Egg(s), Senior Missions and Trees

So the other evening we had an all too familiar conversation:
Me, "So what's for dinner?"
Her, "I can't really think of anything."
Me, thinking "How hard can this be? We have had dinner every day for almost 46 years."
Me, Hmmmmm
Her, "OK. I'll give you a hint. It has three letters!"
Me, "Cereal?"
Her, "No...Three letters!"
Me, "Hmmmmm
Her, "It's eggs!"
Me, "Egg...(s)?"
Her, "Yes, egg."
After this we had a wonderful dinner of eggs, cheese, toast, bacon, juice, etc. One of our favorites.
It's fun to be married and be so familiar in so many ways and yet still have some wonder and playfulness. I am not sure Dawnine always thinks of it as playful; she often just thinks of it as annoying.


Next week we will be posting from Mesa AZ. We have an unique opportunity to visit with our two families that live there.  Alex Johnson, our son, has been given a calling to be in the Bishopric in his ward. I have been asked to ordain him a High Priest. Mike and Jenny Stephan, our daughter, are expecting the birth of their third daughter around the 1st. Other of our children are coming as well. We are excited to see them all, including some of the grandchildren who have come since we left for the mission. 


Many of you may be thinking, what kind of mission are these people serving? The answer, a great/fun/entirely normal one for Seniors. Senior missions are the best kept service secret there is. Unless you have a specific calling/assignment in a temple, mission home, or visitor center for example, you have the ability to make your own schedule. Your "work" will be visiting with investigators and members, you will be teaching classes, playing the piano, helping with family search, doing service projects and all of these in some exotic location...Iron Mountain, MI comes to mind. The absolutely greatest part of the mission is and remains the opportunity to be a part of the conversion of individuals; these life-changing experiences, including those of the missionaries, are the real blessings of missionary experience. 


A couple of weeks ago we traveled once again into WI looking for members who had recently appeared on our Branch list of members. We took a road (a supposed short-cut) called a "Wisconsin Rustic Road". The road was gravel covered and because of recent storms was not at all dusty. Although Sister Johnson was somewhat anxious, she soon became enamored with the beautiful canopy of trees we were driving through.  

Typical Wisconsin/Upper Peninsula forest.  

We were looking for one individual, a 75 year old member, who our address said lived at the end of a lane. We found the home. The name on the door was nothing like the name of the person for whom we were looking. We knocked on the door. No one answered. There was a home close by with a car in the drive way. As we approached the door the name was the same as the name on the previous door. That individual was related to the man for which we were looking. We eventually found that our member had moved to Idaho Falls, ID some 5 years ago and recently died. Sister Johnson went to the Idaho Falls paper on the Internet and found the exact death date. We were able to move him off of our list. That was a typical day in the life of Senior Missionaries. 


Moving (slowly) and Shaking (more and more), 
Elder and Sister J


Bonus material-




Christianity and the Romans
Some perspective on the “Mormon Moment” from early Christian history
Posted on March 4, 2012 by Bruce F Webster

I recently bought Pocket History of the Church by D. Jeffrey Bingham, a brief summary of the history of the Christian church, starting after the death of the Apostles. While reading it this afternoon, I ran across the following passage, which made me quietly chuckle. If you substitute “Modern Christianity” and/or “Modern Secularism” for “Romans” and “Mormons” for “Christians”, there are some remarkable parallels:

Roman religion also was intimately related to the past. Greco-Roman society held that the rites of the ancients were more harmonious with the gods than the newer rites. That is, the past was closer to the ancient gods. For Roman society, only one ancient religious doctrine existed, and it was expressed and maintained in a variety of traditional forms by various nations. Abandonment of these variant but traditional forms and customs was wicked. Novelty in religions, they thought, was irreligious. Therefore, because Christians were seen as antisocial and “new”, they were viewed as a danger to Rome. The gods were unhappy and had to be pacified.

When Christians worshiped only one God, their polytheistic Roman neighbors viewed them as atheistic. When Christians gathered in worship, separate from Roman life, they were seen as destructive to the social structure of the empire. In their refusal to confess the emperor’s deity they were viewed as wicked. Their refusal to engage in civic religion led the Christian apologist Tertullian to write that the Romans considered Christians “public enemies” and “enemies of Rome.”

But the Romans did not end their criticism of Christianity with reference to what they viewed as irreligion. They also criticized Christianity for being irrational. Christians seemed to receive their teachings by faith rather than by rational examination of the evidence or critical thinking. According to the Christian theologian Origen, one Roman, Celsus, wrote that some Christians said, “Do not ask questions, only believe.”

Also, the Romans interpreted some Christian practices as deplorable, because of what seemed to be a secretiveness, a ridiculous perspective of life, death and future judgment, an arrogant haughtiness towards Roman religion and a lifestyle of perversity. Minucius Felix, a Latin Christian apologist of the third century, recorded some early Roman understandings of Christian rites and beliefs. Many unbelievers thought that Christians were “a people skulking and shunning the light, silent in public but garrulous in corners. They despise the [Roman] temples as dead houses, they reject the gods, they laugh at sacred things. . . . They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another. Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters.”

The belief that Christians were clandestine in their gatherings because of their shameful “incest” (because they married those they called “brother” and “sister”) was common, as was the charge that they were cannibalistic (they ate the body of Christ and drank his blood). Because of the secret nature of their rites, and also because some groups claiming association with Christianity were reported to have engaged in acts of perversity, the rumors grew to absurd proportions. Christians were even accused of eating infants. The Christian apologist Athenagoras was accurate when he said, “Three charges are brought against us: atheism, Thyestean feasts [cannibalistic banquets] and Oedipean intercourse [incestuous unions].”

As strange as it may sound to modern Christian ears, the Romans were appalled at the supposed wickedness, social rebellion, irrationality and impiety of the Christians. The “popular and uncritical” rumor about the Christians, to use the language of Athenagoras, set the tone for how the Romans responded. Of course, we ought not to think that early Christianity was perfect or without blame. Many Christians did not balance their faith in the one true God through Jesus Christ with a biblical call to morality and state loyalty. In addition, some non-Christians who associated with believers were said to have practiced their Roman religion in feasts that did involve promiscuous rites. On the whole, though, the charges of rampant perversity in Christ’s body within the Roman Empire were false. (pp. 31-33)