Insights

There have been lots of good things happening this week at Cove Fort.  It is always great to be able to share some of them with family and friends.  Now I know the length of some (most) of my posts may seem a little long, but I really do not share everything that is happening here.  With that in mind, let us begin.

             

Our speakers on Sunday were the Millard Stake President and his wife.  She talked about her mother who was a convert and how she had written a letter, years later, to the family of the girl who had been her friend and shared the gospel with her.  Then the stake president changed his talk and spoke about testimonies.  He said it was important to share your testimony with your children about what you believe.  But he went on to say that most of us stop there.  What he thought that we need to do is tell our children why we have a testimony.  What brought us to that point of knowledge.  I was impressed by his comments.

On Sunday, Stephen and I were put out of our misery by actually finally getting to present the Sunday School lesson that we had been preparing for about two weeks.  It was on Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy.  It was a great topic and one that we were able to find lots of material on – perhaps too much.  It was fun to be teaching again and to be energized by the responses of the participants.  It was good to have the PowerPoint work without problem – yes, I do love to use PowerPoint for lessons especially for the visuals that can enhance any lesson/presentation.

          

Spring may be officially here as there were lots of nice days at the fort this week.  It was so nice that one morning I determined that I was going to go out and dig up all of the dandelions in our yard.  After digging out just a few, I realized that I might need to change my plan of attack since I was leaving three-inch holes wherever I removed a weed.  Then I thought that I would take Stephen’s advice and just pop the heads off of them.  I thought that I could win that battle, but alas and alack I was taken aback as the numbers were too overwhelming.  Just forty-five minutes into the battle I had to surrender and wait for another day to fight again.  The good news is that the park manager says that they will be spraying the dandelions soon.  I guess we will just enjoy those perky little yellow blooms until they die a well-deserved death.

             

I love being at Cove Fort and being away from “everyday things”.  It makes for a very peaceful existence.  It also causes people to be more concerned about others.  The other day I had just finished a tour and decided to go down to the fort to look for candles and to try to draw out some of the quilt patterns.  There were LOTS of missionaries in the preparation room so I really didn’t see a need to tell anyone where I was going besides which there are huge windows in the front of the MPR where we can see everything going on between us and the back of the fort.  Anyway, I must have been down there for thirty minutes just enjoying the solitude.  When I came out I ran into Stephen who had been sent down by the shift supervisor to see if I was there and that I was OK.  It is nice to be cared about but the short leash is a little hard to adjust to sometimes.

            

 During the week I have had several insights into the things at Cove Fort and been able to develop some other gospel messages that I can share when we take tours.  In the Telegraph Room, it dawned on me that we can draw parallels between the telegraph and communication with worldly things and the communications from God through his living prophet (there is a picture of Brigham Young in that room).  The other idea came when I took an eighteen-year-old missionary (he reports on Wednesday to the MTC to go to Bulgaria) and his siblings on a tour.  We were talking about the Hinckley clock (remember it was the first of the three original artifacts that I told you about) and how it allegedly still works but that they are trying to preserve it by not winding it regularly.  I mentioned that sometimes if valuable things aren’t used that they will be lost anyway.  I was so amazed when he turned to me and said, “Like a testimony.”  What a powerful message.  It is important that we share our testimonies as often as we can to preserve this valuable possession.  Luckily, at Cove Fort that is not a problem as we do it several times on every tour.

             

I’ve been enjoying my morning walks to the fort.  It was a little cold earlier in the morning so people driving by were treated to the styling look of sweatpants under my skirt.  Not exactly missionary attire but it did keep me warm.  One of the mornings this week I was almost to the fort when I noticed three cows on my side of the road.  I switched sides and so did they.  I walked a little closer and realized that what I’d thought were cows were actually bulls.  At that point I turned around and started walking home looking for Stephen to come along in the car and give me a ride past the bulls.  Luckily that has only happened once.  Although, last night on our way home there were more escapees from the fields, and the owner was out on his ATV herding his cattle back to the corral.

             

This week we had a Friday night social to honor the Mission President who will be leaving in June.  It was a very nice event with lots of time spent on decorations by two of the sisters and some delicious pot roast (at least that is what people, including Stephen, told me).  One of the missionary couples lives in Beaver, so we were able to have them come over to our mobile home after our shift and spend some time just visiting.  They even helped us put together part of our 1000 piece puzzle.  We now have a nice picture of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park laying on our dining table.

Tomahawk throw

Big time trappers

Yesterday for P-Day we went to the Fremont Indian State Park that is on the way to Richfield.  That was a great place to visit.  The rock formations were so interesting and colorful.  The park has preserved a lot of petroglyphs and pictographs.  I thought that we might get to go hiking but no such luck.  That is OK because we have the whole summer ahead of us.  One of the things that we found while we were there was a rendezvous.  It was a gathering of mountain men who were camped together to do some competitive events.  We got to see them shooting black powder rifles and arrows and throwing tomahawks and knives.  It was an interesting side trip.  We met up with eight of the other missionary couples to have dinner at The Cowboy Corral in Elsinore.  It was such a fun place.  They had a BBQ steak and fried chicken buffet that was made on the BBQ outside.  They also had a local country group come and play music, which was very homey.  They say that they never lock the door so if you are hungry you can come in and fix what you want, clean up, and then leave your money on the counter.  I just love that small town feel.

During the week I was reading about the life of Nicholas Paul who was the chief mason in the building of Cove Fort.  He was an English convert from South Africa who gave up everything when he joined the church.  He had a strong testimony of the gospel, but wound up with all sorts of legal and interpersonal issues with his neighbors.  He finally stopped attending church and associating with church members.  It reminded me of how easy it is to let others influence our relationship with our Heavenly Father and cause us to drift away from Him.  I hope that we will always be careful to remember that the church is true whether the people are or not.

I’m glad that we are serving here at Cove Fort and have all of these opportunities to bear and share testimonies with those who visit.   It truly is a blessing in our lives.