Remembering Courage

 

Dear Family and Dear Friends,                                                                    29 May 2024

May invites us to remember beautiful people in our lives.  Sometimes it is with flowers.  

Other times with cotton balls that remind us of a family game of earlier days when a jar would be filled with cotton balls each time someone would answer to a duty or request: “I would love to!”  Volunteering requires courage.  Sometimes saying NO also requires backbone and strength, and commitment to a greater YES.  We are learning that it helps to define such.

The end of a school year symbolizes wrapping things up (a favorite thing!)

In early May, we celebrated a grandson graduating from Arizona State.  The speaker in his college of Business spoke of J. F. Kennedy's grandfather in Ireland throwing his hat over a wall to express determination.  

Val and I are wondering which hat we will throw over which wall as we come to an end of a year and our service in the Bountiful temple. 

 

Wonderful friends.  Beloved experiences.  Val is hoping to devote time to spending with a 94-year-old mother researching and performing vicarious ordinances for loved ones passed on. 

Laurene has begun calling a nearly ninety-year-old uncle, realizing that links to generations before are fragile, to be guarded with care. 

Invitations to watch Shakespeare snippets, choir and band concerts, and assist a grandson to work to earn funds for participation in a national Science Olympiad event invite us to celebrate talents in the arts and music, and the blessing of side-by-side labor. 

It is during these cherished moments that we learn to know one another and share the benefit of a job well done along with what we can share with one another as we translate our lives and work to help make things doable and more possible for our younger friends. 

One of those such moments came a few days after missing a neighborhood gathering to make dolls for children in hospitals in Africa.  I had marked the wrong day for this event on the calendar and instead watched a delightful Bothell Christian school choir concert.  One of the helpers invited me to stuff dolls at her kitchen table, while we caught up on family happenings and enriched our friendship:  a true embodiment of the words “joyfully repent!”

On Memorial Day weekend, we were blessed to connect with our Denver Duo, to hear of new work improving processes and working to eliminate waste. 

 We are inching closer to richly appreciate the message of Malachi, inviting hearts of children to turn to parents and parents to children.  “Isn’t that what we came to earth for?”  to quote a son bursting with emotion on the birth of his first child.    

In a few days, three grandchildren from Georgia arrive.  “MAKE ROOM” is the message that dons my brother’s in-laws window in December and January.  

“Make Room for Ducklings” is a title of a once loved children’s book.  Ducklings we love.

And there is ever and always room!  We are very blessed to have connection with and learn with and from our next generation leaders. Remembering our past and our future, we are saying "May the Fourth be with you." The Fourth, coming up in just over a month, commemorating seeds of liberty, 

along with the Force of Goodness which lights our hearts, from the Father of Lights.  Thank you, for choosing to be a light in our lives!  Sincerely, Laurene and Val