As we finally complete our holiday season, we have also finished other important steps along the way. This includes my completion of three years on the management committee of the Cornerstone Homeowners Association, Debbie's completion of over three years as a Sunday School Teacher, Lamoni completing a six year courtship as he got engaged, the completion of our Come Follow Me study of the Doctrine and Covenants, the completion of our grandchildren "family tree" on the wall and significant temple ordinances for over 50 of Debbie's direct ancestors.
The finished product with all 50 of our grandchildren on the family tree
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| Photo on Debbie's birthday, after mounting the tree on the wall |
Our grandchildren family tree was a present for Debbie's birthday on January 7. On February 3, we finally hung the photos of our 50 grandchildren. We know have one place with photos of all of our grandchildren. This is similar to what we had in our apartment during our mission. Then the tree was smaller and we had 36 grandchildren. This makes our family room downstairs complete!
Lamoni making major steps in his life:
In November our son, Lamoni, was involved in a major automobile accident that totaled his truck. Fortunately, it was initially determined that the other driver was at fault. When all was finished, Lamoni had a newer truck and a better loan.
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| Lamoni with his new and improved truck |
More importantly, Lamoni took advantage of this Christmas Season to get engaged to Aide. We are thrilled! They have been dating since before our mission and Lamoni had purchased the ring six months earlier. He proposed at the same location as their first date, six years ago. This was the "Tree of Life" holiday display. All of our family loves Aide, especially Lamoni. We are excited as they plan on a September 30 wedding later this year.
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Lamoni and Aide at our Christmas Party, the day after their engagement. Look at her ring!
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Tom completing his three year term as a member of the HOA management team of the Cornerstone Condominiums Homeowners Association:
My first year I was responsible for Buildings and Roads. The second year I was responsible for Landscaping and Grounds. This past year I served as the President. When I started, I felt somewhat coerced into running for office. In the first year of my service, I studied in the New Testament about the importance of being a "cheerful giver". Since that time I have worked on my attitude and have found great joy in serving our community.
This past year we had a new Treasurer and inherited some challenges in the previous financial records. Using the gifts and experience that I have been given, I was able to help clean up all of the owner accounts for their monthly dues. After completing these reconciliations, our new treasurer was able to keep all of the accounts current for the past 10 months. We then implemented on-line web payment of monthly dues. There are now more than half of our 146 units paying their dues automatically, which simplifies things quite a bit. I was also able to bring our income tax reporting current, after discovering several years of non filing. Finally we invested our reserve funds in some higher earning investments. This is part of our plan to accumulate over $1.0 million dollars to replace the roofs for the entire community by the end of the decade. I have offered to stay on as a volunteer Assistant Treasurer to help with financial reporting, income tax preparation and maintaining the reserve analysis for the HOA.
I must say that this has been quite an enjoyable experience most of the time. As president, I led our management team of 5 individuals. Each is a volunteer and do a wonderful job in helping our community to be a safe and attractive place to live. I can honestly say that I am glad that I was able to serve and will miss the close association with the many residents of our community.
In January we had elections for our new President and our annual meeting of unit owners (in person and by Zoom). We completed the annual meeting with the residents comfortable with a raise in our monthly dues, once they understood our planning for future expenditures:
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| This was our management team from this past year |
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| Officers of our HOA, taken from our website |
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| Our Annual Meeting which also had many residents participate by Zoom |
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| Conducting our Meet the Candidates meeting. Bart Davis, sitting in this photo, was elected as the next member of the management committee and will assume the role of president. We are blessed to have someone as capable as him to serve our community. This makes it easier for me to pass the baton. |
Debbie finishing up as Sunday School Teacher:
Debbie was called to teach Gospel Doctrine class in our ward in 2018, teaching the Old Testament before Come Follow Me began. Since then she has guided her classes in their Come Follow Me study through the New Testament, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. She has taught in the Primary Room, the Relief Society Room and in the Chapel and was our first Zoom teacher during Coronavirus. Speaking as a biased Sunday School president for the past two years, she has been an example for the other teachers, working hard to not lecture, but to facilitate learning. Many ward members have expressed their gratitude for the lessons that they have learned in her classes.
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| Debbie teaching her last Sunday school lesson in December |
As a separate "completing" activity, Debbie has now lost 70 pounds in the past 5 years. In the photo below, she now fits into her original wedding dress from her first wedding, 45 years ago.
Completing baptismal ordinances for over 50 of Debbie's direct ancestors:
In November, I felt strong impressions to give more focus to Family History Research. I was prompted to look at one of Debbie's shortest lines, which led to the parents of Henrietta Augusta Schenck, who was born in Bad Tennstedt, Germany. Henrietta is Debbie's 2nd great grandmother. We had minimal success finding ancestors in the 1700s and earlier. In my first efforts, I found some on-line records summarizing marriages in that city. As I began looking at these records, I started with the marriage of Henrietta's parents, which I identified. Once I understood the records that I had available, I was able to check back 20 to 30 years before each marriage and identify the marriage of the fathers, who generally are identified in the marriage record. In the past few months I was privileged to be able to identify over 50 of these ancestors and there is still much more to do. We only have marriage records and not birth records, so the birth dates are estimated, but the marriage dates are identified by the year. This has been one of my most joyous family history research projects because of the ability to identify so many of Debbie's direct ancestors. The photo below shows the six generations before Henrietta that have been identified, including three from the seventh generation that do not appear on the fan chart.
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| All of the outlined individuals were added to our family history records and needed temple ordinances. A few of the others were connected but already had their temple work performed. |
Last Saturday, we were able to take four of our grandchildren to the Draper Temple. For them, it was their first visit to this temple. We arrived early while the baptismal font was empty and were allowed to do ten baptisms per person. This means 60 since Debbie and I were also able to participate. This allowed us to do the baptisms and confirmation for 51 of these identified direct ancestors and 9 other individuals, including a few of my direct ancestors. This was a culmination of a major blessing that we have received from Heavenly Father as he pushed me to do the work with strong spiritual promptings and guided my hand in miraculous ways.
Jon and Joshua as they were ordained a teacher and a priest early in January. This allowed Josh to perform baptisms for the first time during this baptism for the dead experience.
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| Our four grandchildren with their grandmother by the Draper Temple and holding these precious ordinance cards for all of these ancestors. |
As I mentioned above, God is certainly in this process. The following is from my journal about the guidance I received to find one of the lines that was not in the Tennstedt records:
One of the earliest mothers was Anna Dorothea Halbing, Henrietta;s great grandmother. She was identified in a marriage with Johann Balthasar Seelander. The Helbing name is pretty easy to recognize in the Germany handwriting, but I could not find any records of any earlier marriages relating to her father, which was identified as Andreas Helbing in her marriage record. I was successful in most of the other lines but was stuck at this point, a marriage in 1746. As I put the information of Andreas Helbing into Family Search, it showed a possible duplicate with an Andreas Helbing from Grossgrabe, a town not too far distant from Bad Tennstedt. As I looked at this record, it was an Andreas Helbing born about the same time as I had estimated, but it was a child who had died as an infant. I noticed that this record was entered by our friend, Sharon Tristani, 3 or 4 years ago. This led to getting in touch with Sharon again. She is still living, but is very frail. It was good to share emails with her. I came to the conclusion that this probably wasn’t a correct match. However, I returned to the marriage record and found that it said that Andreas Helbing was from Blankenburg. This is a village closer to Bad Tennstedt. As I looked in Family Search, I found microfilm for Blankenburg, with summarized parish records, including birth, death and marriage records. So I began searching again and found an Andreas Helbing that married in 1694. Unfortunately, many of the records of the early 1700’s were not there. I found several birth records of children born to this Andreas Helbing, but not Anna Dorothea. I found other good information in the birth, marriage and death records, including three generations of Andreas Helbing. I wasn’t quite sure when Anna Dorothea fit in. As I was looking one last time at some death records, I went back to the beginning of the death records and found four birth records from 1714 inserted in the microfilmed records. The first of these was the birth of Anna Dorothea Helbing, born to Andreas Helbing. I was so excited to find this, and felt that this tied to the Andreas Helbing married in 1694. Her mother would have been around 40 years old, but still able to bear children. The next Andreas Helbing had a child born in 1721, but nothing more was identified because of the missing records. I felt that I had connected correctly to our Anna Dorothea Helbing who would have been 32 years old at the time of her marriage.
Completing our study of the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History:
As we completed our study of the Doctrine and Covenants, we spent a week studying the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. This was Debbie's last Sunday school lesson. As part of that process, I felt prompted to share my testimony of Joseph Smith and the great truths that I had learned during 2021. The following is what I included in the letter:
"This year I have gained a much stronger realization and testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet, seer, and revelator. He certainly was called for this purpose and learned to always speak for God. He learned from his mistakes. After losing the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon he established the rule that when God commands, “do it”. His continual flow of personal prophecies and expounding of doctrine and true principles was amazing. His ability to trust totally in God’s word was exemplary. Many of his prophecies were personal such as those given to Willard Richards a year before the martyrdom and Dan Jones on the night before the martyrdom. Each was perfectly fulfilled.
His understanding of God’s plan was beyond our comprehension. Yet he patiently revealed this knowledge to the Saints line upon line, precept upon precept. This includes the nature of God and our relationship with him and our potential to become like him. This began to be revealed in Section 93 in 1833 but culminated in the King Follet discourse in April 1844, just a few months before his martyrdom. His last years were filled with restoring the glorious temple work for us individually and finally for the dead, all mankind. He taught the ordinances and covenants to the Twelve and charged them to implement them in the completed temple. He fulfilled the office of a true teacher. He came to show us that God is, not was. That he speaks, not spake.
In all of his trials, Joseph was constantly betrayed by some of his closest friends and associates. However, he was always quick to forgive and to accept them back into the Kingdom of God. This may be best described by his response to W. W. Phelps (see below) who had betrayed him in Missouri, "Come on, dear brother, since the war is past, for friends at first, are friends again at last." He loved others and he wanted to trust all. Truly, Joseph was striving to follow the example and teachings of his Savior, of “long-suffering, patience and mercy”.
I believe that Joseph Smith was the Lord’s anointed and saw the heavens. I believe that his visions and understanding were similar to those of John the Revelator and the brother of Jared. As I study and ponder his revelations, I receive personal witness of their truthfulness. When I study his life, I see a prophet who was restored in these latter days while the Church was being restored. He clearly had weakness, but understood his role. He was mortal but learned from his mistakes and advanced in his progression to be grow “grace to grace” like our Savior. His revelations are full of declarations from the Lord that his sins were forgiven him for he constantly repented. He said “I never told you I was perfect” but “there is no error in the revelations which I have taught”. He sealed his magnificent life as a martyr, “calm as a summer’s morning” with a “conscience void of offense towards God and towards all men”. I declare that he was the prophet of this last dispensation of fullness of times and that he fulfilled his mission as given by the Lord. Through him, my understanding of our Savior Jesus Christ has grown!
The following are a few of my major learnings:
· The restoration of the Church was a messy process, impacted by the agency of human beings, who are far from perfect. However, the Lord guided the restoration process which continues today through our living Prophet. This restoration was full of many visions, revelations and miracles. This includes the translation and printing of the Book of Mormon, restoration of priesthood keys and the revealing of the plan of salvation for the living and the dead, line upon line and precept upon precept. The Lord is clearly in charge!
· The line upon line restoration of the gospel is fascinating to me. The Lord started by teaching how to receive revelation personally and for the Church. He then taught His law in Kirtland, which included the laws of consecration and stewardship. That prepared the early Saints to be endowed with power at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and the later building of the Nauvoo Temple. Sections 76, 84, 88 and 93 included significant doctrinal teachings that explained the road to exaltation, including:
o Kingdoms of Glory for all, according to our desires
o Power of Godliness made manifest in the ordinances of the Priesthood
o Light and Law come from God and Jesus Christ
o Growing Grace by Grace, like Jesus Christ
· The Lord always has a greater perspective which we must trust. We are able to see this clearly by looking back in history. One example is his allowing the Saints to be driven out of New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois and eventually settling in Utah, outside of the U.S. during the Civil War. There they were able to grow as a people and as a Church. As I pondered the continual loss of property, my concerns were answered in Doctrine and Covenants 117 where I read “What is Property to Me? Saith the Lord”. I realized that the things of the world are never the Lord’s priority, but the things of eternity. We are the ones who worry too much about our worldly treasures. Although the challenges of the world did not allow the Saints to build Zion in Missouri, the Lord’s priority was to build a Zion people, before establishing a Zion location.
· Our Self-Guided Church History Tour helped us to understand the people of the restoration as we reviewed their stories and visited the locations where they lived. We found that the Lord raised up many people to help in the restoration, including several who were not members of the Church. They were raised up to minimize suffering and bless individuals. These included Alexander Doniphan, E.J. Grandin, the citizens of Clay County Missouri and Quincy, Illinois and many more. We also appreciated the hand of the Lord in raising up so many members of the Church to lead and strengthen the Church throughout the journey. These are way too many to share in this document. We experienced sacred locations such as the Sacred Grove and Adam-ondi-Ahman where we received strong personal revelations.
· Personally, I learned better how to pray from the dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple and how to ponder from the vision of Joseph F. Smith. From the persecutions in Ohio and Missouri I learned that the Lord accepts our sacrifices more than our increase and our offerings more than our outcomes. From Nauvoo, I learned that all that was restored was to provide for the Plan of Salvation of all mankind, living and dead, in the temples. This was part of the Lord’s plan since the foundation of the world. I learned that while I am providing temple ordinances for my ancestors, my deceased father and grandfather are probably teaching these same ancestors in the Spirit World. Pretty Cool! From the words of the Lord to George Ricksford, an early faithful black member of the Church, I repeat “You don’t have to understand everything about my gospel before you commit yourself to it. Why don’t you show your faith by accepting what you’ve heard and commit the rest into my hands? Don’t trouble yourself. I will never lead you astray”
Christmas Presents for our posterity:
A large part of the celebration of Christmas is exchanging presents. That has also been part of our Christmas celebrations. With 17 children and their spouses and 50 grandchildren, the prospect of buying presents for each becomes more overwhelming each year. This year, Debbie challenged me to buy all of the presents and she would wrap them. This year we counted nearly 200 presents that she had wrapped. For us, each of our children visits us at our home sometime during the Christmas season and we share with them our Christmas presents.
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| One of several piles of presents that arrive from on-line shopping |
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| Debbie turns the gifts that I purchase into beautifully wrapped presents to share with our children and grandchildren |
Several of our grandchildren do not live with our children and these visits are less dependable. So when the New Year arrives, we store the presents in our closet and try to arrange visits in their homes or otherwise. This week, on February 1, we were able to deliver our last Christmas presents and to be able to say that Christmas gift giving was finally complete. The last of these gifts were delivered during birthday celebrations last week for Ariana and Cherish. Others required special arrangements of visits. We need to rethink these efforts as we go forward.
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| Ben opening his present that was stored in the storage room. He was too sick on Christmas to come over. We finally made arrangements to celebrate with him in January. |
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| Enjoying Christmas games with Renica and her children during a January visit. |
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| Tommy, opening his Christmas present at Ariana's birthday party |
Our 2021 Christmas:
Christmas Activities:
One of our recent Christmas Traditions is to attend the German Christmas Market in Salt Lake City. It always gives us the opportunity to reflect on great memories from our mission. This year it also gave us the opportunity to renew a few missionary friendships.
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| At the German Christmas Market on a beautiful autumn day |
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| Enjoying some of our beloved "Poffertjes", a delicacy from the Netherlands |
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| With a few missionary friends from our mission at this German Christmas Market |
Christmas season always brings joy and a certain amount of stress. We try to enjoy meaningful performances that focus attention on our Savior. Some of those that we enjoyed this year included:
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| We continued our Christmas tradition of attending the Forgotten Carols with my mother |
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We have enjoyed the Chosen Series about the life of the Savior. They produced a Christmas special which we attended at our local movie theater. We were impressed on the focus on the Savior's birth as told by Mary his mother.
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| Our Grandson, Joshua, sang with his High School choir, in a performance called "Gloria" and focused on the light of Christmas, which we thought outstanding |
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| Joshua is in the middle of this photo from the production |
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| Joshua's brother Joseph represented the stage crew for this production |
At our ward Christmas Party we were treated to incredible singing from a six year old grandson of one of our ward members. He had sung previously in a sacrament meeting. He has an amazing talent!
After our ward Christmas party, we were able to visit a drive through "live" nativity presented by our local mortuary, which is owned by our stake president:
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| Driving through different scenes and . . . |
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| arriving at the live nativity |
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| including a live camel |
This year Debbie wanted to attend our local "Light the Tree" festival. It included some amazing sculptures made out of different candies:
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| Made 100% of candy |
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| A little South Pacific island sweet flavor |
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| Including a local gingerbread house contest |
Christmas Parties:
Each year we get together with most of our posterity on a Sunday evening at our Condominium Clubhouse. This year was no different. However, the night before my brother, Rob, hosted our extended Christmas party with my mother, brothers and their posterity. The following are photos and comments on these parties:
Rueckert Extended Christmas Party:
Rob and Sara did an excellent job with this party. It is getting large enough to be very complicated. They set the theme as game playing which has always been a strong family tradition. Rob was the master of ceremonies, dressed for the occasion. After dinner, Bingo was played with everyone and then teams were formed from the different tables for life size games. A few of the photos below reflect the festivities:
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| Rob in his Christmas suit as master of ceremonies for the games, with his daughter Emi. |
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| I, Tom, was one of the first winners at Bingo. My prize was a bag of lemons. They became additional gifts to our family members during the Christmas season |
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| Cousin Jacob and his daughter winning the Connect Four competition. I was one of the losers along the way in this game. |
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| Sam awaiting his turn at the Jenga game |
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| Gina won the giant UNO game |
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| Gina, with her prize, a giant box of Candy Bars |
Our Family Christmas Party:
Things started quite peaceful, and then the family started arriving:
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| Decorated and ready with Debbie's special touch |
We start with a dinner while some were still arriving. This not only provides needed nourishment, but allows time for wonderful communication and renewing relationships.
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| We believe that we had about 50 in attendance |
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| We loved the end of this table that included only some of our younger grandchildren who had a wonderful time together |
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| We even had Giovanna and her family attending. They drove down from Rexburg, Idaho to be with us. This was the first time that most of our children had seen Giovanna since Sophia had been born. Sophia was now 18 months old. |
Every year after dinner we focus on a nativity performance of some sort. This also can get complicated with big numbers. This year Beckie agreed to organize the nativity. She wisely engaged the teenagers as narrators and responsible for different parts of the story. We enjoyed this very much:
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| Abbie started this off, reading about Mary receiving visits from angels |
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| Joseph read about the actual birth of Jesus |
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| Joshua continued the story with the visit of the Shephards and a multitude of animals |
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| Nik introduced the Wise Men |
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| McKenzie finished it off |
We always do a gift exchange for the cousins after the nativity:
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| Lots of gift exchanging going on |
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| Including the cousins in Pennsylvania who arranged to ship and receive gifts and participated by Zoom |
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| Our youngest grandchildren were just happy to be together |
After the Party, those who wanted to went with us to sing Christmas Carols to a few of the neighbors near the Clubhouse.
Making Christmas Cookies with Oma:
Debbie kept our Christmas Cookie making activity with Oma alive with most of our grandchildren. We fit these into the schedule after the parties and finished on December 31. The following are just a few of the photos:
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| Gina and Pollyanna's family came at the same time |
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| Grant and Hudson admiring Great Grandma's Christmas tree during their visit |
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Serenity came later the same day while her parents were in the temple
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| The Digerness clan were very involved while their mother was helping with a funeral |
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| Ashton, Dawson and Owen really got into the rolling out of the cookies while their parents went to the temple |
Christmas Eve and Day:
We only had two of our sons (Sam and Jacob) over on Christmas Eve. Ben was sick and was not able to come. This year we started a new tradition. We decided to have a sit down dinner and shared our thoughts about the Savior. We each picked one of the names of the Savior and shared why it was our favorite. This created a great atmosphere and excellent discussion.
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| We used this chart for a different discussion each night during December |
On Christmas Day we scheduled families to come each hour so we could give them our full attention. All others visited us before or after Christmas. The schedule looked as follows:
9:00 am by Zoom with Melanie and her family in Pennsylvania
l0:00 am Kari and her family, including her older children not living at home
11:00 am Moroni and Tiare - this was also Tiare's Christmas celebration with her father
12:00 pm Beckie and her family
1:00 pm River and his family
2:00 pm Lamoni and Aide
3:00 pm Jamie and her 6 children
Finally, at the end of the day we were able to open our gifts to each other.
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| Much of Kari's crew on Christmas morning as they also took advantage of being together in our home to exchange Christmas presents |
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| Our great granddaughter, Marcie, enjoying her talking hamster |
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| Tiare enjoying her personalized Tupac backpack from her father |
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| Tiare and Serenity enjoying their LED drawing tablets |
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| My mother receiving her gift from us . . . |
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| . . . A puzzle board with drawers that we used on New Years Eve, a quiet celebration with just the three of us! |
Other Christmas Photos:
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| Our decorated Condo |
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| Basket of Neighbor gifts before delivery |
Other Grandchildren Performances:
We always have the pleasure of watching performances of our grandchildren. During this season, there are several opportunities:
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Olivia in her dance recital
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Olivia, mid air in her jump
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| Ellie giving us her piano recital two days before the actual event to save us another trip to Hyrum |
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| Paisley in her dance recital, she was awesome! |
Jon participated in a short film festival and a version of MacBeth:
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| John was in the green for the Mario Brothers |
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| Jon in his role as MacBeth's best friend, coming back from the dead |
Birthdays:
We always celebrate birthdays. It is a sure way to keep in touch with all of our grandchildren, at least annually.
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| Hudson turning 5 with his "friend" Kaleb |
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| Visiting Camila by Zoom with Pollyanna on Camila's 39th Birthday |
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| Debbie celebrating her birthday . . . |
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| . . . Turning 69 |
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| Evelyn turning 7 |
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| At Ariana's 8th birthday, celebrating Christmas and her birthday |
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| We finally tracked down Cherish for her 14th birthday. Circumstances did not allow us to see her in the past year. At least we could celebrate her birthday and Christmas at the same time. |
We just held our annual family planning activity. Our focus was our upcoming Family Reunion in June, near St. George. This will take a lot of our time and resources this year, but it will be worth it. It is one of our next priorities after completing these past two months:
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