8 Jun 2007

June 8, 2007
Dear Elder Sean,

It was so good to hear from you last week, but also bittersweet since I felt horrible that I didn't have a letter in your email waiting for you. You sound great and it sounds like you have a wonderful first companion.

Have the sisters you took to church with you last week shown any progress or any more interest in the church? Carlito's story is all to familiar. There are lots of children out there who would love to be members of the church and love coming to church, but usually one parent has it in his mind to try and sound authoritative yet open minded by saying the child can only make those decisions when he is 18. It's a very sad loss of a wonderful youth. Hopefully Carlito can at least attend church and any activities.

I just got off the phone with my dad. He sounds good. He's worried AT&T is going to take over the entire phone market again and ruin things. He must have really gotten burned by them at some point. I can remember our phone bills at home when I was growing up being quite high and those are the days my dad's talking about. I told him I thought there was too much good competition out there for AT&T to monopolize things again, but he's begs to differ with me. We'll have to keep our eyes on that. Maybe we should invest in AT&T just in case....

In case you haven't already heard, Nigel got his call. He's going to the Phillipines and leaves the same day as Mitch. Scott McCauley is pretty happy about that news and says he's going to have Nigel over for a family night and share his mission info with him.

This past week I went to Mitch's house to have lunch with his mom and Denise Frame. Mitch's mom had a lot of questions about getting ready for a mission. Mitch is having a hard time having to wait so long.
When Sis. Hortin opened the door I realized I had never met her before. I have only emailed with her back and forth, so she looked totally different than I had pictured. It was kind of weird. She's very nice. And I met his dad too. They told me about his business Rhapsody.com. I checked it out, but so far I can't seem to get anything to work on our machine. Maybe it's not apple friendly.

Sis. Frame said Garrett is in a mission with no internet privileges. So it's all hand written for them. I talked with Sis. Teuscher today and she said there had really been a problem with some elders in that mission concerning the internet, something about companions not staying right next to each other when they were using the internet. She said it was something big, so the mission president pulled the plug on emailing.

I think I told you how us moms are going to get the word to each of you through a newsletter. About once a month you should get a big long letter that I'll send you with news from each of your friends who are on missions. I'll cut and paste from the letters you send us. The emails you send to us I'm just going to forward to family members now, so if you need home addresses for anyone just let me know. If anyone sends an email to us for you, I'll add them to the end of my letters.

Our 4th of July was fun. When dad got home from work, we went over to the Jones's. The only people we knew there were the Westerberg's and Tyler D. But Andrea's dad cooked up a mean bbq. He really worked hard on it. He had 3 types of smoked meat-pork, brisket and ribs with all kinds of bbq sauces, and tons of salads. I made "carrots" at Andrea's request. I had to put a little twist on them since I made a mistake, which mistake I have made before. Remember when you make the crust, you're only supposed to put 1/2 of the cake mixture on the bottom and put the other half on top. Well, of course I put the whole mixture on the bottom, then realized I had no more cake mix to put on top. So I got a brownie mix and added evaporated milk and butter to it, then put it on top. Wow, I think I created something even better than the original carrots. I made carrots extreme. They were really good if I may say so myself.

Anyway, we had nice visits with a lot of people there. I had a very interesting conversation with Andrea's aunt, her dad's youngest sister, who had just moved to Boise. We have so much in common it was almost scary. She went to court reporting school at the same place I went to in CA. Then she worked as a court reporter in Orange County like I did. She has a son who left on a mission this past April. She's adopted. She found her birth mother when she was 23, the exact same age I found my birth mother. Her birth mother had trouble getting pregnant again once she got married just like my birth mother. She has brown hair and brown eyes and freckles across her nose like me. Anyway, our whole conversation was so weird. Terri Westerberg was sitting with us and her mouth was just open the whole time cuz she was so shocked about our stories. I asked her if she liked to quilt, and she said she doesn't quilt but she has always wanted to. So I think I need to stay in contact with her. Her son on a mission is deaf and is on a sign language mission in Arizona and doing well. They get to use cell phones there so they can text deaf members and contacts. It was interesting to hear how he's doing there.

Alex has had some real life driving experiences now with Chad Arnell. He's doing well. Chad says he needs to work on coming to stops smoother (sound familiar?) But Alex is loving it.

Tomorrow Leah and Nikki start swim lessons at Rocky Mtn. Leah's excited, but Nikki is asking about water depth, etc. Here we go again. I hope she does well this time so she can relax in the water. Nikki came home very excited from church today telling me all about this missionary named Ammon and how the bad robbers got their arms chopped off and how the shepherds would get killed if just one sheep was lost. She kept asking me, "mom, have you heard about that? Do you know that story?" The teacher must have done quite a good job graphically describing the story. When she says her prayers, it's amazing to hear how well she understands gospel basics, especially when it appears she's not really listening to anything I say. Whenever she goes somewhere with dad, she always comes in to me and asks if I'll be ok being alone and then she says, "but remember Jesus is always with you."

I'm hoping this week will be a lot cooler. 107 for three days in a row was too much. Dad took the Mustang to church and of course came home looking very hot. I may have to look into getting some AC for it.

I hope all is going well for you. Try out your debit card sometime to see that it works there, etc and let me know if you were able to see the pix I sent. We are all well here. I look forward to your letters and try to picture where you are, where you are living, the people you are teaching, etc. Send us pictures of your pension and the city. If there's anything you need, let us know. You and your companion are in my thoughts and prayers. Stay true.

I love you,
mom
xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxxo