St. George

We have a deal with our friends Bill and Trudy Ostler.  They visit us once a year and we visit them once a year.  Since they live in St. George, this seems like the best way to keep in touch with them.  Our turn to visit them came up last Monday.  So we flew to St. George and joined them in their lovely house at the base of the red rock mountains.  The red dirt of southern Utah is enchanting.  It fills the countryside with amazing mountainous shapes, in red, often ribboned through with white dirt.  It is such a sight!  Imagine growing a garden in red dirt!  People there do.

Bill and Trudy had our days scheduled with visits to Bryce and Zion parks and sights in between. We drove and hiked and took endless pictures.  And we talked and talked.  Trudy and I walk the same mental path in most things, so our conversations flow and build on each other.  In most categories anyhow.  Bill and Layne get along very well too.  So spending time with these friends is a treat.  Bill had our days planned much as Layne likes to do.  By the time we did all that he scheduled us for it was time to go home.

It is interesting to see such varieties of beauty in our world.  If I were to describe a nature scene that is most beautiful in my mind, it would be filled with trees, green grass and flowers, with a bubbling brook nearby.  Southern Utah has none of these things.  Well, very little.  It is filled with desert plants, lots of dirt and rugged mountains.  Many of them red.  In spite of the contrast with my vision of natural beauty, I found the scenes we experienced awesome in their loveliness.

Bryce provided us with quiet pleasures, while Zion was filled with lots and lots of people.  As it turned out, the week we were there was spring break.  So the area was filled with families.  We took a bus through Zion and visited with several strangers.  This may sound to you like an exaggeration, but everyone we actually visited with was from Boise!  Yes, it was actually true.  Crowds filled all the special places in Zion, so it wasn't as much fun for us as our time in Bryce.  But it was all a wonderful adventure.

It all ended early Friday morning when we returned home.  It is so good, always, to be home.  And now everything is pretty much back to normal.  At Church today our stake president told us that he had been notified by Salt Lake that we could be finished with our mission in May!  Or we could continue until November, when our two years would be up.  We have our choice as it turns out.  So now we must make a decision about it.  I'm not sure what the best thing to do is.  We are thinking that we would like to do one more mission but the question is, when?  Our year is filling up, working around a November release.  Perhaps we should keep to that time frame.  I just don't know.

Trudy and me in Devil's Garden, near Escalante, Utah.

Bill "pushing" on a local rock, with Layne, in Devil's Garden.

Our room at a Bed and Breakfast in Escalante, where we spent one night.

Our scary hike along Shakespeare Trail in Kodachrome Park.
If you look closely you can see some of us on the path.

Opera and Laura

Did I mention that Layne and I are taking singing lessons?  Our teachers are professionals and so very skilled at using the voice in amazing ways.  Susan Patchel Hamilton sang opera in Europe and at the Met for quite a few years.  At 74 she still sings professionally.  We are quite wow'd by her.  Last week, she and her husband invited us to join them for dinner and a replay of a Met opera, "The Lady of the Lake", complete with sub-titles and even some interviews with the performers.  I've only seen one opera in my entire life and didn't like it much.  But this time I found it much more interesting.  Thanks to the sub-titles, I could understand the story for one thing.  As it turns out, very few translations were necessary, as the narrative repeated itself in musical tones over and over again.  The story can be summarized in just a few sentences.  The idea is to enjoy the amazing variety of beautiful sounds the human voice can make.  I can sorta see that.  I actually enjoyed the performance.  Except for one small item.  The love interest of the leading lady was played by another lady!  I found it a bit shocking at first.  Susan's husband, Brett, explained that in early opera (which this is), women sometimes played the part of men, if the composer designed the musical score to be more suited to a woman's voice.  After awhile I got used to it....but I never liked it.  Still, it was a new and interesting experience.  I think we might go again before we call opera a closed activity for us.

Here's the closing scene of "The Lady of the Lake".  Note the
boyfriend on the left is actually a woman!  Personally I'd have
chosen the king, who stands between them.  He's lots cuter.

The end of last week brought us a special treat.  Our first foster daughter, Laura, came to visit for several days.  She lived with us when our two girls were small and no boys yet.  She brought her sister and mom too for a day, to see one of their own perform in a dance competition.  Laura's mom and sister left after the competition but Laura stayed until Sunday.  So we got a good visit in.  It has been sweet to stay in touch with her over the years.  She is in her fifties now and twice divorced.  She is making her own way by running a housecleaning business.  She appears to be doing fine with that.  She has such a sweet way about her.  It was a pleasure to catch up with her life and feel close to her once again.  Truly it is the people in my life that makes me happiest.

Laura White and me.

Laura with Layne.

I got to substitute teach in Relief Society on Sunday.  It was such fun.  I taught a lesson based on the talk by Elder Holland on helping the poor.  I have been bothered for awhile by what I term white-washed lessons in Relief Society.  We talk of the gospel bringing us all stability and happiness while up to half of the women in our group are struggling with some kind of heart ache.  Its not that the gospel can't help with that.  It certainly can, but we never address the downside of life.  And it is all around us.  The gospel has better answers than can be found anywhere else, so why don't we bring up the problems we all deal with and discuss solutions!  We are surrounded by what the Lord calls the "poor in heart", who, with a smile, communicate that all is well and hide their tears.  I think we need to be more in tune with the needs of our own ward family as well as our home family and various others around us.  Too many people bear their pain and loneliness while in the midst of a crowd.  So I taught about the poor in heart.  At least I got it off my chest.

Musings

We seem to be entering an early spring.  One of the ladies in my yoga class is quite the gardener.  She said that she expands the short Idaho growing season by placing clear plastic on the garden ground to warm it up and planting now.  Layne is quite excited about the possibilities, so he has spent the past week or so getting the garden dirt all ready, installing plastic sheets stretched over arched pipes and planting tomatoes.  We are excited to see if they will grow this early.  In the meantime, the trees are budding out and the bulbs springing forth with spring flowers.  I hope they won't be disappointed as the locals say that we are no doubt due for some spring frosts.  Such dramatic changes in season make such a show!  I think I like it better than the more subtle changes of California.

Spring flowers making their show early.

The new housing developments around us are filling up, with new move-ins joining our ward at the rate of two families every week.  I feel overwhelmed by all the people that I don't know.  But there are many in our age bracket and that is a fun prospect.  Perhaps for that reason there seems to be many developing friendships here.  We find ourselves acquiring quite the social life.  Of course with people our age comes problems as well.  I have found myself in the service of a number of people in temporary need.  So much so that there has been very little time at home these past few weeks.  Since we are not among those who are struggling, I feel a very strong obligation to reach out and assist those who are

where I can.  I am finding it quite pleasurable.

One of the quirks of my personality is the need to be always productive.  I seem to measure my very worth by how productive I am.  I know.  I know...that is a silly thing but I can't seem to shake it.  Every day I decide what productive thing I'm going to do and then never quite get it done.  Or sometimes never even get to it.  It's a personal bummer.  Layne reminds me to "just relax" but I have great difficulty doing that.  I wonder how to reasonably create a bit more balance in my life.

Layne and I are taking singing lessons from a pretty well known opera singer in our ward, Susan Patcel Hamilton, and her coach husband.  Wow is it interesting.  I never imagined there was so much to using a voice the right way.  There's breathing from the diaphragm, letting the air escape from the mouth just right, holding the mouth right, etc, etc.  It is a world I never knew before.  This coming week we are actually going to attend a video showing of an opera, complete with interviews of the singers.  I never thought I'd ever be doing something like that.  I don't even like opera.  So it will be interesting to see how that experience turns out.

Here is granddaughter Abigail holding her newest little sister, Olivia.
They are the daughters of son Ben and his Jessica.

I've still not seen my newest little granddaughter.  I can only take that for so long before arranging some sort of trip to California to hold that little one.  This may be our last grandchild.  But then again, you never know!