Robert writes home #118 18 May 1998

18 May 1998

Dear Mother,

                I’ve missed a week in my letter writing. I was sick for acouple of days over the weekend 10 days ago. Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I did a shift in the genealogy booth.

                We’ve been waiting for our first missionary letter from Charlie. We put him on the plane last Tuesday afternoon in Fresno. I've got to try to take one to the MTC once. I only have one left, Sam. The folks at church want the address and a missionary looking picture (white shirt and tie) to put on the missionary bulletin board. We also need one for the stake bulletin board. He needs to have someone take a picture and send it to us.

                We did the second genealogy booth in the Chowchilla fair this past weekend. I took a couple of shifts. It went pretty well not as well as Los Banos. LB had 70-100 interested people per day. Chowchilla had a little less than 200 total. We have got to figure up some eye-catching signs to put up for the Merced fair.

                Only 7 more days of seminary left. The last day will be a breakfast.

                May is a busy month with all the school termination stuff going on.

                Whenever I run into DP folks they ask about Charlie. When someone they know goes on a mission, I think it gives them a connection and a more real feeling for Mormon missionaries… thus making them more receptive to the missionaries that they encounter locally.

                Last Thrusday night we had four missionaries report their missions to us at high council meeting. Justin Anderson, Zack Warner, a Perez and a Capron all returned within the recent past. Zack Warner has his image indelibly imprinted in my memory. I was asked to speak at a YA fireside one night. He came in late and sat in a folding chair in the back row. As he took hold of the chair to adjust his position, the chair collapsed and cut off the end of his index finger on his right hand. What a shock! They grabbed his finger and rushed him to the hospital all while I was standing at the podium not knowing what to do. We stopped and had a prayer for him and then I tried to continue but I’d lost the audience’s attention and focus and felt out of place trying to finish my talk. It was one of my toughest to give talks. It happened so fast that I didn’t get a clear picture of who he was for sure, at the time. But when he got up to report his mission the other night (three years later),someone quipped from the audience, “Don’t ask him to sit in a folding chair,” and I saw his shortened index finger. It all came back to me.

                We had a dramatic rain storm in DP, the day we went to the Fresno airport with Charlie. It rained three inches of rain in less than eight hours. It just sprinkled in Fresno but as we were coming home we could see an ominous storm front hanging over on the west side. The high way was even dry between Ripperdan and Firebaugh, but about two miles out the other side of Firebaugh we hit it. It was a violent thunderstorm that started in LB with hail then moved over DP and just settled there and didn’t move on. The fields are lakes again. Its going to be a tough year for hay and cotton farmers. The season is so late. It snowed again at the 4000 ft level with his storm. That same day on the way home the radio broadcast tornado warnings for an area north of Sacramento. They had two funnel cloud touch downs there. The rain total for the year in LB is 23 inches. Normal is about 8 or 9, I think. Janet is loving the cool weather, but doesn’t dare admit it around farmers.

                My seminary lesson said, in reference to the Jaredite wars of final destruction, that in ancient. Asiatic culture, the wars were between the kings. Chess was based on that pattern. All the players are expendable in defense of the king, who is held sacred. The war is over when the king is killed or captured (some times a brother or the person next in line for the throne could step in to fill his place). Thus the kings are usually the last people killed because of the human shield their soldiers form around them.

                This bit of info is astounding relative to the B of M. How could that backwoods, Vermont,farm boy know anything about ancient Asiatic warfare with no radio, TV, movies, libraries and a 3^rd grade education. I have a 20 year education and read it for the first time yesterday. The Book of Mormon is a divinely translated real document.

Love,

Robert, Janet, Sam and Heidi Jo

PS. Magdalene, I’m glad you enjoyed those memory tapes. I find those little techniques every helpful. I use my “body list” to remember things to do regularly. And the “tree list” works great for remembering numbers.

                I enjoyed your tapes by Les Brown all the way home. As a matter of fact I was able to hear all of them on that trip home with Charlie. I got some helpful insights form him. Thanks.

Robert