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.