Sunday May 25th

Dear Family,

I went to Omaha to visit Kay and go through the Winter Quarters Temple with Caleb for the first time. It was a great 3 1/2 day visit, Lauren came in from North Carolina. Lauren slept at Rachael's and we spent our days with Rachael and her kids. I bought them a combined birthday gift- a climbing dome from Costco. It took 21/2 of us 1 hour and 59 minutes to put it together. The reason for the 1/2 is at the end there were only tools for 2 people to tighten all the bolts.

Having Kay there is a great way to visit the grand-kids. I sleep at Kay's and go to Rachael's in the late morning/ early afternoon. We play and then I leave to go back to Kay's. Rachael's family can have their time together and Rachael doesn't have to feel like her life is on hold for company.

Caleb's mission: Caleb has been practicing his Korean sounds. A dear friend of ours in Orem, that used to be in our ward but was moved out because of a boundry change. Kyoung Suk Lee had us over twice for Korean lessons. She is studying English and is here for 6 more months of her year and a half. She brought her 10 and 12 year old children to have the experience, her husband visits from Korea occasionally.

We brought a recorder and recorded ALL the sounds on a chart that looked like a times table chart only bigger. She made us some wonderful Korean food. I discovered I like kimchee. She had Kimchee in the making, finished up some and sent us home with it. It is hot, but not the Mexican hot where you sweat and need to fill your mouth with something else, it is a refreshing hot taste. She also fed us curry which was not a hot curry. She and Caleb couldn't figure something out with her computer so they called her Korean friend who is from Busan! We had him go through the sounds on the recorder to say the sounds in the Busan accent and a male voice. He smiled the whole time- this is like asking us to say lots of preschool stuff on a tape recorder, funny. Both times we walked out of the apartment Caleb said "that was so cool!"

We went to one of 2 Korean restaurants while in Omaha. We knew it was authentic by it's name "Korean Food Restaurant." It had a real Korean name for the local Koreans to understand but us Americans like the American name. The food was great.

Kay's project (100 unit vacant apartment buildings) is going well, I guess. He hired guys to put on siding and it looks like a miracle happened. They look great. He has had to turn potential renters away. He turned away a white woman. After hearing her music blaring from her car, he refused to rent to her. Picky, Picky, picky. One lady wrote on her application "I am not afraid to call the police" music to Kay's ears. This project is basically empty but used to be one of the worst projects in town and everyone knows it. It may take some time to let people know he means business. Caleb has been working on getting security cameras in place

There are 3 bedrooms in Kay's Omaha apartment. Our nephew Ben Lusk and his missionary companion Ryan each have a room and Kay has the larger room. Kay has a California-king sized bed (he found) in his room taking up most of the space. The question was where to put Caleb. Kay came up with a "horizontal bunk bed" idea. I know, I didn't get it either. Kay put a 1X8 board down the middle of the bed over the bottom sheet. He screwed it in so when I come, Caleb gets kicked out to the living room (which sounds OK but it is a shop area.) When I am not there they share a room and a bed. They have different top sheets and blankets.

Janell auditioned for the school dance company and didn't make the final cut. After tears and calling Brittanny, who didn't make it her Jr. year but did her Sr. year, Janell thinks life will go on. She was invited to participate in the Utah Ambassadors of Music's 2009 European Tour next year playing her flute and auditioned and made it into the highest band at the school. Life is not sooo bad. Love, Janae

Sunday may 11th

Dear Family,

It's been a long time so here is the update. After Mexico, Kay and I took a plane to Omaha and Janell flew in the following day for her spring break. We played with the grand kids and saw Kay in action at his apartments. Janell stayed with Rachael and I stayed with Kay.

In Janell's English class they are reading the book "Black Like Me" where a white guy makes his skin black and lives in the black world. For a project the class had to explore living in a different world and write a paper about it. One of the suggestions was to attend a religion different than your own. In Omaha we attended Salem Baptist Church right down the street from Kay's low income apartments. This was a mega church with between 5-6 hundred people attending the 8:30 service. We were not the only white people, we counted about 15 others. It was Jeans and Jersey Sunday so most everyone there wore a sport's team jersey and their jeans including the pastors. The kids were the choir and had cheer-leading pom poms. The leader had them chanting and yelling over and over and over. "go Jesus, go Jesus" and "Jesus, Jesus he's our man, if he can't do it nobody can"

The paper was about differences and we came up with .... Loud, yelling, cheering, singing the same line of a song over and over again with the words on a big screen. prayer cards you can fill out so the pastor can pray for whomever, donation envelopes you take up to the front at a place in the program, friend-shipping time when we shook hands with all our neighbors. Standing to pray, standing and holding hands to pray. A public laying on of hands ceremony.

We had a cultural experience. We decided we liked the quiet reverent meetings we are used to.

Caleb goes into the Mission Training Center (MTC) July 30. He will go to Pusan Korea and has been studying Korean on his own. A Korean woman we know has had us over twice for yummy Korean food and Korean lessons. There are lots of sounds. Lots. I am proud of Caleb for his studying. His mission President will be new in July, Kenneth Jennings Jr, father of the Jeopardy Ken Jennings. He was a missionary in Korea, raised his family in Korea and is now going back to serve as Mission President. Caleb is in Omaha working with Kay. I fly in this week to go through the temple with him.

Janell is going to Brazil BY HERSELF for 9 days in June to visit a friend she met on a cruise.

Happy Mothers Day to all the Mothers and the Mothers to be. Rachael doesn't know what she is having, her due date is the end of September. Frances, is due somewhere between Mid September and the end of October. Her actual due date is November 4Th. with her twin girls, she goes into the Dr. every other week.

Love, Janae

Sunday May 4th

Dear Family,

Janell and I have been in Omaha for over a week visiting Kay at his “house” and visiting Rachael. They live about 20 minutes apart. I have been staying downtown with Kay and Janell chose to stay out of the ghetto with Rachael. The word “ghetto” doesn’t apply now since Kay has been rehabilitating the apartments but it has been the problem of the neighborhood for years. It was a place that accepted ANY housing person that couldn’t find suitable housing, thus a ghetto. Kay has been turning people away and won’t rent to just anyone. He may lower the rent but he doesn’t want to lower his standards. Right now just a set of Mormon missionaries are here. He gives them free rent.

Janell and I went to the zoo with Rachael, Ethan, Sean and Jenna. We took the kids on the carousel for their first time. Jenna cried getting onto her animal and then cried when she had to get off. Such a hard life.

We went to the children’s museum and took the boys miniature golfing and we went to chuck-e-cheese. Chuck-e-cheese is a place parents should stay away from. We took the kids last September and they asked if we could go again. So while Rachael and Seth celebrated their 7^th Anniversary at a restaurant, we ate bad pizza and ran around putting tokens into mindless games. The kids LOVED it, including almost 2 year old Jenna who knew when we didn’t put the token for her. We would try to sit her at a game that was moving but the steering wheel didn’t match the game. She knew.

I also went to a home school activity where 6 LDS moms get together twice a month to have a social for themselves and their kids. The moms and kids were surprisingly NORMAL. Janell had fun and the conversation was stimulating.

I have enjoyed my rental car here. I am planning on coming back to Omaha mid May to go through the Temple with Caleb. I looked up Caleb’s mission president’s name and couldn’t find anything about him except he has the same name as Ken Jennings III, Jeopardy player. Caleb got on line and found the Kenjennings web site and found out his mission President is Ken Jennings Jr, his dad from Alpine Utah. He took his family to Korea and Ken J III was raised there. Small world.

Rachael is a great mom, Sister Giles in the ward said “Rachael is one of those super moms; she can do anything, like Cherene”. Kay’s cousin Cherene married her son, Steve. Small world.

Janell is reading “Black like me.” For an English project she needs to do something out of her comfort zone and write a 2 page paper on the experience. One option with the most points is to attend a different church. We decided Omaha would be a nice place to do this. There are some beautiful huge churches here. Just 2 blocks from Kay’s apartment is the Salem Baptist Church. I stopped by one evening to see when they meet and met a group of white people outside the church having a prayer circle, praying for the neighborhood. Later we found them walking through our complex and Kay visited with them. He said he would appreciate their prayers and we said our own prayers joining with theirs praying for the neighborhood.

Back to the church: I saw someone walking towards the church with a choir robe in her arm and stopped her to ask about services. She suggested for non Baptists we should go to the earlier church meeting where the spirit is strong but people are not so vocal and crazy. Sounds good to me. Apparently the choir has been nationally recognized and has several CD’s out. I told the choir member about Janell’s paper and she thought that was really neat. She said she would look for us. She will probably see us as we will be part of the hand full of white people in the audience.