Letters Between Golden Delicious and Elder Braeburn

Golden Delicious has been marvelous about writing Elder Braeburn on his mission.  (I wonder if Braeburn will do the same for GD when she leaves next year??)

Elder Braeburn is doing great in York.  He is training a new Zone Leader and will be transferred out soon - probably his last transfer before coming home the 1st of August.

Here is part of his latest letter to Golden Delicious....

"This has been a really weird week. On Friday alone we got dropped by no less than 9 investigators. Joke. So now we're looking at sort of rebuilding a teaching pool again and trying to quickly get somebody baptized before I get transferred. Most of the excitement this week has been generated by an ex-member who has invited and sponsored a bunch of born-agains and apostates from America to hold a fireside in York on how to leave the church. It's generating lots of publicity and a disconcerting number of our less-actives will be attending. Brother Walsh, our deep doctrine guru, has nominated himself to attend and represent the church, and invited us to come with him. Naturally, I was thrilled, but to my dismay I realized that I'll be transferred two days before the blessed event. Accordingly, I've left Bro. Walsh a couple of questions to ask for me:

 

1. What transgression preceded your retreat from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

 

2. I understand this speaking tour is partly to promote sales for your new book on how to leave the church. In ballpark terms, how much money have you earned as a direct result of your apostasy? 

 

3. Is it true that the title "B.A." suffixed to your name stands for Benedict Arnold?

 

You know, that sort of thing. *Sigh*. It's probably for the best that I won't be able to attend.

 

This week promises to be much better. Elder Johansen and I are going to slay it and find a bunch of new people who actually have a few admirable qualities and schedule them all instead of mamby-pambying them. Are you doing anything for missionary work? I'm in a rather fiery, Joshish mood.

 

Make sure mum and dad get a decent house. Good luck on the essays.

 

Yours,

 

Elder Tanner "anti-hero" Wadsworth"

Buffalo Babies

We were lucky enough to see the momma buffalo take their babies (the red dogs) safely across the river.  

First, one of the moms went.  She crossed completely over and showed them it was safe.  The babies then followed (after hovering on the edge for a few minutes.)

The moms swam upstream and cut the current for the babies.  The babies flailed around and bobbed under the water over and over again.

Finally, they touched ground, scrambled out, and shook themselves off.  They looked very mournful and freezing. and huddled down on the ground.  But pretty soon they were up again nibbling on the grass.  

So cute!

Yellowstone Day Trip

Golden Delicious came home for the weekend and so we decided to go check out the baby animals and Yellowstone before all the tourists arrived.

First, we had to stop for a twist cone in West Yellowstone.  This is tradition.  It goes back years and years.  Once we ordered mediums, and they made us larges, and then, when they realized they'd made a mistake, they dumped them all in the garbage can and made us mediums.  That made no sense to us.  All that lovely ice cream in the trash.... We are still bitter :)

The baby buffalo are adorable.  They are called "red dogs" when they are little.  (please note:  we are stubborn and resist calling them "bison".  We have never heard old cowboy songs about bison... only buffalo!)

The Dragon's Mouth.  The kids loved this one.  I was talking with Mr. Bechtel in Japan here, so only saw bits and pieces.  

I love, LOVE the buildings at Old Faithful.  I love them more than old faithful!  My camera ran out of batteries before I could take pictures in the Inn, which is my favorite.

Artist's Point.  The light was PERFECT here.  So amazing.

And the kidlets pretending to be movie stars... Oh boy.

Such a perfect day!  I had a blast.  so fun.

Duchess Essential Oils

I am in the process of starting a little business.

Duchess Essential Oils is under construction because of my despair over regular essential oil companies and the options I had.  I have used oils for years and this is what a discovered:  A person basically has two options with essential oils.  1.  They can go to the health food store and if they know exactly what they want, they can rummage around and buy a bottle of a single oil that they might need.  This option requires you to be an expert, and there aren't blends for specific conditions, which happens to be my favorite way to use oils. 

Or, 2.  They can join a direct sales company, and purchase wildly expensive oils, that all the distributors claim to be the best in the world.  (which at the price they charge, they really had better be.)  All the direct sales companies fight with each other about who has the best oils, and it's almost like a cult following.  Out of sheer cussedness, I resist joining, even if their oils are good just because they are waaaaay tooooo expensive.  

I have so many people ask me about what oils I use.  They are people like me:  they want to use oils because they're natural and healthy, and smell marvelous, but they don't want to be evangelists, or spend years researching botanical attributes, etc.

So finally, I have created a middle of the road approach.  I chose 7 of my favorite oils from a very reliable wholesaler - the ones that I use for 80% of issues that come up around the house - and combined them into one cute fabric clutch, and voila!  Duchess Essential Oils has arrived on the scene :)

Mr. Bechtel has a man in Japan who wants to sell them.  This makes me realize that I'd better actually learn how to sew, and get my booklet of info on the oils completed, etc. etc.

My goal is to sell 10 of them :)

Then we will go from there.... 

Grandpa's Willys

Great News!

The Willys is alive and well!

Grandpa and the boys spent last Wednesday working on it - going through the whole thing - engine, transmission, brakes, etc

and miracle, the old beast sputtered to life!

Granny Smith and I were coming home from town and we passed the Spy Twins and Grandpa on their test drive on the main road.  Everyone looked very pleased.

Then Granny needed a ride, and it has been "tested" several times since.

Looks like it's time for a Jeep trek.

The New Testament Class

Golden Delicious is taking a New Testament class down at BYU this spring.  As part of her assignment she has to write what she's learning to someone.  So often she writes me a note telling me what she learned that day.  I particularly loved this one:

"Mom-

Today in New Testament we talked about Jesus walking on water, feeding the five thousand, and the bread of life sermon.  I found all of these stories super interesting because they all have super relevant applications in the world today, but I want to talk a little about how people focused on faith in these stories and how they were rewarded for it.  When Jesus feeds the 5000, no one has brought bread and he initially just asks Phillip (?) to feed the people.  There is no way that they’ll have enough money to get that much bread, so eventually Jesus asks what they have.  After searching through all the 5000 people, the apostles find one “lad” who has 5 loaves and 2 fishes.  He was the only one in the crowd who was smart enough to bring something to eat, so I can only imagine what I would’ve thought if I were in his place and the apostles came and asked me to give up my food.  My initial thought would have been something along the lines of “heck no! I was the only one prepared here and I’m not about to give up my meal so that two or three of these 5000 people can have a morsel too.  That’s crazy.”  The cool thing is that the lad gives up everything he has without questioning much.  All of the items together make up 7, a perfect offering.  The lad on his own couldn’t have even dreamed of feeding the 5000 with what he had.  But he was willing to give everything he had to the Lord, and the performed a miracle with it.  I like to think that the lad was able to go home with one or two of the baskets of leftover bread, too, leaving him with more than he started out with.  So often, the Lord works this way with us.  We are asked to give up what we think is all we have to accomplish a task that seems impossible and unrewarding, but in the end a miracle happens and we end up with more than we had in the first place.  I loved looking at it from the perspective of that lad’s faith and sacrifice. 

After Jesus feeds all the people, his popularity skyrockets for all the wrong reasons and we come to the bread of life sermon.  This greatly tested the faith of everyone in attendance, and a ton of people left Jesus because of it, because it essentially sounded like a speech on cannibalism.  So many people let the questions in their mind overpower the truth in their hearts, and they left the church because of it.  People still do that today.  What I love about this story is that Peter probably wondered at the sermon as much as anybody else, but when Jesus asks him if he is going to leave as well, this is his response: “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.  And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.” (John 6:68-69).  The moral of the story is: Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."

Artist Camp

While the boys were in Fallon having a fantastic time, we at home tried to enjoy life too.

One night we decided to have an artist's retreat.  Golden Delicious put her hair up in a bun and put on an apron in honor of the occasion.

It was fun!  

I was trying to do this canning jar full of tomatoes still life.  I could not get the right red color!  horrid!  Ah well, we are mere beginners.  Think what we'll be able to do in 5 or 10 years!