A Painting Of Christ

In October Conference, Sister Kristin Yee shared her experience of painting Christ.  She started her Conference talk this way:  

"About 10 years ago I felt impressed to paint a portrait of the Savior. Though I am an artist, this felt a bit overwhelming. How was I to paint a portrait of Jesus Christ that captured His Spirit? Where was I to begin? And where would I find the time?

Even with my questions, I decided to move forward and trust that the Lord would help me. But I had to keep moving and leave the possibilities to Him. I prayed, pondered, researched, and sketched and was blessed to find help and resources. And what was a white canvas started to become something more.

The process wasn’t easy. Sometimes it didn’t look as I had hoped. Sometimes there were moments of inspired strokes and ideas. And many times, I just had to try again and again and again...."   (The Joy of Our Redemption.)

Here is her painting.  She titled it "And I Partook".

She talks about the whole process and talked about our Redemption because of Jesus Christ.  It is a beautiful and powerful talk and I suggest you google it and read or reread it again.

The whole point of all of that background is that since hearing that talk, I have thought of how I would "paint" the Savior.  Sister Yee is an artist of great talent.  She could do it.  I am not an artist but I can imagine a piece of art and so over the past six weeks, I have pondered that idea--what would my painting of Christ look like.  I haven't gotten it completely done in my head and aspects change from time to time but these are some of the words that explain the art work in my imagination.

First, the background of my painting would be filled with light--yellows and whites beyond description. (No reflection at all on Sister Yee's painting, just my ideas.) To me, Christ is filled with light so much that it bounces and fills the space all around Him. He would be standing in front the tree of life--green with life.  This is a symbol that I cherish--the tree of life where God's love is represented in its abundance. The white fruit would glisten and reflect the light of Christ. He is there waiting--for us to seek for Him, to lean on His strength, and to take advantage of His great Atonement for us. He stands with arms outstretched and leaning towards us--but not demanding or pulling us to Him--but us coming to Him is His greatest desire. He is reaching our reachings.

That's my painting.  How would you paint the Savior?

Hello Kitty

So we own a small row of storage units.  Gary manages it all and in general it is fairly straight forward.  However, we currently have a renter that we had to evict because of non-payment for over a year.  Although she told us that she removed her stuff, there is still lots of stuff in the unit. One find was two big boxes filled with Hello Kitty stuff.  Why??? Who knows...the DI or Toys for Tot will be excited.  I guess Hello Kitty is a popular thing at the moment.  My kids will do their own "shopping" and then off it goes.  Jessica says that even with the young adults she works with, Hello Kitty things are very popular.  Who knew and why does this old woman have this stuff in her storage unit.

Gary is having "fun" checking out all of the boxes and file cabinets that were left behind.
 

Saturday Snowfall

November 16th--and winter has arrived. Not a fan!

 

Taylorsville Temple

We had to go to Salt Lake to meet with our financial planner so we decided to combine it with a visit to the Taylorsville Temple, another one of the new temples which we have not visited yet.

It seems almost "dropped" right next to the I-215 freeway in Taylorsville,  It is so close to the roads there.

And I am not a fan of the more squared look of the outside.  However, I had heard that it was amazing inside--a place that John Taylor (the third prophet of the Church) would have felt right at home.

It was stunning inside.  With dark woods and more period style furnishing make it unique and so fun to experience.

And up close, I loved the outside details as well.

Not my personal style, but I can still love it when I see it.  It is fun to share these adventures with Gary and Jena.

No pictures of our financial meeting or our visit with Karla since we were in town, then we rushed back to Syracuse so I could go to dinner with Debbie Woodrow and Amy O'Dell Daily,  (Kristy who usually joins us was sick.)  

 

Sunset In Eden

We popped up to Nordic Valley to visit with Vonette and Gary for a bit and as we left their home, I caught the sunset reflecting on the mountains to the east.  It lasted just a minute of two, but beautiful.

 

Our Sweet Trip con't!

One of the reasons that I really wanted to make this trip is that I had two high school friends who I had connected with over Facebook that past 10 years or so who live in the area. I reached out to them and they were both excited to make the trip into town to meet up.  We settled on brunch on Monday morning.

Karen and Laurie were part of my extended friend group in Richland.  We became friends in junior high and continued through our high school years.  Of course, I moved when I was a junior in high school and I have not seen them since I was 16 years old.  Karen and I wrote letters off and on for a few years, Laurie and I wrote less than that and then we lost touch as we were in college.  While I did reconnect with a number of my Richland friends at BYU, those were my Church friends.  Karen and Laurie were not members of the Church nor was anyone else in that group of girls which hung out together. We were mostly involved in school sports and were in college prep type classes together.  They were all great people and most were involved in some type of religious life then and still are now.  They all went to different colleges out of high school and lost touch with each other for the most part.  They too have reconnected with a couple of old friends through Facebook.  This group of friends gave me a going away party right before we moved in July of 1971.  As part of that, they gave me a charm bracelet where they had each chosen a charm to represent our friendship.  I still have it but it is packed away.  It was sad that I could not have shared it with them and talked about how much they all meant to me.  Maybe next time....Instead, I was able to give them each the book Gift of the Sea and talk about the importance of their friendship during that period of my life.  Oh, how important these good women were to me as a teenager and what a gift to share a meal with them.

Karen picked the place--Skyway Cafe at Felt's Field, a private air field in Spokane.  It was perfect with airplanes taking off and landing right outside the windows.

The clock tower at Felt's Field

Austen wanted me to grab this guy and bring him home.

The restaurant....

Our after meal pictures    

me, Laurie, Karen-sitting and her husband Bob.
Laurie's husband had to stay up to manage
a new puppy who couldn't be left for long. They live about an hour north
of Spokane.

Gary and Jena enjoyed their meal and were good sports for our conversations about the past and catching up.

The whole restaurant is a tribute to flight, planes, airports, and other related things.  If you like planes, this is the place to go.  Both Karen and Laurie said that it is a big favorite with their grandchildren.

Laurie had to head off to do her "in-town" errands, but I got this photo of Karen and Bob at the Clock Tower.  I left wishing that they both lived down the street and we could visit frequently. How I love them--then and now.  They are great women and it is a privilege to be their friends.

As we left Spokane, I had wanted to walk across a cool bridge we had spotted from the freeway that was a walking trail.  Gary dropped me off at where we thought would take me to it, but no luck.  I did get some cool pictures of the fall colors......

These are small locks for controlling the flow of the Spokane River.

More old locks and remnants of irrigation canals.

There is small electrical plant at the end of the trail, but no bridge.

The carpet of leaves at the edge of the park...

You have to love the color schemes of the fall 

Our original plan was to take a slower drive home and stop at some of the historical markers that we had zoomed past on Saturday.  Then we would spend the night some place before Rexburg and drive to Archer, Idaho, to meet our friends, the Yeamans (from the Headquarters Mission) to have breakfast and check out their ranch.

HOWEVER---the weather report changed and a winter storm was moving into the area early Tuesday morning in southern Idaho.  As our goal for the trip was to avoid winter weather, we checked in with the Yeamans and decided to drive straight though to home.  They assured us that we could come and visit them anytime. And other than some rain when we first left Spokane for about an hour, we were able to get home on dry roads.

We stopped for gas south of Idaho Falls and were amazed to find this whole row of chargers for Teslas at the the gas station.  It seemed unlikely that there were that many Teslas in the whole surrounding county.  Odd.

We made it home about 11 pm, safe and dry which was our goal.  Besides missing our visit with Yeamans, it was a perfect trip. It was fun to connect with a variety of people in a short amount of time.  I had been so excited about our plans and it did not disappoint. Wish we could be there next weekend to welcome Sister Holding and Sister Cherrington home, but this was the best second option.

We are having our own "homecoming" of sorts as all of our kids and grandkids will be here next weekend for our Hall Family Reunion.  More fun times ahead!!  And we hope to catch Sister Witt's homecoming in American Fork if possible on Sunday.  Waiting for details about that.

Our Sweet Trip To Spokane, Post Falls,The Cooks And Surrounding Areas

This was our first "post' mission trip  (I know--we took many trips while on our missions, but this seemed different somehow--a new type of traveling freedom.)  And as the planning "fell" together, I was so excited about the whole of it.  It was a fast trip, but was packed with sweet moments of connection, memories, and love.

It went like this---

On November 9 (Saturday), we headed out at 6:00 am. up I-15 until it ran into I-90 and then across to Spokane, Washington.

Along the way, there were rest stops with historical markers sharing about the land formations in the area of Idaho and parts of Montana.

Gary indulged me by turning into Idaho Falls so that I could revisit the Idaho Falls Temple.  This was the first temple that I did baptisms for the dead when I was a teenager.  We traveled about 14 hours from Richland, Washington, after hours and hours of fundraisers for the trip so we could go.  The idea of living close to a temple was so foreign to us back then.  Although my parents always had temple recommends, they probably only attended the temple 3 or 4 times during my growing up years.  We just didn't have temples close enough by Richland or where we traveled to allow that to happen.  They did do a session with the other adults here the night we arrived. Then we did baptisms in the morning.  My dad was in the bishopric so they made arrangements for both of them to go with the youth for that opportunity.  How blessed we are to be close to so many temples.

This is what I remembered--that there was a separate entry for the baptistry although I don't think that sign is that old.

The baptistry door....

The Snake River from the temple grounds

A walk around the whole temple

There were two young sister missionaries on the grounds, so of course we stopped and talked to them for a few minutes.

Our selfie shot....

It was tender moment to think back to what I can remember about that time and how I was as a 15 year old girl.  This was just months before we learned that we would be moving to Amarillo, Texas, and my whole world changing.  But even despite that (or probably because of that move), the hopes and dreams I had for myself came true--in ways more incredible that I could have even imagined at that time. God is so good.

Our route took us north through the eastern part of Idaho, then veered northwest through Montana (I missed both of our crossings into Montana while on this trip because I was sleeping, so no Montana state signs this trip.), and then crossed through Coeur d'Alene into Spokane.

At our gas stop in Dillon, Montana--we found these fun shots---

Proving that it isn't just in Arkansas that people use hay bales to dress up.  This was in front of a feed store.

A beautiful old building in this small town

And I asked Gary to make a trip around the block

to get a front view of this guy in front of a gym.

Always fun to drive through small towns.

At a rest area, they had this information sign about how citizens were encouraged to Keep Watching the Skies!  I thought it had something to do with birds like a rare eagle or something.  Nope!  Back during World War II and afterwards, citizens were trained to watch and report unusual air craft in the area. Be A Citizen Plane Spotter!  The things you can learn at a rest stop these days.

This rest area had very big crow who was enjoying the food from a garbage can.  He wasn't too concerned about us walking near him at all.

The drive through this section of the Rocky Mountains was beautiful. There was a pretty combination of green evergreens and yellow fall trees like aspens and larch trees. Less you think that I really know my trees, I googled it during the drive.  There were huge trees that were turning yellow (and not aspens) and as we saw some closer to the road, I realized that they looked like evergreens with needles and small pine cones.  I worried that they might all be dying from some disease, but when I looked it up, it turned out that they were larch trees which are not true evergreens.  They lose their needle each fall--turning a brilliant yellow before the needles fall to the ground and then they regrow them in the spring.

See the yellow and greens mixed together......

and a little fog mixed in to make the whole scene perfect for a November road trip.  So beautiful.

At a later rest stop, there was actually a patch of snow on the ground.  Then Jena and I came out from using the restrooms, we found this little guy on the hood of our car.

I didn't want Gary's work to be destroyed as we took off, so I moved him to the closest flat surface I could find.  As we were pulling out of the rest area, another car was pulling in so hopefully he brought a smile to their faces as they made their rest stop.

I was awake as we came into Idaho.

We had brought our temple clothes in hopes of doing a session in the Spokane Temple.  The last one was at 5:30 pm and it had space.  However, as we were approaching the area, I knew it would be a huge rush to make to the hotel, change clothes and then get to the temple and rushing to and in the temple is not my favorite thing.  So, we opted to just visit the temple grounds before checking into our hotel.

Spokane Temple:

It is a smaller temple like Oklahoma City and Bentonville where it shares a parking lot with a stake center.  It was fun to see it.  We interviewed many mission leaders who had served in the Washington Spokane Mission and some had shared sweet stories about this place.  It was good to see it in person, even though we didn't go inside.

We grabbed some Panda Express and headed to the hotel for the night to watch the BYU vs Utah game (although it was so poorly played in the first half that we watched The Grinch during the second half.  BYU did win, but it was a weird game overall.  (That made BYU 9-0, but they lost last night to Kansas so their "perfect" season has come to an end.  Now they need to win the rest of their games and see what happens with the playoffs.)

Moving on---:)

The reason that we came up to this area was because our friends and fellow ABM missionaries, Elder and Sister Cook, had returned from their mission and were giving their homecoming talks in their ward in Post Falls, Idaho (right across the border from Spokane. By the way, buy gas in Idaho not Washington--they have a much higher gas tax.)

They did great and we were glad that we were there.

David and Diana Cook and us

Since we were coming up to this area, we decided to visit the families of two of our wonderful sister missionaries.

Sister Leah Holding's family actually also lives in Post Falls, although they are not in the same area as Cooks and didn't know them.  Sister Holding came to their talks and then we headed to their house for a visit.

Then we hopped into our car and headed out to Deer Park, Washington which was about an hour a way through some beautiful scenic roads to get to Sister Katie Cherrington's family's home.  At both homes, we had a great time sharing about their daughters as missionaries and also learning a bit more about them as people.

What an honor it was to spend time with them and to have a glimpse into these sweet missionaries' lives.

The extra fun thing (which is also a bit sad as well) is that both of these sister missionaries come up this coming Saturday at the end of their missions.  Unfortunately, timing didn't work for us to come back to hear them talk.

Jena did make Welcome Home signs for each of them and their moms said they would put them on their beds.  We also gave them some photos of us with their daughters which they loved as well.

The Welcome Home signs

We then headed BACK to Spokane and changed our clothes and headed back into Post Falls to join the Cooks and their son and three of their couple friends for a delicious meal of chicken stew, salad, and rolls.  It was fun to talk with the Cooks and their friends--two of the couples have also served senior missions so it was fun to share some stories.  Also, one of them has a granddaughter who is 9 who also has Down syndrome so she was very interested in talking to Jena and to us about her experiences growing up. It was a great meal and fun conversations.

What a sweet day!!! And we still had tomorrow......see next post!