Arizona Visitors

What a great week for us as we had our daughter-in-law, Heather, and our 2 granddaughters, Afton and Jorja come to visit from Gilbert, Arizona.  We went to the library to show them where we spend our days, to the Church History Museum and then to the State Capitol Building. In the evening we were able to go to familysearch.org and do some sourcing on Heather's line. Nothing better than having a visit from our family.

Log Cabin that was originally located about 2 miles away

Jorja, the Spanish dancer

Afton trying her hand at "translating"

Afton "fishing" in the Church History Museum

Example of granite cut so that you have this kaleidoscope effect ( if you look closely you can see the seams)

Notice the mirror image of the stone because of the way it was cut

Byde, Pam, Heather, Afton, and Jorja

There is a beautiful water feature in front of the Church Office Building (COB) but I am not there very often to see it "go off." On Monday we went to the Lion House to eat and it was "performing" so I got a picture.  It is normally just a flat body of water and you wouldn't even know that it is so beautiful.  As near as I can tell it erupts around noon - 1 o'clock each day.

Water feature in front of the COB

Beautiful fall colors just west of the Conference Center

More Fall Colors west of Conference Center

View of the trees on West  of Conference Center - outside our apartment

Youth prior to the all-state concert

On Saturday night we went to the Tabernacle to  listen to the "Grand  Festival Concert" which was performed by the Utah All-State Choir as well as the the Utah Valley University Chamber Choir. The State Choir was conducted by Guest Conductor, Lynne Gackle, Professor of Ensembles at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. There were over 600 youth who participated. They filled the seats the Tabernacle Choir uses as well as they brought in bleachers and they stood in front all the way across the front of the Tabernacle.  The Tabernacle was totally packed (it holds about 7000 people, including the choir area).

There are a number of chestnut trees around Temple Square and they have been covered with what looks like (according to Byde) porcupine eggs. Those "eggs" are now ripe and falling off the tree to reveal the beautiful brown nut that is inside. I have been picking them up each morning as I go on my walk around Temple Square and now have quite a collection.  I poke a hole in the top of them and dry them in the oven.  From what I can read on the internet, these are horse chestnuts and are inedible but I'm hoping I'll find something creative to do with them; any ideas?

Chestnuts - beautiful wood-grained shell

Last but not least we attended the Tab Choir Broadcast and so enjoyed the music as well as the Spoken word by Lloyd Newell. He told the story of Victor Frankl which has always inspired me.  He told a piece of it which I didn't know.

     "In 1941, Viktor Frankl was a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, Austria. The threat of Nazi concentration camps was increasing, but Victor had found a way out: a visa that would allow hjim to take hw new wife and his promising career to America - and to safety.

     But Viktor knew that when the Nazis came, they would take the elderly first - including, likely, his aging parents. They would need his care and support. Anguished, he searched his soul and sought heavenly guidance about what to do.

     Then, one day, he came home to find a piece of marble on the table. His father explained that he had retrieved it from the rubble of a nearby synagogue that the Nazis had destroyed. Coincidentally, it was a fragment from an engraving of one of the Ten Commandments: 'Honour thy father and thy mother.'

     Viktor had his answer. He stayed with his parents in Austria, and within a few months, Viktor, his wife, and his parents were arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

     Over the next three years, Viktor discoverd an important difference between those who survived the camps and those who did not: a sense of meaning. The ability to find meaning even in horrific circumstances, he observed, gave prisoners resilience in the face of suffering.

     After the war was over, Viktor wrote a book, Man's Search for Meaning, describing what he learned. It took him nine days to write and eventually sold millions of copies. The Library of Congress has listed it as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States.

     In one way or another, we are all involved in our own search for meaning. Our ability to find it depends a lot on where we're looking. We're likely to discover, as Viktor Frankl did, that life's true meaning does not come from pursuing our own happiness but from sacrificing for something bigger. Whatever that something is - family and friends, faith and community, volunteering and serving others - it can give our lives more purpose than we could ever find in just ourselves."