels House VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Our house is warm and cozy as you can see.  The washer and dryer in the kitchen make for extra counter space.  I love the big window in the living room and am happy to have an office.  There is also an empty bedroom which I use for my ironing board and a guest bedroom which will be just right for company.  I thought I had a picture of the house on the outside, hence the title blue house, but I guess that will have to wait.  Must have taken that photo on my camera.

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.