21 June 2008 – Saturday

I slept for over 6 hours last night – this is only the second time since we returned home. It felt good. I spent the morning working on the lower pond that I started 4 years ago. I decided to just clean it out and put in a simple pump and spitter fountain. It is always gross to clean up the wet, dirty leaves that accumulate each year at the bottom of a pond, but it went faster than I expected.

Once it was cleaned out and the area around it was weeded, I went to Lowe’s to get a fountain. This task was made harder by the fact that once again I left my glasses at home. I truly am blind without them. But with the help of some nice associates, I managed to get what I needed for the pond. I also could not stand not to buy some plants.

Back home I quickly set up the pump and got the frog spitter working. It is nice to hear the sound of water splashing as I sat on the deck. Later one problem did show up – there is a leak somewhere in the liner. Which means I am going to need to either repair or replace it next week.

I planted the plants on the North hill – the heather is especially rich looking and hopefully it will produce the same bright flowers in the years to come. The other heather I have planted do not bloom much but perhaps I need to feed them with an acidic base.

I think what ever I had is finally going away and I am thankful for that. In it’s place it the same raspy throat that I had for months in Indonesia. I guess it did not have anything to do with the pollution. If it continues for more than a week, I will go see the doctor and hopefully get it cleared up.

During and after a delicious dinner of homemade hamburgers, I worked on my lesson for tomorrow. I am having a difficult time figuring out what to teach. I do not think we really have any strong, spiritual traditions in our family. I doubt if fixing tacos for family gatherings, reading novels, etc. would count as the kind of traditions that is being promoted by this talk.But I will continue to study and pray and I am sure something interesting and uplifting will come from this lesson.

It has been a good day. The Lord has blessed me with the strength to work in the yard. The yard itself is a great blessing. I love to just walk along and see all the different plants growing. I am not a great gardener but I am an enthusiastic one. I guess my whole life has been that way – I am not really good at many things but I enjoy doing a wide variety of activities.

19 June 2008 – Thursday

The main event of the day was our meeting with the Rebers to get them familiar with how to pay bills on line. Hopefully it will save them some time and make them more comfortable when they get to Indonesia. They are a great couple and will touch many lives on their mission. What ever the Lord has for them to do they will do well. After our training, they took us to dinner at Sizzlers. We had a good dinner and lots of interesting conversation.

Other than that my day was filled with yard work. Mainly raking leaves from under the spruces. I am amazed at how many leaves are produced by Cline’s tree. It does not seem possible that one tree can produce so many each year.

20 June 2008 – Friday

Slept fairly well but still cough too much. The yard is getting closer to being finished. But each time I think that I am about there, I find another area that needs some attention. Once again I spent much of the morning getting rid of leaves under the spruces. I must not have raked them before we left on our mission. At least in some areas. At least I have plenty of leaves for stopping the vinca from spreading.

In the afternoon we went to see “Get Smart” with the Alexanders. It was so natural that it does not seem possible that we have not done this for over 18 months. “Get Smart” was very funny but “86″ was not as funny as the original. He was too dead pan and just did not quite work. I am afraid it will not do well in theaters – there were no young people at our showing. Just us old folks who use to watch the original on TV.

After the movie we went to Pier 49 for pizza. It was good but expensive – I will not suggest it again. However they have an all you can eat Monday so I think I will give it a try next Monday so I can see if it is still as good as I remember it.

The Alexanders are such good friends. We have been doing things together for almost 20 years and it never gets old. We are blessed to have two such good friends. The Campbells are the same kind of friends but we have not been close to them since we left California. When we do get together it is just like old times but that is about once a year and many years not even that.

18 June 2008 – Wednesday

Today was our 48th anniversary. It was very low key as I was busy working in the yard all morning and Mary worked on genealogy. The first thing I did this morning was to clean out the swamp cooler – some of the water holes were plugged and so the full core was not getting wet. I will check it again tomorrow.

I continue to make headway in cleaning up the North hillside. It will take at least one more morning. I went to Costco and bought a roll of the really good weed block, some geraniums, and a 3 gallon lavender. I am getting into the planting mood but I will not be buying many plants this year unless they are really well priced and I know exactly where I want to put them. I am going to thin some perennials and ground covers to use in areas where some plants died while we were gone. I did filled three planters with geraniums to put on the front railing. It is strange to see so few flowers around the door at this time of the year.

After lunch it was just too hot to work outside so I decided to read under the oaks. Instead I fell asleep. I would very much like to have a full nights sleep – at least 5 to 6 hours.

Once the sun was off the hill, I went back to work there. I also did some more pruning. I think that by this time next week, the yard should be back into shape and if I can get rid of all the piles that I have made, we will be ready to have people over for dinner. Tomorrow is trash pickup so I filled our two and used any empty space in the neighbor’s containers. It does not really make even a dent in the pile but it feels good to see some of it go.

I have to say that Cindy and Bob or someone did do quite a bit of work in the yard because the leaves from last year had been cleaned up and it seems that some areas had been weeded. What did not get done – and I don’t think I asked anyone to do it – was the roses and the clematis were not pruned for two years so they are really wild. I am not sure some of the roses can be cut back far enough to get them under control. But that is no big deal. I can always plant more.

As I sit here I realize that one thing we have not done since we got home was to read the scriptures together. I have a number of good excuses but no good reasons. I do find it hard to sit and think for more than a few minutes – which is why I am behind on this journal – and I often start coughing. For that same reason I have not felt like we could go to the temple or visit the elderly – that seems strange being said by a 70 year old but it is the way it is.

17 June 2008 – Tuesday

Basically it was another yard working day. Lots of weeding and pruning – mainly on the North side of the house. The hill is not fun and once the sun hits it, it is time to quit. The temperatures are getting into the 90’s but the humidity is very low so as long as I stay out of the direct sunlight, it is not bad at all. Very different from Indonesia. Mary has been indexing for a couple of hours a day.

In the evening we went to Red Lobster for our anniversary dinner a day early. The coconut shrimp is as good as I remember but I found that 9 were too many of a good thing. Mary had lobster and shrimp and loved every bite. One of the tails was mushy so our very good waiter got her another one. It is nice to be able to communicate with the waiters and folks at the store. Mary has often mentioned how hard the sales folks in Indonesia tried to understand what those crazy bules were trying to explain to them. Sometimes they understood and sometimes they gave it their best shot – we were often surprised at the results of our ‘discussions’ with them. I am sure they went home and talked about those crazy foreigners that could not speak decent Indonesian.

For some reason we are not able to access our AOL e-mail account – it keeps saying that it is not available at this time. I can not figure out what is wrong but it is annoying. But not as annoying as the cough that continues to plague me. It would be wonderful to have at least one good night’s sleep.

15 June 2008 – Sunday

I actually slept fairly well so it was a shock when the alarm went off at 5:30. We reported to the High Council this morning. Along with another couple who had served at the MTC, a young sister who served in Atlanta, and a young man who served in Honduras. It just shows the power of the stake to have 6 missionaries reporting their missions on the same day. I did not feel comfortable about what I said – how do you report 18 months of amazing experiences in 5 minutes?

I felt good and was sure that the nasty cough was gone. I tried to sleep between our early report and going to the 8th ward to speak but I failed. So instead I decided to write a talk – or perhaps it would be better to say that I decided to write some talking points. I first thought I would try to do “My mission in five minutes,” but that did not work out. So I ended up with “Five Things I Learned on My Mission.”

1. The Lord knows where I needed to serve. I included the thought that we teach young members “I’ll go where you want me to go” but when we get older that many decide that we know better where we should serve than the Lord does.

2.  I really do belong to the Household of God – a Fellow Citizen with the Saints. (Ephesians 2:19) That no matter what branch we went to, we were immediately accepted and felt welcomed.

3.  My Mission was more about learning than about teaching. I learned to have more patience, more faith, and to listen to the Lord. I learned from the leaders and the members on what it means to be faithful in adversity. That you do not need lots of money to be happy.

4.  There are no sacrifices in serving a mission. (Mosiah 2:24)

5.  Missions are like potato chips – one is not enough. Home is a wonderful place to visit between missions.

We arrived at the 8th Ward just in time to hear the Primary choir sing Father’s Day songs. I remembered it was Father’s Day earlier but it had slipped my mind. It seems to have slipped lots of minds.

The two youth talks were very good – brother and sister different in a good way. They had a very good PH choir sing as an interlude. Mary spoke on a number of things and when I looked at the time I could use and still leave the High Councilman adequate time, I cut my talk down to 3 points (1, 4 and 5) but managed to work 2 in by taking 2 minutes more. The talk felt good and hopefully it at least stirred up a couple of those who are still thinking up reasons to stay home.

Just as the last speaker was finishing up, I got a coughing fit and had to rush out. For the next hour or so I fought a losing fight with my cough. I left SS class and then left Sacrament. It was not fun in the least. I ended up listening to Sacrament meeting from the stage and then the foyer. I was afraid of going into the chapel. It was Taylor Barrett’s home coming and he did a great job using stories about members and experiences to get his message across without preaching. He did even better than I did. A mission is such a powerful experience that it is impossible to tell anyone who has not been on one what it is like. I am not sure that you can even explain to someone who went on a mission when they were young what it is like to be a senior couple.

14 June 2008 – Saturday

What started as a questionable day ended up being a very good one. What made it work was a visit by our neighbor Nathan Tanner who had volunteered to help me take my yard debris to the dump. I explained to him that I had not slept last night and thought it would be best if we put it off for a week. He said that although he had some church work to attend to this morning, he and his boys would be happy to clean up for me.

I took him on a tour of the yard and showed him what needed to be removed. While we walked he told me about himself and how his father had created a business to teach his four sons how to work. He want to teach his children the same. He told me about how he got his job at the MTC. I told him how we had pioneered the video feedback area. He surprised me by saying that they are completely re-doing the hardware – cameras, etc. Everything is going digital so it is goodbye to the VHS machines and now the missionaries can review their teaching opportunities any time they want to.

I thought I would go back to sleep, but instead I felt I should get up and work on the yard as long as I could. I ended up getting a lot done and felt good. After resting I went back a couple of times but by 3:00 I was pretty much through for the day.

I feel that the Lord has really blessed us by having the Tanners move in next door. Once we get to know them and their children I think we will become good, close neighbors.

During the day I read the PH lesson for the week about the organization of the Church in 1830. It also is about the calling of the 12 Apostles. I must confess that I have a hard time getting excited about the lessons this year.

13 June 2008 – Friday

Worked in yard and it is starting to show. I gave our slide to our neighbors. Hopefully their children will get more use out of it than our grandchildren have. The day went by in a flash.

The Alexanders could not go out so we went to dinner at Macaroni Grill. We went early so the service was great – lots of hot bread. The only blip was that they were not serving fresh tomatoes so my personalized pasta was not what I would usually order.

My cold continues to dog me so I took three hot baths today because it seems to make me feel better. Unfortunately nothing was going to help tonight and the longest I slept was an hour until I finally fell asleep at about 4:30.

I figure I am continuing to learn patience and faith – two attributes I have been working on for the past 16 months. I have done what I could to get over this illness and I have to just let it run it’s course. Hopefully by Monday I will be feeling fine and can get on with visiting all the people I have not seen since we left.

This is where I spent most of my day – cleaning up this corner of the yard.

12 June 2008 – Thursday

Sometime after 4:30 I fell asleep for almost 3 hours. After breakfast I started on cleaning up the far Southeast corner of the yard. After 3 hours of pruning, weeding, raking, etc. It looks pretty good. What is interesting about this is that it is an area that only myself and the neighbors will really enjoy – Mary and the rest of the family hardly ever go up there. But I love it because it is quiet and cool even when it is really hot.

After lunch I managed a nap before heading out to work some more in the yard. While I was napping they delivered the new washing machine.

Frustration of the day – I put my gloves somewhere but a number of attempts to find them proved useless. I know they are sitting somewhere in plain sight – the problem is I have no idea where. The loss of the gloves limited what I could do for the rest of the day. I already have three wounds from getting too close to my work. Gardening can be dangerous.

As I work on a section it slowly emerges from chaos to a sense of order. In many cases the plants and weeds have grown together – in some cases it appears unchecked for a couple of years. I can well understand why – the yard is not an easy one to work. Especially the North hill and the SE corner. I spent most of the day on the SE corner and have most of it in pretty good shape. Now all I need to do is to get rid of all the debris – I will probably hire a crew to come in take it all away.

As the day goes on I work for shorter and shorter periods until I am just too tired to carry on. The cold and continual cough wipes out my strength in a couple of minutes. I decide the best thing I can do is eat some dinner, take a long, hot bath and try to go to sleep. The first two are easy but it seems too early for the latter.

Note: I stayed awake for about 30 minutes after writing the above before crashing. My body just gave up!

 

View from one of the windows on the loft – about 3 feet from where I am typing this.

11 June 2008 – Wednesday

All day yesterday and even part of today, I was determined that today should be Thursday. I guess I want to get the 6 months that we need to wait to go on our next mission to pass quickly. I am sure it will without me skipping days.

Still have the cold and decided to take it easy today to try and give my body a chance to work on healing. We read from the A&P but only for a short time. I just could not concentrate. I then took a short nap. We continue to clean up some of the piles we have made while unpacking. Also there are things to be moved back into our bathroom. After lunch I did a small amount of work in the yard – every little bit helps. However I was soon tired and decided to be wise and stop.

I just took the three pictures shown above from a window near this computer. I love looking over the sea of green of the scrub oak and see the varied structure of the mountains, the blue sky and a few fluffy white clouds. What a gorgeous area we live in.

How quickly time has slid by today. It is already after 5 and it seems like I just got up. We went to Costco and who should we run into – actually he almost ran over us – but Wade Peterson. He looks as good as ever and it hard to believe that they have been home for over 9 months. It does not sound like they are eager to put in their papers for another mission. They are deeply involved in working in the temple and a singing group that Carolyn has joined. It is a shame because they are just the kind of people that is so needed. We came to buy large trash bags and Kleenex but bought lots more. Oh well we have been away for 18 months and there are a lot of holes in the pantry.

After a lovely dinner of salmon, salad and garlic toast, we went to see the bishop about getting started on applying for our next mission. As soon as he sets up our applications, we can start the process. Hopefully we will have everything done so that when Shauna sees us early in July we can have the last interviews and send them in. It will be exciting to see where the Lord wants us to go.

I forgot to mention that I received an e-mail from Elder Subandriyo about an idea that he has been working on to set up a training program for members to learn how to work in TV and movies. Indonesia has a law going into effect that says no non-Indonesians can work on either after a certain date. He asked me to see if I could find some equipment and perhaps trainers that could come to Indonesia to help with the program. After some checking I talked to David Monson, the head of LDS Audio/Visual, and he sounded very open to the idea but needs a request from higher up the line of authority before he can do anything.

I sent this information to Elder Subandriyo and suggested he get Elder Packer’s approval for the program. I was greatly surprised when at about 10:45 P.M. I got a call from Elder Subandriyo and President Marchant about the program. We shared some ideas and I told him I would be happy to help any way I could.

To me this is another confirmation that the Lord sent us to Indonesia for a very special purpose and this purpose will continue long even now and for a long time to come. This was not an wonderful interlude or temporary assignment but a call to serve that will continue in some way for the rest of our lives. It is good to be needed and to serve – hopefully we can do it in a way that is pleasing to the Lord and helpful to the Saints in Indonesia.

I am writing this at 4:30 a.m. on the 12th. I woke at about 3:15 and can not stop coughing long enough to go back to sleep. I am pleased to say that while I am not thrilled with being sick, it seems to me to be another opportunity for me to learn patience and also to have faith in the Lord.

 
Here are some pictures from around the yard – actually the front part of our yard. The first one is looking North from the South edge of the yard. Notice the small window of blue sky that can be seen through the trees. the second picture shows the small patio area in the Southeast corner of the yard. I landscaped much of this area the summer before we left on our mission and was surprised at how much it had matured in less than 2 years. The last picture is the lower part of the front of our house. The water feature that I had to clean out is just under the window that can be seen.

10 June 2008 – Tuesday

Another terrible night – I will be glad when the cold is gone and I can sleep again. Mary woke not feeling well – she accused me of giving her my cold. I must plead guilty to the charge.

Jim’s family dropped by for about an hour to say goodbye on their way to Bob’s and then the airport for their flight home. It was of course sad to give them last hugs and send them on their way. We should see them sometime in August when we go to Chicago.

I spent almost all day working on the yard. I started with the water feature by the front door and worked my way out. Cleaning out 2 years of muck from the pond was not a lot of fun but it gave me a chance to redo the rocks and give it a better look. The small one at the back of the house was much easier to clean – at least once I got the tube unplugged. I was careful not to exhaust myself so there were plenty of rest stops throughout the day and even a nap later. I did a lot of trimming, some weeding, and some moving pots around.

When I was in the resting mode, I sat in different parts of the yard and enjoyed the view. As I sat there I realized that after my children and grandchildren, what I most wanted to get back to was my garden. I think it is going to take about 3 weeks to get it under control and I am not going to do much planting – at least not large plants. So almost all of it will be cleaning up and weeding.

I should mention that is was quite cold today. Even when it was warm in the sun, if I got into the shade, it immediately cooled off.

We got e-mail from Hendra, the Gibbons, Elder Subandriyo, and sister Hinckley over the last couple of days. Hendra says that they have improved the internet but I will believe when the Rebers tell me it is true. Elder Subandriyo asked me to follow up on a couple of programs. Sister Hinckley answered an e-mail I sent her and says that she will see us in July. The Gibbons were looking for the May report – Mary later sent it to them.

We watched NCIS and Without a Trace tonight. It did not take us long to get back into the habit of watching our favorite TV series. We occasionally watched WaT on our mission, but not regularly. Mary barely made it through WaT – she kept falling asleep and watched the last 5 minutes with her eyes half open. Unfortunately I am still coughing so much that I doubt if I will sleep well tonight.

My tender mercies for the day included being able to work for many hours. Also calling a sprinkler repair person who could immediately come over because another customer had cancelled. He cleaned the rocks out of the pipe and turned on the water so I could water the whole yard. It really needed it. There are a couple of problems and I am hoping that Bob can help get them worked out if he comes on Saturday. The greatest blessing of the day was to hold our granddaughters and see them smile.