Six Month Mark has arrived

 Penobscott Bay - looking north to the mouth of the Penobscott river

 The Beach at Belfast............not quite the white pristine beaches of Australia.........but a beach is a beach.

 Looking out on Penobscott bay with the buoys that mark the placement of lobster traps.

 Looking towards the Atlantic Ocean and Penobscott Bay proper.

 The Kennebec River on Sunday 3/18/2012.  It is full tide and the river had just turned and had begun flowing out.

 The Kennebec River at high tide   Sunday 18th March, 2012.

I am fascinated with Water - rivers , oceans, ponds - that is what comes of being raised in a hot, Dry country and living in a high desert in Arizona - we do not see enough water.................

Half Way Mark- 17 March, 2012

We have officially reached our half way mark in this mission.  On September 17^th we left Prescott for Utah and in the evening of September 17^th we walked into the Mission Training Center in Provo.  The next day was Sunday and our first taste of Missionary existence in this modern era.  We were housed in a brick apartment building and we ate with 2,000 missionaries in a huge cafeteria that had to do meals in shifts and our shift was the middle shift.  It was amazing to be in the presence of all these young people who were going to all points of the compass.  It was like Christmas asking them where they were headed.  They, on the other hand, were amazed that we were grandparents headed for a mission they did not understand and we had our own language to learn.  Words like “Capture” that sounds like you are taking hostage of someone or something, “shuttle” which connotes some sort of conveyance that people ride in, “DOR” which is not an aperture through which we pass, but a digital compilation of the records that we have compiled or captured, and a whole raft of computer terms that we  have had to become familiar with in order to communicate with those who review our work.

I am suffering from “Grandchildren deprivation syndrome” but the cure is not available, however,  the course of treatment includes regular contact via a computer program called Skype where I can see them and talk to them.  The little ones love to tickle Poppa’s feet and put their hands with wiggling fingers to the camera of their mother’s computer and tell Poppa that they are tickling his feet.  There are lots of kisses blown to us over the computer network and we can see how they have sprouted up since October when we passed through Nebraska on our way here.  We celebrated a host of birthdays when we were there – Bill on September 29, Lyla on October 2, Oliver on October 10, Jacob on October 13, Me on November 30, Ethan on Dec. 10 and that left Sara feeling rather lost with her birthday on May 31.  We included her in the celebration anyway. 

Since we arrived here in Maine, Ethan has begun to excel in Gymnastics, Oliver has been able to master his language skills, Lyla has started Pre-school at the Nature Center.  Jacob has only a short while before he achieves his PhD in Chemistry and Sara has completed work on  Masters degree in Library Science.  Bill and I have just gotten older.

We have had a very mild winter in Maine – according to the locals and the National Weather Service but to us we have been buried in snow when we compare the snow we get in Prescott, to what we had here in Maine.  There is no question that we have been through the coldest weather of our lives here with the below Zero readings in the dead of Winter but our apartment has central heating and we survived.

We feel like we have been accepted into this congregation as though we have been here all our lives and we have tried to contribute to the general welfare of the congregation and its needs.

Everything has a beginning, a middle and an end.  We are six months away from the end and we open each day of that 6 months just like we would open a Christmas Present and be amazed at what we find.