July update

Hello everyone,

It seems like it has been a year since I last wrote! So much has happened in such a short amount of time. Not much that’s newsworthy, but still so much. The month of June was a very fast one for me; I guess that’s part of why it’s taken me so long to get this out. I finished my school work for now. I won’t begin classes until the 24^th of September. I’m glad for the break. I am happy to report that I got straight A’s and am currently on the President’s list. Last quarter I was on the Dean’s list which didn’t mean much I guess, but then I didn’t even know I was on it until after I knew about being on the President’s list this term. I don’t care too much as long as it means that I’ll be able to get some scholarships-that would be so nice. I have just gotten a couple of books to read; I found out early that one of the courses I will take in January requires reading seven novels and the person who decides them has given me some of the titles. I’m glad for that because it means that I can read at a more leisurely pace if I want to. I’ve never heard of any of the books, so I hope they are good. 

Towards the end of the month was Relay for Life. There was a lot of business in preparing for that. The branch has their own team and I have served as team captain the last two years with Marta Young helping me. She is an amazing partner to work with and I’m not sure that I could do it without her. We plan on doing it again next year. We think we have it figured out now. Last year was somewhat a disaster because we didn’t get the chance to do any fund-raising before Relay and didn’t have any ideas of what to do at Relay so very little money was raised. This year we did a little fundraising before Relay, but for whatever reason we didn’t make much money at that attempt. We think we know why so we’ll try to correct that for next year. At Relay itself we sold elephant ears. This went EXTREMELY well. We made over $800 after costs. We also sold quite a few luminary bags. I’m really happy about the money we raised. I think the total came to over $900 when all was said and done. Andrew figured it out for me but I don’t remember the number he gave me. We had lots of help from the Branch this year and that made a big difference as well. Next year will be even more organized and hopefully it won’t take such a toll on my family and the Young’s. As it was Andrew spent from around 8am on Friday until 6pm on Saturday doing Relay with only about a 2-hour break in the middle of the early morning hours of Saturday. I would have been there too, but I had girl’s camp the next week and knew I couldn’t go into camp being exhausted. I’m so grateful to have such a wonderful husband. Megan (my daughter) wants to be a co-captain next year. She feels like she is already doing all this work for Relay and I guess she thinks there is some kind of glory in the being co-captain. I told her fine. I don’t think she realizes what she is saying though.

The last week of June was girl’s camp. We left on Monday at 7:30am and got back around 9:30pm on Thursday. Again, there was a lot of busy work involved in getting ready for this. I actually had to do laundry after Relay so that I could wear clothes to camp. I had the privilege of working with Denise Whitt and Sydney Coulson; both are wonderful women in the stake. I had such a great time getting to know them. On Monday I woke up with pink eye and so I spent three of the four days wearing some old glasses. That was really hard for me because I couldn’t judge depth AT ALL the first day. I finally got used to it by Wednesday and then on Thursday I had to readjust to my contacts, though that only took a few hours. I got no restful sleep while there, which is just part of the way it goes and thankfully I knew that going in so I didn’t expect it. I think I got about 5 hours each night, but I woke up quite often to turn and move around and wonder where I was and all of that. I was helping with the first year girls. They were sweet, but several of them got homesick and then no matter what we did they weren’t feeling well and kept asking to see the nurse. It got really annoying towards the end, but such is life I guess. We did some cute crafts with the girls as well. They got to go kayaking or canoeing (I’m not sure because I was busy elsewhere) and they went on a hike all together around the camp and had a very spiritual experience as they talked about laying their burdens of sin at the Savior’s feet. We also had a testimony meeting, listened to Brother Drought from the CES (Church Education System) for our area and several other things to build their testimonies. Overall I think camp was a huge success and I can’t wait to go back again next year. I hope that I’m able to and will be healthier when it comes around. I sure got tired of wearing tennis shoes (I hate wearing shoes altogether and felt like my feet were suffocating in there), so I was glad to get back home to bare feet and flip flops. I do miss the silliness of camp though. There is nothing like girl’s camp that I have ever found and I’m so grateful I had the chance to go.

We had a quiet 4^th of July. We watched some shows on Netflix about the creation of the country and those who helped to form it. We went down to the parade which is always funny to watch as we hope that nobody gets seriously injured going around the fountain circle. There are just so many people, wagons, bikes, and pets on the street that I find myself cringing several times at near-misses. We ending up getting a Little Caesar’s pizza because they were only $4 and ate that for lunch and dinner. Not the best, but it was little work so we enjoyed it anyway.

The past few days I have been just enjoying not having to be everywhere and doing everything and as a result have gotten very little done. Today I think I’m back on track. Andrew will be starting a basic welding class on the 18^th I believe to learn basic welding after which he plans to get a job welding. There are lots of them here and has been told by someone who occasionally attends church at our branch that he would hire Andrew if he learned that basic skill. It doesn’t look like the other offer that he was pursuing is going to work out after all. The program is one where you work at your own pace, so if he works at it really hard he can get through the basics in just 2-3 weeks. I hope so. We are past 7 months of unemployment and I don’t think I can take it anymore. I’m so thankful for the Lord sustaining us during that time, we have been incredibly blessed, but I am ready to stand on my own two feet (so-to-speak) again.

May update

May was quite a long month for me, especially the last week. I’m sorry I didn’t get this out sooner, but I just didn’t have the time. I will try to keep my story somewhat abbreviated. I hope that you are doing well and that your family is also.

First though I will tell you that our new Branch Presidency was organized on the 29^th of May. Our new Branch President is Brad Peterson. The first counselor is Morris Evans, he served as the branch president when we were first organized as a branch, so you might remember him. The second counselor is Mike Fittro. I think that they will do an amazing job as we continue to move forward.

On the 6^th we had a branch party with a BBQ and games. It was lots of fun. Probably the best attended event we have had since I moved here a year and a half ago. Mother’s Day was fairly quiet. I got to pick activities for my family on Saturday and I chose to watch some documentaries that I’ve been wanting to see but we haven’t made time to do so. It was a lot of fun.

On the 14^th and 15^th we had Stake Conference. I enjoyed that very much. I ended up listening to a big chunk of the Priesthood Leadership session and really enjoyed that as well. Our new Stake Presidency is quite an amazing set of brethren. I could tell that the mantle of leadership had been passed onto them. The Sunday was session was broadcast from Salt Lake City and was amazing. I got to listen to some of it twice because Andrew and a brother from the stake spent a few hours afterwards trying to fix a bunch of little problems with the sound system in the building.

On the 21^st I got to find out that I’ll be working with the first year girls and found out what level leaders and youth leaders I will be working with as well. That was lots of fun. We planned snacks, fun games, ideas for decorating and such. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I really was so excited to finally know who I would be working with!

The 22^nd was my birthday and it was pretty good. I got to take a nap and I love when that happens, so I was pretty happy. I also got some nice gifts for which I was grateful.

Memorial Day was pretty good at the beginning of it, but when I went home as you know the storm came. We spent about an hour in the basement and then finally came up. We lost electricity and it was off four days. That’s a long time to also not have running water. We spent much of Monday trying to prepare for the days ahead and were so grateful to have several coolers already here. We got a couple more coolers and we made it through pretty well. We did lose some food, but most of it was fine. The food that we did lose we could mostly give to the chickens as it was still good enough for them to eat, but not considered safe for human consumption. Mostly it was eggs that were lost. We tried to have the elders over for dinner on Tuesday and made foil dinners, but then there was that brief rain storm and we ended up at Pizza Hut instead of cooking the dinners outside like we had planned. It worked out, but it was quite interesting. I was grateful for the rain though because we had run out of water for flushing toilets and that made it possible for our containers to be replenished enough to make it through. We finally got power back on Thursday around 3pm or so. I spent a lot of time at the library that week trying to do my homework since I had a major research paper and a major project due on June 6^th. It was nice to be able to go there and use the internet and their power. I also enjoyed using the restrooms there where I didn’t have to refill the tank after flushing. Running water is so nice to have. J So on Thursday we spent the evening cleaning the house and putting things back into the freezers and refrigerators (we have two refrigerator/freezers and one large freezer). It was nice to have everything almost normal again. Our large freezer scared us when it didn’t come on. We found out it was the outlet, not the freezer. Andrew replaced the outlet, but it’s still not working. So for now was have it plugged into an extension cord. It works short-term but he’s got to figure out why that outlet isn’t working anymore.  On either Thursday or Friday Andrew found a mouse nest in our car’s engine. All the baby mice were dead. Mom and Dad were nowhere to be found. He tried to clean it all out, but didn’t succeed until Saturday when he spent probably 6 hours cleaning it out. He found close to 10 bodies I believe. It spelled absolutely awful from the time he discovered them until he finished cleaning it out on Saturday. I had to laugh because they had created their nest with the napkins we had in the car and Andrew found the earbud of my headset that had literally been chewed off. Sadly it was a nice headset that I had to get rid of about 6 weeks ago now. That wasn’t a happy time. I still haven’t found a replacement. Grrr.

The other fun story from last week as a result of the mice was that on Saturday when we went to the temple in “Detroit” which is really in Bloomfield Hills we went without air conditioning. It was 95 F and we had something like 80% humidity that day, so needless to say we were sweating pretty badly on the drive over and back. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes one way to get to the temple. That wasn’t the best travel I have done since getting here. I was more than glad to come inside the house when we got home. We ate some ice cream and I took a cool shower to get cooled back down. Andrew went outside and got really sweaty cleaning up the rest of the mouse mess. He finally succeeded, but his shirt was wet clear-through due to the temperatures. He’s such a trooper. Sunday morning the car smelled decent again. There is some residual from all the Febreeze, the Clorox solution and the air freshener that’s still hanging in there, but at least it’s not so stinky that we have to drive around with the windows down!

Much of May saw me doing more and more school work as I worked to complete major projects and papers. I had two large group projects that culminated in addition to my individual project and my research paper. For one of my group projects I had to rewrite a chapter of a grammar book. I probably could have finished it much sooner if I had been working on it myself. I hate group work like that. Oh well. The other group project, for a different class was to plan, script, rehearse and perform a dramatic representation of a poem with four elementary students. That was actually a very enjoyable group project. I love group work like that. My research paper was supposed to be about a theory, practice, or whatever that helps to teach grammar. That was hard to find something to write about, but once I did the paper went easy enough. I wish I’d had more time between finding something to write about and the due date however because I didn’t do as well on the paper as I had hoped. The other big project I had was to select 10 children’s books and write lessons based on those books. Each book needed five lessons, language development, science, math, creative expression and one other that I don’t remember the category for. That was a lot of work. I’ve been working on it for a long time, but my goodness it was a lot of work. Monday the 6^th I finished those two classes. On May 12^th I started a third class though and am finishing that up later this month. Whew! I feel like I can hardly breathe after just writing all of that down. No wonder I’ve felt so busy.

Of course the month was full of Young Women’s activities and Church and meetings for Church and Relay for Life things and getting ready for Girl’s Camp to an extent a well. Sometimes I wonder if I have a hole in my head when it comes to realizing just what I’m in for when I say “yes” to something. I keep telling myself I will scale back, but then I never seem to do it. The one good thing about not having power was that I seemed to be less busy, although it really created a lot of problems for me because I wasn’t able to do so many things that I needed to. Oh well. Live and learn.

I don’t remember the exact day, but Andrew started interviewing to work with Prudential at some point during May. He went to quite a few interviews and discovered that his licenses could all be transferred and/or reinstated that he held previously. He never would have considered working for Prudential if the opportunity had presented itself sooner, but for whatever reason this felt right at this point and he is actually training to work there. He is not officially hired until his background check comes back clean, but we know that will happen because he has never done anything. We were against the idea initially because we used to work for Primerica which is really against whole-life policies, and for good reason. However, this office for Prudential, or rather this region has a different way of doing business. As a company they have virtually quit selling whole-life and so that was the first major block cleared. Andrew won’t sell that type of insurance. It’s not good for people. He will actually be working more with businesses than with individuals, though there will be plenty of those as well. Already we are seeing blessings of him going down this road. A friend of ours, Rhonda, the same one who suggested we move here actually, just opened a new business downtown and is really excited to have Andrew take care of the finances for the business. She has already invited him to do seminars there once he is officially able to do so. While Andrew is training, which is about 10-12 weeks supposedly he will not be paid because if he doesn’t get paid he has the potential to make more money after training with bonuses and such. He will be working here in Marshall with another Prudential representative, who is the high counselor for our branch. This makes it easy for us to potentially have just one car until he is making some decent income. I hope all of that made sense. We are so excited that he is finally going to be working again. He has been without for six months. The Lord has really taken care of us during that time, but it will be nice to stand on our own again.

I’m so thankful that things are going to change focus for the summer. It will still be busy, but at least it will be something else. J I am hoping to be able to really focus on my weight-loss and I really am looking forward to a break from school. We have youth conference, girls camp, scout camp, Relay for Life, the farmer’s market and of course mutual each week and church and church meetings each Sunday, but I’m  hoping that amidst all of that I can carve out some time to do some fun activities with my family that are more meaningful.

Megan gets of out school on the 9^th, in just a few days from now. She is very excited for that to happen. I’m going to be glad too because things are more relaxed time-wise when she is out of school. The bad part is that we tend to stay up too late at night. Maybe this year will be different. I sure hope so. As much of a night-owl as I am, I’ve discovered that I get less done that way. So I guess I’m finally beginning to see the wisdom in going to bed early and arising early. Took me long enough. J Well so much for the abbreviated version. I hope I didn’t bore you to death.

April update

Hi Jo,


I’m trying to think of what happened this month and can’t really think of much. That’s pretty sad. It seems like it has been an eventful month. I will just start mentioning the few things I do remember and hopefully more things will come to mind.

The month began with General Conference. I love to watch conference and listen to all the messages. I don’t usually have a favorite talk at the time of conference, and this time was no different. Perhaps after I have listened to them several times I will have a favorite. I love to bask in the simplicity of the Gospel. I thought it was interesting that both Andrew and I went into it hoping to get some inspiration about his job. He doesn’t have one still. The one we thought he was going to get he ended up not being offered. We are being blessed immeasurably by the Lord in the meantime, but we know that we need to have a job in order for things to keep working and we want to be self-sustaining. So as we watched conference I found it interesting to see that we both came away with something very different. He came away with the strong impression that he needed to help care for the poor and the needy. This is really odd to me since we could be considered the poor and the needy right now. I came away with knowing that the Lord would take care of us and that He knows our need. I don’t know what will happen, he continues to look for a job, but I know that we will be successful somehow because the Lord wants us to be just that. When we do all we can (and I feel we are) then He will bestow blessings on us that we need and desire in righteousness. I’m so thankful for the Lord’s mercy in our times of trial. I hope you had the opportunity to watch conference. If not, please take time to read it, listen to it or even watch the archived videos. You can access all three forms on the church’s website. If you get the Ensign, then it will be in the May Ensign as always. I like to listen to the MP3’s while doing other things, like getting ready for the day or working in the kitchen making dinner and such.

The second Sunday was our special Stake Conference where we received a new stake presidency. It was inspiring to hear the story of how these calls were made. Two men who barely knew each other and neither of which had ever been to Kalamazoo before flew in on Friday. On Saturday morning they began interviewing a list of about 30 men. Of those one was selected independently by the two conducting the interviews as to whom should serve as the new president of the stake. They both picked the same man. They called him back and extended the call. They gave him a list of 30 men to choose from for counselors and told him he had 30 minutes to make his decision. When he came back he had picked the two men that both of the interviewers had felt, again independent of the other, should be the counselors. The calls were then extended to those two brothers. Both the old and the new presidencies went out to dinner together on Saturday night. What an amazing process. Our new stake president is Mark Witt, the 1st counselor is Mark Montross (yes, our current branch president), and the 2nd counselor is David Decker. I was so surprised that they called Pres. Montross to the new presidency. I thought our branch was too small to take someone from. Obviously I was wrong.

As a result of Pres. Montross now being in the new stake presidency we will have a new branch president called. Due to many circumstances we will be having this done on May 29th, Memorial Day weekend. While I don’t know who will be called I look forward to seeing the change occur. It is a thrilling experience. It will be sad to see those who have served so diligently be released as it always is, but I know that the Lord will sustain the new leaders just as he did the old. If you are able to make it, I would love to see you there. If not, I will let you know who has been called afterwards. I will probably just send my letter a little late so that you can know as soon as possible who they are. I will send it out on Monday, but of course the mail won’t be delivered or picked up that day so it’ll probably be Wednesday before you get it.

On the 16th the youth had their temple trip to the Detroit temple. I hate getting up so early, but it’s worth it to be in the temple. We have such an amazing group of youth. I think it was a deeply spiritual experience for several of our YM and YW. I’m so grateful to serve with them. I had hoped to take a nap when I got home (I got up at 3:45am) but found out I had a meeting in Kalamazoo in only two hours. So I laid down for a while without sleeping and then got up and went to my meeting. I was glad I could go because it was a wonderful meeting and I needed to hear what was said. It was about girl’s camp and how to make it a good experience for the girls.

I have rededicated myself to the difficult task of losing weight. So far so good I guess. I have lost an average of 2 lbs. a week. I have a goal I would like to reach by girl’s camp so we’ll see what happens. I need to actually lose 3 lbs. a week to meet the goal. Still, anything is better than nothing. I feel very confident though and have already lost an inch around my waist.

I started classes again. They are an odd combination. My first class is learning how to teach grammar to children. The textbook is so boring that it’s difficult to even read without falling asleep so we are rewriting sections of it for the biggest part of the class. Not exactly easy or fun. My second class is much more enjoyable as it’s about children’s literature and drama. For about half of the class we will go to an elementary school and work with 1st and 2nd graders to do a dramatic poetry interpretation. My third class won’t begin until May 12th and it will be sociology. I don’t know how that will go, but it’s online.

We are trying to work on emergency preparedness a lot right now. We feel a sense of urgency about it. We also got the chickens outside finally. The room was so gross and dirty it took Andrew 8 hours to clean it. I was glad he did it and I didn’t have to because it smelled so awful in there I don’t think I could have done it without throwing up. I could hardly stand to walk by the door and would often gag in doing so. They are enjoying their home outside, except during the storms of course and I don’t really blame them. They do have a form of shelter, but not much right now. They are still too small to put with the big chickens so they don’t have access to the barn.

I’m so excited that spring seems to have finally come. It happened overnight I think. On Sunday I remember looking outside wishing there were buds on the trees and not seeing any. Yesterday I saw a little green and today (Wednesday) there is so much green it’s unbelievable. I’m glad to see it though. The part I don’t like is my dog is getting all messy and I have to keep giving her baths. Oh well. It’s worth it to have spring.

Yesterday I heard the tornado sirens for a few minutes, but thankfully it ended within five minutes so I didn’t bother going downstairs.

Andrew had his birthday on the 12th. It was a nice quiet day. We had homemade Panda Express orange chicken. Just typing that makes me want to have it again. That is some yummy food.

Easter was on the 24th and that was also quiet. Megan is 13, so we don’t do much of the traditional fare. The day before we had gone to a baptism down at the church and we did hide and find eggs at Megan’s insistence. She hid them and we still haven’t found them all. She decided to hide them extra hard so we couldn’t find them easy, sadly she did it too hard and didn’t keep a record of where she put them. I suppose that’s pretty much what happens every year. I remember once I found an egg 10 months after Easter. At least they are empty plastic eggs so there is nothing going bad.

Last Friday our main computer crashed, so we are limping along while Andrew tries to get us up and going again. He is really good with that stuff. I will be glad when he is done because so much of what we both do is on the computer from school work to church and keeping in touch with family and friends back home.

This Saturday is the “Fiesta for a cure”.  Relay for Life is getting so close. I’m glad it will be over before girl’s camp, but I wish I had more than a day to recover before leaving for girl’s camp. That should be interesting.

Well I guess that’s about it. I knew it had been a busy month.

March update

The month of March is nearly over and once again I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. I finished my Winter Quarter classes and am now over half-way done with my two-week break. I did well in my classes and am so glad for that. On April 4th I begin my new classes, all of which happen to be on Monday. This will make it very convenient for me as far as driving to Jackson, but I’m not looking forward to being on campus all day long. My first class starts at 9am and then my last class will end at 5:40pm. I will have breaks between classes, but that’s still a long time to be on campus. I am hoping that during my breaks I will get the majority of my homework done. That would make it very nice.


Andrew is out of work again. Last month I wasn’t sure when I wrote, but he was definitely given the boot. He wasn’t told for nearly three weeks after they had decided to let him go. He has interviewed for several places and we are hoping that one of them will call back very soon. We are especially hoping for one place in particular to call back. I will let you know next month I guess who he ends up working for. We are pretty sure another place wants him, but he is kind of holding out for a better offer at the place he really wants to work for.

This summer is already shaping up to be a busy one. I plan to attend classes full-time during the summer quarter, I plan to attend girl’s camp and we also have stake youth conference, which I would like to go to, but not sure if I will or not because of the other things I’m going to be doing. I am also the Relay for Life captain and we have Relay on June 24-25 so I will be busy with that as well.

We bought 40 baby chickens and have them in a “spare room” that we have used for playing in when smaller kids come over. We have quite a stink in the house now in that area because they are getting older and just like humans their waste stinks more when they get older. They are hungry little things (which isn’t a surprise) and we are hoping to move them outside sooner than later. I’d love to put them outside right now, but they need their feathers in first and they aren’t quite old enough yet. As soon as they are, we will be moving them outdoors where they are free to be stinky and then we have some major cleaning up to do in that room! My what a mess of ‘dust’ is all over in there. I know why we got them, but I don’t know what we were thinking when we did so! Hahaha

This weekend is General Conference. We will be watching most of the sessions here at home. We went down to the Church last time and the chairs are just too uncomfortable to spend that much time in. We do plan to go down on Sunday morning however because our Branch Presidency has asked us to do so. Andrew has to go down and start the recording, but then will come back home and be able to watch with us here online. We have the TV set up so that we can plug the laptop into it and watch it on our large screen. This makes it nice and comfortable.

They announced a few weeks ago that Pres. Anderson (the Stake President) has been called to serve as mission president for the Colorado, Colorado Springs mission. He is very excited. As a result of that calling though, he will be released at a special session of Stake Conference on April 10th. This means that we won’t have regular meetings for two weeks, which is like an eternity. I am rather disappointed at his release because I had just gotten to where I recognized the Stake Presidency members and now they will all be changing. I feel pretty comfortable saying that they aren’t going to be putting in someone that I know. The likelihood of that is so small I almost cringe. My only hope is that they will call a high counselor that I might recognize. Oh well.

I have been working on some sewing projects and wishing that I didn’t have to. They are not fun projects thus far. It’s mostly been repairing and resizing clothes. I am looking forward to being done with those so that I can move onto a quilt that I want to make and then a dress for Megan for Easter. Maybe if there’s enough I’ll make a shirt or skirt for me as well. I can’t remember how much fabric I bought now because it’s been nearly a year. She had wanted to learn to sew, but before we got very far she changed her mind and I’ve been too busy. I had hoped to get all the sewing done during my time off, but at this point I don’t think that’s going to happen. Too many other things have needed my attention, like usual.

Well, I guess that’s about all I have to really say this month. I have been trying to keep up on current events and I find it hard to believe so many things are going on and yet the people of the earth don’t return to God as they should. If we would all repent and make Him a part of our lives again then there wouldn’t be so much sadness in the world. I hope that you are keeping Him close to you as you go throughout your life, He is always there for you.

February update

Even though the month of February is short as far as days are concerned it has been a crazy one and very busy. I have not enjoyed all the snow that we have had this month, but I sure enjoyed the week of spring-like weather. I hope that break is enough to see my through to the real spring-time because I am so completely done with winter I can hardly stand it. I’m not really sure why this winter seems so everlastingly long, but it sure seems like it has been winter forever this year. Maybe the newness of living in snow wore off the first year of being here and now I find it to be a pain like everyone else. I don’t know. I’ve certainly not enjoyed driving in it this year and I feel like I’ve done a lot more driving in it than I had to last year and I’m sure that’s part of it. I am so grateful that we never lost power during the entire winter. I’m sure this is due only to the fact that Consumer’s spent quite a bit of time chopping up trees that were causing damage to the power lines this past summer after a large number of power outages occurred last spring. I don’t mind losing power so much as I mind losing water. That’s pretty hard to deal with. Someday I will be the proud owner of a generator and it won’t matter anymore, but for now I just get to pour water in the toilet tank and try to flush as little as possible when the electricity goes out.


School has been busy and is progressing quickly. I like the shortened class schedule because I find that I’m already getting quite bored with my classes and I still have a few weeks left for two of them. One is now finished and I didn’t do as well in it as I would have liked to, but did well enough I’m not complaining. I’m doing better with my on campus classes, both of which I have an A in currently. I’m very happy with those grades and I guess I just do better when I’m in a classroom than I do when I’m online. Sometimes the lectures get boring, but I will take the trade-off for the better grades as that opens more opportunities for scholarships and such.

This past Friday my psychology instructor talked about the five languages of love which I found so interesting I wanted to share it with you. Perhaps it will help you, I don’t know. The first one is “Acts of Service” this is a person who shows their love by serving others. If someone wants to say “I love you” to this type of person, they should do an act of service, like the dishes. The second type is “Giving and Receiving Gifts” this is a person who gives gifts just for the fun of it to show their love. Third is “Words of Support” which is someone who shows love by the things they say. Fourth is “Quality Time” and this person needs to spend time with people to show they love them. Lastly is the one so many of us think of when we talk about showing love, “Physical Touch” and includes things like kisses, hugs, and cuddling. He was talking about how we can improve our marriages by speaking our spouses love language. So if your spouse is one who speaks the language of Words of Support then you should compliment them often and about as many things as you can. In return, they will feel more loved. I enjoyed this idea very much and I can see why when I do certain things for Andrew he tends to feel more loved and does things for me that show me he loves me (I’m an Acts of Service person). It was very interesting. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. If you want to learn more, the person who originally came up with the idea is Gary Chapman and he wrote a book entitled “The Seasons of Marriage” which I’ve not read so I will not recommend it nor will I condemn it. I assume it’s a good book and I would like to read it. If I do, I will let you know.

During the month I gave an informative speech in my speech class and talked about four beliefs of the LDS Church. I got feedback from most of the people in class (a few were absent and it was an assignment) and almost everyone enjoyed the speech. I’m glad to hear that. This next Wednesday I do a demonstration speech about conducting music and then I have two more to do, one impromptu and one that is persuasive, which I plan to do about Relay for Life. I figure since I’m a team captain that should be a good topic for me to talk about.

This month we had New Beginnings in Young Women. Sadly, I didn’t feel well enough to go but I did earn some ribbons to add to the one I earned last fall. I’m excited to be progressing through the program again (I did it when I was a young women myself) and am looking forward to completing it sometime this year and getting my medallion this fall.

Andrew left town on February 6th and began work in South Point, OH. He ended up coming home early because they were ahead of schedule on their project so he surprised me this past Wednesday around 6:30am when he showed up. It’s nice to have him back again. I always miss him when he is out of town. I hope that he will not have to stay out of town for such long periods of time for long. A few days I don’t mind, but a few weeks is not good in my opinion.