A Brand New Sunny Month of May - 2009

May 1, 2009

I was visiting with Anita Parkhill, a sister in our ward, last week when she mentioned that she had been a ward librarian. That sparked a memory for me about my mother, Ruth Korb. I told Anita that when the church first decided to have libraries in the meetinghouses, my mother was called. She worked with other sisters and they looked for pictures to help illustrate lessons. Some they found in old magazines. Some belonged to members. Some they found at stores – including thrift stores. The librarians used cardboard boxes for filing. On several occasions my mom drove to Olympia, where the Olympia beer brewing company offered free blank scrap poster board. They used it to mount pictures. The Church eventually provided numbers to categorize the pictures so that teacher manuals could refer to them by number as well as description. Then the librarians painstakingly put numbers on the top back of each picture. I hadn’t thought about that for years. Mom spent many hours as a labor of love going the second mile in a calling, which looks ordinary today.
Anita asked me if I had recorded the memory in my journal. She is a family history consultant and recognized a golden nugget to save for future generations. It reveals some of my mother’s devotion to the gospel when she found it. Now I have shared it with you and will print up a copy for my journal too.
The weather has been beautiful and I have been outside almost daily. I did more weeding. I moved three wheelbarrows of rock – it barely covered the bottom since it is a lot heavier than weeds or rakings. I moved some of the fill from under the cedar hedge to the place where our washout used to be. I also mowed the top half of the yard. Patrick did the bottom half. Boy, he was proud of himself. He commented, “You could lose weight doing that!” That is wishful thinking, but a rather nice wish.
This afternoon I will be picking up Adryann and Brynneé from school. Daddy B.J. and I are heading over to the temple and will be taking the girls along till we pass them over to their parents, who will be finishing at the temple when we arrive. On the 29th we phoned Will to wish him a happy birthday and he and Mindie were heading in to the Las Vegas temple that day. Ruth and Tim were going there later in the day and meeting Nathan and Adam to attend a session. Do you know how happy it makes me to realize that five of my children and spouses, for those who are married, have been to the temple within just a few of days of each other?
Our prophet has counseled us to seek the protection and peace that temple attendance will provide. We are striving for obedience. I am smiling.
Debbie left a message asking us to remember Jay in our prayers – at his special request because he has the “biggest deal” he has ever worked on in progress. We love to hear that he knows the power of added prayer. Besides remembering him by name in family prayers we will put his name, indeed the names of all our children and grandchildren on the prayer roll this evening. We do pray for each of you to reach the greatest possible growth in your lives.Lavina’s foot surgery went well. I saw her later the same day and she looked great. She called yesterday to ask if I could recommend a LDS realtor, since she wants to sell the property at Ollala. I gave her Kathy Olsen’s name. Kathy (Perkins) was one of my seminary students years ago. She married a sailor, Hap – whom we also knew. Ruth gave her collie dog to Kathy who later made a business of teaching dog obedience classes. Now real estate is her part-time job. Of course, Kathy is full-time at being a mother and homemaker.

Benjamin told us that he was being sent to Ogden on June 30th for sure. He and many of us have been praying that things would work out in the best possible way for him, so we feel it will.