Love Walking Through the Piles of Leaves as They Crunch Beneath My Shoes

The trees are slowly losing all their leaves and it really does feel like fall with brisk mornings and piles and piles of leaves everywhere. Craig and I walk early every morning and as you can see the sun is just barely starting to come up as we head up one of our favorite paths on campus. The young people here are wonderful and in general we have grown to love the people of Michigan. What a great place we have been blessed to serve.

We see this gorgeous tree in the woods when we look out our windows.
Saturday, the YSA Ward Relief Society had a great activity at a small cemetry that was once on the farm of Truman Rockwell called Foote-Rockwell Cemetery. We originally planned to take pictures of all the grave stones for findagrave.com , but I guess someone had already taken pictures at this cemetery so we spent our time seeing how much we could learn about the individuals buried here by the things that were on the gravestones. Honestly these girls are amazing and I really learned so much. Do check out findagrave.com as it is very interesting and helpful in finding records.


Brother Draut wants the Institute to be a home away from home for the students here so he ask me to warm up the building with some fall decorations. I love fall decorations so this has been a really fun assignment. We enjoy teaching the institute classes and cooking for the Friday Forum is a lot of work, but we so enjoy the young people here in Lansing. Even Elder Poulsen has got into cooking.


We have a great office in the Institute and we enjoy working with Brother David Draut who is the CES director in this area.


These are some pictures of our cozy little apartment. We especially love the view of the ever changing trees and the busy squirrels outside our windows. I also love the sound of the trains as they whistle in the distance each night.

...of Upers, Trolls and U Turns

We're learning some new language and driving skills here in Michigan. It turns out that in many intersections, to turn left, you first turn right, go about half a block, then make a u-turn. Go figure! Then, it seems that in order to give someone else directions to a town, you hold your right hand up, palm out, thumb extended - then it looks JUST like the lower Michigan peninsula. Then you just point. For example, last Saturday we went to Port Austin at the "tip of the thumb", which about 120 miles from Lansing, which is about mid-palm! AND it looks like folks on the lower peninsula refer to those on the upper peninsula as "Upers" (say "yoopers"), and they refer to folks on the lower peninsula as "Trolls".

That's the culture lesson for today....

Happy 45th Wedding Anniversary to Us!!

Little did Craig and I know of the adventures in life we would share on that wedding day 45 years ago. We have shared so many wonderful memories and we intend to share many more adventures in our life. Right now we are loving our mission and so enjoy getting to know the wonderful young people in this area.
One thing I didn't know was how much cooking we would be doing. Good thing I love to cook and Elder Poulsen, who knows very little about cooking, is really getting into the act. Every Friday we have what is called Friday Forum and the students come for lunch and then attend an institute class. I think we have from around 25 give or take. We plan and prepare the lunch each week. Here is a picture of our potato bar from this past week's lunch.
We seem to be super busy with preparing and teaching classes and going to various meetings, but our favorite part is getting to know and work with the young people. I had an especially wonderful experience last week during my devotional class gettngi to know a young medical student who attends class and isn't a member of the church. His name is Ven.
Saturday before conference, we did have an opportunity to take a drive to see the beautiful foliage which actually is everywhere and honestly I couldn't stop taking pictures. Words or pictures cannot describe how beautiful and vibrant the colors are. We made it as far as Lake Michigan which actually looks like the ocean. The weather has been unusually warm, so that has been a bonus too as everyone who finds out we are from California says, "Just wait until winter!"
We are doing fine in our apartment and we are fixing it up so it feels more like home. We feel a little like newlyweds fixing up our first apartment. (The difference is we are smarter and have more money to buy what we need.)
We had stake conference last night and today and it was wonderful. I really like this particular scripture that President Jones of the Michigan Lansing Michigan quoted, "And he hath power given unto him from the Father to redeem them from their sins because of repentance; therefore he hath sent his angels to declare the tidings of the conditions of repentance, which bringeth unto the power of the Redeemer, unto the salvation of their souls." Helaman 5:11

Fall is in the air...and the pumpkin moon is rising!

It's getting cool and the leaves are starting to change in the beautiful Michigan countryside. Even the pumpkin moon is visible! Plenty of "proper" barnes, and the tractors and harvesters are way cool. I taught yesterday again at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan and I took the scenic way home - actually, every way is scenic here. Karen remained at the Institute to do the Devotional. Today both Karen and I taught separate classes in the Institute. I went to the Missionary district meeting this morning. Tomorrow we are going to the Cooley Law School in Lansing (not a part of MSU) where we will teach a class and then we'll start preparing for the Friday Forum. We are finding time (7:00AM) to walk a couple miles each morning, but it's starting to get pretty brisk out! This is truly a lovely place and we are meeting a lot of very special young folks. They seem kind of evenly split between undergrads and graduate students (in addition to grad programs, there is a law school as well as a medical school at MSU). We're having a great time and starting to get into a more settled routine. Not bad for only being here a week and a half!

Let the work begin....

I had the opportunity last week and again this week to teach a class at Hillsdale College. Very interesting Conservative "liberal arts" school! Probably the only college campus in the US with a statue honoring Margaret Thatcher! Note that the school was founded in 1844! Beautiful place with some great students in the class. We are also teaching classes this week in the LDS Institute and at the Cooley Law School in Lansing. It's great to be with these wonderful young folks sharing principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Karen prepared a great taco feast for about 30 of them at the Institute's Friday Forum, complete with her excellent home made salsa!