#89 YV'S ON THE MOVE (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

The news is out, of course, that our YVs have gone off to Europe to ride out the uncertain days that have come upon the people of Turkey. To some, the move seems a bit late because, in their view, events have now calmed down. But the Missionary Department is rarely wrong in its collective judgment and, I suspect, the temporary transfer will bear fruit in an interesting, unforeseen way. I notice on the Berlin blog that one of our YVs is paired with a YV who hails from Turkey. Hmmmm. Several million Turks reside in Germany.

After the zone conference and after the goodbyes last week, we senior couples who are assigned to Turkey sat down with the MP and Sister MP for a discussion about how we can best help keep the YVs’ investigators toasty and how to reach out the warm hand of fellowship to members (in our case, it is Turkish-speaking investigators and members). In the end, the MP said that he wants us engaged in regular outreach to these people. Now I wish that I could speak some real Turkish, not just an array of greetings and simple expressions. Among other things, this will mean that Grandma and I get on buses three times per month to go to visit members in distant places. We may as well start when the weather is hot so that we know how to reach those places when the weather is stormy and cold.

While in Istanbul last week, we took an excursion with the two senior couples who serve there. We first went to lunch in a Mexican place owned and operated by Turks. Then, with the help of one SV's map app, we hopped on a bus and rode down to the shore of the Bosphorus to go for an hour's ride on the water, going from one side of this wide waterway to the other, and back. Then things got interesting. Our friend with the app looked up a castle that we wanted to visit. He said that his map showed two stops on the bus and a small hike up the hill. We went two stops, jaywalked across the busy street, and headed up a narrow street to what was to be the castle. Well, a long way up the hill, we all decided that we had gone too far. So he stopped three teen-age girls and asked about the castle. One spoke passable English and she said that we had not gone far enough on the bus. We needed to go two more stops and then walk and finally go into the castle grounds. Down the hill we loped, crossed the busy street again, went to what we thought was the bus stop (this one was not marked), and waited. And waited. Perhaps a half hour later, a packed bus came along and stopped a hundred yards from where we were standing. Hustle, hustle. I have not run like that in a very long time. Two more stops, then off, and back across the street. Walk, walk, walk along a narrow sidewalk. Finally we came around a bend and there stood the gate, looming above us. Locked. It was Wednesday and the castle is closed on Wednesdays. All the luck. So we stopped in a nearby restaurant for a potty stop, bought a few water bottles, and headed for the next bus stop. After seven stops on another packed bus, our treats for ourselves were waffles covered in a sweet glaze and topped with fruits. By the time we got back to the MP's villa, traveling by bus once again, we were worn out. But it was an adventure, with no ill after effects, I am happy to say.

The news is also out that Marinn won the pageant "Miss Uintah Basin." What an honor! And what a night for her! Our warm congratulations to you from all of us who could not be there to witness your triumphant evening. It is wonderful that you have now won twice and, on lesser nights, kept the pressure on the one who did win.

The absence of our YVs, I am sure, had a measurable impact on our ability to include people by Skype in a normal way for our sacrament meeting this morning. For help, I asked our most skilled YV to write out instructions about how to make our devices into helpful instruments for Skyping. He wrote them and I was satisfied. But when push came to, well, shove this morning, I had questions galore. For the life of me, I could not get my iPhone to work as a microphone, as he and his companion had done. I went through each step as he outlined. But it did not work out the same. Drat. Double drat. Then we had Grandma’s iPad in hand as a backup. She could not get it to function properly, using the wifi from the hotel. And I am sure that we were connected to one sister on her mobile phone with only audio. She could not see us. Etc., etc. Obviously, we need to get better at this process. Or something.

When all was said and done, we were sixteen in our services, eight in the hotel room and eight on Skype. Fortunately, two of our young single adults, who are biological sisters, can help with translation into Turkish. And they did. I feel bad that we have no way to keep the Farsi speakers on a plane of understanding. They join us by Skype, speak only a little Turkish, and even less English. So the whole service, I am sure, comes at them like an impenetrable wall. But they faithfully join us each week by Skype. We shall see them in a few days and hold a sacrament meeting with them, allowing a couple of brothers who hold the priesthood to bless and pass the sacrament. I shall like that.

I love you and pray for you all.

Grandpa Brown

#88 "Kazakhstan" (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

Happy Pioneer Day!

Kazakhstan. The name evokes images of the Silk Road and fine horses and falconry at its best. The capital city, Astana, also has a superb bike team that was entered in the past several editions of the Tour de France. We did not go to Astana where the wind blows like in Kansas. We went to Almaty, the biggest city in the country (about 1.8 million inhabitants) and former capital city. It now serves as the financial headquarters of the country. And it sits near a high range of mountains.

We flew overnight from Istanbul to Almaty. Not much of a night. Less than five hours on the flight. I took half a sleeping pill when we boarded and, for the first couple of hours, felt pretty groggy. I just couldn’t go to sleep. Usually I do. After the dinner came, I dropped off to sleep for more than an hour. The pill helped. We arrived about five o’clock in the morning, about two a.m. our bodies’ time. The airport is not very big for one that receives a lot of international travelers. Once inside the terminal, we were scrunched into the first arrival hall where a bank of passport control booths sat. International passengers, including some who had arrived on a flight just before ours, all queued up in one massive line. And the agent helping those in that line seemed to be taking his own sweet time. Slow, slow, slow. We stood in that line for twenty minutes and moved hardly at all. After the lines for residents cleared out, and agents began accepting international travelers, we jumped lines and were out the door in fewer than ten minutes. The light was just coming to the countryside when we stepped into our taxi cab for a quiet drive into the city. We showed the fellow the name of our hotel, he nodded, and we drove away from the terminal.

The first thing I noticed was the greenery. The road was banked with tall trees. Bushes and flowers were everywhere. The lawns were not particularly well kept, but there was a lot of green. It is apparent that the place receives a lot of moisture. Then I noticed the mountains in the distance — to the south and east. The peaks still have a lot of snow on them. Later I was told by one of the senior volunteers that the border between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan runs along the tops of the southern mountains. When we reached our hotel, as the driver informed us, we climbed out of the taxi, paid the driver, allowed the bell boy to take our small bags, walked up the steps, and stepped into the hotel lobby. The entry looked suspect for a nice hotel. At the reception desk, the young woman told us that we were in the wrong hotel. Oops. By then, the taxi had disappeared, having successfully dropped its load. Then the young woman told us that the real hotel was close. Six minutes later, we walked inside the true hotel. Because the hotel room had been booked for the night before, we went immediately to our room, off-loaded some of our items, went to a very nice breakfast at seven o’clock, and then returned to our room where we slept until about one o’clock in the afternoon. It was good to catch up on a little sleep, I must say.

Both that afternoon and the next morning we were treated to some of the highlights of the city by the two senior couples who are assigned to Almaty, including an old Russian Orthodox cathedral which is still functioning. One couple is from Australia and the other is from Ephraim, Utah. Dinner together the first night was in a large, native restaurant which had hardly anyone in it. We ordered the customary dishes for the country, one with rice and one with noodles. The total cost for the six of us, with large drinks, was about $12 total. Not bad.

The flight back was the worst. We awoke at four o’clock and the flight left at 6:45 a.m. I didn’t sleep a wink, but I didn’t take a pill either. This is one flight when I should have taken my noise-cancelling Bose headphones. I didn’t. A small girl was a few rows behind us with her mother. She really had a set of lungs. Her cries were something to die for, or to die from. My goodness! Even if I had been sleeping, she would have cured me of any touch of sleepiness.

We were sixteen in our Sacrament Meeting today, eight came to the hotel room and eight joined us by Skype. By happy fortune, a young woman who was baptized last year has joined us again after the ending of the school year (she has been in college a long distance from here). We were grateful to welcome her back among us. In fact, she and we were together as a threesome for our first Sacrament Meeting in the hotel a year ago.

I love you and pray for each of you every day.

Grandpa Brown

#87 July 17 (By Grandma)

So many things happen in a week.  Of course the biggest event was the marriage of Parker and Lindsey.  I hope that everything went well.  And Julianne and Jason flew to South Africa to meet Tanner.  They post on FB lots of exciting things…..for them.  I wouldn’t like many of them.  Just watching the video clips of their zip-lining makes my stomach churn.  Soon they will be back home.  I’m sure their family has missed them. 

Shoshauna reports that her family loves picking up the squishy apricots in the yard.  It has always been a favorite activity for our family for years.

Actually our apricot trees are pedigreed.  They came from a pit from my parent’s back yard.  Who would have known they would have spread so much joy and happiness?  The apricot trees provided a lot of shade in my backyard in SLC.  They also provide a lot of shade in Orem, but the down factor is the messy cleanup each year.  Kent always prays that the buds will freeze in the spring.  They almost never do.  So much for his praying prowess.

We were able to go on a little outing for our P-Day.  There are many, many places to visit in Turkey.  We went to a town called Çeşme.  It is along the Aegean Sea.  I figured out how to get there by looking at maps, and ferries, and buses.  I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to get there.  We began by taking a ferry, across the bay, then we took another ferry back across the bay in a zig zag fashion.  So we were now south of our home.  We thought there might be a bus pick-up for Çeşme at the ferry landing, but there was not.  So we asked someone how to get to Çeşme.  A man told us to get on a certain bus, and he got on also.  We rode in that bus for awhile, and then the man told us to get off and pointed in a direction and told us to catch “that” bus.  So we hopped off and got on a bus that said Çeşme.  That bus took us directly to Çeşme.  It took about 3 hours to reach our destination… a bus station, who knows where.  We asked how to get back to Izmir and were told there were returning buses in a few hours.  We asked how we could get a bus into town, and they said it was a five minute walk.  We were there! 

We walked into town, and it was a very nice sea port, with cruise ships in the bay.  We toured a castle from the 15^th century, had lunch, and asked how we could get to Greece, which we could see in the distance.  You can evidently take day-tours to Greece. 

In a couple of hours we walked back to the bus station, and caught a bus back to Izmir.  This time we got off the bus at a bus stop we recognized and caught a bus to our neighborhood.  (We hadn’t needed to take the zig zag ferry at all.) 

It was a nice outing, but it was very hot.  I guess we’ll be hot for at least two more months.

We couldn’t help but think about Nice while we were in the coastal town.  How sad it would be for such an area to be devastated by violence.

And our own situation here is not without violence.  We’ve received 4 State Department emails in the last few days with warnings.  Most of the activity has been in distant cities, but all of the population feels saddened and worried.  Our streets have been virtually empty since Saturday morning.  Many stores are closed.  It is hard to assess the situation because there are so many sides to the story.  We rely on CNN and BBC mainly for news.  We don’t know what the Turkish press is saying. Many opinions.

We did hold church today.  Dad was the one to make the final decision.  The YVs came by taxi because they are still in lock-down.  Ankara Branch met in homes, and we think Istanbul cancelled their meetings. 

BTW lock-down isn’t fun.  I go stir-crazy.  But, of course we know it is for our best interests.  If you can’t do something you want to do it.  It is like fasting.  As soon as you start fasting, you are thirsty or hungry.  As soon as we were locked-down, I could think of all the reasons I wanted to go outside.  Never-mind it is 150 degrees outside.  Luckily we have had adequate food rations in the apartment.  A few months ago the MP told all the YVs to have a two-week supply.  I have been gradually trying to get that.  It is hard, because if we have company for meals, the food disappears quickly.  And you can’t stock up on canned goods.  Most stuff is fresh.  I had planned to do our shopping on Saturday, so we were low on rations. 

And if worse came to worse, we could leave our apartment to get food.  Dad had to go out and buy bread for the sacrament.

We’ll go to Kazakhstan this week.  It is an over-night flight.  We should enjoy that a lot!  Love trying to sleep on planes.  Hopefully we’ll have a good trip and something interesting to write about next Sunday.

In the meantime look it up.  We will be going to Almaty.  Evidently it is 30 minutes from the Chinese border.

Thank you all for your photos, emails, and messages.

I love you,

Mother

#86 "Koo" (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

For me personally, Parker’s wedding and Tanner’s release stand taller than the troubles that we have seen here in the past two days. To be sure, a coup (I shall spell it koo hereafter) impacts the lives of millions of people, as it did here during a span of sixteen hours or so. (I keep thinking that some communiqués are being monitored.) The quiet, empty streets around here bear silent witness to a level of fear and worry that seems to be tugging at citizens. More than 160 dead, evidently not counting those involved in the koo who lost their lives, and thousands of arrests bespeaks a major upheaval. It will be interesting to see whether, in the aftermath, we witness a spirit of restraint resting on law or a full-scale purge. Enough on this topic except to say that I awoke to the news Saturday morning and decided to skip my planned bike ride. I also faced a large group of email inquiries about our safety and well-being. We are fine and in a state of lock-down in accord with a request from church security. It’s a good thing that we have some food in our storage.

Now to Parker. When we received photos of him and his new bride, Lindsey, we were happy, happy for them. A huge congratulations to them! Naturally, we wished could have been there to celebrate the day with them. I won’t lie. But we are in the right place. And so are they. If we had been in southern California, perhaps we could have made some arrangement to join them. But hey! This is a very interesting place to be in. Very. We know that the two of them will become people whom the Heavens can count on and call on when needed.

And Tanner? Who would have known that a little squirt from Lehi could have a big impact on his mission and fellow missionaries, not counting the investigators whom he led to the waters of baptism? I sensed a few wobbles during his time in South Africa. And his mother was the reason that most of those wobbles disappeared. But he emerged from the experience a better person, and a man. I can hardly wait to see what direction he wants to take his life. Unlike Parker, he doesn’t have a pretty girl waiting for him (I think).

We welcomed two new YVs to our city the past week, bringing the total to four. One is a veteran from Istanbul and the other is a greenie from Twin Falls, Idaho. The two who were here are still with us. They have now split up to become companions with the other two. It will be interesting to see how they divide the city for their work. They work with a number of restrictions that grow out of past attacks in the country, including not traveling on public transportation — buses and metro trains — during peak hours when they could meet and talk with a lot of people. Another element has to do with the religious character of the country, which we all want to respect.

We were ten in our one church service in the hotel today, a Sacrament Meeting. We did not hold our regular Sunday School class because we did not want to be long in the neighborhood. We counted it a blessing because members elsewhere in the country were not meeting in their regular buildings. The YVs traveled to us in a taxi. No public transportation allowed until they receive an "all clear" signal. Thirteen others joined by Skype, eight from one home and five from another home. Importantly, three were investigators. One was in the hotel room with us for the second week in a row. The other two are now meeting by Skype with YVs in Ankara, one of whom speaks Farsi. I keep thinking that one or more of these people will join the Church, an event that I shall relish.

We took a day and went to a town called Çeşme. It lies about an hour and a half west of us, just across the strait from the Greek island of Chios. I imagined a flatish town with a nice beach down the street from the main  part of the city. Instead, it is a place surrounded by hills with a big castle-fort along one side of a bay. We went into the castle because we each have an antiquities pass and the entry was free, and then climbed a lot of stairs to get up to rooms and tops of walls. We sat under an awning of a restaurant next to the sea and ate lunch. It was nice, but pretty hot. The walk back to the bus station was really hot because we were no longer sitting. We even bought an ice cream to cool us down a little. We had scheduled ourselves to leave on a bus at 5:45 p.m., but we were back at the bus station by 3:30. So we took an earlier bus. It's not much of a story, but we introduced ourselves to a town where we might take a ferry sometime to Greece for a day, if we can get permission, of course.

I love you and pray for each of you every day.

Grandpa Brown

#85 "Camelot" (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

Although this notice has been a week in coming, I want to offer a big shout-out to Nashelle for the successful run of Camelot in Vernal. Talk about working your heart out for weeks in rehearsals and then directing the show for another couple of weeks! It has been non stop action both inside and outside of the Jackson apartment for what seems to be an eternity. Although the crowds were not overwhelming, those who came went away with a wonderful appreciation of what this musical can give to its audiences. As you may know, this is only the first baby step in Nashelle’s planned run in the town. She now has the keys of ownership to the theater in downtown Vernal where she intends to mount a long series of plays and musicals during the foreseeable future. I am sure that she would love the kind of success that the Shakespearean run of plays have enjoyed in Cedar City. Or something like unto it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One step at a time. In my mind, she has now taken that first giant baby step.

The dropoff is huge from being engaged with Young Single Adults one week to fighting ants the next. But that is what we have done. Ant struggles. Grandma innocently set an emptied container of yoghurt in a corner of the kitchen floor with the intent of throwing it away. Soon. Very soon. Well, it sat there for a few days. When she went to toss it three days ago, the container was full of ants. So she put a little water in the container and set it in the microwave oven. A few minutes later, nothing was alive in the container. But we had a big problem with the ants on the floor and under one of the cupboards. Two cans of bug spray and a big, frightened cockroach later which climbed up my back in its attempt to escape, we seem to be surmounting the little varmints. But it has not been easy. We have occasionally found a few of them in distant rooms in the house. It seems that they liked the first offering of food and are now looking for the next delicious dish. We are carefully cleaning the floor in the kitchen daily and spraying at night before going to bed. The fact that these little varmints have ascended this far in our apartment building means that they are very good climbers. Perhaps better than the Tour de France climbers. But I digress.

A year ago, we arrived in the country at the end of Ramadan, or Ramazan, as it is called around here. But because the three-day Bayram festival fell during a weekend, beginning on a Friday evening and ending on a Monday, we saw hardly any evidence of the holiday. But hey! We were just new in town, moving into our apartment the day that Bayram ended. So we saw almost nothing of its presence. But this year, everything was different. Bayram began on a Tuesday evening and ran through Friday evening, essentially taking the week with it. So everything around here closed up on Tuesday in anticipation of the holiday. Since then, we have seen almost no shops open on the streets, almost no one walking around, and almost no noise, except for the ravens and seagulls and dogs in the early mornings. All of the cars that usually park in the neighborhood have been gone. They just disappeared. We assume that people either went to the seashore or into the high country to get away from the heat and humidity. Where did we go? Why ask? Not far, is the answer. It was a quiet week, except for the ants.

Almost nothing can be bigger than Parker's marriage in a couple of days. He and Lindsey look to be a perfectly happy couple. We all wish them the best and brightest future that anyone can imagine and hope for. They have a lot of peaks and valleys ahead of them. But they are well grounded and will go forward in faith and determination. I have begun to pray earnestly for them and their future together. I have every expectation that they and their children will become a very important part of our growing family, just as Nashelle and Daniel and Hannalyn are. Of course, we would love to be on site for the celebration. But we are where we need to be and should be. I have that assurance, from the beginning of this venture. And I know that Parker and Lindsey know that they are in the right place with the right person.

We were 18 in our Sacrament Meeting today, ten in the hotel room and eight by Skype. Four were non-members at the hotel where we met. Two other non-members joined on Skype with member friends. Sadly, neither of my good counselors was there. One was hosting important guests and the other was dealing with a work overage. For only a third time we included a talk by one of the persons who was on Skype. She did a wonderful job of talking about prayer. Because my one counselor who was scheduled to speak could not be present, I stepped into the breach and talked about what Jesus prayed for on the top of the mountain before calling the Twelve (Luke 6:12). He obviously prayed for and about the Twelve whom he chose from "his disciples" (6:13). I also suggested that he prayed for those who sought "what they might do to [him]" (6:11). After all, in the following sermon he instructs his followers to "pray for them which despitefully use you" (6:28). He is the example and would not ask us to do something that he would not do himself. Right? The YVs worked their usually skilled electronic wizardry.

I love you and pray for you each day.

Grandpa Brown

#84 YSA! YSA! (By Grandpa)

Dear Grandchildren,

For months we have held onto plans for a Young Single Adult conference in a town about an hour and a quarter’s drive from here. We weathered attacks in Istanbul and Ankara in the sense that no one above us pulled the plug on our plans when troubles erupted in those cities. Security, of course, is a huge worry. And tourists and tourist areas have become targets in Turkey (they have been targets, for example, in Egypt for a very long time). One of our plans was to take the participants to Ephesus, a place where large groups of tourists have gathered in past years. So we were almost giddy in the last couple of days before the conference was to start, which was this past Wednesday, that no serious trouble had erupted. Then, a little after ten o’clock Tuesday evening, Grandma walked into our bedroom and said she had received a breaking news bulletin that an attack had occurred at the Istanbul airport, with "injuries." My hear sank. It would sink a lot further in coming hours, especially after I heard the numbers who perished.

We went to bed not knowing that the phones of the MP and his wife began to blow up from as far away as Kazakhstan. "What does this attack mean for the conference?" "Is the conference still on?" "Our flight has been cancelled; what are we to do?" "My family feels that this attack is a little close to home because I have to travel through that airport. I am cancelling." And so on, and so forth. When I woke up at 5:30, I saw that I had received two texts in the middle of the night. One was from our agent just before 1:00 a.m. who wondered whether we would cancel the conference. The other was from the MP’s wife just before 3:00 a.m. saying that we would have to redo a lot of our airfares because of the troubles at the Istanbul airport. She did not hint that we were to cancel.

I finally got into the fray just before 6:00 Wednesday morning by sending some text messages to key organizers of the conference. The responses were almost immediate. It was clear that these people had not been sleeping much through the night as they watched developments and heard from worried participants. Notably, the area presidency did not force us to cancel. But the MP thought we would surely have to. Even though most of the flights to our fair city were coming from the domestic terminal in the Istanbul airport, not the international side where the attacks occurred, the whole Brussels airport had been closed for ten days after the attack there due to the needs to investigate thoroughly and to set up airline counters and corridors to move passengers into the correct areas. On that model, that might mean the whole Istanbul facility would be closed for at least a week. But surprise of surprises, the airport was closed for only a few hours and was opened for business as quickly as possible. That particular airport is a monster and an enormous number of flights go in an out during a single day. As an example of the short duration of the closure, people coming from Astana and Almaty in Kazakhstan were put on flights that left six hours after those that were cancelled.

Before the conference, we had set up two bus transfers from our airport to the city where our hotel was. A neat package. But because of cancelled and delayed flights, as well as rebooked flights, we did not know when many of our people would be arriving. So the need for two transfers mushroomed to four. And then we were not certain whether we had all the bases covered. All through Wednesday, our organizers called and texted and emailed, trying to nail down the arrivals. I made the airport run, in a bus, twice. The first wave of six came on time from Ankara. But then it was a crap shoot. The first of the Kazakhstan groups arrived about when we thought they would, but in the international terminal even though the last leg of their journey was a domestic flight from Istanbul to our airport. Go figure. By ten o’clock, gratefully, all were in the hotel whom we expected to be there. Those who arrived late missed dinner, which was closed at 9:00 p.m. But that was small potatoes compared to the worrying and shifting that had gone on all day long. The conference organizers went to bed and really slept for the first time in almost 40 hours.

At the end, we welcomed thirty-five fine young people, all of whom are among the bastions of the Church in their respective, far-flung areas. Among themselves, they found ways to penetrate the seeming obstacles posed by differing languages and cultures — Turkish, Russian, Kazakh, African, English. I judge the conference to have been a rousing success, from the classes, to the visit of Ephesus, to the free time at the beach on the Aegean Sea. All those pieces contributed. And helped to make the event Christ-centered in a nourishing way.

During our YSA conference, I was knocked off stride twice. Both on the same day, the day that I spoke about my experiences with the Bible Videos project. Friday evening, the MP asked if I would consider being the last speaker on Saturday afternoon. I said sure. That was the last I heard and thought that it was the way events would go. So Saturday morning I was dressed in my comfortable clothes and noticed that others who were supposed to be giving an afternoon presentation were dressed up in Sunday best. Woops. Then the MP said that he was surprised that I was in those duds. Then Grandma said that I was giving my presentation that morning. Woops twice. So I bolted upstairs to our room and changed into my white shirt and tie.

When I began my presentation at 10:45, only fifteen minutes late, I was told that I had until almost 12:30 when lunch would be served. Ok, says I. So I am breezing along, expecting that I have 45 minutes left, and one of the organizers gives me the sign that I have 10 minutes. Whaaat? I thought. So I skipped a lot of my presentation, which was tied to a power point, and headed for the barn, winding up within ten minutes. Whew. I finished just before noon. At that point, I was told by the spouse of the person who gave me the ten-minute signal that they got it mixed up and I really had until 12:30. But I had shut off my slides and borne my testimony. By then, the YSAs knew that they were free and were already making motions as if they were loosed. So I just lived with the snafu. No one will know the difference, except me. And I am not bitter in the least. Why should I? I was just happy as a deep-in-the-sand clam that everything was working, including the power point.

As reported by my first counselor, our numbers were twenty-one in our fast and testimony meeting today, twelve in the hotel room and nine who joined by Skype. He counted five who bore testimonies. At least four of us were not present, our two YSAs and Grandma and I. With the four of us, we would have been twenty-five, one of our high numbers for attendance.

I love you and pray for each you.

Grandpa Brown