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Moments

7/28/2013

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They say that life is made of moments.  Charles Bukowski, War All the Time says “some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.”    I am going to write about some moments.   I hope you find them worth reading.

Florida in July: Delightful!!!  Who would have thought?   My brother, a Floridian for about a decade now, says that Florida natives stay inside in July; high temperatures, high humidity and high mosquito densities make it high time to avoid it all by remaining indoors.    Flouting convention (something we do regularly), the Wright R. Noel family (36 strong) had high times, in Florida, in July, inside and outside. 

The week was a flurry of activities—riding the trolley through St. Augustine (oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States), touring a chocolate factory (samples included), exploring the Castillo de San Marcos (a 1672 fortress with walls 17 feet thick that was never overtaken by enemy forces) and Fort Matanzas (a 1740 outpost guarding the southern river approach to St. Augustine that was never passed by enemy forces), visiting the Old Jail (walls 7 feet thick, no one ever escaped) and the St. Augustine Alligator Farm (only zoological park in the world that has ALL known species of alligators and crocodiles), and swimming in Poe Springs (natural fresh water springs) and the Atlantic Ocea(natural, salt water ocean)—all of which were awesome but the power of the party, the fulfillment of the festivities, the joy
of the journey came in the memorable moments.

Memorable moments are often tender mercies.

I had a memorable moment before we even boarded our Florida-bound plane.   In the rush to get to the airport, I delegated many responsibilities, including animal chores.   Something (I call it divine nudging) urged me to personally check the animals before leaving.   Less than 5 minutes before getting in the car to leave for 8 days, I carved out a moment to rush down and check the livestock.  
   
All was good…..until I got to the pigs.   The pigs do not have a water trough; they drink from a nipple hooked to a
hose.  Water does not come out until the pig depress a little knob inside the nipple; there is no outward indication that water is or is not available to the pigs.   When I depressed the little knob, nothing happened.   The hose was not turned on, the pigs had no water.     The young girl we hired to take care of our animals is very conscientious but not at all farm savvy.   She would never have noticed the pigs did not have water, probably would not have noticed that they were failing, certainly would not have known why they were failing, and, after 8 days without water in 100+ degree daytime temperatures, we would have returned home to three dead pigs.  Thank you God for sending me down to check on the animals.

Miles and his cousins James Watkins and Eden Noel also had occasion to thank God.   Here is the story.

Lance and I and the three children (Miles, Eden, and James) were driving back from Poe Springs when Eden’s front incisor came out.    She held it tightly in her fist, eager to show it to her parents at the car ride’s conclusion.   Somewhere between tooth loss and ride conclusion, Eden fell asleep and the tooth slipped from her hand.  Eden had lost her lost tooth and she was devastated.   She searched her surroundings to no avail.   Miles said, “Dad, we need to say a prayer.”   

“Okay……...”

“Dad, don’t we need a Priesthood holder to call on someone to say the prayer?”    [During the reunion, because we were not in anyone’s home, we asked the Priesthood holder/head of household of the family in charge of cooking the meal to invite
someone to bless the food.   Miles internalized the practice and wanted the Priesthood involved in their prayer.]   Lance asked Eden to say the prayer and she offered a simple, heart-felt petition, pleading with God to help her find her tooth.

Faith without works is dead.   At the conclusion of her sweet prayer, I was ready to tear the pick-up apart.   We would find that tooth, by gum.    She clearly had the faith and I was determined to do the work.   Before I could even unbuckle my
seatbelt she reached down and plucked the tooth from the vehicle’s floor.    Then the three of them offered a thank you prayer.    It was a tender moment.

Some moments are tender, others are amusing.

At the Alligator farm, the girl cousins interacted with a lively white parrot.    Together, bird and girls danced and squawked.   
The more the bird danced and squawked, the more the girls danced and squawked.   The bird hung upside down, the girls jumped up and down.   The bird hung by one leg, the girls hopped on one leg.   The bird flapped its wings, the girls clapped their hands.   It was unclear whether the bird was performing as a result of the girls’ encouragement or the girls were performing at the bird’s encouragement.  Which came first, the chick or the egg?  

Dancing and squawking……rocks, trees, baseball bats; it all elicits laughter.   We spend one evening crying tears of mirth as Marjorie, Blaine and Brad recounted stories of Brad’s near death experiences at Blaine’s hands.  The exact details of the stories escape me (and I am fairly confident that the details change a bit with each telling) but the memories of the moments spent laughing together late at night will never leave.
  
In the musical “Into the Woods”, the Baker’s Wife offers what I consider to be a priceless insight about moments.  

“Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one-!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.

“Let the moment go...
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you've had an "and",
When you're back to "or",
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before.
Now I understand-

“And it's time to leave the woods.”

And then it was time to leave Florida.  Family reunions, like trips to the woods, do not last forever.   Now we are home.   The moments of the 2013 Noel Family Reunion: Florida are now memories.  Gratefully, the moment memories will last forever.   And, just as gratefully, life continues to offer moments that will become forever memories.  

May you have many memorable moments this week.

Love,
Teresa

P.S.  I found this quote about moments that, for me, is insightful.  I am sharing it in case you find it insightful too.

“My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen—or we have an episode like the one I had with the M&M cars back at the Husky station.

"And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.”  [I added the bold underlining.  Life is the stories you can tell...about moments!]

―
Douglas Coupland, Life After God


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Alligator Party
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Thirty-nine mature alligators in this enclosure. Alligators are relatively light eaters. The average adult eats about 90 lbs of food annually which is the equivalent of you or I eating a sandwich a week.
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When I am old, I shall wear purple. (DeAnn Bingham Noel)
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More than 39 immature alligators in this enclosure. At press time there were no available statistics on how much baby alligators eat. Also unavailable are stats about how much you or I ate when we were babies.
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When I am old, I shall wear glasses! (Jett Noel sporting Grace's glasses.)
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Blaine Noel behind the barricade--a moment to remember!
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Tanah encouraging the parrot.
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Pig nipple. Pigs depress the stem in the middle and water squirts out into their mouths---if the water is turned on.
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The parrot encouraging Tanah. (Notice the open mouth.)
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The parrot doing more to encourage Tanah. (Go, Tanah, go!!)
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The souvenir that sweet, generous Spencer Watkins (age 9) purchased for Miles.
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Tanah, Grace, and cousins in jail.
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Tanah and Kali Mosher arming themselves for a water fight....during a thunderstorm.
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Tanah, without Grace or cousins, free and (and beautiful).
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Miles and Spencer Watkins using a boogie board as an umbrella.
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Miles and Spencer Watkins on the chocolate factory tour.
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Children Will Listen

7/14/2013

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In a talk given in the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in April 2013, Rosemary Wixom (Primary General President) quoted Thomas S. Monson (Prophet and President of the aforementioned church) who told of Jay Hess, an airman who was shot down over North Vietnam in the 1960’s.      “For two years his family had no idea whether he was dead or alive.   His captors in Hanoi eventually allowed him to write home but limited his message to 25 words.”

WOW!   Twenty-five words!!  That is not very much.   I used 85 words in the first paragraph just introducing the idea.   
What would YOU write to your family, if you had not seen them for 2 years, if you wanted them to know the message came from you, and if you had no guarantee you would ever see or communicate with them again?    
 
Here is my message:  “
Life is the stories you can tell.   Prayer is the answer.  Trust God.  Love changes lives.  Learn. Bridle passions.  Obey with exactness.   I love you.” 

Yes, life is the stories you can tell.  Here are some more stories from our lives.

Friday was “Cow Appreciation Day” at Chick-fil-a; everyone who dressed up as a cow received a free meal (main entrée, side dish, and drink).    The lure for us was two-fold: a great story and a great meal.  Living the experience was more fun that reading about it (sorry for you) and eating the food was more fun than looking at it…though I do hope that you enjoy the posted photos.

I also hope you appreciated the photos of the cow published previously on the blog as they were procured at a very great cost.    Because he ate the pasture down more quickly than I anticipated and because his hernia made him a walking time bomb, we took the steer back to the action Monday.      We purchased him at 627 lbs. for $393.00 and sold him a month later at 665 lbs. for $255.65.   Our steer stories and pictures cost us about $150.00.   Ouch.

My husband is fabulous.  Fabulous.   I was heartsick about the money we lost on the steer; Lance provided prospective.   “Tess,” he explained, “the way I see it is this.  We did not lose $150; we got back $255.”     I am still upset about the lost money but feel better knowing he does not condemn me too.

One of the things I could have used the lost $150 for is theater tickets.    Every year we purchase six season tickets to Hale Centre Theater because, as someone so profoundly observed recently “Theater works”. [See 7 June 2013 blog entry.]      I just bought tickets for the 2014 season….and only purchased five.   Chick will leave on his mission mid-2014.   It is the beginning of the end of life as we know it.

I spent every morning this week teaching an “Extreme Summer Science Camp” to about 10 Ogden Preparatory Academy students.   Because it is much easier to hike than teach, we spent most of our time hiking Ogden’s foothills:  Waterfall Canyon, Strong’s Canyon, Malan’s Peak, and the Pond Trail twice.   We also made leaf collections, surveyed aquatic insects, studied rock formations, created water color paintings, performed environmental analysis, and I read them Byrd Baylor books.    
 
I promised a Sweetheart treat to those who made it to the top of Malan’s Peak with me.   One young lady decided she was not going to summit.  She was perfectly physically able but decidedly mentally done; the going got tough and she quit.    Time ran out before I could get her up the mountain so, reluctantly, I let her turn back.       She chatted very amicably with me on the way down.   At the trail’s bottom she said, “Do I get a treat?”   It would have been so easy to just say yes; no waves made, no confrontation required.   She is a very sweet girl and one of my better students.  I was so tempted to just hand her
the candy and be done with it.

But no.   I pulled her aside, told her that she quit, told her that I did not want her to feel good about her decision to quit, and told her that I would not reward that decision by giving her candy.  Sometimes being a teacher is just not fun.

The young lady who quit was a participant in last year’s  Havasupai adventure.   In an effort to urge her up the mountain I said, “C’mon, [name], this isn’t nearly as hard as Havasupai.   You were carrying a heavy backpack then.   You can do this!”  She looked at me and said, “My parents carried my pack for me.”   Oh my.   OH MY!!   I don’t need to outline the lessons for parents manifest by that interaction.   Suffice it to say they are multiple and powerful.

Which reminds me of the song I quoted in the talk I gave in  Church today……

In the play “Into the Woods”, the witch gives the wife-less baker some profound child-rearing advice. She says:

Careful the things you
  say,
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do,
Children will
see.
And learn.

Children may not obey,
But children will
listen.
Children will look to you
For which way to turn
To learn
what to be.

Careful before you say,
"Listen to me."
Children
will listen.

I love that!   Children will listen.  They listen to the things we do and to the things we say. May the things we say, whether they be 25 word messages or 25 years’  worth of actions, be worth listening to!

Love,
Teresa

P.S. My darling husband got me a new cell phone.  I am, once again, able to communicate via cell phone and text.  Thanks Lance!

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Eating Chick-fil-a IS more fun than seeing a picture of Miles eating.
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Blue ribbon beef!
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Water coloring in the mountains
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We got the memo!
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Another mountain artist
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Can you find the camouflaged student?
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Miles organized a neighborhood football game. The six boys played football in the park for 2 ½ hours, amicably calling their own downs, fouls, and goals. Finally, at 5:30 p.m., I had to call the game, a storm was threatening and dinner was calling. Everyone had fun, even me.
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What Works

7/7/2013

2 Comments

 
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What works?   For generations, wisdom about what works and what does not work was
passed by word of mouth.    Later books and magazines offered helpful hints and then radio talk shows and television specials added to the availability of information.   The Internet era dawned and “how-to” advice became only a YouTube search, Google query or Facebook post away.  Now there is me. “What Works” by Teresa Hislop.   

White vinegar and water works.   For several years running summer has brought tiny ants to our bathroom.    Regular cleaning, Clorox baths, commercial ant traps, smashing the little buggers one at a time as one sits on the toilet yelling “Take that you spineless invertebrate!”….nothing discouraged them….until now.   Simply squirting them with vinegar and water (mixed in a 1:1 ratio, administered consistently for about a week)  convinced them not to return.   (No a recommended treatment for door-to-door vacuum salesmen!)

Garage sales work.  Summer 2013 has not offered many uncommitted Saturday mornings so our garage sale shopping season has gotten off to an extremely slow start.   Yesterday we freed a Saturday morning by skipping the ward pancake breakfast (still feeling a bit guilty about that) and went garage sale-ing.  We found Christmas gifts for all four of our children and all five of Blaine and Cathy’s children (we have their names for Christmas).   We may have found gifts for my parents, if we don’t decide to keep them for ourselves.   We also found school shoes for Grace, two winter coats for Chick, a steam cleaner for Lance (his idea, I promise!!), and the skirt I will be wearing to Church today.

Rice does not work, at least not for me.    This spring, on behalf of Ogden Preparatory Academy (OPA), I signed a contract with Ogden City adopting a section of the Ogden River.   As a part of the agreement we committed to pick litter from the river and adjoining trail at least once a month.    Tuesday fourteen of my former OPA students, two parents, and I spent an hour or so doing just that.    The weather was pleasant, the students were even more pleasant, and the river was warm and lazy.     Shod in my hiking sandals (happy toes!!), I was unable to resist the water’s lure.  Before I knew it, I was diaphragm deep. My cell phone was in my pocket, at waist level.   (For those of you whose anatomical knowledge is buried deep beneath more practical information like the importance of keeping cell phones dry, the diaphragm is above the waist.)   The phone dripped
when I removed it from my pocket.    My darling husband removed the battery (he learned how to do so by watching a YouTube video) and we encased the phone in rice for three days.    No luck. I will be replacing my cell phone soon.   In the meantime, I am cellularly out of touch.  Please do NOT be offended when I fail to return your calls and texts.

Tanah works.    Tanah has wanted to paint the basement for years.  I have hated painting for years and years.    Tuesday Tanah tackled the basement.   She piled everything in the middle of the room (it was a big pile), taped the windows, doors, light fixtures, wood stove, and all edges, and puttied the holes in the walls and ceiling.     Wednesday she puttied more and finished taping.   Thursday she and Chick sanded and painted.  Friday she finished painting everything but the ceiling.  Saturday she worked on the ceiling.   Our basement now has a green floor (the green floor was there when we bought it), one long white wall, one short bright yellow wall, a long and short lighter yellow wall, and a white ceiling.    Miss Tanah
was very pleased with the sunny, sunflower look of the room…..until Miles pointed out that they were Green Bay colors……

Cream works.   I picked one and a half gallons of raspberries Tuesday.   Cream, with a titch of sugar, works to make fresh raspberries a heavenly treat.

Iodine works.    Our sweet, docile, stupid Holstein steer somehow managed to knock the outer layer of his horn off.   Cattle horns are made of an outer layer of keratin and other proteins covering an inner layer of live bone.    I have now seen a live
bone.   If you scroll down, you can see a live bone too.  (It is pretty bloody, be warned!)     We put the bloody-faced critter in the chute and tended to his wound.   Bless his big, bovine heart---he stood quietly as I washed his face with a hose, pulled caked blood out of his eye lashes, and scrubbed behind his ears.    I doused the horn’s remaining bloody stump with iodine and it seems to be healing nicely.   
 
Iodine does not work for everything.   When I was scrubbing his ear, I discovered a fist sized growth.   It is black and pocked.  It looks a bit like a huge piece of black pumice but it is definitely living tissue.   I did not even try putting iodine on it.    While he was in the chute, we also checked his sheath (the outer layer of hide that protects the penis) because it is five times the normal size.  We discovered the swelling is not caused by infection (iodine may have helped that) but by a hernia.   Oh dear!  Our Holstein steer is a walking veterinary object lesson.   
 
Sunscreen works….but only if you put it on.    I walked under Mexico’s harsh sun for seven days without being burnedthanks to liberal sun screen applications.  I stood under West Point’s gentler sun for about three hours, neglected to screen myself, and my face is fried.    Fried face aside, we had a fabulous time in West Point on the 4th of July.   In fact, we enjoyed ourselves so much that I hesitate to publicize it for fear that word will get out, crowds will overwhelm West Point, and the city will be unable to continue its “small town” celebration.    Let me just say that we listened to a great flag raising speech,  enjoyed a short parade, and cheered for  the six Syracuse Arts Academy cross country runners that entered the 5K race.    Grace won a prize in frozen t-shirt contest, I won a pie in a game of musical chairs, and Miles won a mini-basketball as a door prize.  Grace and Miles ascended the climbing wall multiple times; we ate a great breakfast for $2 each and an even better dinner for free; Grace danced without inhibition during the evening’s concert while I sang without talent in Tanah’s
ear;  and my Mom ooh-ed and awed like a little girl during the fireworks display that exploded almost over our
heads.    My favorite part of the day was listening to Mom enjoy the fireworks.    Grace’s favorite part of the day was laughing at me when I got lost in a subdivision on the way home.

Theater works.   We watched “Ragtime” at Hale Centre Theatre yesterday.   The play has several powerful messages brought to the heart by some incredibly powerful music.   Tanah did not like it because of an anti-America message she
perceived.   I love that she is intensely loyal to our great country and that she saw how sometimes the greed and bigotry of our citizens compromise American ideals.    Miles did not like it because one of the characters, a man seeking justice, is unjustly shot at the end.  I love it that he hates injustice.  I loved it for the integrity portrayed by several characters who did what was good and right, social pressures aside.   Many messages, much food for thought.  Theater works.

Christ’s gospel works. His message that through Him and His atonement we can have inner peace in this life and eternal joy in the life to come is good news.     Obedience to His teachings works.   It really does.   I have not yet experienced the life to come but I have complete confidence in His promises.   I definitely have experienced this life and I know following Him brings
inner peace.  Pray intently.   Study the scriptures.  Go to Church.   Love. Serve.   Follow Him.   Peace comes.   It works.

Love,
Teresa



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This is me, saving the environment and ruining my phone.
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This is Miles outstanding in the corn field. One week of HOT temperatures brought three feet of corn growth.
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Multicultural colored pencils containing 8 different skin colors (shades of brown, red, black, and peach) to represent people from around the world. Interesting.
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Bloody faced steer
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Close up of the outer keratin shell (above) and the live bone (below).
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Red Plate

7/1/2013

5 Comments

 
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“It was a time honored tradition among early American families that when someone deserved special praise or attention they were served dinner on the red plate. Today, this custom, so dear to early American families, reminds us that a simple reward can mean so much. The Red Plate is the perfect way to acknowledge a family member's special triumphs...celebrate a
birthday...praise a job well done...reward a goal achieved...or simply say "You Are Special Today." When the Red Plate is used, any meal becomes a celebration honoring that special person, event or deed. It is a visible reminder of love and esteem. This is a way of showing someone dear to you that they are appreciated and remembered.” 
http://www.mommysavers.com/c/t/5470/red-plate-poem 

Years ago I was given a red plate and this week I had many reasons to use it.  

We were in Mexico last weekend so no one did their assigned Saturday chores.   Given that it had not been cleaned the week prior and that the entire family brought an intestinal bug home, the toilet was rather nasty.   Monday Miles approached me, armed with Clorox spray, a rag, and plastic gloves.    A determined gleam in his eye, he said, "I am not leaving the toilet dirty until next Saturday," and then he launched his attack.  The resulting clean toilet and the fact that he voluntarily cleaned
it--heck, even the fact that he noticed that it was dirty--is worth a Red Plate celebration in my house.  

On Tuesday Miles said, "Mom, I had a successful fart today.".   I guess to that point all of his farts had been liquid bubbles, rather than gas.   We did not use a Red Plate for that celebration.

Jill and Kurt Gibson went to Alaska without their two sons, AJ (4) and Griffin (2).  Grace and Tanah, who adore the two boys, moved into the Gibson home and mothered the two boys for three days.   When she returned to our home Tanah said, "I learned something Mom."  Oh?   "Don't get me wrong," she began, "I love the boys and all but I really learned something.".  Yes?  "I learned that I am NOT ready to be a Mom.".
    
I thought I was doing Jill a favor by letting her have my girls for three days (someone had to do all their chores while they were gone and that someone was not any of the males who were left in the household) but now I think I might owe Jill a favor instead, a red plate treat at the very least.   Having a 15 year old recognize that she is not ready to be a mom is worth
celebrating.

During his talk about righteous activities,  Kyle Carpenter, a brilliant, insightful member of our ward, said over the pulpit that reading my blog was, for him, a righteous activity.  The comment made my month.  Give that man a Red Plate!!  

I had to laugh (the alternative was to sob) as I sat in Wright and Carole's congregation in Seattle on Sunday.  A kindly soul, recognizing that I was a visitor, said to me, "You are Carole's mother, right?".    [Carole and I served missions together; she and I are the same age.] Laughter is something to celebrate, right?

The ward is doing a 40 day fast; every day for 40 days someone in the ward will be fasting.   We, collectively, are fasting for ward members who are sick, who need gainful employment, and who are struggling to find Christ.   We are also fasting for our youth, our leaders, and our missionaries. Tuesday was my day.  As I began the fast, I felt the mantle of responsibility fall upon me; I was the torch bearer, leading the ward's charge, trusted by the ward members to do my part.  It reminded me of a
time in seminary, long, long ago, when the instructor asked the class to choose a champion, someone who would complete a difficult task for the class.   If the champion succeeded, the entire class would win.   If the champion failed, the entire class failed.   I was selected to tackle the task. I remember staying up into the late hours of the night trying to solve the problem.   I remember being totally overwhelmed, hopelessly frustrated, and wanting desperately to quit but being compelled forward by the knowledge that my classmates were depending on me.  I did end up completing the task and the class was appreciative.  I still have the rock figurine that James Wilding made me, dressed in a royal blue Sugar-Salem track sweat suit and sporting running shoes.     Once again, more than 30 years later, I was the day's champion, motivated by a higher cause.   This time, however, the task's path was different.   The fast was easy and my day peaceful.   Though I did normal Tuesday things, iwas as if I were somehow set apart, certainly here physically but somehow protected from the cares and pulls of the world as if I were in a large, transparent bubble.   Though I did not end my fast with a meal on the Red Plate, I did end it celebrating my
opportunity to worship my Savior and to feel His love.

We interviewed for and awarded the Traditional Family Values Scholarship Wednesday.  All of the interviewees were thoroughly impressive people but one man clearly stood out.  Jeremy has a 2 year old daughter with brittle bone disease; the slightest bump causes fractures.   In fact, he was late to his interview with us because he'd been in the Logan ER with her, setting her broken femur and tibia. She already has rods in both femurs and a tibia: the rod in her femur prevented the break from being worse.  In addition, he just had a cancerous thyroid removed and is beginning the treatment associated with that.  His was not a sob story; he was clearly calm and just as clearly dedicated to doing whatever it took to provide for his wife and daughter.    Incredible story, incredible family.   We were so pleased to be able to offer him our scholarship.

Interviewing folks for the scholarship is so gratifying because they are so incredulously grateful.   "I've never heard of a scholarship for families," they say, "It is an honor just to apply.".   Jeremy said, "I often see scholarships for this group or that group but I never qualify for any of those groups.   Finally I found a group that fits."  As a white male his options for scholarship options are significantly reduced though his need and merit are clearly evident.    Celebrating the chance to meet
his need and recognize his merit is certainly a Red Plate event.

[FYI: The Tradition Family Values Scholarship fund is relatively small.  We have only about $3,000 to award each year.    WSU tuition is about $6000 annually.   If you would like to help meet the needs and recognize the merit of families who live traditional values, please contribute to our fund by sending your donation, labeled "Traditional Family Values Scholarship" to the Weber State Scholarship Office, Sherri Melton, Financial Aid & Scholarship Office, Weber State University, Student Service Bldg., Rm 120, Ogden, UT 84408-1136 ]

On our way to a soccer game, we stopped at a convenience store to ask for directions.  Our van window was down as was the window of the large pickup parked two feet from us.  We could not NOT hear the conversation the truck's driver was having on his cell phone.   During the course of his chat with his dad the driver utilized some vulgar language, including several f-bomb droppings.   As we pulled out of the parking lot Mr. Miles said, "He swore, didn't he Mom?". Yes, son.   "Did he say the f word?".  Yes, son.  "Oh," he said sadly, "Now I know what the f word is.".    Bring out that Red Plate!  I want to celebrate a nine year old boy who did not and does not want to know what the f word is.  It is still possible to teach and live traditional family values in this incredible, beautiful world that is so often garnished with filth and slime.

May your week be filled with traditional family values and Red Plate celebrations!

Love, 
Teresa



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Three generations to sleeping Wrights; Wright Ralph (above), Wright Arnold (right), Wright Miles (far right). ALRIGHT!!!!!
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This stupid lamb forced his head into the pig pen and got stuck four times in 24 hours.
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There is a reason why the words "sheep" and "stupid" are often considered synonyms.
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One week in Mexico gave us two feet of corn growth.
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    Teresa Hislop
    thislop@msn.com

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