A letter from Sister Johnson

One of the great adventures of my life was the mission I served for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil beginning 40 years ago this coming September. My life has been deeply blessed in so many ways by that defining experience. Among the treasures of that experience has been a lifelong association with my mission president and his wife, Hal and Virginia Johnson. They were and are great examples of faithful devotion to the Savior and Christlike service to God's children.

President Johnson passed away a few years ago, but we have continued to enjoy our ongoing association with Sister Johnson. A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to Sister Johnson, who continues to live in Idaho Falls, explaining why we were unable to attend our annual mission reunion the Friday before the April general conference and giving her an update on our family. Friday's mail brought a nice letter, dated April 23, from Sister Johnson in response to my letter. She wrote:

Dear Dean & Claudia,

I just had to answer your sweet letter. Yes, Cecilia [Fischer] did tell me why you weren't at the reunion, whch I think is amazing that she would remember, with everything else she had to think about!

I'm so glad you are feeling well again. Now the challenge is, to stay that way, isn't it.

You mentioned the Woodmansees [the grandparents of Jolene Sayer's new husband, Jeff Head]. It truly is a small world! We have known them for many years. I'm glad you had the opportunity to meet them.

It is hard to believe that all your children could be married now. I still think of them as those darling little ones you used to bring for a visit when you were staying at Lava each summer.

It is inevitable that some of your children will move away—as much as you hate to see them go. That seems to be the times we live in now. They have to go where the opportunities to earn a living—or to prepare for that eventuality, are. (Did that make sense?)

We always appreciated the kind of missionary you were, Dean, and Claudia has been as dear to us as you always were. Thanks for remaining as our missionary son and daughter-in-law!

Much love,
Sister Johnson

"All Aboard"

Utah's new commuter rail system, FrontRunner, currently running from Salt Lake City north to Ogden, officially began today.


This evening Claudia and I, Rachael and her three girls, and Camilla and Sam went to ride the new FrontRunner train. UTA is offering free rides today and next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to welcome the public to the new commuter rail system. We went to the Woods Cross station, hoping to ride the train somewhere north of here, but we ended up taking the one headed south into Salt Lake and rode it to the end of the line and back to the Woods Cross station.

It seemed far better organized than the inaugural rides of Trax when it began operation in the Salt Lake Valley some years ago. For each train that arrived at the Woods Cross station, they would let only 50 riders on at a time. Even with that, the train cars were still very crowded, and I for example had to stand all the way into the Salt Lake station (which is located somewhere around 600 West and 400 South). I had a seat on the return ride, although Claudia Sue and Esther had a bit of a tug-of-war over who would sit in the seat next to me, oblivious to the fact that they both could have comfortably fit there.