Week 22
Last week one of the wonderful girls in the YSA ward received her mission call to Finland. A young man just had his interview with the stake president, so his call should come in a few weeks.  There is such a nice spirit about these soon-to-be missionaries!

One morning we took a walk around a pond down the road from us (it is surrounded by a nicely groomed one-mile trail).  In one of the trees was a rather remarkable looking bird--about the size of a robin, but with a ridiculously long tail and a golden breast.  He took flight and was most interesting to watch.  When we got home we looked him up on the web and discovered he is the scissor-tailed flycatcher--the OK state bird.

The state bird of Oklahoma

We've been seeing more cardinals lately, too.  Another natural delight is the dogwood tree.  A few brave souls try to grow them in Utah, but dogwoods really don't like the climate or soil there.  Here they can grow to be magnificent specimens.  The way the blossoms seem to float above the branches is quite ethereal.

For FHE one of the girls in the ward taught a Zumba class--we started with the warm up, but that about did us in, so we left the actual dancing to the rest of the ward.

They've got rhythm

On Saturday afternoon we went to an OSU baseball game.  They lost to Texas Tech, but it was a lovely, relaxing day.

The boys of summer

I know you think that one day I'll be used to all the orange a black around here, but I'm not sure that will happen.  It is possible that the percentage of people wearing orange to a game (hmmm, about 99.9%) is the same as the percent wearing blue to a BYU game.  However, some people may just happen to wear blue.  No one accidentally wears orange!  At least orange is a nice perky color--it's hard to be down when gazing out at a sea of it.  We also see lots of orange cars.  The little number below is at the frat house across the street from the institute.

Orange Corvette, anyone?

In our Teachings of the Living Prophets class, we had a recap of all of the talks given by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve at General Conference last week (now we'll study six of them in depth over the last three weeks of class).  It was great.

While Elder Rasband was speaking on Saturday, I had a very deep impression about the sincerity of the brethren and the dangers of cynicism.  I've been thinking about it all week, so will share a thought or two here.  What struck me was the congruity between what they (the general authorities) are and what they project.  Too many people--generally very intelligent, seemingly well grounded people--try to project a veneer of doubt or cynicism about spiritual matters or church practices.  They know they feel more deeply about the matters, but don't seem to want anyone else to realize the depth of their commitment.  There is double danger in the outward cynicism.  First, it can influence others who are struggling to become less trusting, less faithful, and less sure of what they believe.  Second, it can bore it's way into the core of the person so that soon it isn't just a veneer but actually replaces commitment and testimony with doubt and disdain.  Surely projecting cynicism while feeling deeply is just as hypocritical as the pharisees projecting piety without conviction.  Both must be abhorrent to the Savior.

Our health report is good--no coughing to speak of for a few days, we returned to the YMCA this week (with sanitizing wipes in hand), and our degeneration seems to have slowed to a normal pace.