Friday, May 1, 2009

Worry No-longer About My Ammo Woes!


This is all the new ammo I purchased recently in my travels. As you can see ammo is available if you look hard enough. Even so, I really do feel that gone are the days that one could just run down to their local Wal-mart and pick up some cheap ammo -sigh!- What is this country coming to? Oh well, for now life is once again good and I can go plink away at tin cans and bottles. (I just have to find the time to go shooting -sigh-)

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The reason Aaron couldn't find 22 shells

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=6322396

What other good reason could there be for destroying shell casings? None. Therefore Chaffetz is right.

Get rid of boozer


This is my annual column written for the benefit of the Skinner family to say I am tired of Carlos Boozer. The top picture is an example of how a player is supposed to play. For 18 years we had a power forward who played this way. The bottom picture is what we have been getting the last couple of years. Sure the man can score but he is lazy. I've seen the hundreds of times that he just jogs down the court practically the last person to cross halfcourt. The man in the top picture was always the first one down the court and he did not have injuries for most of the season like Boozer. Karl got it done and it is very hard for me not to see why Boozer does not take the example of a 2 time leage mvp and apply it to his game. I say he probably never will so we should get rid of him. He is a disgrace to his position and needs to give back the money he has stolen from the owner of the Jazz these last couple of years. If I were in charge of the Jazz I would sign Ostertag to a new contract before Boozer even thought of putting on a Jazz uniform again.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Global Warming Effect Benefits Moroni, Utah While Conrad, Montana Enters The "Next Ice-Age!"




Sorry to hear about the snow Brian, but here in Moroni it has been nothing but sun-shine, flowers, green grass, and warmth! T-shirts and shorts, baby! I even broke out the ol'BBQ grill and BBQ'd up some "tasty" steaks for dinner last night. This evening it was so nice that I grilled up some chicken breasts. Man, here in the land of "global warming" life is good! Don't worry though Brian, I'll pray for you guys and your Ice-age up north! But for now... enjoy my photos and dream of Spring!

Update on snow


And it's still snowing.........

Is this a perfect pie or what?


Here is an Apple Pie Marci made fresh out of the oven. Oh man is this going to be good!!! I hope the budge the pudge blog readers do not see this.

lazy postal workers

The postal workers up here need to be fired. They are scared of a little snow and have decided not to bring our mail today. Who ever heard of that? It is an outrage as I was expecting my netflix dvd today. OOOHHH that burns me up!!!!

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

This much snow so far




Not a very good picture but this is our front yard and the snow is still piling up. We already shoveled the walk twice today.

colton wedding

Gary and Lou Colton are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter, Amy Colton, to Juan Carlos Gomez, son of Marian and Mario Aguirre on Saturday, April 18, 2009, in the St. George Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A reception will be held that evening from 6-8 p.m. at the Social Hall, 200 N. Main Street, St. George, Utah.
Amy will graduate from BYU-Hawaii in June. Juan is a native of Ecuador and is attending BYU-Hawaii.
The couple will make their home in Taie, Hawaii.
http://ubstandard.com/detail/134.html?content_source=&category_id=&search_filter=&user_id=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=1&sub_type=&town_id=&page=

5 inches of snow

We had 5 inches of snow today. I am getting tired of this. It is still snowing too. Marci said we will get 15 inches of snow by tonight. She is hardly ever right though.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Letter from the Smith's in Mexico

28 April 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a very interesting week for us here in Mexico City. You have most likely have read about the invasion of some sort of flu virus here. Yesterday as we were out doing some shopping at the supermarket we saw several people walking around with surgical masks over the noses and mouths. It seemed a bit comical to us that some were wearing the masks over nose and mouth, others over their mouth only and others just had the mask around their neck. Elder Olson (a dentist), tells us that wearing a mask is not very preventative since viruses are spread from hand to mouth rather than by breathing in something. Nonetheless, there seems to be a level of panic at least here in this large city of over 20 million people.

The flu issue was evident last night as we attended the evening session of Stake Conference. When the meeting began it looked as if there were more people in the choir than in attendance. More arrived during the meeting, but ultimately attendance was low. Following the meeting we were asked to wait a few minutes while the Presidency of the Stake met and made some telephone calls to church and government officials to determine if the general session of conference should be held today. Following consultation it was announced that the Sunday session of conference would be canceled and we were to stay at home. So, we have been enjoying a good day of study, reading and listening to some soothing music while protecting ourselves from the flu.

The President of Mexico declared yesterday that all schools are to be closed until May 8th and he also asked that all scheduled meetings of large congregations be canceled. It was this request that led the Area Leadership to cancel all church services today. We are hopeful things will get better during the week as we were so much looking forward to a special meeting in the temple with Elder Gonzalez who is visiting from Salt Lake. We won’t know much about that until later today but we hope the meeting will not be canceled. As well, our friends, the Olson’s are returning home for their son’s wedding this week. They too, are anxious about being able to travel and are hopeful to be able to do so. We hope so as well.

We began this last week with the chance to meet the other senior couples serving in the mission. We had special meeting with our mission President and met several of the young Elders and Sisters serving as well. It was our first major “long” drive from home and we did it without much problem at all. We suspect it was the light traffic and the help of our GPS that made things go good.

The meeting was held in a large Stake Center complex located on the campus of the Benemerito School operated by the church. This is a beautiful campus completely enclosed and a place of beauty and peace. There are 2000 students at the school. It actually fulfills the requirements of a “secondaria” or high school. A thousand of the students’ actually live on campus in dormitories and the other half commute on a daily basis to school leaving their homes very early in the morning to make the trip through the jungle of traffic. The campus is a reminder of many of the church schools. Buildings are very much the same, built and painted much like BYU Idaho. The structures also reminded me of some of the church buildings built during the 1980’s like our 8th ward building on Ammon Road.

What a great opportunity it is for many young people to attend this extraordinary school. When I served here in Mexico as a missionary some 45 plus years ago, this school was just in its infancy. It has now matured into a very special educational facility and extension of the Church Educational System.

We made contact this past week with all of our couples out in the twenty one missions in Mexico inquiring about their detailed plans for their annual youth leadership conferences. It appears that most of them will be held in late June, July and early August. Response from our couples back to us with detailed plans has been pretty good so far. We anticipate hearing from everyone before the week is over allowing us to begin the process of making follow up visits, meeting in coordination meetings and firming up some sort of workable travel schedule.

We have also been given an extra responsibility of assessing and encouraging an increase in activities for Young Single Adults in each of the missions. This is something we will do as we travel to each of the areas in the mission and work with Stake and Ward leaders. We suspect this program will need a lot of help. We will discuss it a bit in the Area Council meeting the first part of May to see what we might learn about the status of current efforts. Fortunately we have a great number of our church leadership teaching or directing Church Education System programs in institute and seminary programs all over the country. This will be very helpful because they know the people and the program. Implementation will be the big job.

And, of course, we think of our family that we miss so very much. It is nice to know that we can call them so easily. The Vonage phone system works great over the computer. We love you all and pray that you are all doing those things that will keep the Spirit close to you and that you will find opportunities to serve others thereby serving our Father in Heaven. It is such a blessing to have the fullness of the gospel in our lives. Whatever little we do could never come close to all that has been done for us by our Heavenly Father and His son, our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. How grateful we need to be for all these great blessings. That gratitude can only be shown by our obedience and faith in our Savior. So stay faithful and be grateful for all you are and have.

We have missed being in church today, although it has been so peaceful here in our little abode, and there has been time to read, study scriptures and Spanish without interruption. All in all, we are so blessed to be here and to be able to serve our Heavenly Father in this great assignment.

The weather here in Mexico City has been mild but comfortable. We throw a blanket on at night but sleep comfortably for two old people. We have had a little rain from time to time as it is the “rainy” season. However, it has been nothing more than a sprinkle. We think of all our great friends and family at home busy in your own aspects of life and send our very best wishes to you all.

A couple of pictures in the blog you will recognize. The others are of our missionary friends taken just after our meeting with President Fuentes, or Mission President.

Love to all,

Mom and Dad

Dave and Elaine

Elder and Sister Smith