GENERAL CONFERENCE AND MISSIONARY REUNION

Dear Family,

It is Church General Conference time and of course time for all the missionary reunions.  My Swiss Austrian Missionary reunion now going on for 55 years met also and Mom and I went.  Here is a picture of what the Zurich district circa 1957 looks like now.  There is Elder Sipherd, District President Elder Wirthlin (me in Austrian Trachten), German missionary Sister Michael, my junior companion, Elder Woodruf (direct descendant of Wilford Woodruf) and Elder Goates.

It was a nice evening.  There was a musical program and we sang the hymns in German.  We also sang some Swiss songs like Ich bin ein Schweizer Knabe.  I then thought of my childhood and my Swiss mother who spoke to us in Swiss German especially when she was irritated. I could not speak it but thoroughly understood it.  When we could no find our shoes, the reply was, "gang ga luege" (keep looking).  When we delayed in going to bed it was, "gang ga schlafe" or go to sleep.

I remembered the Swiss songs she used to sing to us and some I can still sing in Swiss German like Rote Roesli im Garta.  Here are the words of that little song:

Roti Rösli im Garte,

Maieriesli im Wald

Wänn de Wind chunt choge blase

so verwelked si bald

Chlini Fischli im Wasser,

grossi Fische im Meer

Hei lueg wie si gumped

und schwümed juhee

Liebi Sunne chum füre,

liebi Sune chum bald

Das mir chönd go spaziere

                                      über Wiese und Wald.

Well it was great and asI heard these songs, I understood again the great influence my Swiss mother was on my life and again how grateful I am for it even at this late date.  

We are excited about the new opportunities for missionary service as the age has been lowered for men and women.  I think it is great and there should be a flood of applications.  Some of our granddaughters and grandsons are making their plans.  Conference was great and there is always new enthusiasm for the work.

May Heaven bless you all, love, Dad

BACK TO SPOKANE

Dear Family,

We went back up to Spokane for another eye injection, had not been back for three months and the treatment was overdue.

We had another grand time.  We arrived on Thursday and Jeff and ordered half dozen fresh New England Lobsters from Lobersteryguy.com.  Tammy steamed them and it was great.  We also had pizza and here is the gang of kids.  There is Julia, Elise, Rob, Anna, Zander, little Luke and Melissa.  

We had such a good time again; we spent a day at Rob's range on the banks of a river and then went to dinner at a fancy hotel.  We had also found a German Restaurant and I was able to chat with the chef in German.  There was a gun show where Jeff, Julius, Rob and I visited where much damage was done to pocketbooks.  Here is Rob sighting in a Russian 30-06 Double Rifle that was picked up.

I apparently overdid it a bit and got sick for the third time this summer but Rob went out and got the right antibiotics that Doug called in and I was able to get on the plane and head home.  All better now.  It is hard not to have a wonderful time when one is with the family.  These Spokane kids are great and talented and progressing in school. Jeff is busy with his child psychiatric practice and also covers the psychiatric wards in Idaho Falls Hospital.  Rob is busy with his Retinal Surgery practice in a group that services Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Western Montana and has done a good job with my retina.

Mom spent a lot of time with Eva and Tammy.  She went with Eva and visited great estate sales.  She also wrote a play for Thanksgiving and had the kids put on costumes and act out the Thanksgiving Pilgrim drama

Rob and I head to Texas for a Whitetail deer hunt in November. Will miss the election returns but we vote with an absentee ballot.

VISIT FROM POLAND

Dear Family,

Have to catch up on the Blogs and there is continually something going on even though we feel that little happens.

We had a visit from Alexzandra Zan Cwertnia, formely our Sister Cwertnia the  sister missionary from Poland.  She came from Breslau, Poland, a city which used to belong to Germany but given to Poland after WWII.  Most of the germans left after the war.

Sister Cwertnia was a great missionary who spent a lot of time in Augsburg with the former Rachel Alley.  She now goes by "Ola".  Ola was visiting a conference in Salt Lake City relating to a product being sold in Poland.  Ola got together with Rachel who  spent  time showing her Salt Lake, Tabernacle Choir program on Sunday and Temple Square.   We though if would be nice to have a mini reunion with some of the sisters she worked with on her mission in Germany and Austria.

Here we all are, the former Sister Tullis, Cwertnia, Mom and Dad, Sister Nuttal and Newren.  All are married now and have children.  Following her mission, Ola moved back to Breslau and married the Branch President and they now have three sons.

I remember once chatting with Sis. Cwertnia who was not sure she was doing well.  I told her what my polish patients in Detroit used to tell me that, "one must be strong like Bull" She was a great missionary with success. We had a light dinner and then had a Family HomeEvening during which everyone updated their status and we heard about the church and missionary work in Poland.  We were so proud of these missionaries and what they have accomplished since. We will never tire of our little "Missionary Family". We took her to the airport after the FHE.  There are few borders in the Church.

Love, Dad and Mom

U of U VS BYU FOOTBALL GAME

Dear Family,

Well we went to the Uof U  BYU football game yesterday.  As I mentioned before, we are conflicted in our loyalties.  Mom and I graduated from the University of Utah and 15 of our living children graduated from BYU where they received multiple degrees. Paul's family have given us seats in their box up high on the 50 yard line and it is so much fun.  Mom could not find the tickets yesterday but Cheryl told us to come over right away.  Emily took us through the traffic and dropped us at the stadium where we met Cheryl and Paul  They were able to get us tickets reprinted and we went in.  There is always a meal served on the five floor where the box seats are.

The game was a riot and very odd.  The U played well the first quarter, BYU caught up.  I was going a little nuts carrying on each time the U scored and getting very upset with the referees who seemd to be on the BYU payroll.  The stadium was packed for this game and it started at 8:00 PM.  by 11:00Pm we were sort of wishing the game came to an end.  It got very excited right up to the last minute.  Paul thought we should leave early to beat the rush and we left with a minute to play.  Those who stayed to the end got home at 1:45AM.

It seemed the refs gave BYU every chance to catch up and win.  They had a chance on the last second to kick a field goal and tie the game in the last ten seconds.  The field goal was blocked and the game seemed over, fans ran on the field and the referee called foul and gave a penalty to the U for having fans on the field and gave the Y another chance to kick a field goal, this time from about 20 yard out which should have been a chip shot.  The poor guy muffed tje kick and will forever be the "goat"  of the game so the Utes ended winning!!!!!  The picture above is a Desert News shot of the crowd hoisting the quarterback and celebrating!  At halftime, some guy from the stands was invited to kick a field goal and if he made it, everyone therel could get a free hair cut at Great Clips and by golly he made the kick and there will be thousands of free haircuts as well, me included.

Of coursed we all dress up in colors.  Here is a picture of Madeline with one of her college friends all decked out in red.  Maddie took me to the Uof U bookstore and I picked  up a sweater, jacket and  flag for the car.  The rest of the family is total decked out with blue and Big "Y"'s and i think they even put the little kids in BYU diapers!  Everyone looks sharp and it is great fun.

That's all for now,

Love, Dad and Mom

... "Oh I am a Utah man sir and I live across the green, Our gang it is the jolliest as you have ever seen...." goes the song my Dad who played football on the U team in the 1920's would always sing in the car.

BRIGHAM CITY TEMPLE OPEN HOUSE

Dear Family,

Yesterday we traveled to see Cathy and go with her to visit the open house of the Brigham City, Utah Temple.  It will be dedicated next week.  There were huge crowds going through the temple on each day of the open house.  One worker thought there were from 1100 to 1800 people going through each hour.  On the opening day of the public invitation, they thought over 30,00 went through and there were more on Labor Day.

Here is a pic of Me and Mom, (taken with the iPhone) at the back end of the temple.  It is a lovely structure in the classic design of many of our temples.  i am glad they are going back to that design a bit more.

Here is Mom, Henry, Amelia, Lilli, Phillip and Cathy before we started the tour.  One goes through single file starting on the lowest level in the Baptistry and ever ascends  upward.  It is a beautiful structure.  I looked like it would handle about 50 for a session.  One senses a good spirit even before the dedication.  We will miss the dedication as we are up in Spokane next week.

It was quite a drive up there and we felt like we should just keep on going up to Bear Lake.  I think we will go up there after General Conference with Mike and his family to close our place there for the winter.  We drove back to Cathy's and had Salt County hamburgers and had the best time chatting with Pete and Cathy.  We hope many of you will be able to attend the dedication.

Love, Dad and Mom

TRIP TO MICHIGAN AND MORE FAMILY FUN

Dear Family, We are finally getting around to document the great events of the summer.  After the reunion we travelled back to Michigan for a week of further reunion and fun.  Here is what Mom did for a long time.  We are still moving from Michigan.  Here is Mom going through the remaining boxes from the barn.  She found treasures as displayed on the mantel in the farm house.  We found all the trophies from Junior High and High School.. things like Rob's pinewood derby trophy, Cheryl's debate trophy, numerous most valuable player awards from all the teams and it was one giant memory lane. 

We stayed at Mary and Mark's for a few days and also stayed at the farm.  There were more mini reunions.  Rob showed up for his 20th High School reunion at Andover (Mary went also).  We went to Leo's for old times sake and here are Mom, Rob, Mary, Kati, Mark, and David.  We went to Leo's multiple times on Telegraph and in South Lyon. 

We went to watch David at his Karate Dojo.  We went to Al's farm in Munith and that was so neat.  I have somehow lost the pictures but we watched Al milking the goats wearing her baby.  They have a working farm with calves, sheep, goats that are milked, chickens and ducks and a large hay field that Paul cuts and bales.  They have a vineyard and a large garden and we sampled the produce.  This was so fun and amazing to watch Al at the farm as she hated working on our farm as a teenager.  They are almost self sustaining.

I gave two Patriarchal Blessings on this trip, one to James and one to Scotty.  Here is James who is taking online high school and college courses.

We did James at Al's farm and it was a wonderful event.  We also visited with Scotty in his home and here is a picture below.  He is one tall strong young man and we enjoyed this experience with his parents.

We spent a lot of time at the farm.  As Mom sorted through boxes and shipped individual treasure collections to the kids, I got on the
John Deere and brush hogged the 20 acre hay field to keep it from overgrowth.  Bryan and
I spent a lot of time together and we seem to work as a natural team.  We cut grass, trimmed trees, checked on the bees,  and spent a lot of time exploring his new 40 acres to the south of the farm.  Bry now has one mile of property between eight mile and seven mile roads.  He has fixed up the new barns, raised a dilapidated house, planted hundreds of trees on the lower forty acres, and constructed a bridge across a swampy part.  Al and the kids came out and here is a shot of the Kybota which is the best taking the kids around the farm vehicle.

Here are Al's  kids at the haunted Oak tree.  I had forgotten how beautiful Michigan is in the summer;  there are so many trees and everything is so green and healthy.  Here is the path to the back woods at the farm.  There were several barbecues at the farm.  I was surprised to see Stefan Mueller and his family in the Bloomfield Hills ward.  We knew him and his family in Stuttgart during our mission.  We had a barbecue at the farm  and Stefan, wife and kids, father in law (from Landshut) came and we had a Feldschiessen event that was a lot of fun.

These is a lot of game on the farm and we saw deer every day.  The kids did not want Opa to find out about it.

Bryan had the old Ford Tractor restored and here he is on it.  It purrs like a kitten and is as old as Bry himself.

We seemed to party every day; we have such a good time being together.  Jeff and his family also came to the area. Tammy's father passed away in Ann Arbor and we attended the funeral.  Jeff, Tammy and their kids were there as well.  Before we left, we had another barbecue on Wing Lake with Al, Mary, Bryan, Jeff and their families attending.

Here is Mom in the background, Mary, Opa, Al and friends. There was canoeing, swimming, water games, fishing, tree climbing, retriever dog training and more barbecue.  We had such a good time in Michigan.  It was great to go to our  old ward and visit our neighbors, the Breers, as  well.  I had a great time working with Bryan.  It was the best trip to Michigan .

Thanks to all there for the wonderful time,

Mom and Dad

VISITS FROM FRIENDS AND FORMER MISSIONARIES

Dear Family,

I am catching up on all the summer events.  We had our great reunion and after this there were some great visits from all over.

First Steffi and her husband Robert came to visit the USA and indeed Salt Lake City as well.   They came from Berlin, Germany.  Steffi was one of our great sister missionaries and we went back to Germany to attend her wedding couple years ago. Here she is with stepsons Ryan and Riley, husband Robert and their new baby, Rico.

They stayed in the apartment downstairs and used this as their home base while they toured and visited in Salt Lake.  We went to the Church History museum with them and toured all the exhibits.

Here is Steffi trying out the berth on the model of the ships that Church members used to come to this country from Europe in the later 1800's  Then went to the food court at the new City Creek mall and had a good feed.

We had a get together with some of Steffi's companions and that was really fun.  Here is Kristi, Steffi, Rachel, Julie and Elizabeth.  Steffi reminded me that she had a lot of companions and I countered that it was the plan to expose many of the younger missionaries to her so they could benefit from her language (aus Preusen), discipline  and her ability to present the message of the Church so succinctly in German.  She was loved by all.

It was great to see her and her family and I think they had a good time.

We also had a visit from Katje, formerl;y Muench,  Now
Davidson and little Mark and Talita.  Katje was my German Tutor provided by the MTC and she struggled with me for many months getting my pronunciation and sentance structure straight.  She went to Russia on a mission, came back and married Daniel who is also a whiz with languages.  He works for the Defense Department and now they live in Maryland.  She is expecting her third child any minute.  So great to see her and the kids.  LittleTalita is fluent in German and English. Mark Twain said that German was easy as little kids could speak it and dogs understood it.  Talita spoke to Mom in English but addressed me in German.

We visited her mother, Marita, when we went over to attend Steffi's wedding.  We spent time in Cotbus and I did a fireside, (auf Deutsch) in their ward in Howerswerda.  I lovedg going over there.

We we had such great visits from family and  friends this summer.  We are richly blessed and grateful for all we have enjoyed.

Will catch up on some more summer stuff.

Love, Oma and Opa