October 27, 2020

Our back deck door has needed painting for some time and we finally picked up the paint this week and finished the project. Now we are thinking the basement door needs some love. Always something. We also went to LazyBoy this week to look for an accent chair for the basement but decided against the one we were considering and came home and ordered one online from Wayfair. Tom has been good about my home renovations but I am sure he is hoping it will soon be done. Does that ever happen? I just have too much time at home with opportunity to be looking around the house.

I made bran muffins this week and our bran muffins are Grandma Tanner’s recipe which is a very large recipe. The batter can be kept in the fridge for days but I think a week is long enough. We have been eating muffins and we took a dozen muffins over to Cindy and family. We are eating far too well during this pandemic.

I had a phone appointment with my doctor this week and Tom had an appointment with Glen Collingridge, who is Tom’s doctor. Tom is going to go in to have a checkup. We went for flu shots this week too and that was an adventure because getting in for a flu shot is not too easy right now. Because of the pandemic, the government is encouraging flu shots for everyone to lessen the burden on the health system.

I met with Carol Jones again this week via zoom. We discussed one of the conference talks. We took her the sacrament on Sunday too. She is a wonderful convert and a great person to get to know. She is eager to learn and be involved.

We have been working on our Ward Christmas Musical this week and it seems to be coming together. We have all the performers and we have presented our program to the Bishopric for approval. Now we wait to receive the final go ahead.

We watched the funeral for Josie’s husband Patrick on Saturday. He died suddenly from a heart attack and we are feeling for her and sorry we are not able to be with her during this distancing time. I also checked on Shirlene this week to see how she has been doing since Ross’s passing. Her daughter Nancy has been here with her and Nancy is taking her back with her to Utah for the winter. Our hearts are hurting for both Shirlene and Josie.

We have finished pulling the flowers out of our flower beds. The weather has certainly turned and our kids in Kelowna and Montana have had snow this past week. This change in weather and seasons will offer us some new experiences and challenges for our isolation. We are finding our path each day.

October 20, 2020

 Zooming is the new way of meeting with people for church or for other reasons. We never heard of it before covid restriction were put in place. We zoomed Carol Jones again this week and gave her the last of the ‘new member’ lessons and agreed we would continue to meet with her weekly and discuss other gospel topics. We zoomed sacrament meeting on Sunday and I zoomed a meeting with the Relief Society Presidency to discuss the format for the upcoming lesson this week. Tom and Athol Symonds have been zooming trying to figure out how to incorporate Tabernacle Choir music into the ward zoom only Sacrament meetings. We also zoomed into a ‘viewing’ for Josie McCarthy’s husband who passed away recently. They will also zoom the funeral this coming Saturday. We do a great deal of zooming.

We have been asked to organize the ward Christmas Musical and so we have been working on that this week and calling people to perform. I think we have a simple but beautiful program in place and we have some great people taking part. We have Julie Duerichen and her daughter Holly singing, Rueben Leonard singing as well as Charlotte Law singing and the Tsai brothers singing and /or playing instruments.  Carol Hur is playing the violin and Brian and Brenda Leavitt are our readers. We are calling  it “Silent - Holy Night” and plan on it being about 45 minutes long. We will zoom at least one of the two performances and perhaps record and broadcast a version of it. We still need someone to do decor, handle filming/sound and someone to play accompaniment. It is falling into place,

We also cleaned up the back deck for winter, cut Tom’s hair and took Carol Jones the sacrament on Sunday. We have both made phone appointments with our own doctors this week which is also the new way of doing things. We received an email from our London Temple President this week which included his desires for us to return in the near future. He feels it will be 6-9 months before we are able to go back. We answer emails, phone our family and others and tend to our house and yard. We FaceTime our family and connect with our ministering people by email or phone. Roger Jahn has another aneurism and will have surgery in December. Our world seems small at times but it does go beyond our walls and we are grateful for that. Our family are all busy and we appreciate them and each other.

October 13, 2020

 We were finally able to make arrangements with our friend Debra Moore, who the children had commissioned to take our anniversary pictures. We set Wednesday morning as the date and Derby Reach Historical site by the river in Fort Langley as the location. We got up early that morning and found it to be be a very foggy day but I was actually  thrilled because I think fog adds an interesting dimension to photographs and bright sunny days can prove to be difficult when taking pictures.. We had a fun time with Debra and hope she was able to make something of these old people. She hasn’t sent the finished “shoot” to us as yet.

We celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend and, because our children have been going to school and some back at work, Cindy felt we shouldn’t all be getting together because of virus concerns. We determined if we were not going to have dinner with our family, we would take our meal to people who needed a Thanksgiving dinner. We phoned Gene and Marie next door as Gene is suffering from cancer. She had a turkey and was going to make their own meal.  We phoned Cheyenne across the street who is home alone with her father Wayne while her mother Jean and sister Charmaine are in Austria getting Charmaine settled in a fine arts college. We just told them we were bringing them dinner because we know they need help.  We took the sacrament to Carol Jones on Sunday and discovered that her husband would be in Saskatoon for Thanksgiving and the remainder of the winter and so we told her we would bring her dinner too. We started baking and preparing our regular Thanksgiving meal throughout the week - carrot cake, layered salad, stuffing, rolls, yams, mashed potatoes/gravy, brussel sprouts/carrots/bacon and turkey. Our table seemed empty with just the two of us but we hoped that our food helped some others. We have lots of leftovers and will get some cake to Cindy’s family.

We were very thankful on Thanksgiving Day to receive news that Jean and Charmaine were able to obtain Charmaine’s visa clearance in Austria, as we had been trying to help do it from this end and were running into difficulties. We were saddened though to receive news, that same day, that our good friend Ross Slarks had passed away. He had cancer and had been suffering these past years with multiple complications resulting from the initial surgery. We are grateful his pain is no more but sorrowing for Shirlene and her family. Ross and Shirlene were teenage sweethearts and were always joined at the hip. They are about ten years older than us but they and their family have been part of our lives since we were teenagers ourselves. Ross was Tom’s councillor in the bishopric when Tom was a young Bishop. I had babysat their children and Nancy, their daughter, babysat our children. We had holidayed with them and joyed and sorrowed with them thru the years.

Our sister in law Jeannette called this week and expressed concern for Tom’s sister Carolyn, who is going thru a difficult divorce. Tom called Carolyn and learned that she is still struggling to achieve a settlement with her husband, who is also a Tom. He is extremely successful but states that his money is all tied up and that there is nothing for Carolyn. Our hearts are breaking and we have determined to not only pray for Carolyn but for Tom, that his heart will be softened. He is a lawyer and never wants to feel he has lost a case even against his own wife. They had ten children together, with nine living.

I have been sorting thru more family pictures again this week and proof reading the “StoryWorth” histories of ourselves that the children are having us write. It has been a good project for us to work on durning this time.

We are always working on the music for the ward meetings and we also met with Dave Leavitt, via zoom today, to get going on the ward Christmas Musical that we are in charge of this year. We will have to  follow the covid parameters and probably have 2-3 performances, with one being zoomed into homes. This is something we have never done before but we will pray for help and success.

We have done more yard work this week and got our growing dogwood tree in the backyard trimmed in preparation for fall and winter. We are also trying to prepare for Hallowe’en and determine what that will look like this year. Everything is new or at least different at this unique time.

October 6, 2020

 Our highlight of the week was our two days of October General Conference. Conference each six months has always been a much anticipated event in our lives. Through the years we have listened to it, attended it or watched it and now, with covid concerns, we look forward to that much appreciated connection with our leaders. They said that last April’s conference had more people tuning in than any other conference to date. We have not heard if that trend continued this time. The messages were directive, comforting and encouraging. The overall theme seemed to be “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 and Elder Holland’s concluding scripture, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31 And so we carry on in faith and wait upon the Lord.

Covid numbers have been on the rise again but have levelled out here in BC a little. Even Donald Trump and his wife have been dealing with covid this week. We have been concerned with the children back in the schools and people all together again that cases might increase but so far, other than in Eastern Canada and places like New York City, the numbers haven’t been too bad. It is still bad in England which breaks our hearts.

We taught Carol Jones another lesson this week via zoom and this time we did it on our own without the Sister Missionaries We have one more lesson to teach her this week as part of her New Member discussions. We really like her and have been enjoying getting to know her. We will be taking her the sacrament each week from now on. We would to get to know her husband Martin but he is not in sight when we spend time with her.

Debra Moore is taking pictures of us for our fiftieth anniversary and both she and Cindy suggested we go to Derby Reach Heritage area near Fort Langley. We drove there on Friday to take a look around and go for our daily walk. It is lovely location near the Fraser River and should work just fine for the photographs we are asking for. The children gave us this as part of our anniversary gift. We will have the Salmon House dinner they gave us too next month after we go to Karl’s for my hair cut on the North Shore. Our anniversary is being celebrated over a few months and that is lovely.

Fall is coming and we are trying to get a few things done in our yard in preparation. We get the odd warm day but things are definitely starting to cool. We carry on with projects at home and have pretty well decided that we will spend Thanksgiving separated from our family as a precaution. It breaks my heart as the children are the ones we are most thankful for and they are what make the holidays special. So our covid time goes. We hope we are making the most of it and being of benefit to others in some ways.