Fire, Fire, Fire

I decided today to just post some pictures of the nearby fire.  The fire is called the Seeley Fire.  Fox News has this to say about the fire:

Seeley Fire grows to more than 20,300 acres, zero containment

"PRICE, Utah –  A fire that sparked Tuesday morning on Seeley Mountain in Emery County has grown to more than 20,000 acres Thursday.

The Seeley Fire, located on Seeley Mountain between the left fork of Huntington Canyon and Horse Canyon in the Manti-La Sal National Forest, is believed to have been started by lightning. It has grown to an estimated 20,300 according to U.S. Forest Service authorities Thursday afternoon."

Here is what the Seeley Fire looked like from out home in the evening of Tuesday, June 26th, 2012.

Tuesday night the fire came over the top of the mountain and began burning on our side.  In the early 1900's Van's great grandfather homesteaded part of this mountain and that area is now known as Smith Canyon.  Smith Canyon is where the smoke is on this side of the mountain.  We are anxious to take a ride up there and see what the fire did to the old homestead.

And for the benefit of my sister, Terry, I'm going to post a few pictures of a few of our cats that we have running around our house.  

Very few cats at our home receive names but this one is one of the lucky ones.  His name is JOGGER.  That because when I go out to feed the cats he doesn't run a straight line to the feeding spot he jogs around in circles and zig zags back and forth for several minutes before finally coming to rest at the food.

This is one of our Momma cats and she has been around  a couple of years.

These are two of our new baby kittens this year.  The one on the bottom may be lucky enough to be named "Bandit" or something.  Any suggestions?

My Avery Cousins

In my Memorial Day post I mentioned the cards that I had made to put on the graves of my distant relatives.  The cards read, "We came today to pay our respect to our ancestors who have come before us.  If this card is on one of your ancestors graves also we would love to hear from you.  If you have histories or photographs of these individuals that you are willing to share please e-mail us.  Thank you.  Kathy at khamaker@emerytelcom.net".  We put close to thirty of these near headstones of some of my cousins.  As a result of one of these cards, I was thrilled to receive an e-mail from one of my distant cousins, Colleen.  

So instead of this photograph in my family files

I now have this beautiful picture of  Caroline A. Avery

 Colleen has also shared other photos of her grandmother and great aunts and great uncles.  It is a special blessing to be able to have contact and to learn more about our family.  The internet and e-mail have been special tools to make awesome things happen in family history work.  Thank you Colleen.

“It is better to look up.”

This has been a pretty wild month of ups and downs.  Since I don't want to dwell on the downs I'll dwell on the ups.

UP 1 - I finally have my own voice back.  After four or five weeks of having strange voices and sounds come out of my mouth, whenever I spoke, my real voice has returned.

UP 2 - The screws to put my cupboard doors finally got here.  Well, not actually. The clerk at the store just stole 50 sets of screws from other packages and then when the screws I ordered a month ago, come in, she will replace the ones she stole from the other packages.  Yeah!  Now I can get the cupboard doors on that are finished and maybe it will look like I'm accomplishing something.

UP 3 - I received a phone call today from the Fabric Mill in Orem.  (My very favorite fabric shop in Orem.)  The caller informed me that I was a WINNER.  I actually won something?  He told me my name had been drawn out and I had won $100.00 worth of free merchandise from the store.  YES!  Now, to figure out what I want to make.  He said that he had to look up my phone number because all that was on the form was an e-mail address.  I told him that I never expected to win anything all I was planning on receiving was their monthly newsletter.  (They have discount coupons in their newsletter.)  Check out the Fabric Mill Blog! My name is on the list with the other winners!

UP 4 - I received pictures today from the cousin who found my card at the cemetery in Spanish Fork!!  Success!!

In a talk given by Elder David S. Baxter in the April 2012 General conference he says, "Your perspective and view of life will change when, rather than being cast down, you look up."

An experience shared by Carl B. Cook of the Seventy in the October 2011 General Conference reads:  "At the end of a particularly tiring day toward the end of my first week as a General Authority, my briefcase was overloaded and my mind was preoccupied with the question "How can I possibly do this?"  I left the office of the seventy and entered the elevator of the Church Administration Building.  As the elevator descended, my head was down and I stared blankly at the floor.

The door opened and someone entered, but I didn't look up.  As the door closed, I heard someone ask, "What are you looking at down there?"  I recognized that voice - it was President Thomas S. Monson.

I quickly looked up and responded, "Oh, nothing."....

But he had seen my subdued countenance and my heavy briefcase.  He smiled and lovingly suggested, while pointing heavenward, "It is better to look up!"

New Calling In Life

I've had a couple things on my mind this past week that keeps coming up over and over again.  The first of course would be my new calling in life that I received.  A couple weeks ago I told my sister, Terry, that I was ready for a new calling in the church.  It was too hard being a teacher in Primary when you have been a Primary President twice.  Little did I know when I made that statement to her that the new calling was going to come quickly.  The following Tuesday I had an appointment with the bishop and received the call to serve as the First Counselor in the Primary Presidency.  Well, that is one calling in life that I haven't ever had.  The new president, Natalie, is very energetic and seems to be a go get it done person.  I'm looking forward to serving with her and the other sisters that have been called.  I'm old enough to be a mother to all of them but hopefully they will all keep me young.

I've thought a lot during the past week about an incident that happened at the Family History Library last week.  A man came into the library and I asked him if he needed help.  He told me no, he knew what he was doing and would be okay.  He worked for a few minutes on his own and then he did ask me a question.  I can't remember what he asked me because I couldn't believe what he was doing.  He had been coming into the library for the past couple weeks and they had gotten him started creating his family file.  The method they had taught him was to open up his PAF file on one side of the screen and open up New Family Search on the other side of the screen and type the information you see into your family file.  I looked at what he was doing and all I could say was, "Really!!  They taught you to do it that way?"   PAF is a way thing of the past.  It is the dark ages.  It is 19th century.  I have a hard time believing that people still try to use it.  There are at least three programs on the same computer that he could be using to do the same thing faster.  I quickly got him started working with Ancestral Quest.  I'm an Ancestral Quest fan.  He was a much happier family historian doing the same work on Ancestral Quest.   I have just been in total amazement that they taught him that method to do his family file.

Remember on my second post about our Memorial Day adventures in Spanish Fork cemetery?  Remember the little card we posted at some of the families headstones?  I had someone respond to the card and wants to meet up.  She lives in Bluffdale.   We'll have to set up a family meeting.  That should be fun.

I received my own personal badge for FamilySearchIndexing for helping with the 1940 census indexing project.

I also received badges for helping with the states of Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New York, North Dakota and Utah.  Volunteers have only been working on this project for two and a half months and already it is over 50% complete.  Awesome accomplishment and it makes me happy to be a part of it.

Write them down

This morning as I was reading in the Ensign there was an article about earthquakes and learning to recognize when earthquakes are happening.  The closing paragraph reads: "I'm so grateful for what earthquakes taught me about recognizing the Spirit.  There are times when the Spirit is undeniable, a voice of thunder piercing our souls.  Yet more often, the Spirit is a silent whisper, a new thought, an impression, a subtle feeling of something to do or say. (see Helaman 5:30).  If we notice only the strong soul shaking, we miss many of the sweet impressions of the Spirit.  We may sometimes need others to point out the feelings of the Spirit so we can focus our attention and fine-tune our perceptions.  When we do we find an entirely new world of awareness and wonder. (June 2012 Ensign, A voice of Thunder, a Voice of Silence, by Kristin Boyce.)

As I read this I thought about how important it is for me to write these experiences down so I can read it and reread it to remind myself over and over again about the thunder piercing experiences and the silent whisper experiences. I haven't got a really good memory and I seem to forget far more than I remember.

So, thinking about writing these experiences down reminded me of one of my favorite conference talks was given in October 2007 by President Henry B. Eyring.  It is titled, "O Remember, Remember."  He told the experience of coming home late one night from a Church assignment and found his father-in-law in his yard working on a system to pump water from a stream below up to their property.  His father-in-law, smiled, spoke softly and then rushed off to finish his work.  As President Eyring was walking inside his home he heard in his mind - not in his own voice - these words, "I'm not giving you these experiences for yourself.  Write them down."

He goes on to say:  "I went inside.  I didn't go to bed.  Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write.  And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind.  I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family.   ... And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it."

So, someday our children are going to need to know when we felt the spirit and how we had seen the hand of God blessing our family.  This is something each one of us should ponder each day, quote: "Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our family today?" by President Henry B. Eyring.