Joy in June

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. 

However, God is in His Holy Temple. 

We walked sacred ground, 

appreciating friends,

and what they told us: “I could feel Him near.” 

 “When I close my eyes, all I can see is the celestial room!”

“It was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.”

Grateful to connect with friends.  To help one another connect as we look upward.  

(More Newman friends, one related to composer of songs we like. )

Grateful to learn of family and friends celebrating graduations, new work, healing, steps forward, in our pathway to forever. 

Grateful for the miracles trailing faith from you!  

 Happy June!

We love you!

Val and Laurene Starkey