I have recently become an admirer of a woman named Becky Douglas. She founded a charity called Rising Star which is a non-profit organization to support individuals living with leprosy in India.  Among other things, they provide medical services for people with leprosy as well as sponsor a school for children who live in leper colonies. They also support leper colonies by doing microloans and helping people become self-reliant. The way she got started in this work is quite interesting. Becky's oldest daughter Amber had severe bipolar disease. Amber struggled with it for many years making numerous suicide attempts.  She survived them and seemed to be doing better until finally the disease won when Amber was in her late 20's. As Becky and her husband were going through her daughter's possessions, they found that Amber had been donating to an orphanage in India despite her limited income as a student. So Becky decided she should go visit this orphanage in India as a tribute...

 In the spring of 1994, we purchased a used Toyota van. It was not a beautiful car but it had pretty good ratings for reliability and we needed a bigger vehicle for our third child who was going to be born in December of that year. That gave us the courage to go on a big trip that summer to Glacier National Park where we were going to meet my family and go camping. We took off on July 15 and drove to New Salem, North Dakota, where we found a campground and camped that night. This was the home of the largest cow in the world and we found that it was, in fact, quite large. The next day, Saturday, we drove to Great Falls, Montana, and spent the night there. We went to church the next morning and then drove to Glacier National Park. We camped there from Sunday until Thursday. This trip has a couple of memories I should mention. After we arrived and set up camp, we were sitting around reading comic books. My mother suggested going swimming in one of the (ice-cold) lakes. My father said,...

 Towards the end of July in 1993, our little family of four flew to Utah. We visited my family for a week, attending my brother Craig's farewell before his mission to England. He went into the MTC at the beginning of August. Brian and Kent JoEllen David and Liesl After the first week, we borrowed my parents' little Honda 2-door Civic and drove about 18 hours to Priest Lake, Idaho, to visit Scott's father and his wife Bekki at a cabin they share with relatives.  We stayed several days and enjoyed the R&R.  We did some boating and a little fishing (no fish were harmed!). We also visited a lookout tower which was for spotting forest fires. The cabin was small but right on the lake. Scott had broken his arm about a month before but he managed to do everything he needed to do. David was 3 years old and Jan was 7 months--he was huge. Bekki and sleeping Jan Neil and Jan Neil and David--I love the expressions on their faces Neil and Bekki in front of the cabin Our cute little...