Hubble Telescope Photographs

When we first arrived at the Joseph Smith Memorial there was a beautiful display of photographs taken from the Hubble Telescope. The collection was called Heavenly Majesty. The pictures are truly spectacular!

They were taken down before Christmas but we were reminded of them recently because Elder Charchenko and Elder Starley have been building a large wooden box to ship them in. We took photographs and thought you might enjoy seeing some of them,
There was a scripture by each picture. We have included some of them. You can click on a picture to see them larger, and you can use the arrow key to move back and forth. Use Esc to go back. ENJOY!

Moses 1:4 And, behold, thou art my son; wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease.

Abraham 3:11-12 Thus I, Abraham, talked with the Lord, face to face, as one man talketh with another; and he told me of the works which his hands had made...
And he put his hand upon mine eyes, and I saw those things which his hands had made, which things were many; and they multiplied before mine eyes, and I could not see the end thereof.

Moses 1:38-39 And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.

For behold, this is my work and my glory-to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Moses 7:30 And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations...
If we had it to do over we would have chosen large size pictures instead of small ones. If anyone is interested in seeing these at a higher resolution let me know and we will send them to you.

A gentleman saw them when we were packing them and said he would like to have one for his living room. These small photos here do not do it justice.

Mike has had a cough for about a week, but otherwise we are both well. Hope the same for all of you.

We are having a great time here. Every day is a miracle!

WE SEND OUR LOVE TO EVERYONE!

Icicles

This is the back of our apartment. A few days ago it rained and we had strong winds in the night and all the icicles were gone the next morning. I was disappointed because I wanted to take a picture of them. No worry, they were back in 2-3 days. I took these pictures yesterday, then right after I knocked all of them off. Tonight they are about 14 inches long again (just from one day). Why did I knock them off? Well I have heard stories about the icicles at our church last year. Some of them grew so long that they touched the ground and weighed about 200 pounds. They were going to cause damage to the roof and had to be taken down with chain saws, a very dangerous job. They had to cut the big ones down in pieces. I decided I would keep ours knocked off the back side of our house so we wouldn't have any trouble with our roof. I took the picture because I think they are interesting. They are very pretty to see out our window at night with the light shining on them.

The next picture is the woods by our shop. We have forest all around our shop except for the road coming up. This is where we gathered most of the materials for our nativity. It is like being in the White Mountains of Arizona. We have mountains and hills all around us.

We are still having a good time. Mike has been replacing the hanging ceiling in both of the restrooms in our shop and I have been working on lights. We check every string, replace burned out lights, repair the ones we can, and wrap them up for next year. We will be working on it for many weeks.

We are continuing to feed our car money. It likes it. We don't! We spent over $1,000 in January on car repairs. We hope it will be happy now!
Hope everyone is well, and enjoying January. We hear the weather is beautiful in Arizona, and Todd (in Washington) had 6 inches of snow.
LOVE TO EVERYONE!

Is it cold yet?

THE SNOW IS BEAUTIFUL

Many people have asked, "Is it cold?" I have always said, "Not yet." Well it is finally cold, and getting colder. This morning it was 13 below zero. When we came home from church it was about 10 degrees outside with a breeze (wind always makes you feel colder).

It is actually colder when there is no snow. At least that is what the locals say. All I know is that it is coldest when there is a breeze blowing. I don't care what temperature it is if there is no wind I am OK.

We wear thermals everywhere we go and that really helps. With few exceptions I have been just as warm here as I was in Pomerene on Sundays. It was actually warmer at church today because they finally (after about 2 months) got the boiler fixed. The heat has only been working in half of the building. Today was the first time we have had hot water in the kitchen, and heat in the bathrooms in months. It was quite nice. It is interesting how we don't appreciate things until we don't have them. P.S. They asked me to teach the 4-year-olds in Primary. That should be fun.

This picture of the snow on the lane was taken from about the same location as the picture that Mike calls "Almost Heaven," the one that has the light shining through the trees. We are hoping to get a better winter picture but the day the snow was perfect we forgot the camera.

My favorite snow pictures are of the evergreens with snow on them. These trees are always beautiful.
Hope all of you are having a wonderful new year. We send love and greetings. STAY WARM!

January 2012

I asked Mike if there was anything he would like me to tell you about. He said to tell you about the "new fungus" that we have growing around here. It is on the sides of the rocks, and we see it on our way to work, and a couple of places on the side of the freeway when we travel to New Hampshire for groceries. I wish we had a picture for you, but perhaps we can get a picture before our next blog. If we could stop on the freeway, we would have already taken a picture. It is very beautiful. It looks like something you would see in Kartchner Caverns. It is white and it looks like it is boiling. Once we get pictures of this strange phenomenon we will tell you more about.

On Wednesday morning I drove Mike to the emergency room to see if his ribs were broken. He was helping to take down the stable where the donkey and sheep are kept. He was on a ladder, and was leaning over a 2X4 reaching as far as he could to take out a screw. He was turned sort of sideways and was putting all his weight on his right side when he heard a pop and felt immediate pain. He was sure he had broken a rib because of the pain. He climbed down the ladder and moved and felt another pop. He came back up to the shop and we headed out. When we were about 15 minutes from the hospital the check engine light started flashing. The car was running pretty rough by the time we got there, but we made it safe and sound. A few hours later we learned that his rib had become dislocated and the second pop was when it went back into place. It was not broken, but this type of injury is just as painful, so they gave him some pain pills and said take it easy. Then we drove straight to the Volvo place and got our car fixed. If Mike hadn't been on pain pills, and I had not been a bit stressed also, perhaps we would have thought to see if the car care plan we purchased covered the repair. We spent nearly $250 dollars without even thinking about the policy. When we got home and called we found out that they WOULD have paid for it if we had called for pre-authorization, but since we didn't they won't. We are grateful we didn't get stranded on the side of the road.

At Sacrament Meeting today Sister Miriam Kill told about a friend of hers whose son got engaged at Christmas time. She asked Miriam to guess where he proposed. She guessed a number of places and finally gave up. Her friend then told her that they came up to see the lights and he proposed under our covered bridge. She asked, "Why there?" The friend explained, "It is a family tradition and we go there every year. We feel great being there. We always felt that it is a magical place."

It is a magical place. People love to come because of the "feeling" that is here. I thought you might like to know that we had 14,850 cars drive through to see the lights. Many of the people drove around several times, and some come back many times, so the actual number is less and impossible to figure. That is, however, an impressive number.

During the Christmas Season (beginning the day after Thanksgiving with the lighting ceremony) we had 4,500 people get out of the cars and come in. That is an amazing number.
In the month of December we had 3,615 visitors (who stopped and came in) and of those 3,063 were not members of our church. It was surprising how many people said they had never been there before. It was nice for people to get to know us a little bit.

For those of you who missed seeing the covered bridge in previous blogs, here is another picture of it.

Since January 6th is Christmas in Ukraine and Mike is half Ukrainian I thought we should just continue celebrating through January 6th. Don't you think that is a good idea? On January 6th (Friday) we were home because of Mike's very tender ribs, so we were able to talk to Alex Bocenko, Mike's Ukrainian cousin on Skype. On Sunday we called back again and talked to both Alexander and his brother Andrew. It was great.

We have talked to all of our kids (and most of the grand-kids) on Skype between Thanksgiving and January 6th except for Todd and family. We talked with him on the phone and looked at each others pictures on Facebook. Modern technology has been amazing to help us keep in touch with family.
LOVE AND GREETINGS TO EVERYONE. HOPE YOU HAVE THE VERY BEST NEW YEAR!!

Christmas was Beautiful

We had a lovely Christmas. We were so busy we didn't even remember our blog.
On Christmas Eve we had a dinner at our apartment and invited the neighbors. It was great. I cooked a turkey and made pies and Sister Starley (in the apartment behind us) cooked a ham and cheesy potatoes. It was a lovely dinner.

On Christmas Day we went to the Memorial Residence and had a lovely dinner with all of the Senior Missionaries. It was great.

I didn't get to help my mom and brothers and sisters on the nativity this year, but mom sent pictures of it. On Christmas Eve they surprised her with a beautiful new Mary. She is a REAL Manikin with arms that hold the baby so tenderly. The one that has been used for the past 13 years was made out of plastic pipe and chicken wire. This year my sister-in-law Barbara ordered this one and the brothers and sisters went together to buy. It is beautiful and I wanted to share it with you. People come from all around to see the beautiful life-size nativity with music playing from dusk until dawn.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!

We had a fun New Year's Eve. We decided to enjoy a quiet evening at home, but we ended up painting our living room and putting up the floor boards and wood trim. The floor boards were behind the couch, we bought the rest. Our apartment was never quite finished, so we decided to finish it (a little at a time). It turned out really nice. At 9:00 we were pretty tired, so we sat down and watched the first two movies of "The Work and The Glory" that were on BYU TV. Just after midnight Mike got a phone call from Rachel and Sara with all the kids singing Happy Birthday. (It was 10:05 in Arizona and just after midnight here.) Shortly after he got off the phone with them, Dewain and family called to wish him happy birthday. It was GREAT. He loved it!

Today (New Years Day) we went to church this morning and we picked up Brother John Lee to give him a ride. John is a member of our ward who is from China. He's here working on a master's law degree at the college. He wife and 3-year-old daughter in China are living with her parents while he finishes school. He joined the church a year ago. He became interested in the church while he was still living in China. He knew John Huntsman (the ambassador to China) was a Mormon and he was curious so he began reading all about it on the internet. He requested a Book of Mormon, but never got it. He called and they explained they can't send a Book of Mormon to China because it is forbidden by the government. When he reached the United States (Oklahoma) he got one. He read it, believed it, and was baptized in Oklahoma City. He has been a member a year and was just made an Elder. Today after church he invited us to eat lunch with him at his home. Mike invited him over to our apartment for dinner. We had fried burritos that Mike requested for his birthday. After dinner we drove to the memorial to see the Christmas Lights one last time. The covered bridge in the picture is one of people's favorites. I heard there were 11 marriage proposals under the bridge last year. My new friend Doris took her grandchildren. They always park under the bridge and make a wish. It has been a wonderful Christmas but the new year is here. We will start taking lights down on Tuesday. It will be sad to see them go. They have been very beautiful.

Earlier this evening John called. We talked to John, Laura, and the kids on Skype. It was great to see them. If you think about it, it is pretty awesome to be able to talk to your kids across the country and see them on the computer screen at the same time. Shortly after that Jeremy called to wish Mike happy birthday.

As I am writing it is raining outside. All the snow is melted. We have had a little snow come and go but it has rained 3 times in December. It seems strange to me.

WE WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SEND OUR LOVE TO ALL!