Robert writes home #46

Dear Mother,

                Charlie and I planted the watermelons yesterday. I’m going to try irrigating them up by watering them twice at weekly intervals hoping to get them up without having to cap the seed bed with plastic like we usually do.

                Charlie and Meg both won their match last week in tennis

                Sam got hit by a car and knocked down as Megan let him out of her car and he walked out from behind her car to cross the street to school. He wasn’t hurt much (bruised arm) the other car was going slowly). But he got a lot of attention.

                Sam is really wanting his turn for a trip since Charlie went to Tucson with Janet and had such a good time. I think he is the only kid that I haven’t taken on a single kid trip, so now that he is pretty stable we’re starting to make plans. I don’t know where it will be yet.

                Some predator got into my peacock pen and killed the peahen the other night. Now we just have two peacocks left and one guinea night.  We’re just about out of farm animals and birds. Mom wants to get a couple of dogs. She thinks that two might stay home better than one. Duke (our dog) lives at the Yonkers (neighbors) all the time now and only visits if he see a party going on. Carl really likes him and keeps him company.

                We took an investigator to church today. The missionaries contracted him and have given him two discussions. He seemed favorably impressed and quite positive. He is the son of one of my patients. He grew up in LA and just came to live with his father and go to Merced College.

                I’m sending you a clipping of an article about Megan from the paper.

Love,

Robert

I’m enclosing a little story that I made up for Sam to help him understand about the value of afflictions. I would reference Mosiah 3:19…”an willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him,”

The value of the demonstrator model

Once upon a time there was a man who had a kayak manufacturing business. Kayaks are those little boats that the Eskimos used to use to hunt seats. They were a little canoe with a hole and a drawstring apron to pull tight around the rider so the water couldn’t get in if they capsized or a wave crashed over them. Now they are used to run whitewater rapids and are made out of fiberglass. In this fictitious story the guy who made the boats opened a store in a valley high I the Andes in South America where a world class whitewater stretch of river ran down a narrow gorge in the valley. The natives were afraid of the rapids and tried to avoid traveling upon down the gorge. Occasionally they had to and occasionally someone fell in and was almost always drown before he could get out.

The local people were not interested in kayaks. When the dealer tried to explain how they could travel the whitewater in them they weren’t interested. They would rather take the long walk around to get to the bottom of the gorge.

So one day he took a kayak and went up to the head of the gorge. A lot of people followed to watch. He got in the kayak and ran the rapids. The people were amazed when they saw him travel rapidly and safely to the bottom of the gorge. Soon many of them wanted to try it and later bought kayaks.

I think that Heavenly Father needs demonstrators to show people now the gospel works. If he chooses you to be one of his demonstrators then you will have to run the rapids to show the people how well it works. Sometimes I think he sends families who live the gospel to live in communities where they can demonstrate the impact of the gospel and how faith in God sustains them as they endure physical calamity, (like house fires, life threatening sickness and or loss of life)

My son who has been dealing with a malignant brain tumor for the past two years (which has been put in remission with radiation therapy presently) often has his teachers comment on how cheerful, happy and calm about the future he is. I think they are overlaying how they think they would act if it happened to them. They would probably feel angry and despaired to be cheated out of their youth (his pituitary gland which controls the endocrine system has been badly damaged if not destroyed). So they are amazed that he is not and probably think he doesn’t understand what lies ahead. But what they don’t understand is that he knows that this life is just a short episode in the total life and that somewhere down the road he gets to be superman and leap over tall buildings with a single bound. Just like Heavenly Father knows what’s best and is orchestrating the whole thing. Faith is a wonderful gift.