Portland Temple

During August and September there are tours each Sunday afternoon of the Portland LDS Temple grounds. Since we are new to Portland we decided to go yesterday. Volunteers lead small groups around the grounds and point out interesting little tidbits about the temple. The Portland Temple was built in 1989 at a cost of $20,000,000. Sunday services are not held in this building but in smaller meeting houses located in hundreds (in fact probably thousands) of different places all over the world, including one in my hometown of Lonoke, Arkansas. Worldwide there are 130 temples to serve the approximately 14,000,000 members. When I joined the LDS church in 1972 there were 16 temples. This sacred building is used for special religious ceremonies, including marriage for time and all eternity. If you came to see the grounds on a Saturday, chances are you would see a number of brides and grooms being photographed outside the temple after their wedding ceremony.

I enjoyed visiting with the other couple on our tour. They were not members of our church but just came to see what they could learn. I got the opportunity to talk to them about missionaries - both the young familiar to everyone young men in the dark suits, white shirts, and name tags and the less familiar senior couples who serve all over the world in a variety of capacities....from leadership training to clerical help to church security! George and I hope to join their ranks one day!

If you'd like to learn more you can go to http://lds.org/temples/faq/0,11264,1904-1,00.html

for answers to frequently asked questions about LDS temples.

The white marble is from Virginia and the green slate is from Pennsylvania.

The guide said that in Oregon the motto is "If you plant it, it will grow." The flowers are stunningly beautiful!

The words over the front door say, "Holiness to the Lord - The House of the Lord". We believe that it truly is!

Gotta love Oregon!

What's not to love about a place that has flowers like this? Yes that is one plant with two different types of flowers.

Calls porta potties "honey buckets"?

has drinking fountains for the tall, the short and the four legged?

And has poems like this along the walking paths?

I'm a Squirrel Torturer!

On Monday I hung up my bird feeder eagerly anticipating all the new types of birds I'd be seeing here in the Wilamette Valley!

My first visitor was this cute little squirrel who was sure that somehow he could enjoy this newly discovered food source.

"Maybe if I stretched enough!"

" I can jump that far....I think I can, I think I can....."

"Ok, I'm here. Now what do I do?"

This is his third day of trying unsuccessfully to eat my bird food. He's a tenacious little fellow! I don't see him for an hour or two and then he returns to try again. I swear that when he sees me taking pictures through the window, he gives me dirty looks. I feel so bad that I think I'll buy a squirrel feeder.

Spiritual Insights, Brownies, Friends and Fun!

After one week in Portland I flew to Salt Lake for Education Week. Sunday morning Jan and I attended "Music and the Spoken Word". Listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is always an amazing experience and this was no exception. "Music and The Spoken Word" is the world's longest continuously running network broadcast. It is heard on about 2000 radio and TV stations all around the US and Canada. There are 360 members of the choir who are selected after a rigorous audition process and serve without pay. The choir was just inducted into the Radio Music Hall of Fame. Special guests on this particular Sunday were members of the Wasatch and District Pipe band....I love bagpipes!

Sunday afternoon we drove down to Provo, checked into a dorm, and then spent the week attending classes from 8:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night....with a few chocolate mint brownie breaks!!!!

"Get farther away from the Savior and closer to the Mint Brownies", was the direction from the lady who took this picture of us! Those brownies are yummy but the classes did help me feel closer to my Savior. I'm so grateful for the spiritual boost of this fantastic week.

It is so wonderful to see more than 20,000 women, men and youth who take a week from their busy lives to attend BYU Education Week. There are classes on everything from money management to folk dances to scripture study. Two of my favorites this year were "Speaking and Listening to God" and "What the Scriptures Teach Us About Adversity".

I always go with friends that I made in our Ward when we moved to Boise in 1988. So wonderful that even though we don't see each other as often as we would like, when we get together it is just as if we'd always been together! I love my friends.

Portland Move Part 4

George brought back the bachelor pad stuff that I didn't want and then we loaded up all the furniture and kitchen things that I wanted into a big U-haul truck.

Everyone helped!

I helped by staying comfortably out of the way!

Matt was the brains behind the loading of the truck. It reminded me a a large scale Tetris game! Matt did a masterful job and it all fit.

Saying goodbye was hard but we were off to finally really make the move to Portland.

Now the new challenge is to fit it all in the little two bedroom apartment!

Happy birthday to me, a day late!

I forgot to do a post for my own birthday. Here I am when I was one year old! I still have a hard time believing that I am on the downhill to 60 years old. I always thought at some age I'd start feeling mature....but it hasn't happened yet. I still feel like a 'kid' and am surprised when someone asks me if I qualify for a senior citizen discount or what I'm doing about the medicare prescription drug plan! When my mother had her stroke and the paramedics asked me for her insurance cards I immediately thought, "I don't know where they are. I need to call my Aunt Mary, she'd know." Then I remembered that Mary had just died and I got this panic.......oh no, I am the grown up now! Am I supposed to start feeling like a grownup some time soon?

Birds of Prey

Boise has a wonderful attraction called the "World Center for Birds of Prey". It is the headquarters of the Peregrine Fund which saved the endangered Peregrine falcon from near certain extinction. The last time I was there was when Matt was an 8 year old cub scout...that was the last time Matt was there too! Scott's last time was when his 1st grade class went on a field trip. We decided that before I moved, another visit was in order.

One new exhibit was the Condor Cliffs where California Condors live, breed and are eventually released into the Grand Canyon area. They are BIG impressive looking birds. I didn't know that they are scavengers who eat only carrion.

We explored the "Arabian Falconry" exhibit and Matt and Scott even agreed to pose outside the Bedouin tent and in the tent.

In the live bird show we saw a Swainson's Hawk. His trainer threw yummy rat tails high into the air. He easily caught and devoured them in one or two gulps. This particular type of hawk spends the summer here in Idaho and the winter in Argentina or Uruguay. That's quite the trip each year.

We also saw a crow. Although he is not a bred of prey, he is pretty entertaining! Birds of prey, or raptors, are meat eaters and use their feet, instead of their beak, to capture prey. They have exceptionally good vision with large prominent eyes, a sharp, hooked beak, and powerful feet with curved, sharp talons. The crow isn't a raptor but he is one smart bird. The trainer showed us one of his tricks. She said he learned this with just a few minutes of training. She had him sitting on a stick and attached to that stick by a small rope was a basket that held a treat. The crow used his beak to bring the rope up & up, holding it with his foot as it got shorter until the treat basket was close enough for him to eat the treat.

At the end of the show she asked for donations of dollars to help feed the birds. People would walk up and hand the bird a dollar and he'd go and put it through an opening into a box. Who knew that crows were so intelligent? I certainly didn't!

I can't remember the specific name of this bird, but he is pretty. He's from Africa.

If you are interested, here is their website. http://www.peregrinefund.org/default.asp