Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Heavenly Visitors

There have been times when those who have crossed the veil have not been far away. Here are some examples I thought I'd record here.


Mom

This happened a while after Grandma and Grandpa had passed away. When Aunt May’s grandson Eric and his wife Suzie were going through the temple being sealed, I was just sitting back by myself next to an empty seat. I said to myself, "Well, Mother, there’s an empty seat. Come and sit by me."
Then Dad said, "I’m sitting by you. Mother’s up front so she can see better." Just as if he were sitting there saying that. I sort of laughed and felt like crying and said to myself, "That’s right Dad. That’s where Mother would be."

Mom again

Another time we were doing sealings, I was sitting waiting and wasn’t really thinking of anything and all of a sudden it felt like someone kissed me on the forehead. I had the strong feeling that my mother kissed me. Till this day I still think she did. I told Reva this and she said, "If you’d told me she kissed you anywhere else except you forehead, I wouldn’t have believed you."
The forehead’s the only place she ever kissed us.

Twist

One night I had a dream that all of us as brothers and sisters were together at some gathering. Joyce was there and as we greeted her we all hugged each other and were so happy to see her. It wasn’t as if we were meeting some stranger for the first time. We knew her well and the feeling of knowing her well was very strong, in fact that feeling persists to this day as I remember the dream and I usually don’t remember my dreams. She had almost shoulder length salt and pepper hair and was a little shorter than the rest of us. Joyce had a little of Mary Beth’s look to her, maybe being better described as a cross between Marlene and Mary Beth. When I related this to Marlene later, she said she had always had the impression that Joyce had black hair like hers.

Death is not the finale, just an intermission.

Twist

Saturday, May 19, 2007

One Man's Junk....

I love to go to garage sales. The allure is a cross between snooping in strangers houses, finding out what they consider surplus, un-needed items and rummaging around in those items to find the bargain I didn't know I was looking to find. We started our day today arranging the surplus wares of our abode to attract the gaze of shoppers we hoped to entice to our garage by stategically placing signs on cardboard boxes at each end or our street. Now, lest you think that insufficient advertising, it helped a bit that the entire block around the corner was having a block garage sale.

The first order of business, after getting set up, was to get my wife to watch our sale, whilst I perused the merchandise begging my attention a mere half a block around the corner. I walked about a half a mile down one side of the street and back again and spent a grand total of 75 cents on a roll of speaker wire. My treasure found a year ago was a rain chime box. Turn it upside down, the right side up and bb's drop on the chimes for up to 30 minutes

The bargain hunters from around the block did manage to find their way to our humble driveway, but possibly with purses much lighter than they started, because they didn't leave an abundance of currency in my coffers. We brought in a grand total of about $95, which needed to be split four ways, my take amounting to approximately $35 for 7 hours of selling. As I make that much in a couple of hours at my day job, I think I'll stick to it.

Doggonit, I didn't even get rid of very much junk, I mean surplus domestic products. Best part of all is that my wife wants to do this all again in 4 weeks, leaving our display counters intact in the garage once again showing that Americans will store $100 worth of stuff in their garage and leave $30,000 worth of automobiles unprotected out in the weather.

I can't wait to hit the sales again next weekend.

Twist

Friday, May 4, 2007

Bureaucracy

I went to a class in Austin last September for training in my job for the state of Texas. The instructor was very good. He is also a Superbowl Official during football season. Although I have had a great deal of instruction in how to be a teacher, this class gave me additional insights and I enjoyed the class. I did not, however use that training for what it was intended, primarily to teach week long classes to other state employees. To be brief, I resigned that position.

Quarterly we do seminars for the public, which I have taught for years. Recently, headquarters decided that the seminar presenters needed to be trained to be able to do this and sent me to a class to learn how to be a teacher. Oh, wait a minute. It was the same class I just took. I let the powers that be know I had just taken this class, but since this class was now call a class to train the seminar presenters, they said I needed to go back.

My instructor in Austin was surprised to see me back, but ours is not to question why.... In my final presentation of the class, I totally lost my train of thought....and couldn't get it back. I ended my presentation a couple of minutes early.

I wonder how I'll do next time they send me to this class...

Twist