Easter Eggs and Daffodils

April 16, 2006

Dear Family,

Easter came gently this morning, as it does in Oregon this time of year, with sunlight peeking through a gap between cloud cover and a snow-dusted forest on the horizon. Occasional showers put a glisten on our apple blossoms and daffodils. Later we had enough "sun breaks" to cheer up the place and lure Kyrstyn and me into the yard to hide Easter candy and "real live" dyed and decorated Easter eggs. It has been a good day to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

Bill and Mary Griffiths were our speakers in Sacrament Meeting and they both presented thoughtful and moving messages. I sat in the choir seats and looked at many faces drinking in the spirit of their inspiration, the fruit of their spiritual work preparing a feast for us today. I sang in a quintet "Were You There" (When they crucified my Lord), I sang in the choir (Suzanne Mosman at the piano) singing "He Is Not Here" - one of my favorites from the old "Choir Book" but which is much too high for my voice and Brittany Foushee sang a beautiful rendition of "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." with Laura Walhood at the piano. Just after the beginning of the closing hymn, "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today, Halleluia!", tiny Natalie Glausi climbed off her mother’s lap in the choir seats and tripped over the organ power cord, pulling it loose. The congregation sang on under Ed Winkler’s steady direction with no accompaniment. After a moment, I reached for a hymn book and slid onto the piano bench, quickly turning the pages to the hymn so I could pick up at the beginning of the second verse. At the same time, Teresa Jolly was figuring out what went wrong and then working to get the organ plugged back in. As luck would have it, we were both ready for the second verse and began playing at the same time, full tilt. This gave the congregation a start and they began to sing more energetically. We played together for the rest of the closing hymn and everyone seemed to be pleased. Lots of folks commented to me after the meeting how much they enjoyed the sound, and this by accident! This gave me an idea. I’d like to have a regular LDS version of the ubiquitous evangelical "worship band" for hymns in our Sacrament meetings but, of course, with "approved" instruments. We have youth in the ward who play in high school bands and adults in our ward with good intonation who can play cello, flute, violin, classical guitar and whatever other instruments. Wouldn’t it be great to have them play with hymns on a regular basis - to involve more people in the musical worship and liven up our hymns? I’ve never wanted to carry the load of a bishop, but the thought of being able to try some of my ideas makes me think it could almost (almost) be worth it. Oh, well... Maybe in some other life.

Sometime recently, Krystyn and I were having a conversation about Easter and she volunteered to decorate eggs. Of course, Kyrstyn had much more in mind than dipping them in some PAAS dye kit and you will see from the photos what she has done. I stuck to the PAAS coloring and enjoyed making some two toned and three toned

eggs. But Kyrstyn inspired others of us, even Jared for heaven’s sake, to try our hand at decorating an egg with some creativity.

Yesterday, Kyrstyn finished up her many days of body cleansing regimen with mixing up potions and making asparagus soup. Bryce cleaned out the refrigerator again. Photos galore of each.

We had our traditional Easter egg hunt in the yard in between showers. Logan and Caden had fun, but so did Kaaren, Bryce, Kadra, Kyrstyn, Skye, Jared, Courtney and Jason carrying Ashlynn about the gardens. I guess we’ll keep this tradition. We had a lovely dinner of Black Forest ham, scalloped potatoes, cauliflower, perfect sweet bread and fruit. Ashlynn slept through the whole thing. Kaaren read some scripture. We had some nice conversation. It was a good dinner.

It’s getting to late to write much more, but I want to tell you about an experience I had this week.

I stopped in Deseret Book - sometimes I do sometimes just to see what’s new - looking for a cheap copy of God’s Army (Did one of you borrow my DVD? ). I saw a new book being promoted near the entrance - an illustrated story by Elder Dieter Uchtdorf about a Sister "Eternal" ("Ewig" in German) and picked it up. It was a short story with only one paragraph on each page opposite an illustration, telling the story of his family’s conversion to the Church in East Germany through the influence of Sister Ewig whom his mother met in a bread line. Something about the simple and direct narrative in Dieter Uchtdorf’s style of speaking touched me deeply when I reflected on the deep faith of the German saints. Germans are not famous for their spirituality; they are known, rather, to revere "Die Wissenshaft" (Science) more than God. But here was a story that paralleled the lives of so many Germans I knew and loved including German people that I brought to the Church and baptized. He told a story of his family living their Gospel each day with simple, deep faith in the face of economic disaster, political danger, religious intolerance, and long suffering such as you and I may never know. I teared up reading his story while I thought of my friends in Darmstadt: Helga Koehn and her son, Hartwig and Ruth Litta and their daughters whom you know - just of few of the faithful living lives of obedience and humility even today. I couldn’t stop crying and left the store still wiping my eyes. This was the sort of simple faith that led my Grandfather and his family to be baptized and associate with the Mormons in Hannover and to leave their home town of Barsinghausen and emigrate to Salt Lake City. A couple of hours later, going into the courtroom in Portland on a contested Probate case, I was still fighting tears in my eyes over this story that Elder Uchtdorf told. In these days, many of think we are very sophisticated and discriminating in matters of religion and religious history and philosophy and I usually like to count myself among them. But this experience was a little reminder to me why faith is one of the first principles of the Gospel. It is worth while, in the face of criticism or spiritual difficulty, to withhold judgment and continue in faith. Perhaps I am not making much sense to many of you and only preaching to myself. Nevertheless, I needed to write this down and share it with you. My German converts are teaching me today to continue in faith.

Continue in faith.

Happy Easter!

Love,

Dad