A merry Christmas from Dixie

It sounds like we made it out of town in just the nick of time, if news reports are to be believed about a major winter storm that slammed most of the state of Utah on Christmas day and evening. We had a nice visit with Chris, Camilla, and Sam inside the airport. They had arrived from Seattle just before 10:15 Christmas morning, and our flight was scheduled to leave at 12:45. They had not expected to get out of Seattle, whose airport had been closed a couple times earlier in the week, because it was snowing heavily in Everett as they left home. As they headed south the snow turned to rain and, by the time they reached the airport, the rain had stopped altogether.

Mom and I flew out of Salt Lake International at a little after 1:00 Christmas afternoon and made good time to Chicago's Midway Airport before immediately boarding our second flight from there to Birmingham, Alabama. Conditions in Chicago had been terrible both before and after Christmas Day, so our window of opportunity was particularly narrow and fortunate. We then drove a rental car from Birmingham the 165 miles to Paul and Eliza's place in Duluth, Georgia, where we greeted them and saw our new little grandson for the first time. We encountered a little rain, but our trip east on I-20 and then northeast on I-85 was without incident, precisely what you want a road trip to be.

Season's greetings from the land of Dixie.

Aaron arrives

A new little one begins his journey through mortality. Aaron Marvin Challis was born a little after 7:00 this morning (Georgia time) to Paul and Eliza. Today was his actual due date. We understand he weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces. In her initial call this morning, Eliza did not know how long he was.

We anticipate that either Paul or Eliza will post more details, including pictures, concerning the arrival of their new child. Our congratulations to them all.

Elder Wirthlin's funeral

For those of you who may be interested, the funeral services for Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin will be held in the Tabernacle on Friday, December 2, at 12:00 noon. The services will be broadcast live on KSL, BYU-TV, and lds.org.

The Church Office Building and all other downtown Salt Lake City Church facilities will close at 11:00 a.m. on Friday and will be closed for the rest of the day.

Elder Wirthlin dies

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, a member of the Twelve since 1986, passed away during the night. I had the privilege of working closely with him for many years when he served as a member of the Missionary Executive Council. A great and honorable man.

As he taught us at this last conference, "come what may, and love it."

What's in a name?

There has been recent chatter on some blogs I happen to read concerning which school qualifies to be called the Lord's university. It seems to me the issue really has little to do with who has attended which school. It clearly has nothing to do with athletic prowess in any particular sport.

Both schools were established under the direction of a prophet of God. Both schools employ faithful members of the Church among faculty and staff. Both schools enroll faithful members of the Church as students. Both schools boast talented, faithful, distinguished alumni. And both schools have areas of academic excellence that are worthy of serious institutions of higher learning.

And, unfortunately, both schools have their share of those among students and alumni who bring discredit to their institutions and tarnish the good reputation each enjoys.

But only one of the schools is sponsored by the Church. Only one of the schools receives any of its financial support from tithing funds. Only one of the schools has prophets and apostles serving as its board of education. And only one of the schools has a currently serving General Authority as its president.

Hmm. Perhaps only one of the schools qualifies for the title.

A historic moment

A historic moment for our country. Last night enough of my fellow Americans (including some of my children) voted for Barack Obama to make him the first African American president of the United States. We've come a long way since the civil rights struggles I remember from the 1960s. And that is good. Very good. I had no problems with Obama's race but had grave concerns about his liberal record and promises. But now, or at least on inaugural day in January, he is our president, and I pray for him and all the other leaders elected yesterday.

Of course, had John McCain won instead, we would have had our first female vice-president, Sarah Palin. I thought she was the best thing about the Republican ticket. But that was not to be. She goes back to serve as governor of Alaska. Perhaps we will hear more of her in the future.

By nine o'clock Mountain time the race had been decided, and Senator McCain gave an impressive concession speech that was full of class and reconciliation. Too bad many of his supporters who were gathered there in Phoenix did not have similar levels of class.

Is this a great country or what?

Go Utes! / Go Cougars!

I was happy to see that both Utah and BYU won their games again this week. I hope they both continue undefeated until they meet each other in late November. Though that will be a great game, I will not watch it because I do not want to jinx the Cougars' chance of winning.

(Historically BYU loses football games that I happen to watch. When they won what came to be known as the Miracle Bowl back in the 1980s, I had been watching on our little black-and-white TV until Grandma and Grandpa Lange showed up from southern California and I quit watching and the final-quarter miracle happened and the Y emerged victorious.)

What is all that white stuff?

A headline in this morning's Deseret News proclaimed "Snow falls on N. Utah - more skiff than blanket." The skiff in our backyard at 10:00 this morning measured 6 inches deep. Given the relative warmth of the ground still, a lot more than that had to fall to result in an accumulation of 6 inches.

What was that again?

I guess I need to pay better attention to the news. Somehow I totally missed the little fact this past week that Iceland has gone bankrupt. Oops!

A quick trip to Washington

Friday evening, October 3, Claudia and I flew from Salt Lake to Seattle. Becca had kindly driven Mom to the airport. (I had driven to work and went to the airport straight from there and parked our pickup in long-term parking, since our return would be near midnight on Sunday, and it didn't seem right to ask anyone to come get us at such an hour.)

Our flight was uneventful, which is precisely what you want when you're in an airplane.

It was raining when we landed in Seattle, apparently the first time it had done so in quite a while. The freeway traffic was heavier and slower than Camilla had expected, so we had to wait 20 or more minutes for her and Sam to pick us up. We were happy to see them again, and we drove from the airport (which is south of Seattle) to their home in Everett (which is north of Seattle), listening over and over and over to Sam's favorite song about a happy elephant.

Sam, who is now two, seems so much more grown up and talks a lot, although not always in the same intelligible English we are used to. He is a happy little boy. And was very excited to see his grandma and grandpa.

Chris had finished Camilla's shift at their Great Harvest bakery so she could come get us, but he was home by the time we reached their apartment in Everett. We visited and ate and went to bed.

Chris worked early Saturday morning. Camilla fixed us breakfast. We called to wish Peter a happy second birthday. He was having a great day. Then, before the morning session of conference began, we walked over to the bakery so Mom could be taken on the grand tour. (Although it rained much of the day, it was not raining when we walked over to see the bakery.) We returned to their apartment and somewhat listened to the first half of the morning session of conference, but the Internet connection kept dropping, so we went to their stake center to listen to the final hour of the opening session.

We got sandwiches from the bakery for lunch. Chris stayed with Sam while he took his nap, and Camilla, Mom, and I went to the stake center again to watch the afternoon session. Their stake center, far closer to the apartment than the building where their ward meets, is just on the other side of I-5, so it only takes about 5 or 10 minutes (depending on how you hit the lights) to get there.

Reference was made in the afternoon session to five new temples announced in the morning session. We had not heard the announcement, so we called Michael (actually we called Eliza first, but she didn't answer her phone) to find out where they were. He told us they were in Calgary, Cordoba (Argentina), somewhere in the Kansas City area, Philadelphia, and Rome (Italy).

Chris and I went to the priesthood session together. Afterward I took everyone out to dinner. Originally we were going to try the Olive Garden, but the 45-minute anticipated wait seemed too long, so we went to Red Robin instead. Their wait was only supposed to be 5 or 10 minutes, but actually it was much longer. And then it seemed to take a long time for our food to come after we had ordered it, and Chris's and Camilla's burgers were actually cold, and they complained about that, so the waiter took theirs back and brought hot ones the second time, and then the manager came out to apologize, and Chris told him he was the owner of the Great Harvest next door, and the manager said he'd never been over there but meant to, and they invited him to come, and he didn't charge us at all for their two meals, and it was all so wonderful.

We tried calling Margaret for her first birthday, not that she would really have known we were calling, but Rachael did not answer her phone. So we hope little Margaret had a wonderful day. Vince and Mary had gone up to help them all celebrate.

Sunday morning we participated in the Taylor family tradition of having breakfast burritos for the Sunday morning of general conference. Then we listened to the morning session streaming over the computer. It worked fine for the morning session, but it deteriorated again for the afternoon session and, though we talked about going to the stake center again, we just toughed it out at home and heard much but not all of the session.

Sam was still taking his afternoon nap, so Camilla took Mom and me on a little driving tour of the Everett and Mukilteo area. Chris and Camilla fixed us a delicious dinner that consisted of Parmesan chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and fruit. And cookie dough ice cream for dessert. Yummy. Then around 6:30 we all left for the airport. It was raining some, but the traffic was good, and we got to the airport a little earlier than we actually needed to. And then our plane left about a half hour later than its scheduled 8:30 departure. They must have flown faster than they would have otherwise, because we landed in Salt Lake pretty close to our scheduled 11:25 arrival. We were home by about midnight.

It had been a delightful weekend. We appreciated visiting with Chris, Camilla, and Sam. We were grateful for the spiritual uplift from general conference. And, as always, it all went by so quickly.

So I repent already

In my last, hasty post, I reported that my Congressman (Rob Bishop) had voted for the bailout package. I was in error. He actually voted against it. According to the Salt Lake Tribune on September 29,

Bishop believes the government needs to take some action, but he thought the approach was misguided and unnecessarily rushed.

"The solution needs to be more market-driven rather than based on taxpayer liability." Bishop said, "We are in a tough financial spot, and things could get worse fast, but Congress is acting too quickly based on what you've really got to admit is an artificial deadline." Bishop wants the amount of taxpayer money lowered from its current $700 billion cap, and he also wants Congress to bolster a provision that encourages Wall Street to buy government insurance instead of taking taxpayer cash.

I can live with that sort of thinking. So, I guess I'll have to vote for him after all.

Enough foolishness already

I have not used this blog before now to comment on political/economic stuff, but there seems to be far too much misinformation and fear and outright nonsense floating around out there, particularly in the news media, for me to forebear on this occasion. I do not begin to presume that I understand what is going on (does anyone really?), but it seems increasingly clear that many economists and politicians and media commentators do not.

Something President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1933 seems appropriate today: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

AARP, which I happen to be a member of, invited me to comment on their blog about how terrible it was that Congress did not pass the bailout package yesterday. I respectfully disagree with the position implied in the question they posted: "Is failure to take action on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression really an option?" This is what I posted:

"Let's be profoundly grateful that the bill did not pass yesterday. It was a very bad idea. There are saner ways to stabilize the markets without saddling taxpayers (that means us and our kids and grandkids) with such horrendous debt. My Republican representative voted for the bill, and he therefore does not get my vote this November.

"This is a great time to be investing. And it's simple really, something my parents taught me years ago: buy low, sell high. Stocks happen to be on sale right now. I wish I could afford to invest even more than I am right now."

A new house

Mom and I, accompanied by Rachael and her girls, went this morning to see Pete and Anna's new house in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake. The house dates from 1940. It is one of those sturdy, well-built homes with some measure of actual character, such as were built in this area in the waning years of the Great Depression just before the United States became engulfed in World War II.

It appears to be in a lovely, well-kept neighborhood along 1700 East, not too awfully far from Sugarhouse Park. (If you visit the Family Address Book, you can see their actual new address, their new ward and stake, and new Church meeting times.)

They have a deep back yard, a separate one-car garage, and a covered back patio area next to the garage. The three-bedroom house has a finished basement (two bedrooms on the main level, one in the basement) and two somewhat recently renovated bathrooms. The small kitchen has been completely redone in a style that is either reminiscent of (or actually from) Ikea. So totally Pete and Anna.

Mom thoughtfully took them as house-warming gifts some fresh-cut flowers and a large package of toilet paper (always a necessity at any house, especially when things from a previous residence are still being found and unpacked).

They closed on the house on Thursday, moved much of their stuff yesterday, and were finishing moving this morning. Today is Pete and Anna's second wedding anniversary.

I hope either Pete or Anna posts some pictures of their new home because no amount of verbal description would do it sufficient justice.

The circle of life

Just outside my office window I have watched a pine tree grow to maturity through the years I have worked here. In earlier times the tree was much shorter, and the top barely reached my third-floor window. In later years it pretty much filled the window and blocked the view.

Today during lunch hour we watched in fascination as a young lumberjack climbed the tree and with a chainsaw eliminated branches and cut off the top and worked his way back down, cutting sections of the remaining trunk as he descended. It was both fascinating and sad.

The tree is now gone, but we now have an unobstructed view of Temple Square and its magnificent temple.

I remember years ago when Claudia grieved over a large pine tree our neighbors removed. Were that tree still there, we would not enjoy the view out our kitchen window that we have of the Bountiful Temple on the foothills to our east.

A journey through medieval Europe

I just took an interesting journey through medieval times, beginning with the period we commonly refer to as the dark ages and on through the centuries of European history up through the Renaissance and the Reformation and Ferdinand Magellan's incredible journey to circumnavigate the world. It was not a pretty place to live. Over and over I felt grateful that our turn on earth came in an age of enlightenment and advancement and Restoration and freedom, although I recognize that many on our planet still live in impoverished circumstances or under totalitarian regimes that echo the bondage of past ages.

My journey was through the pages of a remarkable book that I finished last night entitled A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age, by William Manchester, a professor of history emeritus at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. (The book was published by Bay Back Books / Little, Brown and Company: New York, 1993.) It was a compelling read that kept me engaged through all 296 pages of the text.

An apostate Christianity dominated the landscape throughout all these centuries, and from my perspective it seemed clear that a great apostasy, as the prophets and apostles abundantly foretold in the biblical record (such as in 2 Thessalonians 2:3; Acts 20:28-31; Galatians 1:6-12; 2 Thessalonians 2:7-8; 1 Timothy 4:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:1-7; 2 Timothy 4:3-4; and Jude 1:3-4), had indeed occurred. The church that emerged in both eastern and western factions bore little semblance to what the humble Galilean, the Son of God, had introduced among His disciples. The doctrines were changed, the covenants and ordinances were adulterated and then lost, the authority of heaven was clearly withdrawn, and the institution that survived resorted to corruption and force to control the minds and souls of its adherents in satanic and barbaric forms of unrighteous dominion. Falsehoods were proclaimed as truth. Freedom of conscience and expression were suppressed. Spiritual wickedness reigned in high places.

The medieval church was no friend to liberty, justice, or truth. It was no friend of heaven. I am absolutely not making any of this up (nor was William Manchester as he wrote his book). This is the church that burned people at the stake for presuming to make the holy scriptures available to people in their own tongue. This is the institution that banned or excommunicated or killed people for presuming to teach that the world was round rather than flat as the ecclesiastical hierarchy insisted. Magellan's voyage around the world changed that old flat notion, although incredibly the church would not accept that the earth was actually a sphere until after a couple more centuries had passed.

The Reformation, beginning in the early years of the sixteenth century, was a response to all the accumulated evil that masqueraded in the name of religion and was an attempt, as the very name suggests, to reform the church. But the new Protestants, as they quickly came to be called, proved every bit as ruthless and dogmatic and controlling as the old regime had been. The excesses continued. The consciences of men were still abused. The government of heaven was still missing from the earth.

It is small wonder then (and this is now not technically a part of my little book report here but a requisite postscript), that the God of heaven had to start afresh, after carefully preparing a place where freedom of thought and religion were finally available, with a new revelation from the heavens. The nature and character and attributes of God had become so confused and lost, dating from the early centuries of Christianity and canonized in confusing and false creeds that by force of sword became mainstream, orthodox belief, that the Father and the Son chose to appear again to reveal Their true nature and to begin anew the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ with its simple truths and ordinances and covenants and authority.

So, after centuries of apostasy and darkness, the heavens were opened once again on a spring morning in 1820 on the western frontier of the fledgling United States, in a marvelous theophany that verified the actual existence of God and that taught that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ are actual, distinct, separate personages as the Bible clearly taught before its truths were obscured by the wrangling councils and creeds of later centuries.

Sadly, the philosophies of uninspired men had hijacked traditional Christianity from the simple scriptural truths taught by the Savior and His apostles. Things had gone badly wrong. A mere reformation was insufficient. A complete and total restitution or restoration of divine light and power and authority was necessary to get things back on track and to gather scattered Israel from all corners of the earth and to prepare a people, saints of the Most High God, for the imminent return of the Son of God, who this time will reign in glorious splendor as Lord of lords and King of kings. This coming millennial reign will differ in every respect from what prevailed during the dark and medieval ages portrayed by Professor Manchester in this book.

What a saint would look like

This afternoon in sacrament meeting, after my dear wife had returned to her seat on the stand, having just delivered a masterful discourse on forsaking sin and coming unto Christ, I kept trying to catch her eye from my unobstructed view on the second row of the chapel to give her a thumbs up on a job well done. She had had the Holy Spirit with her in obvious abundance as she spoke of truths central to the gospel and central to our purpose here on the earth.

As I sat looking at her, as a soloist sang a medley of sacrament hymns and during the concluding speaker, she looked positively angelic in her bright pink dress and with her head crowned with its silvery hair, and I thought to myself that that is precisely what a saint would look like. She is clearly the epitome of what a faithful Latter-day Saint woman should be, filled as she is with charity, or the pure love of Christ, and with her genuine, heart-felt and all-inclusive, all-embracing concern for the welfare and happiness of others.

Did I happen to mention that I love her very much? As our instructor in priesthood meeting observed earlier in our meetings today, when he said he had clearly married above himself, I too am humbled, grateful, and happy to be yoked to such an one as her.

The grandest journey

Forty years ago today (on Saturday, August 24, 1968) I received my mission call. The letter was signed by President David O. McKay, ninth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It called me to the Brazilian North Mission, which had just been newly created during the month before that, and I was to report for service exactly one month later (on Monday, September 23, 1968).

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of my mission, the grandest journey of my life up to that point, I have started another new blog, this one entitled Dean's Missionary Journal, in which I will post entries from my missionary journal exactly forty years after they were originally written. A preface and an introduction have already been posted. I hope you enjoy.

Visit to Georgia (the final day)

Thursday was our last full day in the Atlanta area, and it turned into a long, full day. Before Claudia and I left the Kieffers' house this morning, we said good-bye to Kathryn and her mother in anticipation of not seeing them before the day was over. We gave Momma Lue a copy of Mormon's Book as a sort of thank-you gift for all the Kieffers' many kindnesses to us during this week we have been in Georgia.

In the afternoon we left for Mercer University to attend the White Coat Ceremony in which Paul, along with the 146 other entering students, officially became a pharmacy student and began his graduate school career. There were six of us (Claudia and I, Paul's dad and sister, and Eliza and Peter) there cheering him on. We are all so proud of Paul and wish him every best wish as he begins the four-year journey toward his doctor of pharmacy degree. The campus of his school is very beautiful.

We returned to Paul and Eliza's apartment, changed from our Sunday dress, and ate a delicious pot roast and carrots that Eliza had been cooking since morning in the crock pot.

Then all of us except Claudia (who spent a quiet evening alone working on her gospel doctrine lesson for Sunday) drove to Doraville, caught the Marta train (we think that stands for Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) to downtown Atlanta, and got off at the Five Points station. From there we walked through Underground Atlanta and caught a Marta shuttle bus to Turner Field to attend the game between the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs. Ken Kieffer had arranged tickets for us through some acquaintance at work, and they were wonderful tickets, in the center of the lower section just behind the pitcher. We had a great time. And Peter loved the experience and, at times, was proving very entertaining to people sitting all around us and again on the train ride home. The final score, by the way, was Braves 7 Cubs 11.

We got back home a little before midnight. It was after one in the morning by the time Claudia and I said our good-byes, filled Kathryn's car with gas, and returned to the Kieffers' house. We just slept in our clothes since we had to leave for the airport at four in the morning to catch our six o'clock flight home. We flew on United from Atlanta to Chicago and, after a nearly three-hour layover, from Chicago to Salt Lake City. Our final flight left Chicago about fifteen minutes early and arrived in Salt Lake more than half an hour early.

Camilla and Sam picked us up at the airport. They and Chris arrived late Thursday night from Seattle to attend Chris's sister's wedding Friday afternoon here in the Bountiful Temple. They will be here until Monday.

Visit to Georgia (continued yet again)

We spent the entire morning Wednesday at the Kieffers' house: Claudia working on her gospel doctrine lesson for Sunday School this coming Sunday, me checking stuff on the Internet, posting an account of our trip, dealing with work-related e-mails, ordering a birthday gift for Michael, etc. We visited with Mama Lue, who was in and out. Eliza had called and said she and Paul had to run a number of errands and were taking Peter with them, so we waited until after they returned.

We drove over to Paul and Eliza's apartment and ate some lunch. We had planned to go this evening to see the laser show at Stone Mountain, but Paul discovered that as of last weekend they discontinued nightly shows and only do it on weekends now that school has resumed. We considered other options and in the end, after Peter awoke from his nap, decided to go find where the temple is located. We spent some time walking around the temple grounds. We arrived probably not long after Kathryn left work. She works in the Distribution Center just behind the temple.

We returned home, fixed the hoagie sandwiches that were originally intended as our picnic supper at Stone Mountain, watched more of the Olympics, and played a board game. It was late when we finished, after ten o'clock, and drove back to Kieffers' to sleep.

Visit to Georgia (continued)

Monday came and went and still no Paul Sr. or Ashley. They were stranded still in southern California. Fortunately, they caught a nine-thirty Monday night flight (12:30 a.m. Atlanta time) and arrived here in Atlanta at about five o'clock Tuesday morning. They were very tired of having waited in airports since Sunday morning.

On Monday, after Claudia and I were up and ready for the day, we drove over to Paul and Eliza's apartment and spent the rest of the day with them. Their washing machine had apparently been damaged in the move from Utah, but Eliza did not discover that little fact until after a load of clothes had filled up with water and would not then agitate. Not good. So Paul took the machine apart and discovered that one of the springs that holds up the whole interior part of the washing machine had come off. We spent a good part of the next few hours trying to lift and reconnect it. Finally our endurance gave out and we went out to eat at a nearby Waffle House. Adeaquate to refuel us. Nothing to write home about.

We then returned and finished working on the washer, which we finally repaired, put back together, and tried to resume washing the load of clothes. Nothing happened. Some other problem keeps it from working. So we reassembled the crib in Peter's room instead.

Originally we had planned to go to a laser light show at Stone Mountain for our family home evening, but since Paul's dad and sister were not yet here we decided to postpone that and watched more of the Beijing Olympics instead. Claudia and I then drove back to Kieffers' house. We visited a little while with Kathryn and then went to bed.

On Tuesday, after Claudia and I were up for the day, we drove back over to Paul and Eliza's place (15 miles from where the Kieffers live as I clocked it on the odometer of Kathryn's car that we are using for the week). We had visited a little with Kathryn after her seminary class (which she teaches each school day from six to seven in the morning) and before she left before eight for work at the Distribution Center near the Atlanta Temple. School started here yesterday, and the first day of seminary was this morning.

We helped watch Peter while Paul and Eliza went to their ten-thirty appointment to get Georgia driver licenses and register to vote. By now Paul's dad and sister were here, recovering still from their having flown through the night and having endured waiting at airports since Sunday morning. We watched more of the televised coverage of the Olympics.

In the afternoon we all went shopping at Wal-Mart to help fill up Paul and Eliza's pantry and refrigerator. We filled three shopping carts. As our little way of helping the kids get a start here in their new home, Paul Sr. paid for what was in his cart, Claudia and I paid for what was in our cart, and Paul and Eliza paid for what was in their cart. We brought everything home, put it away, fixed a late lunch, and Claudia and I took Eliza to Sam's Club to get the few more things that were still needed.

Originally we had planned to go to a laser light show at Stone Mountain, but it started raining, so that plan was postponed once again. Apparently the rain is good, since the whole region here is in a prolonged drought.

After watching more of the Olympics, Paul and Eliza generously took us all to dinner at Tanner's, a restaurant in Suwanee, not far from Kieffers' house, for a late dinner. We got there at eight o'clock, and the restaurant closed at nine. We went there to try the fried pickles that Eliza (and Peter) love so much. They were good, as was the rest of the food we all had. The portions were huge, and we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Claudia had chicken and ribs with mashed potatoes and gravy and apples and cinnamon as her two sides. I had chicken with apples served on a bed of rice with baked beans and grilled corn on the cob as sides. It was all very delicious.

We then went to Kieffers' house. Paul and Eliza came too, so they could introduce Paul Sr. and Ashley to the Kieffers and check on the tickets to the Atlanta Braves games on Thursday night that Ken can get through someone he knows at work and so Peter could play with Mattie (the Kieffers' dog). Mama Lue was back from her visit to Kansas City, and we all had a delightful visit. The Kieffers, who we consider practically as family, are so incredibly nice and helpful and generous.

Visit to Georgia

Claudia and I flew Saturday morning from Salt Lake City on a United flight to Denver. Michael kindly picked us up and dropped us off at the airport. In Denver we changed planes and continued on to Atlanta. Both flights were uneventful, which is basically what you want when you're tens of thousands of feet above the ground.

Ken Kieffer met us at the airport in Atlanta and took us to his home in Sugar Hill, which is located northeast of Atlanta. We so appreciate the Kieffers' generosity. Mary Lou is visiting in Kansas City and will be back on Tuesday. Kathryn was still at work. We waited awhile for her return, but she was delayed, so we drove over to see Paul, Eliza, and Peter, who live in nearby Duluth, about 25 minutes by car from the Kieffers' house. They have a nice two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a generous amount of storage space in a large gated apartment community that is just off I-85. They are on the ground floor of a three-story building and are right near the rear gate that comes into the complex.

We are basically sleeping at the Kieffers' house, but Saturday night we stayed with Paul and Eliza so that we could go to their early church meetings Sunday morning. They are in the Lawrenceville First Ward with meetings from 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning. Shortly after we found their place and were given a little tour of their apartment, we went with them to their church to attend an ice cream social. They seem to live in a very friendly ward. After returning from that, we stopped at a grocery store to buy some stuff for the salad we are contributing to Sunday afternoon's meal with the Kieffers. Then we watched some of the Olympics on the new HD TV that Paul and Eliza had bought just that afternoon. Their old TV got broken during the move from Utah.

Sunday morning we attended church. Their ward has sacrament meeting first. Peter successfully went to the nursery, allowing all of us to attend Sunday School without his cute distraction, and allowing Claudia and Eliza to attend Relief Society and Paul and me to attend priesthood meeting. The previous week, Peter's first in the ward, did not go as well.

After church we returned to Paul and Eliza's place, ate sandwiches for lunch, read, took naps, took a walk through the apartment complex to feed bread crumbs to the ducks in the little lake and to see the swimming pool, the exercise room, where the garbage is compacted, etc.

The reason we were able to sleep at Paul and Eliza's on Saturday night is that Paul's dad and sister have not arrived yet. They spent all day Sunday trying (they are coming standby) and ended up at John Wayne airport in Orange County, California, based on the advice that they might have a better shot getting to Atlanta from California than from Utah, where it appears every single flight was filled. We have not heard as of this writing on Monday morning whether they made the final flight last night at 9:30 California time (12:30 a.m. Atlanta time), which would have put them arriving here sometime around 5:30 or so this morning.

Sunday evening we went to Kieffers and enjoyed a delicious chicken and salsa meal Ken had cooked in the crock pot, served with rice and corn and the salad we provided. An enjoyable meal. Even more enjoyable company. We watched some more of the Olympics. After Paul, Eliza, and Peter left to return home, we visited more with Ken and Kathryn, talked on the phone with Camilla and Sam in Everett, watched more of the Olympics, and finally went to bed.

Northwest adventure (day 9)

Thursday, August 7, 2008
Oregon, Idaho, Utah

The final day of our adventure. Our motel offered a full continental breakfast, which we ate before packing and leaving. We stopped to get stamps canceled at the Ontario post office and took pictures of the Holy Rosary Hospital where I was born nearly six decades ago.

We then drove to Nyssa, where we saw the stake center where I was baptized fifty-one years ago this week. We drove by and took pictures of the Owyhee Ward chapel, where I went to church until I was nearly ten years old. We stopped in Adrian (current population about 140 people) and took pictures of the school I attended through most of the fourth grade, had stamps canceled in our trip books, and otherwise toured the little town.

We crossed the Snake River just south of Adrian and drove the six miles to where our farm was located in the Big Bend area of eastern Oregon bordering on the State Line Road. The farm is still there, but the house, the barn, the trees are all gone. The foundation of the little house is still visible. While we were stopped taking pictures, a pickup came down the hill and stopped to see if we were having car trouble (why otherwise would a car be stopped out here in the middle of nowhere?), and when the couple in the pickup saw the camera concluded we were not having car trouble. I mentioned we were taking pictures of the place I had moved from when I was nearly ten years old. The lady in the pickup said, "Oh, the Cleverlys." I was utterly amazed that someone would remember the family from nearly fifty years ago. They said their name was Adams, I think, and that they had lived just up over the hill for many years.

I also showed them the little swimming hole just down the road where we used to swim in the drain ditch. We then continued on through Wilder and Greenleaf to Caldwell. I pointed out where my mother used to work at Simplot's. We then went to Nampa, had some stamps canceled there, and drove by the site of the old Nampa Fifth Ward building (which is no longer there), where I attended church from age ten until after my mission more than a decade later. We drove by and took pictures of Central Junior High, where I attended school when I was in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. We drove by the site of the Dairy Queen I worked at in high school, now occupied by a Subway, so we stopped there to eat. We drove by and took pictures of Nampa High School, where I attended school in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. We drove out south of town to see the house we moved to in 1959 when we came from Oregon. We drove by and took pictures of Scism School, where I attended the three-room school for parts of the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. We drove by where our next house in Nampa was located on Colorado Avenue (which is no longer there). And we drove by the final house I lived in in Nampa on Ventura Drive (it is still there and looks very much the same as I remember it). Michael can remember going to that house to visit his grandparents.

We then got on I-84 and headed toward home. With a couple of rest stops, a stop in Bliss to buy gas, and a stop in Snowville, Utah, to find its post office (which had closed an hour earlier than we arrived), we reached Layton about seven-thirty. We were glad to be home.

I unloaded my stuff from Michael's minivan and put it in our minivan (which Shauna had borrowed from us while we were gone; she also filled it with gas and washed it). I ate supper with Michael and Shauna's family, spaghetti that Shauna had made, and then drove home to Bountiful. It was wonderful to see Claudia again. We called Rachael to wish her a happy birthday. She and Robert and the girls are in Illinois visiting Robert's parents and had just returned from spending a couple of days in Kentucky. Today is her thirty-third birthday.

Northwest adventure (day 8)

Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Oregon, Washington

I should mention that although I love all the trees that infest this forest we have been in, Meghan does not. She thinks there are too many trees. She has thought that ever since we arrived in western Washington last Friday afternoon. So she was glad as we left the forests of western Oregon and traveled into the more desolate parts of central and eastern Oregon.

We ate, packed, swept our yurt, checked out, and left Fort Stevens State Park and returned along U.S. 101 to Astoria and then U.S. 30 to where we crossed the Columbia River back to Longview, Washington, and then traveled down I-5 on the Washington side of the river. As we approached the Vancouver-Portland area, we took I-205, a shortcut toward I-84, crossed the Columbia River a final time, and were back in Oregon again. We then headed east along I-84 up through the scenic Colombia River Gorge with a short stop at Multnomah Falls. At The Dalles we stopped and had lunch at a KFC. It is a particular challenge finding a place to eat that will satisfy all the picky eaters in our traveling party. At Pendleton we stopped for gas. Oregon, as far as we know, is the only state in the country, where by law you cannot pump your own gas. We continued east on I-84, mile after mile after mile, entering the Mountain Time Zone again, and finally reached our destination in Ontario, the final city in Oregon.

We stayed in a Super 8 Motel, which our review panel rated as far better than the EconoLodge we had stayed in Wednesday and Thursday nights in Boise but not quite as nice as the Best Western we had stayed in Friday and Saturday nights in Everett. The yurts, which we stayed in Monday and Tuesday nights in Fort Stevens State Park, were in a different category and were a universal favorite also.

Just before going to dinner, Jacob had jumped on one of the three beds in our large room and bonked his head against Meghan's. It hurt terribly, and she was very sad. When she finally recovered we started walking over to a pizza buffet within walking distance of the motel. We stood for five or ten minutes in the parking lot waiting for Caleb to join us (Michael and Andrew were going to stay in the motel room because Michael was not hungry, and he was tired of paying for Andrew to eat when he typically would not).

While waiting for Caleb, a guy drove by us three times in a car, finally parked and got out, and asked us if everything was okay. Meghan's face was still red and puffy from her earlier crying. He wanted to know why everyone looked so unhappy and if they were okay. He asked me if I were their father. It was kind of creepy, but I guess we were glad he was tuned in to whether a couple of kids standing in a parking lot were not being held there against their will or were being abducted or some such awful thing. I wondered if he were an off-duty policeman or something.

We went on to the pizza/pasta/salad buffet and learned that on Wednesdays children eat free, so I called Michael and said he could safely bring Andrew if they wanted to come join us, which they did. Caleb proudly ate nine pieces of pizza.

After eating we returned to the motel and went swimming in their pool until it closed at ten o'clock. We then went to bed.

Northwest adventure (day 7)

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Oregon

Our yurt is situated in a dense forest that is absolutely gorgeous and peaceful. We are somewhere between a half and three quarters of a mile from the Pacific Ocean. It is cool, damp, and foggy in the mornings. Although it is cool, it is not as cold as I anticipated it might be, and my new Malad City hooded sweatshirt that Robert and Rachael gave me for my birthday was entirely adequate. We fixed breakfast at the yurt, cold cereal and milk and orange juice for Michael and the children, a hard-boiled egg and protein shake and orange juice for me.

We drove over to the beach where the remains of the shipwrecked Peter Iredale are located. It was the first time that any of the children (except Caleb, who had been to Hawaii with Cade, Rebecca, and Mimi) had seen the ocean. We played on the beach a little, and the kids all got their shoes and socks thoroughly muddy.

The children, with Michael and I accompanying them, participated in a scavenger hunt as a part of the junior ranger program.

Next we drove over to the part of Fort Stevens State Park that included the old military installation (which started during the Civil War and was closed right after World War II) and learned about a guided tour we could take in the afternoon. Fort Stevens is the only military installation in the continental United States that has been shelled by a foreign power since the War of 1812. A Japanese submarine fired nine shots at the fort in April 1942 but caused no significant damage other than psychological among the civilian population along the west coast.

We left the park, driving toward U.S. 101 (the Pacific Coast highway) and found a Dairy Queen, where we ate lunch. We then returned for the 2:30 tour of the military installation. We rode in a 1952 military truck. Caleb and Jacob got to sit up front with the driver and got to honk the horn when we crossed bicycle paths a couple times. The rest of us sat in the covered bed in the back of the truck with the other tour participants. The tour lasted a little over an hour and was most interesting.

We then went exploring throughout the park on our own. We visited a large military bunker, visited a spot along the beach of the Pacific Ocean and a spot along the Columbia River just before it empties into the ocean. The road there took us to the very northwestern-most point of the state of Oregon. We learned that the actual coastline here is about a mile further west than when the Lewis and Clark expedition visited here in 1805-1806. That is because jetties have been constructed to control the changing currents and sandbars at the mouth of the Columbia. The Colombia River bar is particularly treacherous. That and the rocky Oregon coastline have resulted in over 2,000 ship wrecks in this area in the last couple of centuries, earning the mouth of the Columbia the nickname as the graveyard of the Pacific.

In the evening we drove south along U.S. 101 to Seaside to find a place to eat. We ate at a little Italian restaurant.

We returned to the park and were there in time for the nine o'clock campfire program at the amphitheater. Tonight's program, presented again by Ranger Matt, was on Roosevelt Elk, which are common in this corner of Oregon. We all wished we could be here for the program scheduled for tomorrow night entitled the Graveyard of the Pacific, but we will be in Ontario on the opposite side of the state by then.

We returned to the yurt and retired for the night.

Northwest adventure (day 6)

Monday, August 4, 2008
Oregon, Washington

Dani left for work (or school, I am not sure which) just as I was waking up for the day, which was earlier than any of the others were up. We got up, had some breakfast, packed our things, and headed out for the day. First we went looking for a post office to buy stamps and have them hand canceled in our travel books. We then drove into downtown Portland and went to Powell's, which is billed as the largest independent seller of new and used books, and spent a couple hours there. Michael and the children each bought books. I just browsed.

We then went to lunch at a Burgerville, a local chain here in the Portland area. Dani had recommended it as a place with to-die-for onion rings and in-season fresh raspberry shakes. We tried both and were very pleased.

We then met Dani at OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), which is located along the south bank of the Willamette River, and spent a couple hours there. It was similar to what we had seen at the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise.

We said good-bye to Dani and, at her recommendation, headed toward Astoria in the very northwest corner of the state by taking I-5 back into Washington and traveling up the Washington side of the Columbia to Longview, where we crossed the river back into Oregon and continued along U.S. 30 on the south side of the river to Astoria. We stopped there to buy food at a Safeway store and then drove on to Fort Stevens State Park, our home for the next couple days. We found the ranger station and checked in. We are staying in yurt number 11 both Monday and Tuesday nights.

The yurt is just the right size for our group of six people. Caleb and Jacob will sleep in their sleeping bags on the top bunk. Michael, Meghan, and Caleb will sleep on the wider bottom bunk. And I will sleep on the futon couch. After we got settled in, we went to the nine o'clock campfire program at the amphitheater on lighthouses on the Oregon coast. That was an enjoyable half hour program.

Northwest adventure (day 5)

Sunday, August 3, 2008
Washington, Oregon

Today is fast Sunday. Our motel provides a full continental breakfast. Michael's children, who fast one meal on fast Sunday, decided to eat breakfast and skip their midday meal. That way we wouldn't have to stop somewhere on the road to buy a meal on the sabbath.

Chris and Camilla stopped by our motel about nine o'clock, and we followed them to their meetinghouse, where we attended the meetings of the Mukilteo Ward. Sacrament meeting was first, followed by Primary for the children and by Sunday School and priesthood meeting for Michael and me. The children felt more comfortable going to Primary because Camilla was there as the music leader. Chris accompanied Michael and me to Sunday School and Michael to elders quorum while I joined the high priests group.

After church we returned to Chris and Camilla's apartment to visit for a few hours. Sam has had a great time having some of his cousins here to play with, particularly Andrew, who is closest to his age.

Around four o'clock we said good-bye to Chris, Camilla, and Sam (we will be seeing them again in two weeks when they come to Utah for the wedding of Chris's sister) and left Everett, heading south on I-5 past Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia (the capital of Washington), and on south to Vancouver. We continued across the Columbia River into Oregon and on through Portland to Lake Oswego, where Michael's friend Dani lives. She used to work with him at Deseret Book. On the way to her house we passed the Portland Oregon Temple, which can be seen just off the east side of the freeway just south of Portland. (On Friday, as we were arriving in the Seattle area, we passed the Seattle Washington Temple on the north side of I-90 just before it intersects with I-405 in Bellevue.) It had taken us between three and three and a half hours to travel from Everett to Lake Oswego.

We spent the evening visiting with Dani. Michael, Meghan, Caleb, and Jacob slept in sleeping bags in a tent in the backyard. Andrew and I slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the living room.

Northwest adventure (day 4)

Saturday, August 2, 2008
Washington

The motel we are staying in here in Everett is by everyone's count much nicer than the one we stayed in in Boise. This morning we went to breakfast and found they had a full range of foods available. I had a hard-boiled egg, some oatmeal, a peach-flavored yogurt, and a drink of orange juice.

After we ate breakfast and got ready for the day, we went over to Camilla's apartment to plan the rest of the day. It had been raining and was overcast, with clearing later in the day, but we never did see any actual rain. Meghan took a bag of dirty clothes to launder in Camilla's washer and dryer. First, before going to Camilla's, we went looking for a post office. We found the one Camilla directed us to, but it is not open on Saturdays. So we went to Camilla's.

We left after a little while and went to downtown Everett to find the main post office. It was open. Then Camilla took us to a petting zoo, followed by a scenic tour through parts of Everett and Mukilteo because we were lost. We saw the Puget Sound, our first view of the Pacific Ocean on this trip. We also saw the Boeing plant where they make airplanes. It is supposed to be the biggest building ever built. We then drove to the Great Harvest bakery, bought sandwiches for lunch, and took them back to Chris and Camilla's apartment to eat. In the afternoon we went to the very interesting Future of Travel museum out by the Boeing plant in Mukilteo.

We returned to the apartment, and Chris made us spaghetti for supper. We also watched a DVD of the movie Second-Hand Lion, a touching story of a young boy who gets left with two old uncles who live on a remote farm in Texas or somewhere and who are reportedly very rich. I had seen the movie once before, also when we were on a family trip, the time when Talmage and Louise, Chris and Camilla, and Paul and Eliza went with Mom and me to Nauvoo more than a year ago.

After the movie ended, Chris, Camilla, and Sam went with us over to our Best Western motel, and everyone except Chris and I went swimming. Sam, who apparently had not been swimming in a very long time, seemed to particularly enjoy it.

It had been a pleasant day. We heard from Shauna, who arrived safely home from Boise and rescued the twins from Grandma Claudia. And we heard from Grandma, who had just been talking with Eliza in Georgia. This afternoon Eliza and Paul found a place to live, and they bought a new computer and printer and accompanying software. It sounds like a good day for everyone.

Northwest adventure (day 3)

Friday, August 1, 2008

Idaho, Oregon, Washington

We dropped Shauna off at the hotel where she will be staying for the final night of her Scentsy convention. We then took pictures of the Hoff Building for Rebecca. It is an art-deco office building built early in the last century that is one of the taller buildings in downtown Boise and located just a block west from the state capitol. We went inside the building and rode the elevator up as high as it would take us (11 floors). From the elevator we could see out two sides (west and north, I believe) of the Boise landscape. We then went to the main post office, which is just southwest of the capitol, to buy our postage stamps and have them hand cancelled in our travel books. The post office opened at 8:30, and by 8:45 or so we were on the road again.

We traveled west along I-84 past Meridian in Ada County and Nampa and Caldwell in Canyon County. I grew up in Nampa, from the spring of 1959 when I was nine years old until 1968 when I left on my mission to Brazil. My brothers Gene and Dale still live in Nampa.

The children were all asleep by the time we crossed the Snake River a final time and entered Oregon. Ontario, the first Oregon town we passed, was where I was born all those so many years ago. We continued along I-84 past Baker City, La Grande, and over the Blue Mountains to Pendleton. Along our way, which roughly follows the route of the Oregon Trail, we crossed into the Pacific Time Zone (and changed our clocks from 10:00 to 9:00) and crossed the 45th Parallel, the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole.

We stopped to eat in Pendleton. We stopped at a local place, Roosters restaurant. The food was good and reasonably priced. Most of us had some kind of breakfast fare, except Andrew, who had his obligatory mac and cheese. We also found the post office and bought more stamps and had them cancelled.

We continued further along I-84 until it intersected with I-82. We took that route north into Washington, crossing the Columbia River at Umatilla. We continued along I-82 past the Tri Cities, Yakima, and finally to Ellensberg, where the freeway joined I-90. Interstate 90 is the longest freeway in the United States, covering the 3,000+ miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington. We only traveled along the 100-mile stretch up and over the Cascade Range into the Seattle area, a beautiful ride by the way. When we reached the Seattle area, we turned north on I-405 and inched our way in rush-hour traffic toward Everett.

We were hoping to reach Everett before six o'clock so we could visit Camilla at her Great Harvest bakery store. We got there about fifteen or twenty minutes before closing time. Chris, Sam, and Chris's sister Kirsten came over and helped Camilla clean up and close the store. Chris gave us a little tour of his bakery. It was fun to see Sam again. He turned two last month.

We went to Chris and Camilla's apartment, which is only a block or so away from the bakery, and visited awhile and ate. Then we went to find our motel, the Best Western Navigator Inn, which was located on Evergreen, less than two miles from Camilla's house. Everyone was in agreement that it was way better than the Econo Lodge we stayed in in Boise. In this motel all six of us are able to stay in the same room. We checked in, and I went with Meghan, Caleb, Jacob, and Andrew to watch them swim during the final hour the swimming pool was open. It closed at ten o'clock.

Northwest adventure (day 2)

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Idaho

I awoke this morning about 6:30 and used the time while others in our room were still sleeping to read five chapters from the Book of Mormon and to finish Are We There Yet?, one of the books I received for my recent birthday. A little before eight o'clock I drove Shauna to the place in downtown Boise where her Scentsy convention began.

When we were all up and fed and ready for the day, somewhere around ten, we headed out for our day's adventures. We drove through downtown and then along Warm Springs Avenue to visit the site of the old penitentiary, which operated from 1870 (seven years after Idaho was organized as a territory) until 1973 (when the facility was replaced by a new state prison built at another location). After we paid our entry fee, we joined a tour group that was already in process. The older gentleman who conducted the tour was a wealth of information and stories about what had happened at the penitentiary during the century of its operation. He was fascinating to listen to, and we didn't mind that his tour lasted far longer than it was supposed to. (During the evening, after Shauna was back with us, the children were recounting some of the stories to her in great detail.)

Also housed at the penitentiary site, not because they had anything to do with the prison but because space was available, were museums relating to early transportation and to the development of electricity in the state of Idaho. There was also a firearms museum, but we did not go into that.

Michael called a friend of his (TJ Eardley), who used to work with him at Deseret Book and who now lives here in Meridian, just west of Boise. They agreed to meet for lunch at 1:00 at a place on Broadway across from Julia Davis Park called The Ram. I called my brother Jerry, and he and his roommate Jim were already in downtown Boise, just minutes away from The Ram, so I invited them to lunch as my guests. When we got to the restaurant, the three of them (TJ, Jerry, and Jim) were sitting in front visiting with each other. They had already figured out that they were waiting for the same people.

The food was good (I had a garlic swiss burger that TJ recommended as being good, and it was), and the visit even nicer.

After lunch and good-byes, we found the Discovery Center of Idaho and spent the rest of the afternoon there. The children participated in a tower building contest using plastic straws and masking tape. Caleb tied for second place in the most creative category. We then spent a couple of hours with the numerous hands-on exhibits throughout the center. It was both enjoyable and educational.

The center closed at five o-clock, and we were supposed to pick Shauna up thirty minutes later. Since the Discovery Center, located just at the edge of Julia Davis Park, was only a couple blocks from where we were to meet Shauna, we decided to use the half hour we had to drive up to the freeway to show the kids the Boise Idaho Temple and then back into downtown to find Shauna. She had had a thoroughly enjoyable day at her convention.

We returned to the motel for about an hour, then headed again through downtown and along Warm Springs Avenue to the Municipal Park along Walnut Street and the Boise River to attend the family picnic being held in conjunction with Shauna's Scentsy convention. Boise has a lot of urban park space and an impressive greenbelt through much (perhaps all) of the town along both sides of the Boise River. We ate our picnic dinner, which consisted of green salad, potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, corn-on-the-cob, beef or chicken barbecue, and drinks. There were ice cream, popsicles, or watermelon for dessert. We met another person Michael knew from Intermountain Healthcare, Ryan Day, whose wife is also involved in Scentsy, and they were up for the convention from Herriman, Utah. We ate at the same picnic table, just a stone's throw from the Boise River, and visited with the Days. After eating, Caleb, Jacob, and Andrew went and played on the big inflated bouncy toys that had been set up throughout the park.

After we left the park, we drove a little further along Warm Springs Avenue and showed Shauna where the penitentiary was that we had visited this morning. The children shared their stories from the guide we had there. We then went looking for a Wal-Mart, somewhere on Overland Road, filled the car with gas, which is cheaper here in Idaho than in Utah, and returned after dark to the motel. It had been a fun and memorable day.

Northwest adventure (day 1)

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Utah, Idaho

Our trip to Boise and beyond began this morning a little after ten o'clock as we pulled out of our driveway in Bountiful. Michael and Shauna had come from Layton to Bountiful to drop the twins off with Grandma, who bravely agreed to tend the 18-month-olds for the next four days. That left seven of us in our traveling party: Michael, Shauna, Meghan, Caleb, Jacob, Andrew, and me.

Our first stop was at the post office in Bountiful, where we stopped to buy first-class stamps, pasted them in the travel books Michael had published for this trip, and had them hand cancelled with a Bountiful postmark.

Then we headed north on I-15 until it was joined just south of Ogden by I-84 and continued on through Weber and Box Elder counties until we reached the Idaho border. The children were busy looking for various things: the air museum just off the freeway near Hill Air Force Base, cows, horses, sheep (for which they substituted llamas), airplanes, busses, letters of the alphabet on signs, old barns, etc. as a part of travel packets their aunt had prepared for them. As they completed various items they could open little gifts she had prepared for them.

We stopped at the first rest stop we came to in Idaho, about five miles after we left Utah, and then continued along I-84 toward Twin Falls. Michael had driven until we came to the rest stop. I drove until we came to Twin Falls.

Our purpose in stopping at Twin Falls was to attend the open house for the newly completed Twin Falls Idaho Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. New temples are opened up for public tours before they are dedicated to their sacred purposes of ordinance work and instruction. We were scheduled for a 1:30 tour, which we were about ten minutes late for, not bad for having driven all the way from northern Utah.

At the open house we started in the adjacent stake center, where we received a brief orientation and watched a short video about the purpose of temples and the history of the Church in the Twin Falls area. Then tour guides took us through the temple. At the front entrance into the temple they had us put plastic foot coverings over our shoes (so as not to unduly soil the carpets throughout the temple). We proceeded through the entry and waiting areas to the baptistry in the rear part of the temple. We explained to the children why the baptismal font is placed on the backs of twelve oxen, following the pattern used in Solomon's Temple anciently as recorded in the Old Testament, the oxen representing the twelve tribes of Israel. We then walked up a staircase to the upper level, where we walked through the women's dressing room, the bride's dressing room, the ordinance rooms used for the endowment (the one we were in had a gorgeous mural showing the Shoshone Falls on the Snake River), the celestial room, and a sealing room. One of the nice touches was use of a symbolized version of the Idaho state flower, the syringa or mock orange, throughout the temple in the woodwork, the windows, in designs in the carpets, etc. We then left the temple and returned to the cultural hall of the stake center for light refreshments (cookies and water).

While in the temple one of the ushers asked me if I were Dean Cleverly, and it turned out that I was. And the thought popped into my head that his last name was Jensen, and it turned out that it was. He was Gary Jensen, who had served with me in Brazil nearly forty years ago when we were missionaries in the Brazil North Mission. He now lives here in Twin Falls. A small world.

After leaving the temple, we stopped to eat a late lunch/early dinner at the Perkins restaurant. We then found the Twin Falls post office and bought postage stamps, affixed them to our travel books, and had them hand cancelled with a Twin Falls postmark.

We had talked about taking the scenic drive through the Snake River Canyon but decided to continue along I-84 toward Boise. Michael was driving again. We stopped at the Malad River Gorge State Park, just off the freeway near the town of Bliss, for about ten or fifteen minutes, our version of scenic lite. The deep chasm carved into the lava rock was impressive, even a little erie as we stood on the foot bridge that spans the chasm. The kids were not sure they liked that feeling.

We stopped at the rest stop just before the freeway exit to King Hill and just before the highway crosses the Snake River again. I resumed driving from there to Boise.

We reached Boise a little before seven o'clock and dropped Shauna off to pick up the registration materials for the Scentsy convention she is attending the next three days. We went and found our motel, a low-end EconoLodge not far from the downtown site where the convention is being held. When Shauna called, I drove over and picked her up. The only challenge with navigating downtown Boise are all the one-way streets that we are not particularly familiar with.

We had two adjoining rooms at the motel, numbers 316 and 318 on the top floor of the motel. Michael, Caleb, Jacob, and I stayed in room 318, which had two queen-sized beds. Shauna, Meghan, and Andrew stayed in room 316, which had one king-sized bed. Each room had a microwave and a refrigerator and was adequate for our needs, clean, but definitely not spacious or fancy or very up-to-date. Our idea of roughing it.

A bit of ingenuity

Paul and Eliza and their little Peter are currently making their way across the country from Utah to Georgia. Two days ago they called from Sidney, Nebraska, to report they had successfully completed their first day of travel. Last night they called from St. Joseph, Missouri, to report completion of their second day.

They were planning to have Hot Pockets for dinner, but the motel where they were staying had no microwaves or toasters in the room or even in the lobby area. So, in a burst of creative ingenuity, Paul took out the iron and ironed their dinner. Eliza said it worked. And thus the hungry travelers were filled.

Bryce Canyon half marathon

Over the course of our lives Claudia and I have made the drive along I-15 from northern to southern Utah many, many times—some of them before there even was an I-15. Most were a part of the regular trips to southern California when Grandma and Grandpa Lange still lived there. Nowadays a trip to California is more likely to be by airplane, particularly since there are just the two of us and not a whole carload of kids too.

In more recent years trips to southern Utah were exactly that: trips to southern Utah, for such things as visiting our daughter and hubby when they lived in Hurricane, or watching various of our children run in the St. George Marathon a couple different times, or more recently visiting my brother and his wife first in St. George and now in Hurricane.

The past two days took us to southern Utah again, this time to the Bryce Canyon area, where our youngest daughter was running a half marathon. We left midday on Friday and headed south through the various familiar counties—Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Juab, Millard, Beaver, Iron—that I-15 runs through. We took a short break at Scipio and continued on until we exited the freeway south of Beaver on Utah highway 20, which happens to be just twenty miles long as it heads east from I-15, through some mountains, and ends at U.S. 89 of the other side. A pleasant, scenic drive.

With the high price of gasoline (at now over $4.00 a gallon), I decided to employ some of the elements of hypermiling that our younger son uses so effectively to boost his gas mileage in his ten-year-old Saturn. I decided to drive only 65 miles per hour while still on the freeway, even after the speed limit increases to 75 south of Spanish Fork. Most cars were going faster, but I was surprised to encounter an occasional fellow traveler who was driving slower like we were.

Once we were on U.S. 89 we continued south to Panguitch. About seven miles south of there, we intersected with Utah highway 12, the route that runs toward Bryce Canyon. We turned east onto highway 12, and near the intersection of 89 and 12, perhaps a third or half a mile east of the intersection, we found our motel, Harold's Place Inn, and checked in. The entire drive from Bountiful to our motel had taken only four hours and fifteen minutes, including our brief stop in Scipio.

After we had made our original reservation at Harold's Place, my assistant at work (whose grandparents live in nearby Tropic) told me that there were many places much closer to Bryce Canyon and gave me a list of ten other motels to try. I called every single one of them, and none had vacancies for this particular weekend. That is not surprising, given that July has to be the normal height of the tourist season for the Bryce area, not to mention all the additional people in town for the half marathon.

We then drove the seventeen miles or so on to Bryce Canyon. The road goes through the very scenic Red Canyon, and we greatly enjoyed the drive, which incidentally only took us about fifteen minutes rather than the half hour my assistant had suggested.

Near Bryce Canyon we called Mary on her cell phone, and she directed us to where they were camping in the large campground just south of Ruby's Inn. She and Vince had driven down this morning to make sure they were early enough to find a suitable campsite before the campground filled up. There were two other couples staying with them. The husbands were friends that grew up with Vince.

After visiting a while, Claudia and I went to eat dinner at the Ruby's Inn restaurant. We had the cowboy buffet. The restaurant was very crowded, and we heard a lot of tourists speaking German, but the whole arrangement was very efficient, and we did not have to wait long to be seated. After we ate, we looked through the general store and some other little shops trying to find some balloons for the race Saturday morning, but apparently balloons don't sell well in such touristy places.

We returned to the campground, and Peter and Anna had also arrived, and we visited briefly with them before driving back to our motel. The drive through Red Canyon at dusk was also very pretty.

We watched the first episode of the new season of Monk on the TV in our motel room. It was followed by the first episode of Psych, but I fell asleep and did not see much of that.

The alarm on my cell phone went off at 5:00 Saturday morning, way too early for anyone to be up, except that we had to pack up our things, check out of the motel, and drive back through Red Canyon to Ruby's Inn for the 6:00 start of the half marathon. Mary was running with the wives of Vince's two friends. The elevation is above 7,000 feet, and it was downright cold at 6:00 in the morning. (On the drive between Red Canyon and Ruby's Inn we passed a sign saying "Summit 7,777 feet.")

We watched the race start, and then drove part way along the race route and parked to wait for the three girls to come by, and held out our signs that Claudia made many years ago when we watched Anna and Eliza run in the Lake Tahoe Marathon. It was in a gorgeous setting as we watched the sun come up and spread across the intricate red rock formations. We listened to a new Tabernacle Choir CD, "Called to Serve," that Claudia had given me before we left the motel as my birthday present. We were somewhere between miles 4 and 5 of the 13.1-mile course when Mary and her two friends passed.

When the traffic was allowed to continue in an eastbound direction along highway 12 (police officers alternatively piloted east- and then westbound traffic along the half of the road the runners were not using), we continued down through Tropic and beyond to Cannonville, where the finish line was. I say down because the elevation drop from the start to the finish of the race was some 2,000 feet. It's hard to image a marathon route with more breath-taking scenery than this one had.

We parked within a block of the finish line in Cannonville and waited for Mary to come in. Pete and Anna had joined us, and Vince and his two friends were there too.

After Mary finished the race, Mary and Vince, Peter and Anna, and Claudia and I went to breakfast at a restaurant back in Tropic. Pete and Anna treated Claudia and me for my birthday. We all had some sort of omelet, except Anna who had pancakes and scrambled eggs on the side. The service was exceedingly slow; it appeared they were severely understaffed. So it was late morning by the time we finished eating.

We drove Vince and Mary back to their campground, said our good-byes, and we headed for home, a final time through the beautiful Red Canyon, and back to Panguitch, where we stopped to fill the minivan with gas. Rather than travel back along the familiar I-15, we decided to stay on the more scenic (and for us different) U.S. 89. I was glad we did. This route took us through parts of Garfield, Piute, and Sevier counties.

Around Marysville (and just before the battery on my cell phone died) Camilla, Chris, and Sam called from Everett to wish me a happy birthday. Camilla had just returned herself from a week of training at the Great Harvest headquarters in Dillon, Montana. She finished Friday afternoon and drove to Spokane, where she stayed overnight, before waking up early Saturday morning and continuing on home to Everett.

We traveled north on U.S. 89, Claudia sleeping much of the way, until it merged with I-70 heading eastbound. We exited at Salina and continued northward on U.S. 50 until we came to Scipio and rejoined I-15 northbound.

And then on home, with a brief rest stop in Nephi, continuing at our 65 miles per hour. I was very tired by the time we reached home. Claudia felt it took us forever to drive just through Utah Valley.

Interestingly, our return trip from Panguitch to Bountiful took only four hours and five minutes. So, both routes—our more conventional I-15 and the more scenic combination of U.S. 89, I-70, and U.S. 50—were fairly comparable in terms of distance and time.

Trip to California

On Friday evening, June 27, Grandpa Lange, Claudia, and I took a Southwest flight from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Paul, Eliza, and Peter kindly drove us to the airport.

Our flight arrived nearly a half hour early in Los Angeles, which was fortunate because it took us as long to drive from the airport to our destination in La Crescenta as it had taken to drive from our home in Bountiful and then fly to California. We had to catch the airport shuttle to the Alamo car rental place, pick up a rental car (and then pick up a second one because the plates on the first one expired in May), and then find the right freeway (which happened to be south on I-405, east on I-105, north on I-110 through downtown Los Angeles, north on I-5, north on California 2, and finally west on I-210). At that late hour we did not expect traffic to be so heavy, but it was nearly a parking lot at times as we approached downtown and just beyond.

We were spending the night with Janice's parents, Wally and Ann Anderson, who generously offer their home for us to stay in whenever we come down to visit David and Janice. We arrived there at 11:30 p.m. California time (or 12:30 our time), and Ann was dutifully waiting up for us so she could lock up the house after we were safely in.

The purpose for our weekend trip was to celebrate Stuart's return after two years as a missionary in the Illinois Peoria Mission. He had arrived home on Thursday of the week before, the same day his younger sister Rachel graduated from high school. The next day David and Janice took Stuart through a session in the Los Angeles Temple and then David and Stuart went surfing.

We spent much of Saturday visiting first with Wally and Ann, who kindly fixed us breakfast, and then much of the rest of the day with David and Janice and their family. Tony and Jessica came up from San Diego, where they live with their two boys (Tanner and Ben) about two hours south of David and Janice. Adam and Joanna were there from Glendale, Arizona, a five-to-six-hour drive away, with their little two-year-old Kate. They are expecting their second child, a boy, sometime in August. Drew and Erica live nearby in La Crescenta, perhaps ten minutes away, and they are expecting their first child in early December. Stuart and Rachel will both be going to BYU this fall, and Heather, Brooke, and Annee are still at home.

On Sunday morning we attended church in the Verdugo Hills Ward and heard Stuart report his mission in sacrament meeting. He did a fine job. Just before he spoke, Jessica and Rachel sang "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," one of my favorite hymns.

We spent the rest of Sunday, after the three-hour block of meetings, visiting with David, Janice, and their family. When David, Janice, Stuart, and Rachel left to go to another sacrament meeting, we drove back up to Ann and Wally's to take a nap but ended up helping them set up for the family dinner that was scheduled for four o'clock. It was a delightfully pleasant day, a little too warm if you had to be out in the sun for any period of time, just right if you were in the shade. It was good to see some of Janice's side of the family again.

In the evening the crowds faded away, and we visited some more with Wally and Ann and a little later with David and Janice, who came back over to the Andersons' house for some final visiting and farewells.

David is going through a tough time right now. He has been unemployed for the past five weeks and has now lived through the month's severance pay he received when he was let go. He has a lot of feelers out, and a couple of leads, but nothing concrete yet in the troubled times that the construction sector is now going through in California. Many days look bleak. In addition to looking for work, he plans to spend the coming months sprucing up his home in the event he needs to relocate. If he can actually sell it in a slow market, he thinks it is probably worth something approaching three-quarters of a million dollars. Incredible.

We went to bed a little earlier so we could wake up before four o'clock Monday morning to drive back to the airport, return the rental car, and catch our 6:30 flight home to Utah. When we got in the lengthy line of passengers trying to make their way through the security checks, we wondered if we would actually catch our plane, but we did. (Interestingly, my newly implanted heart monitor set off the machines in Salt Lake as we were leaving there Friday evening, but it did not cause any beeping this morning as I went through security in Los Angeles.)

Shauna and the three youngest of her six children (Andrew, Ethan, and Marta) picked us up at the airport after we arrived in Salt Lake. It had been a quick but delightful reunion with Claudia's side of the family.

And the verdict is . . .

I guess for the record I should mention what's been happening lately. Thursday morning, a little more than an hour after I arrived at work, I started feeling very sick, starting first with nausea, then feeling light-headed, weak, sweaty, disoriented. I had the thought that I might pass out, so I actually sat on the floor of my office so that when I toppled over I wouldn't have as far to go.

I had the presence of mind to activate the heart monitor that had been implanted in my chest two weeks earlier.

This is stupid, I thought, so I got up from off the floor and called in my assistant and told her I did not feel well. She could tell I did not. I was probably pale at the time and disoriented. She wanted to know if I wanted to go down to the nurse's station, but I said I didn't think I could make it. So she called down, and within seconds it seemed the nurse arrived with a wheelchair. I can remember getting in the wheelchair, being pushed to the elevator, and getting on the elevator, but not much after that.

The next thing I remember was lying on a cot in the nurse's station with paramedics working all around me, asking questions, taking blood pressure, poking, proding. I remember hearing the nurse tell them that I was unresponsive for a while although my eyes were open. So I do not know if that means I actually passed out or not.

The paramedics wheeled me out to an ambulance in front of the Church Office Building. I was amazed that in addition to the ambulance there were also two fire engines there. That seemed an extravagant bit of overkill. It was the first time in my life I had ever ridden in an ambulance, and as they took me up to LDS Hospital it seemed to be an awfully bumpy ride. They had me eat a glucose stick on the way up and inserted an IV line into my left hand. Once in the emergency room, I was asked a lot of questions again (just as I had been in the nurse's station back at work and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital), and was hooked up to various medical devices and had a chest X-ray taken and such procedures.

My work had kindly called Claudia and told her I was being transported up to LDS Hospital, so she arrived at some point. Eliza starting spreading the word to other family members.

At some point a man came from Medtronic (he said he had been up in Ogden when they called him) to interrogate my heart monitor (I had naively assumed that they just read it, but no, they interrogate it). Apparently it served its function because it showed no unusual heart activity during the whole episode. That is good news.

My blood sugar level, even after eating the glucose in the ambulance, was only 48 after I arrived at the hospital. The normal range for a non-diabetic, I discovered from subsequent research on the Internet, is between 70 and 120. I had had a severe case of hypoglycemia, which is apparently unusual for someone who is not also diabetic.

Also, my white blood cell count was extremely elevated, something like 21,000, which the ER doctor said could be caused by one of three things (although afterward Claudia and I could only remember two of them): a response to the trauma my body had just been through, a serious infection going on in my body, or something else. I told the doctor I had had a cold and sore throat for the past week, but he said that would not be sufficient to account for such a high level.

Talmage came from work to join us just moments before they were going to release me to go home, which was about five or six hours after the whole ordeal started. When we exited the ER, Rebecca, Louise, Meghan, and Mimi were also there in the waiting room. Louise, who had come with Rebecca from Layton, kindly drove Claudia and me home. Talmage came to our house to pick her up, but they stayed the rest of the afternoon visiting. Louise fixed us lunch and called my primary care doctor to make an appointment for Friday afternoon and was generally a great help.

I was feeling pretty worn out and tired and just rested much of the rest of the day. I was also having chills even though everyone else thought it was a warm day.

What I had just been through reminded me of how I felt on the second day of our North Dakota trip when I got so sick as we were driving across eastern Montana (see journal entry for Thursday, May 15). I must have been experiencing hypoglycemia that morning also. And in much milder forms several other times in the past couple of months when I have felt light-headed.

Friday morning I had a follow-up visit with my regular cardiologist that had already been scheduled for some time. He said that one of the heart medications I have been taking, Metoprolol tartrate, could cause my blood sugar level to be low and told me to discontinue it.

Friday afternoon I went to see my primary care doctor, but his receptionist had no record that I even had an appointment (even though they had told us just the day before to come at 1:40 Friday afternoon). We did talk her into having the doctor review the record from what happened at the hospital yesterday. He did and ordered a lab test, after which I had a shot of something, and then had to come back an hour later and have another blood test. My appointment with him will now be next Thursday afternoon.

In addition to the hypoglycemia episode, I have had a fever and chills and an unsettled stomach and continued to pretty much rest most of the day Friday. We were planning to go to Hyrum early this morning, up in Cache Valley, to watch Anna participate in a triathlon, but I called her this evening and said we had decided not to come. She thought that made sense. My boss had called me from work Friday morning and said not to worry about the mission presidents' seminar that begins Sunday morning, if I didn't feel up to coming. I'll play that one by ear still.

The day freedom died

This afternoon I finished reading of a disturbing chapter from our nation's troubled history following the Civil War in a well written, engaging book by Charles Lane entitled The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. The summary on the inside leaves of the book's cover gives a fair summary of what the book was about (interspersed with my own comments prompted by that summary):

"America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats."

Much has been said and written in our own time about the impasse between modern-day Republicans and Democrats, together with a resulting lack of any leadership in confronting the problems that beset us, because of the partisan nature of today's politics. Today's wrangling between the two parties seems mild when compared to the warfare that raged between them in the decade or so following the Civil War.

History thus provides a sense of perspective and balance in understanding and interpreting the events of our own day.

"In The Day Freedom Died, Charles Lane draws us vividly into this war-torn world with a true story whose larger dimensions have never been fully explored. Here is the epic tale of the Colfax Massacre, the mass murder of more than sixty black men on Easter Sunday 1873 that propelled a small Louisiana town into the center of the nation's consciousness. As the smoke cleared, the perpetrators created a falsified version of events to justify their crimes. But a tenacious northern-born lawyer rejected the lies. Convinced that the Colfax murderers must be punished lest the suffering of the Civil War be in vain, U.S. Attorney James Beckwith of New Orleans pursued the killers despite death threats and bureaucratic intrigue—until the final showdown at the Supreme Court of the United States. The ruling that decided the case influenced race relations in the United States for decades."

Like the author, I had never heard of the events of that long-ago Easter Sunday in Colfax, Louisiana, and the resulting constitutional issues and political fallout that concerned the country at that time, until I read this book. I would heartily recommend it to any serious student of American history.

"An electrifying piece of historical detective work, The Day Freedom Died brings to life a gallary of memorable characters in addition to Beckwith: Willey Calhoun, the iconoclastic Southerner who dreamed of building a bastion of equal rights on his Louisiana plantation; Christopher Columbus Nash, the white supremacist avenger who organized the Colfax Massacre; William Ward, the black Union Army veteran who took up arms against white terrorists; Ulysses S. Grant, the well-intentioned but beleaguered president; and Joseph P. Bradley, the brilliant justice of the Supreme Court whose political and legal calculations would shape the drama's troubling final act."

The pervasive fraud and rampant violence associated with elections in Louisiana (and indeed in much of the South) during this period makes our little hiccup with the 2000 George Bush election, ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court over irregularities in Florida, seem pale in comparison.

In many respects, we have come a long way since the difficult days of Reconstruction and its aftermath. We now have a black candidate of a major American political party—ironically the Democrats, which in that distant day was the party of white supremacists—running for the presidency of our country. I liked the concluding paragraph in Bret Schulte's editorial in this week's issue of U.S. News & World Report:

"As much as the Obama campaign trafficked in hope, the racial undercurrent is enough to make many Americans despair, regardless of political stripe. Still, most Americans are proud to live in a country that gave a self-proclaimed skinny kid with a funny name and few advantages the chance to be president. Whether or not Obama is the best candidate for the job is up to voters, who have plenty of issues to weigh. It's too bad that some voters have decided that race is one of them" (U.S. News & World Report, June 16, 2008, "One Week," 10).

I personally think there are a lot of issues against Senator Barak Obama's becoming our next president, but I do not think race should be one of them. By now we should have outgrown that.

A thirtieth anniversary

There are moments in life so infused with emotion—whether of shock or grief or fear on the one hand or of surprise or excitement or joy on the other hand—that forever enshrines the events and feelings of the day into our memories for the rest of our lives. The death of a loved one or the birth of a child can be such a moment for an individual or a family.

Sometimes such moments are spread across whole populations and cultures, such as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated or the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded or the morning America was attacked on multiple fronts on 9-11. Each of these was a horrific event, and if you were alive at the time and were old enough to know what was going on, you can clearly remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news unfolding.

A particularly joyous event in the lives of Latter-day Saints across the world occurred exactly thirty years ago tomorrow when President Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985), the twelfth president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced on June 8, 1978, that God had revealed that "the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple" and that "all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color" (First Presidency letter dated June 8, 1978; now canonized as scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration 2).

There were undoubtedly those who refused to accept the revelation as the mind and will of the Lord, just as had occurred eighty-eight years earlier when President Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898), the fourth president and prophet of the Church, had announced in 1890 that God had revealed that the Latter-day Saints were no longer required to live the law of plural marriage and were from that time forward specifically prohibited from entering into plural marriages (see Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants).

In both instances—with President Woodruff's announcement in 1890 and with President Kimball's announcement in 1978—the vast majority of devoted, faithful Latter-day Saints accepted these major shifts in practice as being the mind and voice and will of the Lord to His people.

My own experience on that June morning thirty years ago, captured in a joyous letter I wrote the following morning [Saturday, June 10, 1978] to my extended family and others, I think reflects the spirit in which most Latter-day Saints at the time greeted the announcement:

On Friday morning, June 9, 1978, all of the General Authorities of the Church who reside at Church headquarters were called to an early morning meeting in the Salt Lake Temple. They had been asked to come fasting and praying. In a manner most solemn and sacred, the statement of the First Presidency was read:

“To All General and Local Priesthood Officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the World

“Dear Brethren:

“As we have witnessed the expansion of the work of the Lord over the earth, we have been grateful that people of many nations have responded to the message of the restored gospel, and have joined the Church in ever-increasing numbers. This, in turn, has inspired us with a desire to extend to every worthy member of the Church all of the privileges and blessings which the gospel affords.

“Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all of our brethren who are worthy may receive the priesthood, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom the priesthood has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.

“He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple. Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color. Priesthood leaders are instructed to follow the policy of carefully interviewing all candidates for ordination to either the Aaronic or the Melchizedek Priesthood to insure that they meet the established standards for worthiness.

“We declare with soberness that the Lord has now made known His will for the blessing of all His children throughout the earth who will hearken to the voice of His authorized servants, and prepare themselves to receive every blessing of the gospel.

“Sincerely yours,
“Spencer W. Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner, and Marion G. Romney”

President Kimball then responded, bearing his sweet and fervent testimony that the Lord had heard and answered by revelation his oft and fervent pleadings. Each General Authority present then had an opportunity to bear his testimony and share his feelings of joy and thanksgiving.

“Never have I felt the Spirit of the Lord more strongly,” commented one of the Brethren to me later that day, “than I did this morning in that temple meeting.”

Shortly after that historic meeting, Elder Carlos E. Asay and Rex D. Pinegar called together all of the staff of the Missionary Department, where I have the privilege of working, to make the announcement to us. As Elder Asay read the statement, my eyes filled with tears, my heart swelled with joy, and I felt like standing and shouting “Praise the Lord.” My reaction was not unique. The Spirit of the Lord was strongly present, and many in the room wept openly—as I was doing—and were thrilled beyond all description at this monumental step forward.

Both Elder Asay and Elder Pinegar bore their testimonies and let us know in no uncertain terms that this was indeed a revelation from Almighty God. The Spirit confirmed their witness and riveted it into our souls. This was truth; it was so right; the Lord had spoken; the heavens had been opened.

Elder Pinegar opened the meeting for others to respond, and three or four of us bore our testimonies. I had that sacred opportunity, and only once before in my life during the bearing of my own testimony have I cried.

I recounted how I had served my mission in northern Brazil, where a large part of the population had the Negro lineage. The last city I worked in had an estimated 70 to 90 percent of its population who were black. Oh, how I grew to love those dear, humble people. They were warm, eager, and receptive. But their day and season had not yet arrived.

In Brazil there are many fine black members in the Church, many of them strong and faithful despite the restrictions they may not have understood but nevertheless accepted, grateful for those blessings of the gospel they were able to enjoy, and hoping for the day that has now arrived when the blessings of the priesthood would be theirs.

I recall specifically one dear, humble family in Petrópolis, just out of Rio de Janeiro. They were poor even by Brazilian standards. They lived in a tiny house with a dirt floor and no electricity. But they were solid people, and they taught a young elder from North America what happiness was. The husband, who held the priesthood, was a counselor in the branch presidency. His wife and consequently the children were of Negro lineage. For eight or nine years the family had faithfully attended meetings before the elders would baptize them. And now to think that in only a few months when the São Paulo Temple is dedicated they will be able to go there and all be sealed together forever as a family.

Oh, how I wish I were in Brazil today!

Yesterday’s announcement was historic. In my mind it far surpasses in significance the Manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff in 1890. It perhaps even surpasses the revelation that came to Peter anciently when he was directed to begin taking the gospel to the gentiles (see Acts 10:1–11:18). This new revelation issued by President Kimball this week canceled what has been in effect through six long millennia since the days of Cain. It fulfills the promises and prophecies of various prophets that that day would come. We have witnessed prophecy fulfilled, and I would hope each of us would be wise enough to record the historic event in our journals and diaries.

Two things came across to me yesterday, among other things. First, President Kimball is a kind and loving man, filled with great concern for all of God’s children. He had struggled long and pled much with the Lord before this revelation came. The very tone of the First Presidency’s letter bears this out. Second, President Kimball is a courageous man. It is one thing to hear the voice of the Lord, but it is another to have the courage to carry it out.

This action did not come about, as some have already erroneously supposed, because of outside pressures brought to bear against the Church. It has come partly because we have a prophet who in the fulness of his near perfection is filled with charity, the pure love of Christ, and who paid the price to bring it about, prevailing upon the heavens with his giant Enoch-like faith. And it has come because in the economy of heaven and in the wisdom, justice, and mercy of an all-knowing and all-loving God the time was right for the full blessings of the gospel to be extended to all people everywhere “who will hearken to the voice of His authorized servants, and prepare them-selves to receive every blessing of the gospel.”

What the Lord said specifically of the Prophet Joseph Smith seems to apply so very well to President Spencer W. Kimball:

“Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;

“For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith . . . .

“For thus saith the Lord God: Him have I inspired to move the cause of Zion in mighty power for good, and his diligence I know, and his prayers I have heard” (D&C 21:4–5, 7).

How fully that fits President Kimball and how appropriate to what has just happened this week!

The First Presidency’s statement does not contain the phrase “thus saith the Lord,” but it says it. They did say, “He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come.” They did say, “We declare with soberness that the Lord has now made known His will for the blessing of all His children.”

I add my own humble testimony. God lives—of that there is no doubt. He has restored His priesthood in our day—of that there is no doubt. We have a mighty prophet in modern Israel—of that there is no doubt. The Spirit has borne powerful witness to my soul that this move to extend the priesthood to those who were formerly restricted is in fact a revelation from God. It is true. I know it as I know anything, and I declare that to you in the name of Jesus Christ, whose priesthood it is. Amen.