Having a great time....

Some teaching scenes from the Institute, Family Home Evening, Institute Classes, etc. What a joy it is to be called to serve and have an opportunity to help influence the lives of the young folks. We are truly having a great time in this service. It is a wonderful thing to see young lives influenced as they learn more about the teachings of the Savior. It is quite humbling to know that we were afforded this opportunity, and we are not only enjoying every minute of it, but also finding our own knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ enhanced each day.













Roy and Jennie...just two of the many great friends we've made while on our Mission. I can't begin to describe how wonderful all these young folks are and what a great privilege it is to serve among them. They are a tremendous example of the the teachings of the Savior in the way they serve each other and the Lord.



On the 4th of July weekend we noted that even though most went home for the weekend, there were still a few of us here, so we all got together for a barbeque followed by going to the local fireworks shows....










We moved in June to an apartment down the hall that we liked better because it had a deck. Note the bird feeders...we have lot's of company!




A few weeks ago we had a slight lull in our teaching schedule between the two MSU summer teaching blocks, so we finally had some time to take advantage of the admonition of President Jones, our mission president, to "see more of northern Michigan". I've mentioned before that Michigan has two land masses...the Lower Peninsula (shaped like a "mitten"), and the Upper Peninsula (above the Mackinac Straits, between the north end of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. Michiganders(!) refer to people living in the upper peninsula as "Yoopers", as in UP or Upper Peninsula, and "Trolls", as in living "below the bridge".

Sooooo, we headed north...

Two lighthouses in Cheboygan, on the north east corner of the lower Michigan peninsula facing Lake Huron.







We spent a couple days on Mackinac Island (pronounced MackinAW), a tourist destination since the early 19th century! Ferry ride to get there, no cars allowed, just horses and bicycles. Beautiful place with tons of old world charm and great "Mackinac Island Fudge"....



We stayed in the Mission Point hotel.





We rode bikes around the island...about 8 miles.



The famous Grand Hotel. That front veranda is over 600 feet long!



Old Fort Mackinac

Some more Mackinac Island scenes....



























The Mackinac Island Light



The Round Island Light on Round Island across from the harbor at Mackinac Island.



The Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, on the Mackinaw City side.



The incredible Mackinac (say MackinAW) Bridge which crosses the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron on the north end. Completed in 1957, it is the worlds second longest suspension bridge at 4 miles length...not to mention beautiful to look at!

Factoids for the next time you run out of things to talk about at a party:
20% of the world's fresh water is in the Great Lakes!
30% of the Great Lake's water is in Lake Superior, the largest lake!
If ALL the water in the Great Lakes was spread evenly across the US, it would cover the US with 9.6 ft depth of water!



Huge ore freighter traversing the "Soo Locks" on the American side at Sault St. Marie. These locks - the first ones initially and incredibly built in 1855(!) - lower ships the 21 ft height differential between Lake Superior down to Lake Huron. Prior to the locks, folks with large canoes, boats, etc had to portage over land down this part of the St. Mary river.



Leaving the Soo Locks eastbound on the St. Mary's river with a load of iron ore pellets.



The Whitefish Point Lighthouse and Foghorn. Beautifully restored, it also features a well known Shipwreck Museum with lot's of information on the many Lake Superior shipwrecks.



Looking north across Lake Superior from Whitefish Point. 17 miles offshore in 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 730 ft long ore ship outbound from the Minnesota iron mines went down in 570 ft of water with all hands in a fierce winter storm featuring 30 plus foot waves and a lot of wind and ice. That inspired the "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" ballad that was a hit for Gordon Lightfoot. It was just one of literally thousands of shipwrecks recorded in the history of Lake Superior!



This is Tahquamenon Falls on the upper peninsula. Beautifully brown, the water gets it's color from the tannin in all the leaves in the river.



On our preparation day a couple Saturday's ago we went to the Annual Air Show in Battle Creek. One of those nice muggy "91 degrees but feels like 105 degrees" days with the humidity. I do believe Karen is not really fond of this beautiful summer weather! Her words "...I felt like I was going to die." And she wasn't even in an airplane!

Here's a couple of the aerobatic planes...they were really fantastic and some of these guys seemed to be flaunting all the laws of aeronautics while flying VERY close to the ground. Virtually no margin for error!



An amazing wing walker...on this pass she is standing on her head!



The Blue Angels were incredible!



Battle Creek MI always comes to mind as the HQ for the Big 3 of the cereal world - Post, Kelloggs, and Ralston. You may remember that a few weeks ago we went to the "Cereal Festival", of all things!

Here's the "mother ship" for Post Cereals



...and here's the Kellogg headquarter's

We've Moved!

All the college kids here were moving apartments, so we didn't want to be left out of the whole moving thing. Guess we have a case of MOS (Missing Out Syndrome) Actually we had always planned to move into an end apartment with a balcony as soon as one came available. As we were arranging the funiture and deciding where to hang pictures, etc., I told Craig that we are just like a couple of newlyweds in our cute little apartment getting things all organized. We are now all settled and we actually just love our new apartment.

Last night in Devotional here in our apartment complex Matt Pace, one of the young men, shared a talk by Elder Hugh B. Brown and I especially liked this story. I thought it was especially inspirational to me as I wondered when we got our mission call why we were called to serve in Michigan instead of some third world country or another part of the world.


The Currant Bush by Elder Hugh B. Brown of the Council of the Twelve

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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"You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what he ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than he does about what you ought to do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story that I have told quite often in the Church. It is a story that is older than you are. It’s a piece out of my own life, and I’ve told it in many stakes and missions. It has to do with an incident in my life when God showed me that he knew best.

I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”

Time passed. Years passed, and I found myself in England. I was in command of a cavalry unit in the Canadian Army. I had made rather rapid progress as far as promotions are concerned, and I held the rank of field officer in the British Canadian Army. And I was proud of my position. And there was an opportunity for me to become a general. I had taken all the examinations. I had the seniority. There was just one man between me and that which for ten years I had hoped to get, the office of general in the British Army. I swelled up with pride. And this one man became a casualty, and I received a telegram from London. It said: “Be in my office tomorrow morning at 10:00,” signed by General Turner in charge of all Canadian forces. I called in my valet, my personal servant. I told him to polish my buttons, to brush my hat and my boots, and to make me look like a general because that is what I was going to be. He did the best he could with what he had to work on, and I went up to London. I walked smartly into the office of the General, and I saluted him smartly, and he gave me the same kind of a salute a senior officer usually gives—a sort of “Get out of the way, worm!” He said, “Sit down, Brown.” Then he said, “I’m sorry I cannot make the appointment. You are entitled to it. You have passed all the examinations. You have the seniority. You’ve been a good officer, but I can’t make the appointment. You are to return to Canada and become a training officer and a transport officer. Someone else will be made a general.” That for which I had been hoping and praying for ten years suddenly slipped out of my fingers.

Then he went into the other room to answer the telephone, and I took a soldier’s privilege of looking on his desk. I saw my personal history sheet. Right across the bottom of it in bold, block-type letters was written, “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.” We were not very well liked in those days. When I saw that, I knew why I had not been appointed. I already held the highest rank of any Mormon in the British Army. He came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.” I saluted him again, but not quite as smartly. I saluted out of duty and went out. I got on the train and started back to my town, 120 miles away, with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul. And every click of the wheels on the rails seemed to say, “You are a failure. You will be called a coward when you get home. You raised all those Mormon boys to join the army, then you sneak off home.” I knew what I was going to get, and when I got to my tent, I was so bitter that I threw my cap and my saddle brown belt on the cot. I clinched my fists and I shook them at heaven. I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?” I was as bitter as gall.

And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.” The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness and my bitterness. While kneeling there I heard a song being sung in an adjoining tent. A number of Mormon boys met regularly every Tuesday night. I usually met with them. We would sit on the floor and have a Mutual Improvement Association. As I was kneeling there, praying for forgiveness, I heard their voices singing:

“It may not be on the mountain height
Or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle’s front
My Lord will have need of me;
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I’ll go where you want me to go.”
(Hymns, no. 75.)

I arose from my knees a humble man. And now, almost fifty years later, I look up to him and say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.” I see now that it was wise that I should not become a general at that time, because if I had I would have been senior officer of all western Canada, with a lifelong, handsome salary, a place to live, and a pension when I’m no good any longer, but I would have raised my six daughters and two sons in army barracks. They would no doubt have married out of the Church, and I think I would not have amounted to anything. I haven’t amounted to very much as it is, but I have done better than I would have done if the Lord had let me go the way I wanted to go.

I wanted to tell you that oft-repeated story because there are many of you who are going to have some very difficult experiences: disappointment, heartbreak, bereavement, defeat. You are going to be tested and tried to prove what you are made of. I just want you to know that if you don’t get what you think you ought to get, remember, “God is the gardener here. He knows what he wants you to be.” Submit yourselves to his will. Be worthy of his blessings, and you will get his blessings. "
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Love Teaching

I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to teach Institute classes. How great is it to be able to actually have time to really study the scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ? This summer I am teaching the course entitled, Teachings of the Living Prophets. It is such a great opportunity to teach these amazing young people about the blessing of living in a day when living prophets are upon the earth and help them know that Heavenly Father speaks today as He has in all dispensations.

After attending the Detroit Temple on Thursday, we took the opportunity to visit The Henry Ford Greenfield Village, which is one of the best historical attractions in the United States—the Wright Brother’s original workshop, Thomas Edison’s lab, George Washington Carver’s log house, etc., etc.
Brian Kinghorn and family invited us to the annual Cereal Festival in Battle Creek on Saturday and going to a cereal festival was definitely a first for us. We had breakfast with the whole town.

The Kinghorn Family

Michigan is such a beautiful place.

Interesting bird houses we saw for Purple Martins in the Amish Country.

The Langley Covered Bridge is the longest one in the United States.

An Amish buggy all ready to do errands for the day.

An Amish buggy towing a boat.

The trees are no longer bare and wild flowers are in full bloom. One of the many gorgeous flowers we see as we walk through campus in the morning.