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We've been busy, it's that time of year.  This afternoon attended Handel's Messiah over at the Cox Auditorium at Dixie college.  It was really well done and there were a lot of people there.

 

Everyones getting settled in and getting ready to start.  It's a nice auditorium with plenty of seats.  We were about half way up in the center.

   

This is short but gives you an idea.  This was, unfortunately, spoiled by someone up in front of me moving around.  So, had to cut this off.  I have others but they are really long and too long to be uploaded for viewing.  At any rate, this was really a great show.

We're almost completely full in the afternoons.  This is one of our afternoon devotionals the other day.  There were still about another 10 missionaries in the wings filling up chairs in the "way back".  We have quite a crew of missionaries coming here every day.  All of them searching for those that have gone before.

You can always tell when christmas is here.  Found this at Wal-Mart.  Didn't last long.

 

We get to go to the Cedar City Temple dedication next Sunday (10th).  They are broadcasting here in St George and we get to participate in one of the three services.  Looking forward to it.  Obviously, we won't be going up there but it's OK.  that's for those that live up there.  The last one we were at was Sacramento in 2007 so it's been awhile.  

We have a Christmas party for the ROC this coming Friday, a few more Christmas things, then Nathan, Tabbi, and family are coming back to visit us for Christmas.  We are working on finding a place to live other than the apartments we've been living in.  We have a meeting scheduled next week to finalize the paperwork next Monday.  Plus, they have an open schedule so we have no need for us to be out of there at the end of our mission next September.  It's a pretty good deal for us.  More to come.  Hope you all are having a great Christmas season. 

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At the St George temple, the day after Thanksgiving, is the annual Christmas lighting ceremony.  Several organizations and, obviously, the church, get together and have some choirs sing, have a couple of speakers and then light all of the thousands of lights on the temple grounds.

Surprisingly, a lot of people show up for this annual event in St George.  All types of people.  This is only a very small portion of the crowd.

We couldn't get a good view of the speakers so had to walk around the backside to get close to them.  It was the typical St George evening.  Probably around 60 degrees.

 

There were seats there but we had to get there a lot earlier in order to get any of those.  Far more people than seats.  I guess this is a really big deal in St. George.

 

The Visitors' Center was open and all of the lights are on.  We clean here on Thursday nights.  They have lights all over the temple grounds.  Nothing spectacular but just pretty.  Just the outskirts of the temple grounds. 

  

One morning as I was walking between the buildings over at the ROC, I glanced over at the temple and saw this beautiful sunrise.  We get there pretty early and sometimes are treated to beautiful pictures painted for us before the day starts.  We have some very early starters at the ROC so I usually try to open things up for them.  We can now see the temple because most of the leaves from the trees have fallen.  Well, there are a few left but most are gone.  

 

With most of the leaves gone now, we can actually see the temple from our apartment door in the mornings as we walk over to the ROC.  We w=should be able to see it a td bit better in a couple of weeks when everything has fallen.  

 

I saw this in a custom brewed soda rack at an Albertson's store here in St George.  There are River City's in all parts of the US so I just had to check it out.  Yep, it was brewed in Sacramento, CA.  No, I didn't buy it as, well, I just didn't.  I'll get it next time we are in the store.  They have a lot of sodas in that store.   I'm not all that crazy about plunking down nearly $2 for a bottle of soda.  But it was good to see something from hometown, USA. 

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The Christmas season has blossomed here in St George.  One of the 1st things to come around is the Jubilee of Trees.  We had several missionaries tell us about it as a "don't miss" event (among many) so we took the time to go visit it.  Only lasted a few days.  It is a display of all the Christmas trees you could possibly imagine in one place over at the St George Convention Center.  It was really something to see.

Trees of all sizes and shapes, decorated to the fullest extent and most of them, if not all, are for sale.  And the prices are not to be believed.  Not something I'd take home but unbelieveable.  Some of these went for thousands of dollars!  You buy the whole display when you buy it.

The area that had Christmas centerpieces had a lot of these candles that intrigued me.  These aren't candles.  The flame is a fragile center thing that kind of flops around with a bright lite in the middle that looks, for all intents and purposes, like a flame, but isn't.  Never seen one of these before.  They had a lot of these there.  They are really neat.  They would have lasted about 10 seconds in my house with my kids....

 

Santa's Mailroom.  Had to get that for Arlene.

 

They had a couple of model railroads there.  The scale of the downtown mainstreet was pretty well done.  Note the American flag on top of the building?  That was a digital sign that was flashing and changing.  That was pretty interesting.

 

...more trees...

 

Of course, Arlene always likes the purple trees.

 

They had an entire booth filled with small trees.  Some of these belonged to some relatives of those that work at the ROC with us.  Really nice stuff.

 

There was an entire booth filled with wreaths.  Some of them were even affordable.

 

This tree had an interesting theme.  It was all about lighthouses.

 

How could you not have a Harry Potter tree?  I couldn't get a good shot of this tree.  It was very popular and I could never get a clean shot of it.  Sorry.

 They had a big dining area in the middle and live entertainment the whole time we were there.  Lots of stuff to look at, eat and browse through.  We had a great time getting ready for Christmas.  Not even December yet!

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Catching up again.  We managed to wrangle tickets to run up to visit the open house for the new Cedar City Temple.  It is beautiful.  Oddly enough, the best time to get in and view it was Halloween night.  the other nights were all taken within an hour after the tickets were offered.  But, that was a good night to go.  Most of the children had other plans for that night.  They offered pictures of us against a backdrop of the temple so we jumped at that offer.

Not outside but who could resist the opportunity?

 Of course, pictures inside the temple are not allowed so any pictures I have are from outside.  But, it is magnificent inside the temple.  It is along the same format as the Nauvoo temple in width and height.  the basic footprint anyway.  It is about the same size.  A little bit smaller at 39,000 square feet.  the St George temple is considerably larger at over 100,000 square feet but this temple was not meant to replace the St George temple.  It's just to take some of the pressure off of the temple here in St George.  The temple here is going all the time.  I know that I always feel kind of odd that they seem to build temples in Idaho and Utah a lot and it makes members wonder why so many in Utah.  Well, the reason is that the temples in Utah/Idaho are just busier than you can possibly imagine. It's not like temples in other parts of the US where they have very few hours open due to very low attendance, hence, very short hours and few times during the day week.  In Utah they actually can't be open enough hours to satisfy the needs of patrons that attend there.  Until you have spent time in Utah, you really can't appreciate how many members actually attend sessions at their temples.  It's pretty impressive.

The tent to the left is the entrance to the temple.  The one in front here is where everyone comes out of the temple once they have completed the tour.  There were several tents for a short video prior to entering the temple for a brief overview of what temples are for and any questions.  The tents after the tour had the pictures after and displays of what went into the construction of the temple plus a small Christus statue you could take your picture  in front of.  I am guessing that will go somewhere in the garden area when everything is done and the temple is dedicated.

 

I think it gets prettier looking as the night comes on.  It'll look much better when all of the pre-dedication stuff is removed.  The tours ended just before Thanksgiving and the Dedication is scheduled for December 10th.  We have tickets to attend a remote dedication here in the St George East East Stake Center during that day.  When we can, we will be able to go up and attend a session.  the temple is in our mission so we can go.  It's about 45 minutes from here.  We don't know how busy it will be but I am betting it will be plenty busy until after Christmas.  Yes, we are planning on attending.  Half of the ordinance workers came from Cedar City but they have so many here in St George so that, apparently, is no problem for them.

 

The North side.

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It's been awhile.  Not a lot going on.  We have pretty much settled into a "grind" of regular work and a routine at the ROC so there isn't a lot to tell you about.  But, what the heck...

We've passed our 6 month mark here in St. George.  Actually, we are almost 7 months along our mission path.  About 11 months left.  We've had a lot of things to do and had to keep busy over the last couple of months.  One of our full time couples is preparing to head home so they are training me to take over when they leave.  The Elder stuff anyway.  Consequently, I'm getting more to do.  Keeps me busier than I have been in the past.  One of the other couples has extended till February then they are leaving.  They were supposed to leave in January.  Odd thing is, they have no replacements for either of these couples.  It appears that we might be heading towards having only two full time couples here at this ROC.  The Lead couple said they will be extending for a while as they may be transitioning to Church Service Missionaries.  So, the next few months ought to be pretty interesting.  But, we're here for 11 more months, I think...well, I'm pretty sure anyway.

We got to attend the "Newsies" musical over at the Tuacahn theater back in August, thanks to Sister Joines.  She's always taking care of us.  It was a lot of fun.  It wasn't quite the story of the DVD version as it had some variants and the music was different.  It actually had even more music but that was a good thing.  But, it had all of the good music we were used to and we got to kind of sing along with it. 

The set up for Newsies.  They did the musical all over the stage and up to about the 40 foot level.  It was pretty impressive. 

The intermission of the musical.  I believe Tuacahn will hold about 2,200 people.  It was packed that night, for the most part.  They are usually pretty well sold out.  This summer they had the Piano Guys perform there for a couple of nights but by they time I heard about it, there were no seats available except a couple of $90 nose bleeds.  Al Yankovic is coming next year but I think his seats will be sold out almost immediately as he is only doing one night.

Later in September we managed to get tickets to attend the Family Roots Tech Show here in St. George.  It was 2 days but one was Friday and we work on Friday mornings.  So, we opted to go Saturday only.  One speaker was John Bytheway on Saturday.   

He was really quite interesting to listen to and very funny.  Had a great time listening/watching him.

After the speakers, we attended classes that covered various subjects.  I attended 2 that covered RootsMagic, the PC/Mac related software application that is for genealogy.  It was interesting and I learned a lot about the software.  The VP of RootsMagic taught the class so it was pretty good and he knows his stuff.  There were even a few glitches during the class that he had to address and he was able to work around them.  Shows he knows his stuff.  Very interesting.

 A couple of weeks ago we went into the DMV and traded our Kalifornia license plates in for Utah plates.  We went over to the driver's license division, the next building over, and started the process for a drivers license for both of us.  Certainly is a lot more difficult to get one today than when I got one originally in 1965!   I had to drag out so much stuff to prove who I am now.  Thanks 9/11.  It took us a week to get all the paperwork together, study for the test, and return to take the test, eye exam, and pass it (I missed one in 25).  And I am thinking that is none too soon.  The RAV4's registration was going to be due in a couple of months so we saved well over $100 and the license is only $25.

So, where else but in Utah could you possibly make money on a store that sells ties?  Tie One On in the Red Cliffs Mall in St. George.  Bought 4 ties.  They have ties for everything, including Jerry Garcia ties that are not at Kohls!  This isn't all of the store, either.

We have a nice older gal that works in the ROC with us. She has an interesting calling due to her physical condition.  She's pretty crippled up with arthritis and has eye sight issues so working on a computer is difficult, at best.  But she's a trooper and works at it every day.  Her ward calling is a coordinator for blessings at the local hospital.  When they have a need for a Priesthood Blessing, she gets a call from the chaplain at the hospital, she then calls her husband who sets up the appointment as soon as he can get a couple of Elders there.  Because she's prit near deaf, we get to listen to these conversations.  

The other day, she couldn't get her husband to answer his cell phone.  The hospital described the patient, in the cancer ward, as "actively dying", whatever that means, never heard that one before, and he needed an immediate blessing.  So, I got elected to drop everything and head over to the hospital.  We have a 92 year old Elder serving with us and he said he could go.  We walk to the ROC so he would need to drive us.  He has a lot of experience with this kind of stuff, my experience is limited to, well, not much along this line.  He has been a stake president twice, a Bishop twice, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  So, when we got over there, I administered the oil and he administered the blessing.  The poor brother was in his last few hours of life.  He was not communicative in any form.  There are times in your life, when you give a blessing, that you really want to be able to talk to the person you're administering to.  This was one of them.  It wasn't meant to be.  This blessing was, however,  short, perfunctory, and efficient.  When you've given a lot of them, I guess you do that.  I looked at him and watched him struggling for breath and couldn't help but wonder what his life had been like.  His family had asked for the blessing.  His last blessing in this life.  No one was there to hear it but the two of us administering it and, well, maybe those from beyond the veil.  I assume he passed shortly after that.  Alone.  No one there with him.  Shouldn't be that way.  Really a shame.  My guess is this won't be the last time I do this.  She gets these calls sometimes twice a day.  Everyday.  Guess I need to get used to it.  25% of the population here in St George is over 75.  Maybe even more.  Makes one wonder when your time is going to happen....makes one thing about life a bit.

So, Halloween is right around the corner then Thanksgiving then, you know what!  Costco already has all the stuff up....argh!  More to come!

080817_Staff Training

We received training from Salt Lake on the El Paso Audit for newspaper editing this week.  It is the lead-in to WayPointing, preparing the newspapers for separating them into groups/batching for indexers to pull out articles.  El Paso has very few people to do the work so the ROCs are lending them a hand to get this all moving.  It is preparing the newspapers to be looked at, making sure they are square, readable, centered, they were cut right, no large areas of black showing...just making the newspapers usable for the batchers, mainly.  It takes a while to do them as there are about 1,000 images per film so we can only do a few before we need to turn them back in and someone else needs to finish them or we need to finish them after someone else started working on them.  I did manage to finish one but it took me two days.

Brother Hamp came down to assist as he is the Project Lead.  He introduced the topic and the training. 

 

Sister Stoddard did most of the training.  It lasted about 2 hours then we went back to our workstations and made an attempt at working on the project.  Got all set up and started working on things.  It didn't take too long before we had lots of specific questions and they both answered them easily.  As we worked through issues we realized there still are a lot of things that are not completely ironed out yet.  This is still in kind of a "beta" stage and we're kind of "beta" testers.  But, it's a lot farther along than the other two ROCs that are working with it.  WE had additional training, sort of a 2nd stage of training, the next day for another hour then they turned us loose.  They were so impressed with our progress they left on Wednesday after 2 days saying we didn't need for them to be here anymore.  It's a long drive back to Salt Lake....

 

Basically, the screen looks like this.  The page is listed on the left.  It's the one thin blue line in the middle.  This one has a red line around it because I am clipping or "cropping out" all of the bad stuff on the edges.  The column on the right gives me my options as to what I can do with this image.

  

This is a two page layout, an A and B page, that I had to make into a single page layout because it was skewed crooked and needed to be straightened out then re-split again.  Sometimes the people taking the pictures cut the pictures off to one side and I get to "fix" their picts or correct them in some other manner.  We can't always do that but we try to when we can.  When you do Zoning, you're doing these kinds of newspapers that we are preparing that will eventually be going to indexers.

 

This is Sister Stoddard helping Sister Mart install the El Paso Audit Program on her PC.  She's doing the initial discussion on what to expect and how to get it all set up and running right.  It takes a little while to get it all configured but once it's setup, it's pretty easy to get back in and do the work.  We are to put in 2 hours per day on the project.  They have 110, 000, 000 film pages to audit.  That is a lot to do.  It's going to take years to get done.  I'm betting there will be many more.  More stuff to follow...

072717_Nathan-Tabbi Family Visit

The Camino Seger Family visit to St George occurred this weekend.  Hugs and kisses and some family bonding for a few hours.  Some food, visits to the temple, the Family History Center, and the Visitors' Center were in line.  Of course, a visit to where we spend all of our time was in order.

Of course, we had to go visit the St George Temple Visitor's Center.  That requires an obligatory picture in front of the Christus statue for the family.

 

...and a picture in front of the Visitors' Center sign.  Does "Deer in the headlights" mean anything to you?

 

But the big deal was, the family got to meet with Jon Heder's Grandmother.  Don't know who Jon Heder is?  Napoleon Dynamite!  How could you not know that?  Dang it!  She works with us at the ROC and is a very special lady.  Has been a real asset and helps out a lot as most of those on Church Service Missions do.  She can really play a piano, too!  

 

She brought Nathan a signed picture and he was delighted!  We have a lot of fun with this and her celebrity but she is spiritually minded and works hard to do all she can with the records we work with every day.  BTW, that's not his real hair color, he had to dye it for the movie and he's about 32 now.  I've seen a recent picture of him and he looks older and...wiser.  But still Napolean.  The back story on how he ended up doing the movie is actually pretty fascinating.  You might want to read up on it on his website.  See ya...

071717_Last day in Escanaba

Well, all good things must come to an end...I guess this must too.  Today my goal was to visit one last haunt.  I got directions to my Dad's old cabin and railroad station that his Father worked from for years.  I had already been told it had been abandoned and burned to the ground many years before but just to go there and maybe feel Dad's presence once more was worth the effort.  My Dad passed away in 1980 so he has been gone a long time.  I think of him once in awhile around his birthday, Chirstmas time or other holidays but not a lot anymore.  It's been a long time.  Pictures remind me of him but I haven't heard his voice since Nathan was 7 months old.  Nathan is 37 this year.  Seems like a million years ago....

We headed off to Nahma Junction, which no longer exist...really.  It's just a place in Google Maps. The station is long gone and so is everything else.  However, after I took the pictures of what we saw there, Arlene realized that there was a shed there that looked vaguely familiar.

Note the door on the right...

 

This is a side view of the shed.  Since I was just taking pictures in the general area of where the depot once stood and the surrounding area, I snapped a couple of picts of this shed.  It's long since lost it's usefulness and will soon be sawdust and go the way of the world...  Behind it would have been the Seger cabin (long gone and replaced by a nice new house with new tenants and a road out to Hwy 13.  The depot would have been directly in front of this shed, to the right. and the railroad, which still exists, by the way, and is still in use, would be less than 75 feet from here.

 

Notice the doors on this storage shed?  Granted the current shed is only a fraction of the size but, hey, it's 60 years later!  If you notice in the 1st picture above, you can barely make out some faint yellow paint on those doors.  I figure it was turned into a kids playhouse or something many years ago and the rest of it was discarded.  The railroad is just to the left of the depot on the left there.  That cinder ash road is still there, by the way, some of it anyway.  Not so much, though.  Look at the length of the shed.  Pretty much the same, isn't it?  Although, the shed certainly hasn't weathered the years very well.

 

This is pretty much what the area looks like today.  All is gone and a few derelict railroad ties are perched on concrete blocks.  Looks like they have been there a while.  The cinders are on the right of the blocks.  The railroad spur is long gone as there is no reason to stop there any more.  There's no depot, no water tank, no Seger cabin built by the family.  All traces of the Seger's ever living there for a couple of decades have been erased.  But, that is progress.  Only a few of the older Seger's even remember what this place ever meant to anyone.  At least there was something there to remind me of Dad but that won't be there the next time I swing by, most likely.  But, I could feel him there, one more time.  I remembered a few of his stories.  Most of which involved him jumping on train cars as they sped by to the horror of his mother, but, Mom's are like that, aren't they?

 

One last look across the railroad crossing and it's time to head back to St. George tomorrow.  This is the road that leads back into Nahma Junction.

 

We made one last stop for items in Escanaba and headed back into our motel room for our last evening before we departed for home.

  

On our last day out we stopped by the lighthouse at the end of Escanaba.  A throwback to the time they needed this on the bay to keep barges from running into the land.  We weren't able to go into it as they weren't open in time for us to get to our flight but it was a nice looking restoration.

 

This gives the history of the Sand Point Lighthouse.

The flight home was, well, adventurous...  We got to Green Bay in plenty of time only to be told it was an hour and 20 minutes late.  That meant we were going to barley make our connecting flight in Chicago to Las Vegas.  I talked to the airline (United, of course) and they booked us on the next flight.  However, the plane got in a little early and we scrambled to make it to the original flight and managed to do a standby, actually getting better seats than what we originally had reserved!  Go figure.  BTW, when the car rental agency tells you they are upgrading you to a full sized Chevy Malibu, don't take it!  Not my favorite car.  So much worse than the Nissan Maixima I was supposed to get.  A whole list of issues with the car and it only had 2,000 miles on it...argh.  At any rate, we got home to the sultry 100+ temps in Las Vegas and managed to get home that evening.  A memorable trip to Upper Michigan, not to be forgotten.  Many relatives, friends, and experiences.

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Why the engine?  My Dad was raised near a railroad station where his Dad, Edwin W Seger, was a railway agent for SooLine.  They have long since gone out of business but they were pretty much the major railroad in upper Michigan for many years.  I heard many stories about his time living on/near the railroad.  This was on display as we were on our way up to Perkins to visit Cousin Kathy and Jim J.

JIm and Betty have a really nice spread up in the middle of a forrest area.  

 

This was a low lying area with a lot of swampy land.  He's done it up very nicely and it looks great.

 

More of his property with another small lake.  Very picturesque.  He spends several hours mowing his "lawn" every week.  Of course, they get their fair share of snow during the winter.

 

After a nice dinner with Cousin Kathy, Ed, Jim J and Betty, I managed to get a photo of Jim and Betty.  

 

After dinner, Cousin Kathy, Ed, Arlene and I went out to the old Seger Homestead.  This is the dairy farm that Fred, Nell and family occupied for many years.  About 350 acres here, I posted the pictures my Dad took back in 1959 in an earlier post.   

 

Kathy and me on the front steps. 

Well, we tried to recreate it...sort of.  Same place...58 years later.  Kathy is in about the same place and so am I.  Only a whole bunch more years older.  So is the house.  I'm the one in front on the right.  Kathy is the redhead on the 2nd step.  My mom is in the middle, 2nd step.  My Dad took the picture.

 

We snooped around the house and found the back door open.  The house is abandoned during the summer.  I understand it's used as a deer hunting cabin during the winter and it's rented out.  Talking to Cousin Kathy,  most of the homes that used to have families in them are abandoned or demolished.  The area has been bought by a large conglomerate and is mostly farmed commercially.  This is the living room.  Kathy said the carpet looks the same as when they lived in the house.

 

My Dad used to live in this house when he was young, close to 100 years ago.  That's hard to believe.  I have no idea how old the house is.  Cousin Kathy lived here also.

 

It has an upstairs with a couple of rooms.

 

Off to the right used to be a barn and the dairy barn for the cows and everything else.

 

This was where the garage was for the snowplow and vehicles.  It gets pretty cold in the UP so there had to be a place to keep things a bit warm.

 

Here's what it used to look like.  That building in the upper picture is not the original.

 

Back side of the farm house.  That's our family's Pontiac with the red stripe. I spent a few hours in the back of that car.  Especially on this trip.   

 

Hasn't changed much in 60 years, has it?

 

The original pad, where the garage once stood, is still there but I need to tell you, it is not in too good of shape, the winters have not been kind to it.  

 

One last look at the many acres that at one time used to be the Seger Family Farm and we took off for the Escanaba River just a short drive to the West.  Interesting thing is, this is so far up North that this is almost 9:30 at night and the sun is still up.  And it's mid-July!

 

A shot down the river in 1959.

 

A shot down the same river nearly 60 years later in almost the same place.  

 

Did have some really nice wildflowers along the riverbanks.  As the sun went down, we made our way back to Escanaba for an evening's rest and preparation for the next day.  I still wanted to go out to the old Nahma Junction where my Dad was raised and lived a good portion his young life.  But, that is another day's adventure.

My dad spent some time in this farmhouse, as best I can figure. He left from here to go to California and find his "fortune".  Here he met my mom, married and had me.  the rest is history, or so the story goes.  There's a lot more to the story but that will suffice for now, won't it?