3:40pTuesday,
1/20/15 Hey Brandon,@I went through all kinds of contortions to
experiment and send you a couple of postcards last week. One of them
was hand written and the other was typed. I got 1K words on the
handwritten and 4.5K words on the typed one. I had 3 letters returned
in December and I sent you a portion of one of those. @You said your
eyes were good and I picked a font that was complete even at 4 point
size. One of the printers at the FHC wasn't smooth so I had to pick
the other one to print it. I kept a copy for myself so I could
remember what I had included. A child and I took turns counting words
on a page in the book of mormon and kept getting in the 650's. My
cell phone only allows 160 characters on a page and can send up to
five pages at a time. This post card is alrea*dy at 800 characters so
that is as much as my cell phone can do at a time.@ Since I couldn't
type your letters I decided to start typing some to my son. Since I
haven't heard from you so there is nothing for me to respond to, and
I don't want to type stuff over again when I have already told the
story once I will just include my letters to him to keep you up to
date and entertained. We hardly dare be totally honest with people.
If you didn't want me to go to the effort of writing and sharing with
you because you found it boring, you would never dare tell me! It is
just to hard to be that totally honest, huh!@ I
can't tell you how much social fun I have had in the past weeks and
month. I have had a total blast. And when we feel those wonderful
rewarding feelings of having done something helpful and that HF is
happy with, no amount of car delays and frustrations can take the
specialness out of our evening prayers at night when we conclude our
day. It might sound funny but at 12:15am I started to pray Saturday
night and at 12:45 I checked the clock again because I had just
finished reliving my day in my prayer. And it was joyful. Same thing
happened again Sunday night after some sticking -out -my -neck
experiences.@ Where to start? @
One
of my HT family members, Bonnie Carter, texted back that she was sick
Sunday, after I offered to come home teaching in a text. As I sat
here writing my son Michael a letter it kept bugging me that all I
had responded was “K”. I learned that from my oldest son. A one
letter response which I love. But in this case my conscience was
bugging me. I am supposed to be a caring home teacher and when I find
out a family member is sick I just respond, K? Not very caring if you
ask me. @ But what should I say? I sat back on my bed and pulled up
my text message screen not quite knowing what to say but I started. I
talked about how in the same way she was nourishing and taking good
care of her body so she could feel better, we also need to nourish
and care for our soul, our spirit. She had been working the previous
Sunday and sick this one. I encouraged her to do a conference talk on
TV or something like my last Home teaching visit. I couldn't quite
fit my last sentence in my 800 characters so I decided to delete the
words. I started to delete my carefully, painfully worded text to a
married sister, something way out of my comfort zone, and it erased
the whole thing! @ I couldn't believe it was gone. I tried stuff to
bring it back but no luck. I have a slide out keyboard on my phone so
I slid it in and set it upside down on my chest in frustration and
practicing patience. What should I do now? Should I call and leave a
vmail instead? What if she answers? Can I say it to her face, to her
directly? I doubt it.@ I called and she finally picked up. Darn! @ I
did my best to explain and she said, you are awesome! That was not
what I was expecting.-V She said it again, and I didn't know how to
respond and so I said, So you can related to what I am saying? She
said, This is exactly what I needed. Vern was in shock. I am not
very good at accepting compliments nor continuing normal conversation
after getting and unexpected compliment! So I said, OK, thanks, Good
bye. Click @ Relief, I didn't have to face it anymore. You can't
quite do that when you are in person but on the phone, there is a
safety space there. : )@
Later that night I was on Facebook and Bonnie Carter had posted an
awesome Conference Talk on Friday. She was already concerned about
spiritual nourishment and she was feeding/feasting. So I needed to
find some way to make that comment in a secular world. This is what I
wrote her.
lds.org
V-What?
This is like a good spiritual vitamin! You have been nourishing the
spirit haven't you! Sunday 10:15p
/She
liked it. : ) @ So perhaps you can get a sense of how special
Saturday and Sunday were for me this week. It is like if you reach
out to bless someone else's life, three fingers are still pointing at
you and you feel 3 times as good as they do! So fun. @ There is one
part I left off. How did I get the evidence bag back from Tami
Salmon? That is where the Welches Carmel Apple soda was.@ Well while
I was flying high after visiting Shannon and dropping off the
peppers and collecting her tears,( just kidding about the tears.
Those tears of joy for being appreciated for something sacrificed and
well done.) I rode my bike to Salmon's house so I could
share the rest of the story. She
returned the evidence bag. I showed her what the bottles looked like
and she asked, So you still really don't know do you? I responded, of
course I know. You don't get tears in your eyes if you haven't
sacrificed and served! But Tami is right the Jensen's have not
admitted anything!! And I so want to ask them how they kept my dog
Lily who was often resting on the front porch, from making a fuss.
She even barked at me last night when I snuck out through the garage
to see how long Izy was going to bark at her echo!! 30 minutes, what
a pain. : (
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