Young Women

This last week was our first week with young women in camp.  What a beautiful spirit they bring to the mountain.  Elder Duerden moved the main bench where the girls sit once they have been harnessed and are ready to go so that he can hear them sing while he is belaying.  

We have a wonderful team, the Monfredi's, the Adam's and the Asays.  Sister Asay is having surgery tomorrow for a tumor on her knee.  We will be so glad when she is well and can join us again.

We have already had some spiritual experiences and love the wonderful things that happen here at camp.  Our Heavenly Father loves every one of us!  We are so grateful for this time in our lives.  It is going by so fast!

Lined up at the welcome gate

I am in the nest taking pictures of the young women getting on their harnesses

Elder Duerden and Elder Asay taking a little break!

Barbecue and more animals

After a day working on course, Elder Simonsen invited us to a barbecue.  He brought up his large barbecue, and invites a few people to bring their own meat and anything else you might have like a pot luck.  

This evening was quite enjoyable.  After dinner, we got out all the fire pits and sat around telling stories, including Chuck stories!  Elder Powell brought his guitar out and sang some pretty funny songs!  We had a great big bull moose join us in the distance.  It was a great evening and only the cold chased us back to our RVs.

Last year about half way down the parkway, was a large nest with a red tailed hawk.  This year, an owl mother decided to call it home until her 3 young ones were old enough to fly.  We took the binoculars down to see, it was awesome!  Elder Moretti has a camera with a big lens and he shared this picture with me.

We had a robin trying to build a nest in the king pin of our 5th wheel.  We got rid of it at least 3 times and finally decided to let it be.  She is sitting on the nest now, and I'm sure we will have baby birds soon.

Our friends tell us this is a rock chuck.  Interesting looking animal.  We sure have seen a diversity of animals this year.

Challenge Course 2

When we first came up to camp, we were asked to be on Challenge Course 1.  We were not asked to be course leaders, which was hard at first, but we settled in right away.  We were on CC1 last year and loved it, and we would be with the Simonsens again, which was great!

The Wintertons were assigned course leaders on CC2.  Then Sister Winterton got hurt and the church would no longer let her be on CC2 because of liability issues.  So, we were then asked to be leaders on CC2.  It's sort of interesting, I had a feeling we would be on CC2 this year.

We give everyone a high 5 as they leave the course

This was a home schooled group that came the first of the week

We have been losing a lot of sleep and working hard to get the course going, including training the new missionaries.  It's a lot more work that I would have thought.  We want to make it a great year and pray all the missionaries will have the same kind of wonderful experiences like we had last year.

Memorial Day Flag Ceremony

Elder Duncan playing Amazing Grace on the Bagpipes                   

This is part of the group of veterans we honored 

Flag Raising

Elder Lee lead us in America the Beautiful

On Memorial Day we have a flag ceremony at the Smith amphitheater.  We honor all the veterans, there are a lot of them.  Elder Duncan has played the bag pipes the last two years.  Elder Lee played his guitar to our singing.  It is a short ceremony, but touching.  As you can see from the pictures, it was a beautiful sunny morning, the first we have had.  

Love the Wildlife!

We never get tired of seeing the wildlife up here on the mountain.  We have seen many deer, some elk, 2 badgers, a few moose, sage hen, rabbits, many different birds, geese and their babies and of course chipmunks and pot juts.

Behind our back window

Salt lick that brings the animals around

We saw these geese and babies on the way to church

I will try to blog more.  I have been having a hard time getting my pictures to post.
Last night we saw a very large moose, but we weren't able to get close enough to get a picture.  Hopefully he will return.

Work, training, work!

I have not been good at blogging but will try to catch up with the last two weeks.  
Sometimes (often) the weather isn't the way we would like it to be.  It seems like the best weather was a week ago when we were inside training.

The week before training, we were getting the courses ready.

 There was a lot of snow on challenge course 1, probably about 3 feet.  You can see here we have uncovered the first bench.

 Wow! What a lot of work!  There is a lot more snow up here this year.  We have to get rid of it so that we can begin our training.

 Here we are in Smith pavilion during our training.  It was much harder sitting in class all week this year than last.  We had heard it all before.  One good thing is that we just were not as worried about the test.  Sure glad that is done!

It's going to be a great year!  We have some awesome new missionaries!

Our first visitor and weekly news

We arrived at our camp site on Friday, April 22nd.  The weather was pretty good.  When we walked around to see where everyone was park, we spotted a wild turkey on the ground allowing several people to pet her.  I figured there must be something wrong with her. But when we all had a turn petting her, she got up, pecked around a little, and ran off.

We have named her Talula

We went to the temple on Tuesday.  It was a beautiful day!  We enjoyed lunch at the Joseph Smith memorial building.

 It snowed almost every day last week.  We woke up to about 12 inches on Wednesday morning.  

This is looking out our front window

As a result, we spent the entire week indoors learning many things, including knots.

Elder Button, Sister Forester, Elder Simonsen and Sister Button