A Day in the Life by Julie Ann Bishop

It had been one of those days. One of those days where your (almost) two year old eats day old yogurt, red juice gets spilled on your couch, your toddler taking a nap for your sanity isn’t going to happen, two little new white teeth show up, poking through an already grouchy child’s gums, and that same toddler’s favorite word of the day is “NOOO!” You know the ones I’m talking about, the kind of day that just isn’t going well. My day started off with a long list of to do’s. Things like:

• Make a salad for the get together with my visiting teaching ladies.

• Try and wash my hair today… How long has it been?

• Fold laundry.

• Pick up the house .

• Don’t forget Braymon (the kid I watch) will be dropped off at 11:30.

You get the point. Nothing particularly stressful, but I knew it would be a busy day. It wasn’t long into my day that I got a call from my mom asking me to help her get a meal together for a family we both know. My assignment was rolls. I began making them around two thirty thinking that I would be able to get them done by five thirty. It seemed like every ingredient I added to the mixing bowl my child kicked her screaming or crying up an octave. You truly do not know the joys of motherhood until you have baked bread with a toddler on your hip.

Sooner than later, five thirty showed up and the bread wasn’t completely done baking, and I still had no makeup on. I rushed in the bathroom, put on my quick face, and headed out to the car. My mom had just arrived and offered to help get the food in the car while I tried to coax Tyley into her car seat. By this time we were running 20 minutes late to drop the meal off, and I was for sure going to be late getting to my visiting teaching get-together. While putting Tyley in her car seat, I realized I had dropped the keys somewhere and could not find them anywhere! I thought of grabbing my spare keys in the house but I had already locked the door to the house.

After a while of looking, I had started to get exasperated and really started losing my cool. I felt myself becoming more and more irate, and I had the impression to stop and say a prayer. I stopped looking and kneeled down on my knees to say a prayer. I bet you’re thinking that this is where my day turns around. That really would be a great story, but that is not what happened next. I just so happened to kneel directly on top of my new phone and crack the screen completely. That had been the last straw. I burst into tears. “I’m not going anymore.” I announced to my mother. “I’m going back inside forever.” (Dramatic I know, don’t judge).

Shortly after, we found the keys and delivered the meal to our family friends. I remember going up to the door and feeling so upset. I’m not even sure what kind of exchange took place. But when I got home and had gotten Tyley to bed, I reflected on my day. As I pondered, I realized that I had had a stressful day, but it was not all bad. Tyley had learned a new word. Braymon had come up to me while I had been hustling about the kitchen and said that he loved me. My husband came home from work safe, which in his line of work is never a sure thing. I had helped take dinner to good friends, and their gratitude made my heart happy. I had so much to be grateful for, and yet I had been so focused on the bad that I almost completely missed the little tender mercies from the Lord. In a way, God did answer my prayer, even though it wasn’t in the way I had expected. One of my very favorite quotes is from Dieter F. Uchtdorf, and I think it fits me and this situation perfectly. “Sometimes we become so focused on the finish line, that we fail to find joy in the journey.”

Attitude of Gratitude by Brian Burdick

I would like to share my feelings of love towards the nice, sleepy town of St Johns. In order to do this I need to go back in time about a year. Recently, Daniel asked us what we plan to do for his anniversary in October. Lynette and I were confused at his question, so we asked him what anniversary we were going to celebrate. He then explained that the anniversary he was talking about was when he ended up spending the entire night under the stars, trying not to freeze to death, and basically surviving what was a very difficult ordeal for him, his family, and many of the citizens of St. Johns.

Daniel and I had been doing some yard work outside. I could tell that he was quite agitated and suffering from a great deal of anxiety and depression. His medication for his anxiety and depression had been changed in order to find a medication that would be more effective in dealing with some panic attacks that he was having. (Eventually, it was determined that the new medication was increasing his anxiety and depression and causing them to become worse. Finally, Daniel's psychiatrist found the right medication to deal with his mental health problems.) Daniel told me that he needed to go for a walk to try and relieve some of his anxiety and depression. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, so I told him to go ahead. I expected he would be back soon. Several hours later, Daniel was still gone. Lynette came home from work, and I explained the situation to her. The farther the sun dropped on the horizon the more worried we became. Lynette called a few people in town asking if they had seen Daniel recently. Someone had seen him walking north on 24th W.

Later that evening, Lynette and I began driving around town looking for him. We went to several of the stores and businesses in town, and no one was able to give us any information regarding his whereabouts. Lynette was able to contact one of her friends who sent out a group text message informing people of the situation and asking if any of them had seen him. Because of this text, many people in town began helping us look for Daniel. Even after Lynette and I quit for the night, there were people who stayed out past midnight continuing to look for him. The next morning two sisters in our ward felt inspired to drive north on 24th W one more time. They found him walking barefoot down the road. His feet were great masses of blisters because he had been shoeless for most of the night. Later, Daniel explained that he lost his shoes walking through the muddy parts of the Little Colorado River. We were overcome with relief that Daniel was alive and would be okay.

Lynette and I were so impressed with our St. Johns’ friends and neighbors. We were so grateful so many were willing to leave their comfortable homes and offer assistance that night. We were also impressed and grateful when we found out how many people had been praying for Daniel and for us. Even though we were anxious about Daniel and his circumstances, those actions brought a spirit of peace that even allowed us to get some sleep that night.

After this ordeal with Daniel, Lynette and I felt like our trials had calmed down for a while. Little did we suspect that a greater trial was to come to our door a couple of months later. In November I found out that I had a deep vein thrombosis (blood clot), and doctors had started me on medication to try and break up the blood clot. Then, on January 1^st, we were sitting in our living room when Lynette told me that I looked yellow. The next day we went to the local clinic and from there we were sent to the emergency room in Show Low. After several hours of being in the ER, arrangements were made for me to be admitted to the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix.

After running several different tests and having a specialist perform a special endoscopy, we found out that there was a tumor wrapped around my bile duct, which was cutting off the flow of bile to my small intestine. This test took place on the 4th of January. After meeting with several doctors, it was agreed that I needed a pancreaticoduodenectomy, more commonly known as a Whipple. The surgery was performed on the 9^th of January. It is a very lengthy and extremely difficult surgery. It involved removing parts of my pancreas, stomach, bile duct, and about 15 inches of my small intestine, after which I was replumbed. The recovery time was quite lengthy. The doctors eventually were able to tell us that I was suffering from pancreatic cancer. When I was told this, I felt like someone had hit me over the head with a 2 x 4. This news was extremely stressful and difficult to hear. After three weeks in the hospital and one week at the home of our daughter, Sian, I was able to come home to St. Johns.

The next step was chemotherapy and radiation that began after I had adequately  recovered from the surgery. These treatments were to try and take care of any lingering cancer cells and would take 6 to 8 months to complete. I have finally completed (more or less) these treatments. Now the plan is to monitor for the cancer's possible return. Needless to say, it has been a very difficult year for our family.

So should we really be celebrating the anniversary of the beginning of this difficult year? Most definitely we should! While the year has been tough, our family has been awed by the amount of love and concern we have been shown and for the prayers that have been offered in our behalf. We are so grateful for the acts of service that people in St. Johns have given us. We have received many meals, loaves of bread, plates of cookies and other wonderful expressions of love. We have received assistance with our lawn and our garden and with other projects around our home. We have received many visits from people who have gone out of their way to encourage me while I have been recovering from the various medical treatments. Everywhere I go, people stop me and ask how they can help and then let me know that they are praying for me and my family. These acts of love and kindness have assisted me in those days when I am struggling with depression and with worry about the future. We are forever grateful for all of the service that has been rendered by so many loving hearts and hands to our family. I just want to tell everyone thank you. There are so many of you that I do not dare start naming names for fear I will leave someone out. Most importantly, I want to thank my loving Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ for allowing me to turn to them when times seem the darkest. I know that through the grace of Jesus Christ my life will continue after this earth life has ended and that my family can be a unit of eternity. This is the greatest act of love possible, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Gardens of the Soul by Ferrin Crosby

Growing up in a small town like St. Johns has many advantages that some from the city may not initially be aware of. As a youth growing up in St. Johns, I worked for myself from the time I was 8 or 9 years old. I was privileged to have an old red Farmall tractor that I used to plow people’s gardens. By the time I was in my teens I knew everyone in town, or at least everyone who had a garden. Each fall I would make a circuit plowing remnants of gardens under for the winter, and each spring I would prepare the same gardens for planting. This experience early in my life taught me these great life lessons:

1.     In order to have a successful crop, you must first prepare the soil - In my life I have found that preparation is 95% of any accomplishment. As a wrestler and then as a coach I have watched many young men prepare for competition with the goal of overcoming an opponent and winning the prize. These young men prepared with extreme effort, knowing that if they trained harder than their competitor, they deserved to win. This kind of preparation instills the attitude of never giving up and never quitting.

2.     I learned that in order to plow gardens I had to keep my tractor in good operational condition (My Dad was extremely helpful to me) – My Dad taught me how to pay attention to a machine, how to check the oil, gas, and coolant levels. He taught me how to listen to the engine, to feel and to hear what a smoothly running engine felt and sounded like compared to one that was in need of repair. These lessons have been immeasurable in value to me in my life. Aside from saving money on simple mechanical repair, I have been able to understand when one of our vehicles was in need of attention before a major problem occurred. I learned that not unlike machines, people I love also have need of listening and understanding when they are out of sorts and need attention. Most, if not all, of these repairs in people come through simply helping them understand who they are. They are children of a loving Heavenly Father.

3.     During all my trips to every part of town, I learned that there are good people everywhere. No matter what religion, ethnicity, or background, people can have and do have a propensity to be good. I so enjoy my memories of these people and am amazed that they put their confidence in me to plow their gardens and not run over their fruit trees. People like Ernie Wilbur, Arlo Lee, Matt Montoya, and LP Sherwood, to name just a few. – This experience has helped me to try to see the good in people. Doing so has been a catalyst to me for making good friends from a wide variety of backgrounds. It has also helped me see the vast amount of service our community renders to one another and encourages me to do my part.

4.     Lastly, I discovered that growing a garden is hard work; plowing it and preparing it for seed is just the beginning. Many weeks thereafter of watering, weeding, fertilizing, and cultivating are necessary in order to harvest the desired crop. – I learned life is just like this; mostly we are preparing ourselves for the next season. A wise prophet said “This life is the time for men to prepare to meet God, this life is the day for men to perform their labors.” I found that, like a well-tended garden, when life serves up weeds such as hate, envy, or greed, we need to pluck them out. When our ground (hearts) gets too hard to allow the water and fertilizer in to nourish us, the Master Gardener will use trials, temptations, and sorrow to soften us up. And, as with our gardens, if we exercise faith, a good crop will grow out of the experience.

This is a much prettier tractor than the one I drove,
but this is how I remember it.

Our Life in St. Johns by Elynn Badger

Bob got hired on at Salt River Project Coronado Generating Station when it first opened up in 1977, and I was so excited. We had been living in Rock Springs, Wyoming, which was so far away from family. With this new job, we would be coming back to Arizona! Bob had been applying to places in Utah where his parents lived, but nothing worked out for us there. So we packed up our two kids, Robert & Jennifer, and moved to Snowflake where I grew up. Bob commuted to St. Johns to work, but the road between Snowflake and Concho was still dirt then, and there weren’t very good fences or cattle guards yet so when they put Bob on shift work, I said, “That’s it, we’re moving to St. Johns!”

 

Even though I loved living in Snowflake where my roots run deep, and where my parents lived, I wanted more for our kids. I wanted them to have more time with their daddy than to have him on that road driving two extra hours every day. So we started looking for a house in St. Johns. We wanted a whole bunch of kids, so we chose the first four-bedroom home that was being built out in “Sunset Acres”.  Bob said he figured we’d live in St. Johns for a couple of years and then we would move on. 

My family was sad to have us move, but my mother couldn’t say anything negative about St. Johns. She only said, “I know there are good people in St. Johns, too.” My grandfather said, “You just need to know that in St. Johns, if your children don’t show signs of being a good athlete by the time they are five, they take them out and drown them!” My dad was sorry when he saw that we wouldn’t be in a ward with more of the older folks in town. He wanted us to have a better chance to get to know them. Bob’s grandpa was excited for us to move to St. Johns where his father, Miles Park Romney, had lived in the early days, but he had to flee to Mexico with his family in 1885 to avoid persecution for plural marriage.  There are no coincidences. The Lord had led us here and maybe we could finish where Bob’s great- grandparents began.

We have been richly blessed here. Bob moved up in the company even without a degree and really enjoys his work. He also found he could do lots of things in the country that he couldn’t do in the city, and he learned to love living here. He also loves working with the young men in Scouting. I worked with wonderful ladies and children in Primary and Relief Society. The last several years I have been blessed to work at the Family History Center. I have come to know lots of wonderful people in our Stake that I ordinarily would have never had the opportunity to meet without my calling. We have also been very blessed to raise our kids here. They had so many opportunities to learn and grow and associate with good people. We appreciate all of the good teachers and leaders whose efforts and caring helped us raise our children. We are so grateful that our kids could be involved in music (band, orchestra, and choir), drama, and sports. We felt safe knowing that others really cared about our kids and wanted them to succeed. Our kids had good friends who we trusted, and we knew their parents.

In these past almost 38 years that we’ve lived here, we have come to love the way of life here. We love going to the Post Office where we can meet and greet all kinds of friends and maybe stop and visit a while. I’ve always appreciated that we can get anywhere in town in just five minutes! We always took our kids to the Fine Arts events, which were such a bargain. We’ve bragged to others about the quaintness of Town Square Theater that had a wood stove for heating and the movies had the bad parts edited out by a card being held over the projector. We love all of the traditions that St. Johns carries on.  The Apache County fairs are great. It was great fun helping our kids enter their creations every year.  Pioneer Day Celebrations are the BEST. The Ice Cream Social, the Campfire Circle, and Parades are favorite activities. We enjoy having all four seasons in St. Johns. We thank everyone who has helped us in raising our family. We love St. Johns.