This semester I have been taking an African-American family history class. This week our assignment is to go to the  Century of Black Mormons website  and read several of the biographies there.  Today I read about Freda Magee Beaulieu who was baptized as a child into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mississippi at the age of 9 in 1909. Her parents were very faithful members although they did not live very close to a branch of the church so they couldn't always attend. Freda married a man at age 25 and cared for his 5 children but it was a very unhappy marriage. He wouldn't let her attend church since he "hated Mormons." As soon as the children were old enough to take care of themselves, she divorced him. She later moved to New Orleans and married her true love, Rudolph Beaulieu, in 1938. She said this was a happy marriage and her husband, although Catholic, encouraged her to attend church and pay tithing. In 1944, she fell sick and her husband soug...

Yesterday Scott and I went for a drive to see the fall colors and find a hike to do. We took Hwy 189 up Provo Canyon and turned left at Heber. Then at the turnoff towards Kamas, we got on Hwy 32 until we got to Francis, Utah, which is a tiny little town. At Francis, instead of turning towards Kamas, we kept going straight on Hwy 35 to Woodland, an even tinier town and a beautiful area. Not long after Woodland, we came to a trailhead which looks like a popular snowmobiling site in the winter. We decided to hike the Nobletts Creek trail and it was a really nice hike. Nobletts Creek originates from a spring and it's about a mile from the trailhead to the source of the spring, so two miles round-trip with very little up and down. The trail was a little wet and I wished for my hiking boots but it was doable without them.  Not far from the trailhead, we saw a lot of signs of beaver activity. We saw a beaver house, a dam, and several logs that looked gnawed by beavers. A lot of the hike w...

Friday was our friend Drew's birthday. To remember him on his special day, we met at his grave and released balloons. We sang Happy Birthday and then Bruce told us to say, "Catch, Drew!" as we let go of our balloons. The balloons floated away to the southeast. They were a beautiful sight, reminding me of our desire to remember Drew going up to heaven and our desire to support his family. The balloons are in the middle of the sky in the picture below. Because of the strong sunlight, it was actually harder for me to see them at the time than it is to see them in this picture.

 This Labor Day was cooler and rainier than some but the weather cleared up enough and we enjoyed getting together with some of our Hansen relatives in my parents' backyard. We ate and then Michelle organized a game of Four on a Couch. Here are some pictures starting with the silliest: