Before entering the "empty sea"

COUNTDOWN


At any given point in time it was quite a trick to know when Craig would enter the MTC in Provo--Yep, you had to somehow be close enough to see the fine print on the white board on the fridge. It was easy to see by his expression that Craig was dreading leaving home to venture into the unknown world of the mission field, especially Taiwan. On Monday before leaving Tucson, we asked Sam Rogers, recent return missionary from Taiwan, and his family over for Family Home Evening. The idea was to get a little more acquainted with the country, language, and the mission in general. We asked loads of questions including, "With all those Chinese characters, how do you look up a work in the dictionary?"

Sam responded, "One way is to count the strokes in the character, then look up the characters that have that number of strokes. There might be several hundred you will need to go through until you find the correct one."

We were aghast. "Incredible" we commented.

He said, "When you become a little more acquainted with the writing, it is also possible to identify the key 'radical' or group of strokes in the character, and then count the other strokes. That way you might have only a few characters to look through."

"If it is such a trick to look up characters, how do you get directions to find a place in the city?" we asked.

"Well, there were a few times when we never did find the place we were looking for." he responded with a smile.

With that as an appetizer Craig was ready to go and up for the challenge. He dived into the reference books he had and was starting on Mandarin characters in earnest. He will be great!


ON THE LINKS

Continuing a long established family tradition stemming way back to one other time (before Nathan left for his mission to Argentina), we ventured out for a family round of golf.

We hit the Mick Riley Golf Course on Saturday, August 2, at 9:29 a.m. (Not only did we hit the course, literally, our golf balls hit almost everything else as well.) It was easy to tell that we knew exactly what we were doing: We tried to go as a sevensome, even though only foursomes are allowed. The field marshal quickly spotted our group and had us split up to make two groups. So Camille, Bryan, Michelle, and Josh headed for the second hole even before finishing the first, while Craig, Mary Lee and I continued at hole one. We concluded that in addition to having a great time we also got a great value--We got more swings for our money than anybody else on the course. (Some of us got a much greater value than others.) We also contributed to the golf ball collections of several of the neighboring homes and often found that we hit more of the big ball (earth) than we did the little ball. Additionally we were usually too close to the ball even after we had hit it, unless of course it was on the greens where the opposite was the case. All in all it was lots of fun for us, even if the people behind us were about ready to abandon golf altogether or commit hara kiri.


THE NIGHT BEFORE

Like Craig, we were thrilled that we could have a small gathering of family and friends when Craig was set apart by Grandpa Scott the night before entering the MTC. It was doubly beneficial because each one there gave Craig one tid-bit of advice to help him in some way on his mission. It seemed that much of the advice applied in some way to each of us. We missed Nathan and Megan, and Grandma and Grandpa Faux, as well as their advice.

Grandpa Call, Josh, Bryan, Grandpa Scott, Craig, Truman Madsen, and I all participated.

Michelle, I, Craig, Camille, Bryan, and Mary Lee were all there.

Michelle (the camera gravitates to her), Teresa, Sarah, and Cathy came.

Grandma and Grandpa Call and Grandpa Scott were there.

Brother and Sister Madsen and their granddaughter Elizabeth were also there.

Now with a line-up like that you know that the advice was superb and their hearts were all in it. Elder Scott gave Craig a great blessing that was perfect preparation for his entering the MTC and thence going to Taiwan as a missionary.