I Love the Mountains: June 2019

With the crops and hills of California baking at 106 ° for tomorrow

SNOW

and water can be a spectacle for sore eyes.

Saturday, the parking lot of Crows Landing chapel was filled with siblings and parents welcoming brothers and sons

descending more than 5,000 feet, after hiking 2,500, an apt description of HIGH adventure!

We continue to collect stories of helping without being asked, courage, camaraderie, compassion and kindness. Thankful for older shoulders!

When one of the twelve-year-olds slipped off an embankment, the older campers and leaders watched, concerned. A few seconds passed. A head bobbed to the surface. He floated. He swam!
Grateful for buoyancy - for friends ready to rescue.

When another younger camper struggled with stomach ache and related discomfort, big brother-like helping hands reached out.

On the home front, Cub Scouts created, crafted and sported to beat the heat. Hurray for our Primary president, and cub scout leaders for rounding up and promoting day camp.

On Sunday, three students put their pedal on the metal (or at least fingers on the ivories) to remind us "All is Well!" when we Walk in the Light, and a little humility helps when we suffer pain or sorrow. Recognizing effort. It takes courage to show up.

Speaking of showing up, on Saturday at 7 PM, the First Presidency will meet with our youth at Temple Hill in Oakland, preparing for their dedication on Sunday.

Many of our young people are planning to attend.

Preparing our hearts

Appreciating faith and friendship.

How fitting, on my Dad’s 81^st birthday, I should wake up wanting to see every one of the 12 year old young men (whom we have encouraged to join in youth/scouting activities for the past several months) present and accounted for at Crows Landing parking lot at 9:30 a.m. heading for a high adventure outing on Mount Shasta.

Days ago, we got an unexpected "okay" from a parent going it alone, for her eldest to go!

Grateful for a go-ahead...

Time for fast packing and preparing with another 12-year-old acclimating from Columbia, and a third down the road, in neighboring Newman.

Of the 16 boys going, seven came

from our Spanish branch. Counting it a miracle!

Last week, we received an online find with a Deseret Industries $2 sticker still on it, of a favorite loved book my husband claims to have “cut teeth on.”

Grateful we are, for prayers and help from every side in encouraging our friends gather clothing, camping supplies, pillow, water bottles, extra socks.

At 8 AM, concerned with notice of a non-functional phone and a new suggestion that the boys might want quarters to shower, yours truly grabbed grandchildren birthday dollars, ran to the nearby grocery, familiar stomping grounds from days before, where our boys invited neighbors to purchase camp cards. (Each boy, with donations and camp card sales, helped fund their own way to camp.)

I found our young Newman friend, 30 minutes before the designated meeting time, rubbing eyes in sleep. No breakfast. No lunch packed. No news about lunch or quarters. Younger brother, helpful on all sides, offered ketchup (America’s favorite), tobacco sauce, pickled jalapenos and finally some oranges to add to the apples purchased to acquire his shower quarters. A Ziploc came in handy to house two ends of bread (the last) housed in peanut butter, and a bag of coco-pebbles. What are brothers for? Better still, a donation of three pair of socks and a little light reading found a side pocket before a mad rush for the missing water bottle.

All’s well that ends well!

That was the message from Sunday’s Come Follow Me (I loved a footnote to the Second coming painting) by taught by our Columbia friends’s mom, who helped us look past fearful events to think of final day happenings in terms of preparing for a wedding!

The past three weeks were something like that for us. Oakland is truly out of our mission boundaries. But with friends and neighbors,

our little Corolla jaunted back and forth five times. Grateful, as many of our neighbors do this drive daily, that this commute is rarer in our daily doings.