Faith, Family and Farm

10-7-86 Dear Mom and Pop, I'm sending you a few persimmons. I hope they make the trip okay. We're all okay. We went to Madera to see Saturday sessions of conference and Merced to watch the Sunday sessions last weekend. It smells like cotton defoliant here now. We dread this event every year. It usually brings some upper respiratory irritation and congestions with it. Hope you're well. Love, Robert, Janet etc. 19 Feb 1995 Dear Mother, I hope you are doing well. I went to the Merced 4th ward (Spanish) today to speak as a high councilman. Rick Rowan, father of one of Megan's friends, Gannon's dad, is Branch Pres. Gannon was home from BYU for the weekend. He just got his call to go to the Dominical Republic on a mission in May. He sang a song with his two little sisters. Two of her other friends, Colby Brink, got his call to go to Tennessee and Aaron Ketcher was called to Montreal, Pete's mission. It's a remarkable experience to se...

20 August 2006 Dear Magdalene, Thanks for remembering my birthday with that pretty home made birthday card. We are planning to come to Manti for a month from September 22 through October 22. I've asked the renter to vacate the house by Sept. 15. We're going to spend some time there and evaluate it's potential, or lack of same. I'm excited about the adventure and having a month there. We may take a trip back to see Laurie and Charlie for a few days somewhere in that month. We took a trip back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Nauvoo for Susie's oldest daughter, Amy's, wedding in the Nauvoo temple. It was a fun time. It was a family reunion, as well, with all the kids except the Wasatch Front dwellers there (except Charlie, who couldn't miss school, He's in Dental school in Pittsburgh, PA.) After flying home from Susie's, we drove back to Utah and Idaho to see the ones that we had missed, especially Mary, who had just had a baby girl, named Olivia Janet...

February 27, 2005 Dear Magdalene, How are you getting along? I haven't heard from you for a while and I am just wondering how you're doing. We are doing fine. We had a tough bout with the California strain of the flu in January. It took just about the whole month to recover, but we're doing well now. I think Janet brought it home from sub teaching and then I got it from her. It had an additional feature of gastritis, which kept me awake at night with discomfort for a couple of weeks after the fever subsided. The fever lasted ten days. This is the second year in a row that I've had upper respiratory problems in January. I keep remembering how much trouble mother had with pneumonia in the cold wet season when she was here and then with you in Oregon, and how moving to Utah seemed to resolve the problem. I wonder if I'm getting old enough that I may need to make the same move. Laurie's husband got a job in Morgantown, West Virginia. He's there working and ...

September 5, 1999 Dear Magdalene,                 I didn’t make it down to see you at symposium week. Did I tell you that I happened into Emma Kate in the cafeteria? That was fun.                 I’m enclosing another check for Mom’s funeral expense.                 Our stake has an 80 acre raisin grape vineyard for a welfare project. The church members all go down to pick them and lay them our on paper trays to dry each year about his time. Grape harvest was the easiest ever this year. We had a light harvest. We were done by 8:30 AM (started at 6:30). The mutual kids went down on Wednesday, after school, and did about half of the rows. It was nice and cool and we had a good time.             ...

27 March 1998 (out of order) Dear Mother, Our boy, Charlie, received his mission call to Bogota, Columbia. He enters the MTC on May 14. The only day that we have for his farewell is Mother's day. I don't know how that is going to work out. He doesn't get home from BYU until the end of April. We really had a rain storm last week. It dropped 2.5 inches of rain here in DP in 36 hours. But, in Merced it dropped 6 inches of rain. Bear Creek flooded part of the city and 1000 people had to be evacuated. That's pretty unusual for a dry place like this. We have had a wet winter...about 15-20 inches of rain...depending on where in the valley you're located. Saturday late afternoon a severe storm warning came on the TV. A thunderstorm accompanied by funnel clouds and 3/4 in. hail was reported 5 miles sout of Merced along Hwy. 99. It was headed for Chowchilla at 15 miles per hour. Chowchilla is getting to be "Tornado Alley." They were hit by a tornado about 3 we...

24 May 1998 Dear Mother,                 We had a great missionary homecoming sacrament meeting today, Justin Anderson, home from the South Dakota mission, gave a great talk. He really impressed me with his spiritual growth over the past two years.                 Only three days of seminary left for this year. I’ll be glad for the rest but I’m already excited about next year. I’m excited for the Lord to “make my weakness into strength”…after humbling me (Ether 12:27).                 We went to the temple again yesterday. The ward had a temple day involving youth doing baptisms and the adults doing initiatories for names submitted by the ward members. It was a nice day.              ...

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 c...