My Sister's Surgery

My sister, Maryanne, has Parkinson's Disease, brought on, according to her doctor, by a surgery.  So we all worried a little when she informed us that she was going to have shoulder surgery, to replace her shoulder joint.  More anesthesia, the apparent Parkinson's culprit.  Her husband, Bob, gave her a blessing and we all prayed that this surgery would do no harm.  She had the surgery on Monday.  I arrived at her home on Tuesday, shortly after her return home.  She looks great!  And it looks like the surgery will have a good outcome with no downside.  She is recovering quickly and has better movement than expected.  She has been blessed!

Maryanne in her study.  You can see the brace that she has to keep on for a month, making the use of her right hand out of the question.  Hence, for her need for me!  She looks pretty good, don't you think?

I've been planning on spending two weeks with Maryanne and Bob to help Maryanne, so here I am in Draper, Utah, staying on the top of the mountains in their new home.  It is lovely here, with a view of the mountains in three directions (covered with snow) and a great view of the valley from the remaining one.  There is little here to dislike.  Maryanne and I have spent our open time doing family history.  To be clear, I am copying her family history.  She is a bit of a mystery solver, you see.  She can put family clues together in amazing ways.  I can see that much education is gained in trying to figure family historical things out.  She's a master at it.  So I'm copying what she has done.  But let me say also that I plan to make some contribution to her efforts by writing up family stories as she discovers them.  But first I have to catch up with what she has already done.  That may take a bit longer than my remaining week here.

I am enjoying my time with Maryanne and Bob.  I enjoy care taking, especially with family.  I try and position myself to be of most use and to understand some of the feelings that Maryanne is dealing with as she tries to get her body to work properly.  It is a struggle for her and I feel badly about that.  I'd like to fix it.  I don't like to see her sad or discouraged as she sometimes is.  She has a very strong character and is absolutely uncompromising in her application of what she feels is right.  She does a good job of working around the physical issues she deals with daily.  But it is sometimes hard to keep up the effort.  I can see that.  Altogether she and Bob are good people to have in my life.  I'm hoping that this coming week I can be a blessing to them.

                          Ben, suited up for his Church presentation last Thursday.

These are the ultra-fancy chocolates Ben gave me for my birthday.  They are pretty delicious.

This past week, son Ben was in Salt Lake, giving a technology presentation to Elders Bednar and Holland, and other Church leaders.  There were a group of techie guys there to talk about the use of mobile technology by the Church.  He spent two nights with us, much to my delight.  He is a great person to have around and I'm reminded of that whenever he is with me.  He gave me some post-birthday chocolates and another gift as well.  His birthday is tomorrow, so I made him one of his favorite things, peach pie.  His time with us was short but oh, so pleasant.

In the meantime, Layne is home and, I think, is enjoying his solitude.  He is the kind of man who enjoys a crowd or being absolutely alone.  He's flexible that way.  But I hope he misses me...just a little.

Little Miracles

I had great plans for this past week.  I always have plans, you know.  Things I want to for sure get done.  I have such a great need to be always productive.  Perhaps I overdo this, as, even in the evenings when I am with Layne watching TV, I must be doing something; folding clothes, exercising, crocheting, etc.  It bugs Layne.  "Just relax," he will tell me.  I think I may be a bit over the top with the whole "must be productive" thing.  I'm going to try and modify myself.

We met with one of the stake counselors this past week, about our pornography addiction presentation.  We were dismayed to hear him say that he wanted us to completely change our presentation and go through the Church web site on pornography prevention and treatment to cover the material.  What?  Layne and I prayed and worked on our presentation and felt that it was interesting and right.  It was alarming to hear that this particular brother wanted it completely redone...again.  My heart rebelled.  I told him I couldn't think of a more boring way to give a presentation.  He persisted.  We left quite disheartened.  In all of our time in the Church this has never happened to us.  We are given the responsibility to present the material, then told to present it completely differently.  It doesn't feel right.  Our stake president and his counselor are very good men, but I can't help feeling that they have handled us a bit roughly.  We redid our presentation, again.  This time we inserted some information directly from the website.  We kept most of our other material as well.  By this time I was no longer excited about giving it.  But our first assignment came up today, in a local ward nearby.

Our Sunday is booked.  We had to sing in Sacrament meeting, then present the pornography addiction show, and tonight go to our pornography addiction support group.  Layne awoke this morning with vertigo!  He felt dizzy and upset.  So now we are to give a porn presentation that we don't feel especially good about and Layne feels unable to do his part.  Not good.  We prayed together that the Lord would heal him quickly, if He wanted us to give the presentation.  Usually when Layne gets this it lasts for at least a full day and he is worn out the next.  I went to Sacrament meeting alone while he rested.  We sang without him.  I came home to find him all suited up and feeling fine!  He said that he had a few extra trips to the bathroom, where it felt like he was being drained of whatever ailed him and he was fine after that.  Wow.  Our own little miracle.  We thanked the Lord and gave the presentation. It seemed to go fairly well in spite of having to change so many things.  Layne has been fine all day.  What a happy experience it turned out to be and what a joy to feel the Lord working on our behalf so directly.

Now to work through our feelings about this whole presentation process with our local leaders.  I want to feel good about this and I think that means we need to talk about it with them.

We took friend Phyllis Salsedo out to dinner for her birthday Saturday night.  Red Lobster, as you can see.  I wonder if something we ate there caused Layne's problem.  His vertigo is a bit of a mystery.

Layne, me and Phyllis outside Red Lobster in a "selfie".  Note Layne's new scar, above his lips.  It is healing nicely after last week's surgery.

The Good and the Bad of It

These days I must be on my toes.  The last little while there seems to be so much to do.  Layne and I gave a presentation on Mongolia to our empty nesters last Monday.  I decorated the house in Mongolian style and cooked Mongolian food.  We used our new projector to show pictures of Mongolia and gave our presentation to about 24 people.  They seemed to love it.  In fact, we have two more invitations to speak of it.  So Mongolia is back, with all its happy memories.

Here is one of our Mongolian "embroideries" stretched over a frame that Layne made.  They originally hung inside gers, above the beds.  I think they are wild and wonderful.

Our neighbors, Jim and Inez Wilkey, came to our house for the Mongolian evening.  They got along with our group very well and, I think, really enjoyed themselves.  I can say that because they invited us for dinner a couple of nights later.  Jim is recovering from cancer.  Recovering.  Layne joined with another member neighbor to give him a blessing before his cancer surgery and promised a recovery.  We've been praying that it would be so and, apparently, it is.  We are hoping that we might be able to lead them into the gospel.  They are such great people.  Maybe it'll happen.

We are struggling to get our presentation on pornography ready to take to the wards in our stake.  We submitted our materials to the stake president to make sure he approved.  He thinks it is too "frightening" and wants us to calm it down.  Hum.  The feeling we come away with after sitting through a couple of months of pornography support groups is...alarm.  We were hoping to awaken members to the dangers and give them real helps for overcoming and, mostly, preventing it from invading the lives and hearts of their families.  We have calmed it down and resubmitted it, so we shall see what he thinks of it.  This coming week we will talk to him and one of his counselors about it.  I hope we can come to a meeting of the minds about it.  If we tune in to what the Lord wants, I'm sure we will become united.  I hope so.

Pamphlets we made for our pornography addiction program; one is for treatment and one for prevention.

On a lighter note, I find myself assigned to draw some props for our singing group.  For the first time since moving here, I'm waxing artistic.  I drew a couple of romantically involved worms and a collection of faces to illustrate a couple of the songs for our spring concert.  It will be filled with whacky songs.  I like the group; it is comfortable for a girl who's singing voice is far from perfection.  Once we are rehearsed we sound pretty good and have a lot of fun.

In a year's time, we have become more involved and collected more friendships than we did in Pleasanton in seven years.  We have several good friends we do things with and visit with on a regular basis.  I like this social end of things.  Last Saturday we met with our Fremont gang for another dinner.  We seem to get together about once a month.  I can feel friendships deepening and I feel blessed by it.  It doesn't make up for not having family here, but it is sweet nonetheless.  On one of our get-togethers an especially funny thing happened.  As we were getting ready to leave, Jim, thinking his wife Kenni was already in their car, got inside the driver's side and drove home.  He got all the way inside the house before he noticed that Kenni wasn't there!  She was waiting patiently with us for him to notice she her absence and return to get her.  Finally he did.  Can you imagine it?  That has got to be a classic story!

Jim and Kenni Kirschbaum.  Kenni was the "forgotten woman".  She's pretty cute to forget, don't you think?

The days are warming up.  The snow is gone.  Green is beginning to appear in places.  Looks like spring is coming.  I love the change of seasons!