John's Birthday

Dearest Family,

Thanks to all of you who made John's birthday special by remembering him. Kathie called and sent a nice card. Lillis and Frank came over for dinner on Sunday. We were very excited to read all the news from Craig and Lissa on their blog: http://craigandlissa.blogspot.com/ Rebecca had a baby girl, Reese Rebecca Bryant, born April 21, 2009. She is Rebecca and Mark's third girl. Their family is moving from Craig and Lissa's home in California to Idaho today for Marks work. Reese is grandchild #7. The count is now 3 boys and 4 girls, and Melissa has the wild card coming in August. It just doesn't get much better than this!

Aunt Tam Rogers' stepfather, Merlin, died on Thursday, April 30 and his funeral is Tuesday, May 5. Merlin just had his 93rd birthday on April 7. Dave and Tam drove up to Salt Lake on Sunday. They spent the evening with Dan's family and the night with Amy. Today Dave and Tam came and visited with us in the Training Zone and had lunch at the Church Office Building Cafeteria with us. Afterward they were going to visit Lillis and Frank. Jeff was flying in this evening so Amy, Jeff, Dan, Tanya, and possibly Tia were going to the funeral. Tam and her sisters were going to sing at the funeral. We hope that it is a tender time for the family to be together.

We had a good week. It was a delight to have Julie, Jason, and Jason's Korean friend come and visit us at the Training Center. They were especially impressed to see new.FamilySearch with Korean characters. Because train people in different languages, they sometimes have a trainer with the program in English and another computer with the program in the other language next to it. The programs are identical except for the labels. Many symbols are used so things don't have to be translated. The Far East will be the last group to get the new program because they still haven't completely developed a way to standardize the number characters. For example, everyone in the rest of the world has unique a membership number but in that part of the world they use characters in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Names are characters instead of Romanized names.

John is really enjoying teaching the Institute class to the Young Missionaries on Wednesday night and Thursday at noon. It is only for three weeks but it is a lot of preparation. It makes it nice for John that he knows many of the young missionaries. Wednesday night John and I took a tour of the Conference Center which was fascinating. There are so many beautiful and interesting places here on the Church campus.

It was a delight to have Grant and James stay overnight on Friday night. They gave new meaning to the phrase "rotating food storage." The boys put the cans back afterward. We look forward to having Talisa stay overnight again soon. We love to have company! It was great to have half of our family together to celebrate John and Lillis' birthdays on Sunday afternoon. We enjoyed telephone calls from those who weren't able to attend. Thank you for your precious calls and cards.

Sonja Rasband treated Karen, Edie, and me to lunch at Los Hermanos in Lindon on Saturday afternoon. We had a good time visiting and catching up on our families.

John and I both had very advanced students last week and it was a delight to see their progress. This week my student had only used a computer briefly once about three years ago. She is 79 but knows how to type and is very eager to learn. Today she learned how to use the mouse and entered about 15 names. She also got her first email account and got user names and passwords for all the programs we use. John's student has not had any computer experience either. We have 30 students this week so we have several "rent a trainers" from other zones. Incidentally some of the trainers are teaching new secretaries how to use Excell, Power Point, etc. I'm glad that isn't my assignment. I need training in those areas myself.

Have a wonderful week!

Love, Mom and Dad