Robert writes home #43 25 Dec. 1994

25 Dec 1994

Dear Mother,

                I’ve been thinking of you this Christmas and am hoping you’re doing okay. I’ve tried to call Magdalene acouple of times this past week to tell her that I couldn’t find Milo’s military number but haven’t been able to reach her. I’ve wondered if she went somewhere for the holidays. I wonder if you have had anyone there to see you today, since it’s Christmas.

We had great weather here today. It’s sunny and warm. It’s probably the nicest weather I’ve seen for seen for Christmas in my memory. It’s usually foggy… as you may recall.

It’s surely been fun having all of the single kids home. Peter took his sisters and went caroling to many of the widows in Dos Palos two nights before Christmas. They spent the first day making cookies so they could take a plate of cookies to each widow. They were really well received and had a rich experience.

We really had a nice Christmas sacrament service… youth choir, women’s quartet (Linda Nielson, Julie Nunes, Janet Buckley and Sister Edler) and Les Stringfellow were the music. After the sacrament meeting there was a baptism. Mike Nielson gave the Holy Ghost talk. (he recently returned from a mission in Italy) He made a couple of really good tie-ins: first he said that when he was a kid in school he had a lot of trouble spelling the word friend because he couldn’t remember which came first. The e or the i. One day his teacher said just remember that he last three letters spell “end” and a good friend is a friend til the end. He then said, “the Holy Ghost is a friend til the end.”

Then he said that he asked his mother once how she read music and knew what pitch to sing. She told him that at first it was hard but as you practiced singing the notes that you finally got to where you could hear the pitch in your mind to sing the notes without the cue from the piano. Listening to the Holy Ghost is kind of like that. AT first it’s hard to hear him. But as you continue to try to live worthy and feel his influence you get to where you can hear and recognize his influence.

IT was really kind of an empty Christmas morning with no little kids around to come and try to get you up early. These guys all wanted to sleep in and have the presents after church.

Well, Merry Christmas!

Love,

Robert, Janet and kids

Carries dancing in Russia

The prophecy about Russia is exciting. It has opened up a whole new vista in my mind and put many things into perspective Carrie has had dancing as her main focus all of her college life. I’ve taken a casual attitude about it thinking it wasn’t very important but would be an okay thing for a girl to major in. She could teach it until motherhood took over her focus. I also thought of her upcoming Russian tour as another fun thing to do of not great significance…one of the perks of university life. Now, after synthesizing that prophecy for a few days in my mind, I have a whole new focus on Carrie’s dancing. I see her Russian tour is a fore runner mission. They’re going to Russia to open the hearts of those people to being receptive to the church when the proselyting missionaries come. Dancing has been her main focus throughout her BYU experience and now I think it’s the main event in her life, at this moment, also. Her Patriarchal blessing says something about going to the nations of the world as some sort of emissary for the church. I didn’t expect it to happen this soon.