Dad's Update

Dear children I think about you very much and miss not having more time with each of you.

Bethany hang in there and make it go, I'm proud of you. I've had a little goal, to try to loose so weight and this last week I made two hikes one from Stump Creek to Tin Cup approx. 18 miles, it was beautiful and we had some fun experiences when we have time we'll talk about them. The second hike was 3 hikes on the same day this last Friday. I made three hikes from the Strawberry Dam up the canyon while our friends were fishing, the sum totally was approx. 8 miles, and the result was this morning when I stepped on the scales and weighed in at 164 lbs. This is the lightest I've been in about thirty years. So Bethany it pays off.

Lana I had an experience two weeks ago with lightening that really got me attention. Uncle Doyle and I were at the place in Star Valley putting in a water line to the Bowery. Uncle Doyle was in the Bowery and I just came out of the house heading towards Uncle Bruce's, the wind came up tremendous and I took off on a run because rain was with it. As I approached the big irrigation pipe between our place and Uncle Bruce's a lightening bolt observed by Uncle Doyle came down within about 300 ft. of the ground and branched off into 3 different bolts. One bolt came down and struck the ground between our house and the Bowery, the 2nd bolt struck the power pole right by our house, it blew the insulators and lightening arrester send glass everywhere, the third bolt hit Bruce's house. Aunt Joyce was inside calming grandchildren because of the previous thunder, a ball of fire about 2 ft. diameter was in the middle of the the kitchen. I was about 8 ft. from the irrigation line and a wall of sparklers came up out of this pipeline, it felt like my heart was going to explode. I stopped immediately but didn't dare run back to our place because of the glass coming down from the transformer. The sparkler wall lasted a few seconds then disappeared back into the ground. I ran at full speed to Bruce's house. It burned up Bruce computer and telephones. Bruce and Marion had just went down to dig potatoes and Bruce had just picked up the shovel with his foot on top to go into the ground when the lightening struck. They found themselves on their knees looking at each other and Bruce said let's get out of here. Fortunately no one was hurt. We were out of power for about 5 hours until the company could get a new transformer installed. Two days later we were still working on the water line and the lightening started hitting on the hills south of us, he said let's get out of here and I made fun of him. He asked if I wasn't afraid of lightening after that experience, I said 2 days before the Lord had the chance to take me and didn't so I figured I was okay.
This is an interesting devise of communicating with everyone and I like it!! Give Stan, Bethany, Jake, Cody and Josie my love and God be with you til we meet again. This includes the Arizona bunch also.