Cooper, Kerry & Jamee

Dear Family and Friends. We had our FHE last Monday and our new convert, Alex, taught the lesson on Adam and Eve and the Fall.  He did a great job in spite of some of the far out comments and theories some of the older men had.  We have a couple of brothers that like to go off on tangents at times.  I have come up with a signal that we need to reel it in a bit.  I go through the motion of a casting a fishing line and reeling in the discussion.  They usually get the idea.  Tuesday we cooked dinner for the Young Single Adults again after a short break.  We saw a recipe for a Mexican Cornbread Casserole online and decided to try it out on the students. It turned out okay.  The kids seemed to like it and ate one pan full and a little of the second pan. We had watermelon and cantaloupe and ice cream for dessert. Over all it was a pretty good meal. We only have two meals left to prepare because they are having an off-site activity in a couple of weeks. ...

Dear Family and Friends, One thing I think we forgot to mention in past letters is a successful quit smoking program we did for a lady named Leighann. She has smoked since she was a teenager and was starting to have some serious health issues.  Her doctor actually recommended the church's program. We don't know how the doctor  heard of us, but she told Leighann that our program works.  The sisters did most of the teaching with Mom and I joining in when appropriate. It was the first one we have been involved with and it is pretty amazing. As of a few days ago, she had not smoked for three weeks. Her whole family  is grateful. On Monday we drove down to Elkins, West Virginia to have lunch with the Hepworth's.  They are leaving for home tomorrow. It was a beautiful ride down and we had a good visit and a good Chinese buffet.  The buffet was better than the one we have here in Oakland, but we won't be driving and hour and a half to eat there. The Hepworths are ...

Dear Family and Friends, We'll start with the reason we are sending this just a little bit late.  As you know, this is a long 4th of July weekend so we had a lot of visitors at church today. Mom taught the youth Sunday School lesson this week and had at least 18 kids in her class, none from our branch. Some of those visitors included Mom's cousin Valerie Wride and her family.  We have probably mentioned this in an earlier letter, but Valerie's son Adam owns a cabin on Deep Creek Lake.  So Valerie invited us to dinner yesterday.  It is such a beautiful setting. The cabin is 40-50 feet from the lake and is surrounded by trees.  They said that their handyman came by last week to do some work and a bear crawled into his truck.  He had a Burger King sack with some food in it and some pizza bites.  The bear ate the pizza bites but left the Burger King sack alone. What do bears know that we don't?  We also saw a bear off to the side of the road on our wa...