Andy Flores, the Moores, us, and seated Noel Janko

              There wasn’t too much knocking on doors, but a sprinkle of it. But it did include a lot of meetings. A stake meeting every Sunday afternoon was the one we were expected to attend! When Clyde heard that, he was not one bit happy. There went his free Sunday dinners. At our first meeting we met all the other stake missionaries from the various wards and the stake mission presidency that we would be working under. It took a lot of faith and prayer for me to get through the next two years.

              We worked with some wonderful people, especially co-missionaries, the Moore’s, Clark and Diann and Andy and Peggy Flores, and Grace and Noel Janko from our ward. I mentioned Noel in another chapter as the Jewish convert.

              We loved working with the young elders; we feed them a lot of dinners which included Clyde. They were so young, spiritually enthusiastic and fun to be with. Jack took them to most of their meetings and appointments. We helped them out with followup investigators. It was such a thrill when we had baptisms. We held a lot of missionary meetings in our home plus some dinners and parties. At Christmas time both years I made giant Christmas stockings for each of the Elders and had the Relief Society sisters help fill them. On Christmas Day we had them over for dinner and gave them their stockings. That was so much fun; they acted just like little kids on Christmas morning. We loved all of our Elders and as they filled their missions and returned home and married, we got invitations to their weddings. It was a great time in my life, I did grow spiritually and my testimony was strengthened, but I feel that I could have done more.

Jack and I as stake Missionaries

              Our grandson, Mark Dudley at the age of 15 came down with a very rare condition called “Guillian Bairre Syndrome”. It came on him all of a sudden one Sunday evening around the first of April. His legs were paralyzed and he could not stand. As he lay on the floor his dad thought he was acting up, but soon found it was very serious and gave him a priesthood blessing. He was taken to the emergency room and from there rushed to the hospital in Twin Falls. This Syndrome paralyzes the whole body very quickly and mostly the lungs. If not put on a respirator very soon it will kill the patient. Mark was very blessed, as the first Doctor he saw had seen it once before and recognized it. He acted upon it very quickly that saved Mark's life. I drove to Twin Falls to see him one day. It took him a very long time to recover.

              Kellie and Kyle came and stayed during Spring Break, Cindee also came about that time. Even though we were missionaries we made time for family and friends. And we did have a lot of company. My guest book is full, a big share is related to our missionary work, feeding the young Elders and holding meetings here. We also had a lot of family members come during that time period. It seemed to be our missionary work was slow but did move forward. The fulltime missionaries had just started teaching a new family. We only had two full time missionaries for the Stake that covered six wards but with all the new housing that was being built in our area we got new members and even converts.

              In August we met Connie and the kids at a junction just before Hailey and followed them to the Uriguen’s summer home in Ketchum. Connie was dating Frank Uriguen at time. Since his mother’s death, and Frank and Connie’s subsequent marriage, they own the house but as of 2011 we have never been invited back. We stayed there for three days and three nights. The home was so lovely. What a great vacation that turned out to be; just loafing and sightseeing and having fun with Connie and the children, running around Ketchum, Sun Valley and Hailey with all the wealthy people was exciting.

              We were surprised to see Roger, LeeAnn, Brad and Raquel Turner peeking in a store window at us. They knew we were there but we didn’t know they were. What fun. All good things seem to never last long enough, it was so beautiful there. We took the mountain route going home, it too was very beautiful and our bonus was seeing a cub bear in the middle of the road. In all of our mountain travels through the years, it was the first time we saw a bear in the wild outside of Yellowstone Park.

              It seemed like we didn’t stay home long enough to get very much missionary work done. Our Mission Leader was beside himself. He worked so hard to motivate us. We were to have a training meeting in our home the night we returned but found out there was a Stake training meeting so that got us off the hook.

              One Sunday a young lady came to church by mistake. Boy did we jump on her! A young man friend of hers told her she should visit the Mormon Church, but she got the wrong building. She was really friendshipped and in the Gospel Principles class she asked all kinds of questions. Luckily the Elders were in our ward that day and they took over. “Golden?” Yes! Julie was a delightful young lady and stayed in our ward until after her baptism. We taught her the last new member discussion. We missed her after she started going to her own ward. She married the young man in the temple and she has kept in touch with us for many years.

Loren's baptism

              Lynette was another delightful young lady, divorced with a small daughter, that we were able to teach the discussions too. She was baptized and later we were able to go to the temple with her and see her sealed to a young divorced man and see their two young daughters sealed to them. What a sweet experience seeing those two adorable little girls become sisters.

Ricks College Gardens

              Well there we went again, this time to Rexburg for Loren’s baptism on July 1^st. We stayed a few days and enjoyed touring the Ricks College Campus and the beautiful campus gardens. Melynda was going to school there worked in the greenhouse and planted a lot of the flowers. The way I love flowers, it was so fun seeing all the different blooms that I didn’t have. We stayed through the Fourth of July and went to the parade with them. Later we had a picnic in the park and that evening watched the fireworks at the fairgrounds.

Kyle and Kellie: Sundance Kids

              I went to Salt Lake with Connie and the children. Connie had a lot of fun things planned. Lagoon, The zoo, the Heber Creeper, Sun Dance Resort in Provo Canyon, etc, We stayed in a motel, which was fun for the kids. Another three fun filled days and then back to Burley for the Frost Family Reunion that was held August the 5^th. Turners were in charge, I don’t have any other information or newsletters from that year. But knowing the Turner’s it had to be a good one. Of course we had to stay and take in the Cassia County Fair and Rodeo before returning home. I was told that on a Stake Mission you have too many distractions. How True!

              We were very happy when Michael got out of the service the end of the month. He had served in Kuwait during Desert Storm in the Prussian Gulf War .

              Oh my Gosh! I almost forgot to tell you that we are going to be great-grandparents. Raydon and Colby were expecting after two years of marriage. I thought they were too young, too immature and too selfish to be parents and I was right.

              Emil’s daughters did not treat Melody and Emil like parents. Adelma had three or four children, and Emily had Thomas and Melody, Melody was killed in an automobile accident along with one of her children. We never got to know any of them, except for Thomas. So it was hard to claim them as grandchildren but we claim Thomas.

              Okay, so our missionary work got a little slow, no co-operation from the ward. So we started working on our neighbors across the street, the Asins, (only they didn’t know about it). We took them to a Relief

With Bob Asin at Shoshone Falls

Society dinner at church and they were really made to feel welcome. We had the Elders over for a barbecue and asked Doris and Bob over, telling them the Elders would be there. The Elders gave them a copy of The Book of Mormon. We got tickets for a stage musical at the Boise State University Special Events Center put on by the Boise LDS Institute. If I remember right, the performance was “Joshua”, any way we all enjoyed it very much. We have had them over for dinners and barbecues, and they like wise have had us over.

              We also took them to see Shoshone Falls. Since they were from California, they had never been there. At that time the water was running full bore and was absolutely breathtaking. We also stopped and viewed the Malad River Gorge and Falls.

With Jack's cousin, Muriel

              Jack was just elated to find a second cousin living in Lafayette, Louisiana. While getting some names on his mother’s side ready for their temple work, he found that a lot of the work had been done in 1982. With further checking, he obtained the submitter's name and wrote her a letter. Four days later he received a phone call from Muriel Roberts of Lafayette finding out that their grandmothers were sisters, which made them second cousins. They each thought that they were they only Mormons on that side of the family. She had traced their ancestors all the way back to the Mayflower and back to England.

              In October we went to Spokane, Washington to meet Muriel Roberts. She had a son living there and she was visiting his family that weekend. She and Jack had a wonderful reunion, even though as for as they knew, they had never meet, except for the possibility of when children in Seattle. They exchanged a lot of family information and photos. John and Heather welcomed us into their home. Jack and Muriel hit it off just like cousins should.

              We went to Malta where Jack photographed the wedding of our niece Corinne Harper to Burke Udy . It was a beautiful back yard wedding and Corinne looked just beautiful. The fun thing was that we got to be the first to see the wedding pictures and they all turned out beautiful!

With Kellie and Kyle on our tour of Boise

              During the summer we had a lot of guests come and go. Kellie and Kyle were here a lot. We did so many fun things; spent time at Kathryn Albertson Park, blew giant soap bubbles, made ghosts and painted pumpkins. We took a train ride tour of Boise, rode paddle boats on the lake in the park, explored the Discover Center had the most fun right here in our back yard.

Scarecrows in McCall

              Kellie and Jeremy both had their 13^th birthdays. Sometime during the busy summer I even had my 69^th insignificant birthday. Gordy, who started going by Glen, had his 16^th Halloween birthday. Halloween came and went and we had lots of little trick or treaters. We even drove up to McCall to see the scarecrows placed all over town. After Halloween, Livi also had her 13^th birthday.

Thanksgiving 1995

              For Thanksgiving our special guests was Gordon and Bonnie and their family from Rexburg. What made it so special, they seldom get here, and Clyde. We had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner they stayed over for a few days so we had time for fun.

              We celebrated our 17^rd Once Upon a Time wedding anniversary by reaching out for each other’s hands and our life together is our happily ever after. We always buy something nice for our home. That has been a traditional throughout our married years. As usual, we dressed in our finest clothes to go to a very fine restaurant, The Chart House, for a very fine dinner, also a Once Upon a Time tradition.