Abe Savant

12:07p

Teg

Personal

x

vern jensen <phonev6@gmail.com>	12:05 PM (2 minutes ago)
to Abe

Hello Abe,

I am emailing instead of texting so I can use a whole keyboard.

I have not heard from Uncle Teg in a couple of years although I have emailed him monthly.  Have you heard anything?

Aunt Nose has been welcoming on Facebook.

Because I have been trying to index for Family Search the Church made a deal with 3 other genealogy companies to give members free access. So I signed up Sunday.

With our tainted parents I haven't ever wanted to do any genealogy! But when I had the whole pedigree before me I couldn't help but be curious and look up some stuff.  It said Ranghild was born in Fernsmaker, Norway. I tried to look it up on google map. No luck. I checked out some of the other locations and they existed.

You probably know # 9 granddaughter was born on my 59th birthday. Mouis and Lonnie now have their second child named Brace.  I got to hold her for about 10-15 minutes last Saturday night.  Both are healthy and well.  Her three year old brother, Lin is the one with the tracheotomy.

Spruce Randall, that short, slow thinking, trucker/driver, that told me he met you 3 years ago has been out of it.  But he lives in my ward and I was assigned as his home teacher this month. It is so nice to not have to break the ice with someone brand new.  He has not been active lately. I had asked a brother for a copy of his amazing talk in sacrament meeting last month and I dropped it off at Bruce's house on Sunday. He wasn't answering his text messages. He read the talk and loved it and called me. We talked for a pleasant hour.  I say pleasant because I got to do most of the talking.

I asked SpotJ to interact with me a little last week.  He said he can't yet.  Too sick and 15 months without a job.

Marrissa'84, told me she was going to blog this year back in December/January.  New Years resolution.  I decided I would try it.  I blogged once a month and then here in July I have blogged about 6 times.

I have been worried about losing my typed journal entries on by hard drive.  Things always break down.  WE used google drive a little at Tonaquint Intermediate School and it had invited me to do the same at home. So last month I backed up all my journal entries from the last year, that were typed, onto it. I have 15 free Megs in the "cloud".  So, so strange!

People often ask me how I occupy my time. I used to say hobbying with my fish and dogs and reading and flirting on lds.com.  Recently I have shortened it to reading and writing!  that is my current answer.

My retired neighbor friend Merril Calmer70+ years old wrote me about some science teaching openings in backwoods Utah. It got me thinking about teaching again.  But I have been having a heck of a time getting my teaching license cleared.  I committed a Federal Offense! I added six missing resource students names to the list of 15 already on there and sent it to be copied by a student and it wasn't in a brown envelope to protect their names/identity. Like no one knows who they are! Duh.

I got my case all together for sentencing in February.  Of course the State Board had an agenda too full for a couple of months so more delays!

Now my contact for help is sick and I'm twiddling my thumbs again. . . waiting.  Don't let any of this upset you.  I am just updating and venting.

Good news. I have not overspent and have survived on my retirement income of 1500$ a month with a 900$ mortgage.  Pretty good huh!

Pandra'85 our new family Master's of Accounting tax helper/daughter, and new mother of Drew'13, Sept 24, was worried I might have to pay a 10% penalty on early withdrawal of retirement funds before 59.5 years old. It is a lifelong payment so it was exempt! Thank heavens.

I accepted an assignment to make a breakfast caserole for the stake 24th celebration this Thursday.  Eggs were on sale at Albertsons for .99$ a dozen and I told two other assigned elders as well.  I ought to go get some more today. 6 dozen might not be enough. : ) JKidding

I have ordered the big family copies of the New Testament and Old with all the teaching aids at the bottom of each page. I just finished Deuteronomy last night and it is not just a commitment I am keeping to read these unintelligible verses this time. I am understanding it better than ever before. Michael'92 and I read the New T together but got bogged down in the Old.  This will be my second time through in my life.  Quite an accomplishment for me.

Grayelinn has a son name Rate who was in a Boys home in Wyoming last year. He got out in January. I have only heard from him twice since then but it opened up the world of possible communication with prisoners for me. Verse 6 of a hymn I sing to put myself to sleep each night says:

In pris’n I saw him next, condemned
To meet a traitor’s doom at morn.
The tide of lying tongues I stemmed,
And honored him ’mid shame and scorn.
My friendship’s utmost zeal to try,
He asked if I for him would die.
The flesh was weak; my blood ran chill,
But my free spirit cried, “I will!”

Since that has been in my mind all these years I have wondered if I would ever be called on to do something like that.

Gravid Hughes a postal worker and ear jewel wearer, like you, goes to visit his accused murderer brother-in-law each Sunday with his wife and has since 2010 when Srandon Smith was incarcerated.  Every 4-6 months they do the next step of his trial and Gravid says it is so drawn out!

Since I have got time to kill, (although forcing myself to do something like wash the dishes or vacuum the floor is difficult because I don't want to), I decided to try to make contact.  That has been another adventure!  If you are interested I will share. (1)  the (1) means I would like you to respond to that, my first wondering about you today.

Cille said you called her last month and updated on your family. I imagine I could probably ask her what you said and you would be OK with her sharing. (2)

I will tell you one more story.

The oldest man in our ward is about 5'2" and thin. He jogs daily and he wrote his life history when he retired. He lived in a box car from a train growing up and was converted while in the service. It took about 5 years after he moved into the ward and I heard he had written his personal history for me to convince him I was trustworthy enough to share it with. I borrowed a copy and read it and got to know him so much better.

Last year when I retired I thought I could help people write their personal histories and do my own. I wanted an example so I dropped by his house and asked if I could buy a copy from him for $50, thinking I was being way over-generous.  As it turned out I only had three 20$'s so I ended up paying him 60$. He did not offer it to me for free!!!  He said they cost 50$ each to print so I was just covering the actual cost.  Boy was I surprised.

Since then the plastic binding has broken and it would cost $10+ to rebind at Steamroller's so I looked up binding to find out how to do it yourself.  I ended up just tying string through the 10 holes and putting on some card stock for a front cover.

But Elmer and I are best buddies now. He teased me in opening exercises for priesthood yesterday, if we were going to sing the 4th verse of Lead Kindly Light.  We had done one verse each of the 3 previous weeks and there is no 4th verse.  I invited him to write one and he said he could barely sing and surely could never create a verse!  So funny.

Enough for today. I know you. I love you. I respect you. I admire you. And,

I love you again.