Miracles all about us

Today, our home sold--an incredible step toward our relocation to Washington. But that is only the latest of a series of miracle which have been occuring almost daily during the last several weeks.

Sunsystem wanted to fly Linda and me up to Anacortes to extend an offer. As we were driving away, we realized we had made no preparations to sell our home, so we thought that we should call a realtor to put our house on the market. We spoke with xxx, the lady that sold us the house years earlier. We told her "We are going up to Washington to accept a job. Could you try and get a for sale sign up in our yard while we are gone to get the ball moving?" She agreed.

We flew to Anacortes, accepted the job, found a house (which turned out to be across the street from another member family with little girls on the island), and returned home in a matter of only a few days. When we arrived home, our house was already sold. The first couple to walk through the house, bought it. Our realtor said she was on the phone with another real estate agent, and she asked "How did that house sale go you told me about?" The real estate agent said that the deal went south. So our agent said she just had a new listing (our house), and the couple came to walk through our house and purchased it before we returned from Washington--another tender mercy in our behalf.

• Received no offer on FileNET job
• Microsoft/Quark offers not adequate
• Sunsystems offer was the best, making the decision very easy - financially, good future, family-orientation, beautiful area, small town environment.
• Last day at Corel would be September 11; start date for Sunsystems is September 14.
• Found home/registered for school in four days.
• Found that we lived across the street from a family with young girls (Stones)
• House offer by the first couple that walked in through our door; they accepted counter offer.
• Rental apartment secured (site unseen) despite the difficult rental situation in Anacortes. A Sunsystems employee vacated the premises prior to our renting it.

Stuck

I have always looked up to Randy. He has many qualities which I have always wanted to emulate. He has been a mentor for me. He is fun and has a fresh sense of humor. I have many choice memories of experiences together with Randy. We did lots of things as a pair, even when I was just a small boy in Salt Lake. I remember the weekend we stayed at Grandpa Curtis' cabin along the banks of the Weber River. We spent the days hiking and fishing the river. Whitefish and trout made a most delicious dinner those evenings. We went on fishing trips together often and sometime we took Mac, my dog, along too. Randy and I have always had a close relationship as brothers and a unique friendship.

When we moved to Castle Valley, our kinship continued. We worked together, played together, and experienced the good and bad together. Because we lived in a remote and sparsely populated area, there wasn't a lot of other friends with whom we could associate in the valley. My family became my best friends, and that especially included Randy.

One late fall afternoon, Randy invited Jeff and I to go along with him to do some bow hunting in the La Sal mountains. We were delighted. Since it would soon be dark, we quickly put our gear together, climbed into one of Randy's old trucks, and hurried on our way.

The mountains were covered with deep snow, but Randy's heavy truck climbed the hills without much trouble. As we drove, night fell. We continued up a windy road and as the incline steepened, we began to have a little difficulty climbing a spot here and there on the road. We'd try and get a little momentum and make a run at the hill, and usually we would eventually get up it. By this time we were quite a ways up the mountains.

We reached a slightly steeper spot in the snow-packed road which curved toward the left, and we lost traction when we tried to climb the hill. So Randy attempted to back down the hill to give it another try, but the truck had slipped right up against the bank on the right side of the road. We had difficulty steering the truck properly since the front of the truck could not swing to the right to direct the truck back toward the left onto the snow-packed road. At the time, we had no idea of the dilemma we were in. We inched the truck down the road in this predicament. We tried and tried to get the truck back on the level road surface, but eventually the back wheels of the truck slipped off the road and down into a depressed area.

At this point, we just wanted to get the truck back on the road so we weren't stuck anymore and could get to camp. We tried building a road of branches to give the tires something to grip on, but the incline was too great and the wheels just spun. So we jacked up the back of the truck and placed stones under the wheels. We took the time to build a rock path for the wheels to follow. But still the tires would not grip, and we couldn't drive back onto the road until they did. It was very late now, and I felt we were beginning to get desparate, stuck somewhere in the mountains while deer hunting.

We hadn't tried chains yet, so Randy got the chain for the tires. We jacked the back of the truck up again to put the chains on the wheels. When the chains were in place, I stood toward the rear of the truck in the black of the night, and Randy attempted to drive back onto the road. But the wheels just spun. Sparks shot from the chains as they ground against the rocks we had placed under the tires. But the truck didn't budge.

We had tried everything in our power to get the truck back on the road at this point, but we couldn't do it alone. Randy suggested that we say a prayer. I had secretly been hoping for this but didn't make the recommendation. I agreed it would be a good idea. He offered the prayer, pleading with the Lord to intervene and help us free the truck.

Following the prayer, Randy climbed back in the truck, started the engine, and again tried to drive back on the road. I stood near the rear of the truck and held my breath. This time the tires didn't slip, and the truck moved forward and back safely onto the road. Randy got out of the truck, and headed directly for me. We held each other and shed tears of gratitude.

Then we knelt together and thanked Heavenly Father for miraculously answering our prayer that dark night, alone, stuck somewhere in the snowy hills of the LaSal mountains.

Firsts

Nicky

Our new experience farming was the beginning of a lot of firsts. It was the first rime we ever owned farm animals like pigs and goats. Each of us had preconceived ideas of what these animals were like, usually from little things we had heard or read, and usually wrong. For instance, doesn't everyone know that pigs are, well just that, pigs! They are a mess; everybody knows that. They live in dirty pens, eat rotten food, and wallow in the mud just to be filthy, right? Wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pigs happen to be incredibly clean and smart animals. What I noticed first was their insatiable need to be recognized and given attention. Our first pig was Petunia. We bought her while she was still young and brought her to the farm in the moving truck we borrowed from ... She was young but pretty good size sow already. She would oink and grunt as though you understood every word she was trying to say you. We would scratch her side, and she would roll over on her back so you could scratch her tummy. She was playful and kind, and she kept an immaculate home: orderly, clean, and organized. Goats were new for us, too. We learned how to milk them by following instruction in a book. Nicky, an French Alpine goat and veteran milker, was our first experiment.

Luckily, she already knew the routine and was patient while we learned the process: wash the udder, pinch and squeeze from the top to the bottom until the foamy white milk sprayed into the gleaming steel bucket until eventually no more would come. We milked twice a day, morning and evening, and she produced about 1-2 quarts of creamy white milk each milking.

Marmee

Marmee a Sanaan goat was younger and we purchased her for forthcoming breeding and milking. Both were great goats and beloved. We kept them for years and loved having them around the farm. The milk was good, too, and healthy. We learned that we had to be careful about what the goats ate or various flavors would start appearing in the milk. Starting with goats was perfect, because they were easier to manage and milk. They added a premium dimension to our farm. Kimberly and Robyn were their caretakers early on. But I suppose we all got our chance at milking. It quickly lost it's novelty late at night when you were just getting home and it was dark and the goats still needed to be milked. Later we purchased a Jersey cow. Her name was Janey. Grandpa loved her and milked her on pretty much the same schedule everyday. We made butter, cheese, sour cream, and buttermilk from Janey's creamy jersey milk...it was a staple in our home and a blessing to all of us. Jersey milk is notoriously creamy and rich. Janey's was among the best. We helped out Grandpa occasionally, but he pretty much did all the milking of Janey. I think he loved it. He got a chance to rest and think, and he often talked non-stop to calm and befriend her. She loved Grandpa as much as was a good-natured cow for the most part.

Janey

I could tell many stories about Janey, and I will. But the one typical instance comes to mind. Linda and I had just purchased our first VHS tape recorder. We went down to the farm and began recording history, or so we thought. One particular evening, Grandpa was on his way to milk Janey, and that was the perfect chance to record an epic event repeated daily in the history of the farm. He stopped and filled his box with grain. Then with stainless steel milking buckets under one arm and a bucket with warm water for washing, he somehow balanced it all as he walked across the field to the milking barn. Janey knew the ritual well and came trotting over for the grain. While the recorder captured history, Grandpa spoke gently to Janey while scratching her back and said, "Now you're such a good girl. You have been waiting patiently.  Now we are going to milk you so you can rest." He situated the milking stool and gently washed and damp dried Janey's udder. Then he placed the gleaming silver bucket under her belly to begin the milking. The first two streams of milk were shot into the grass, then he aimed directly in the bucket. As the streams hit the bottom of the bucket, the metal vibrated and the milk splashed to the sides of the bucket. When the bucket began to fill and the foamy warm milk, I prodded Grandpa to tell us a story while he milked that we would capture for posterity. He began telling us missionary stories and spoke softly to Janey all the while, occasionally looking up to the camera to stress a point here and there. It couldn't have been more than thirty minutes, and it was finished almost as quickly as it had begun.

Camilla and Steven were just little children at the time, and this tape became their favorite to watch. They watch it more than any other, and each time was a treasured memory of the farm and Grandpa and Granny. Unfortunately, video tapes were not that resilient back then and before long the sound began fading, until it was completely gone. And later the tape video began to show problems, but the memory of that day capturing a routine activity repeated hundreds of times over the years, will forever linger in our memories...the day we recorded Grandpa with his beloved Janey during milking time.

Heavenly

We moved to Castle Valley in June 1976. Rather than hiring a moving company to pack and transport all the belongings we owned, our move to Castle Valley was accomplished by taking truckloads of our stuff to our new home. Since we didn't have a place built yet to put our things on the farm, we stored the majority of our what we owned in a warehouse down in Moab. One of the most memorable trips was when we loaded our old Chevrolet pickup and a large moving truck loaned to us from the Harmons with our belongings and other preparations for the farm, leaving enough room in the back of the moving truck for a few of us kids and the animals we purchased and planned to pick up on our way down to the valley. Since all the family would not fit in the front of the trucks, the younger children crawled into the back of the moving truck and found places to relax during the trip. We stopped along the way at various farms to get Marmi (a Sanaan goat), Nicky (a French Alpine goat), Petunia our pig, and a crate of chickens. The journey progressed fine until just outside Green River, Utah. The old pickup truck had engine trouble and refused to go any further. Stranded on the side of the road, we arranged to have the truck towed to a garage inside Green River. The mechanic examined the engine and explained that it had "thrown a rod." Like I really knew what that meant at the time. As a result, we needed to stay the night in a motel and pull the pickup behind the moving truck the next day to reach our destination. After arriving late in the day, we parked the truck toward the rear of the property and used it as a shelter initially. We erected tents around a fire pit, and our new home looked vaguely like a pioneer wagon train. We gratefully slept under the stars at night--a literal milky way of galaxies. The starry night sky was remarkable. With no city lights of any consequence, the Milky Way displayed across the entire sky--billions of stars. We spent many nights studying and marveling at the countless stars and awe-inspiring heavenly bodies. That's how it all started for us in the beginning, but the miracles continued throughout the years while we were there.