14 July 2019

 Hi everybody,

   Dad/Grandpa got home from his trip this evening; he's been gone a whole week! But it sounds like he, Ben, and Joseph, did well and had a great time in New Mexico! I hope we'll hear more about it from one of them. 

   In Sacrament meeting today there were four speakers who had gone on the Stake Trek this week. It sounded like a difficult and wonderful experience.  I hope that Luke has written a journal about his Trek experience a few weeks ago; I'd love to hear about it too!

   I am not too good at family history, especially the part of getting names ready to go to the Temple, but I had recently listened to a conference talk by President Nelson where he emphasized the blessings of Temple attendance and taking family names. I set a goal to get a family name ready and take it to the Temple by Friday. By Wednesday evening I was frustrated and grumpy about it, having not made time to do it and being pretty sure I wouldn't know how. But with the emails sent out by Family Search, it is not hard at all and the name I found was a distant cousin of my Grandmama Templin's who Gran had never heard of. As it turned out, Tennie May Simmons was born about 16 years before Grandmama, also in Kentucky, but passed away at 20, when Grandmama was only 4 years old, so it's not surprising she didn't know her and probably never mentioned her to Gran. So that morning, before work, I attended the 6:45 session and just before I was going to go through the veil, I looked at her name once more and realized it was her birthday. She was born, 12 July 1894. So that made me happy and I said a quiet, "happy birthday, Tennie!" Since then I've wanted to know more about her. From her death certificate I learned that she had kidney disease almost all her life, that she was living in Louisiana with her sister, Mabel, and her husband when she passed away of uremia. Now I want to learn more about their whole family and be sure their work is done. I've been indexing more WWI draft cards, just a few each day. 

   There are two Denver receptions coming up that I think you might want to know about. I'll include pictures with the info. 

   We'll be seeing most of you in just a few days!  Can't wait!  Love to you all. Mom/Johanna/Nana