Provo Winter

Whheeelll Family. Ach but I have a wee accent... haha!

This winter (I use winter here loosely to mean a period of time between late november and late march, but it in no way constitutes a guarantee of snow) has been really mild. We haven't had any snow to shovel except over Christmas break, and I wasn't even here... haha. (This next sentence is in the voice of Elder Calhoun off of the best two years) There was one day when it began to snow, and then... nuthing. To the groce-er-ry store!!
It is nice in some ways because we have kept busy at work. The construction crews haven't even slowed their work, and when they work, they always leave a good swath of broken sprinkler systems. I really haven't been working a lot this semester. I am trying to leave room for school, service, and sleep... (and alliteration! I don't know any s-words for relationships, dating, girls, so I guess I don't have time for that)

 Here are John Hancock and I.

Here I am with Dallin Faulker. He is a friend from the ward. We got a box of pizza each for posting to social media and promoting BYU's museums. They had a "Night at the Museum" with scavenger hunts and prizes and food. We only went to the JFSB on campus and looked around. We also took our picture here. 

I have been mentoring through 4-H. I mentor a young boy named Jonathan. He is in 3rd or 4th grade. It is fun. We try to do fun things and learn together. I am just supposed to provide a good role model for him and help him have a desire to further his education and do well in life. He and his family are from Mexico. They have lived here for several years, and Jonathan actually prefers to speak English, but I communicate with the parents in Spanish. Here we are at a basketball game.

I made some peach jam this semester from some peaches that I had frozen in the freezer until I could get to them....


I asked my roommate John to get me some oatmeal from Winco where it is cheap... He calls me and asks, "Do you want Scottish oats or steel-cut oats?" I say, "Just the normal ones. I think steel-cut is fine." So that was how I learned how to use steel-cut oats. John bought 5 lbs (I was expecting oatmeal), but the cereal that you make from the steel-cut oats is pretty tasty, and the price was the same, so I recommend them if you want to try something new.



Here is the recipe for baked potato soup that I have made several times and it is super tasty!


Here is a picture of my haircut! It is special because I cut it myself.


I went and visited Grandpa Stratford a couple of times. It is fun to talk to him and get some stories from him. I helped him clean up some of his papers and such. He felt really good about getting everything more organized. He told me how he is sharing the gospel with several of his old contacts from school and such. That was good.

My roommate Ian got sick. He had an ear infection and a cough and was just dead. He talked with my roommate John and the conversation went something like this,

John - "Ian you look terrible. If there is anything you need, just let me know."
Ian - "John can you go to the store and get me some medicine and some gatorade?"
John - "Can I go tomorrow? I have a lot of homework and I don't have time right now."
Ian - "Joshua?"
Me - "I'm going..."

John isn't mean, but he really focuses on school sometime. Look here at this link https://roommatejohn.wordpress.com/ for a funny description of our apartment on Ian's blog. As a side note, I am in almost all the stories on Ian's blog, but not always explicitly mentioned. If you read it, I can tell you what part I played. :)

So then I got sick because, unlike John who was super germophobic and avoided all contact with Ian, I talked with Ian. That was a rough week, but I didn't miss any class and I wasn't as bad off as Ian was. Here I am with my cough syrup fumanchu... Ian was kind enough to share his medicine. Probably because he felt guilty for getting me sick. And there I am with Ian and the cream cheese brownies we made.



I have been working on family history lately. Our stake is part of a pilot program called Golden Hints which sounds like a good name for a hair coloring product. The program searches your family tree and correlates with census records to find people that you can add to your tree. I have been working on my hints and I have found several new people! This week I found a little boy who died not long after he was born. The census of 1900 showed that the mom, her name is Sadie Edith Carmack, had two children, but only one was living. Sadie and her husband William Franklin Carmack were married in 1896. So I searched death records between 1896 and 1900 and found a boy named Everet E. Carmack who had died in the same town as Sadie and William, but the death record was only an index and it didn't show who the parents were. I then looked around some more and found a birth record on someone else's tree that showed that Sadie and William had a boy in 1898, but they hadn't named him yet, so on the birth record it just says "Carmack". I am pretty sure that this is the right one, but I am going to do some follow up looking on some microfilm in the family history library here, and see if I can find a death certificate instead of just an index of a death certificate. If I can find one, then I can for sure confirm that Everet is the name of the boy who was born to Sadie and William!!

So that is fun. Here is the pathway to William and Sadie if you want to work over there. Also if you want some tips, I have been learning a ton of things about how to start and where to start looking (which I think is the hardest part) and I am happy to help.

Last but not least, here is a recent picture of me (today) and a picture of Lauren Bradshaw and me. We went to a dance together at her school