April 2024

Dear Family and Friends, 

Although Easter Day has come and gone along with April Fool’s Day, I will still ask you ... Did you find a hidden egg or get fooled? Of course not. But Easter Week did end with the Church’s two days of General Conference, where we were reminded by the Lord’s Prophet and others of the greatest gift ever given to God’s children - Jesus Christ - and His gift of Eternal Life to all those who will come unto Him and obey His commandments. Getting the broadcast on our TV at home was wonderful, but I still wore a Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. I wish I could stay inspired by the counsel of our spiritual leaders instead of just drifting along, because there are many things that I need to improve on. I need to be more diligent in using my “Buddy” for longer periods of time each day and to do more exercising of my other leg and arms, so as to keep them healthy and strong enough to support me and the extra weight I know I have gained.

I’m afraid that my desire to work puzzles, saying it’s a good brain activity, is keeping me from doing other more useful things. It’s almost like an addiction that I can’t seem to get rid of. And since it pleases me to share my word search puzzles, I keep inflicting them on others, just hoping that they will be well received. So for Easter Sunday, having already one about fun things and the gift of new life that Easter time brings, I decided to redo, add, or enhance upon a puzzle that was done by professionals about the Savior’s crucifixion and resurrection, and to make a final message tell about His gift of eternal life. Doing this required an awful lot of time.

As you know, in making up my puzzles, I do not use xyz’s to fill spaces not used by the words, but instead I find a thought related to the theme of the puzzle and one that will fit exactly into the number of open spaces made available after all the words are found. This often seems to be more difficult than fitting words together in the puzzle itself, but I like giving it that final touch. In this particular puzzle, I made my own copy of someone else’s grid and words, but removed all of the xyz’s. leaving lots of open spaces to fill. I was able to add a few more words to the ‘find’ list, but still had 67 spaces to fill with an appropriate message. I kinda knew what I wanted it to say, but for the life of me, I couldn’t make it fit exactly. So I worried and stewed over it for the longest time until finally I was successful. Puzzles must be perfect!

Our Ward Bishop seemed to like the 24th of July puzzle that was added to our Sunday bulletin last summer, so I asked if I could include an Easter one in the bulletin for Easter Sunday? He was delighted. One hundred copies were made of this puzzle with the other fun puzzle on the opposite side of the sheet. I began to think it might be better to hand out this sheet at the end of our Sacrament Service, so as not to be a distraction. Then I had another brilliant idea. Recently one of the sisters had given me a package of almost 100 small pencils, already sharpened. I could use a few of them, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest, until now. I figured a way to fold the sheet so it could hold a pencil if the bottom was fastened with a paper clip. So we bought a box of 100 paper clips and I began folding and clipping. With the pencil safely inside, I was ready to hand them out as my Easter gift to everyone as they left the chapel. Being in a wheelchair however, I sought the help of the Elders (2 missionaries) who stood at each door with their bag of nearly 50 gifts and seemed to enjoy helping their Grandma Ree. Another thing was I had accumulated some dollar bills,  so I decided to use them in a few of my Easter Unknown Giver envelopes for new people in the ward, hoping they won’t know who it is. 

Springtime and Easter is such a wonderful time of year, when everything seems to come to life. True planted some new flowers outside to replace those that were frozen during the winter. The orchids inside the house are all blooming so beautifully. The lovely pink camellia bush outside, which bloomed so proficiently in early February that I was able to use them as boutonnieres, now seems to be slowly dying out. But like the roses, it may come back again later.

Something else that seems to be taking a long time to die out is the sore that I received last December when I slid fast down our ramp in my wheelchair until it hit bottom and I was dumped out onto our rough carport pavement and got a deep gash just below the knee of my good leg that had to have 4 stitches put in it. It wasn’t painful but had a large red area around it. After the stitches were removed, it developed a huge scab that finally came off after 8 weeks, only to leave behind a smaller one that continued for another 8 weeks. It still has a slight covering over the wound and redness around it, so it seems to be taking its own sweet time to heal up completely. I can’t believe it will be more than 4 full months for a relatively small wound to be still hanging in there. ‘Course, I still get occasional pains & jerks from my 3+ year old stump!

I did have an appointment with my dermatologist, but she didn’t do anything about that sore when she discovered three places on my face that she thought might be cancerous and took a biopsy of all of them. Only one had to have an extra treatment, but she is evidently not too worried about it because I don’t have another appointment for 3 months. I had 3 bandages across my face as they healed up. Luckily, my vanity didn’t keep me from attending church or getting my hair done. Surprisingly, people were kind and didn’t say anything about it. Now I have 3 blotches on my face that I hope won’t take forever to disappear.

True showed me live coverage of the solar eclipse on her phone. What an awesome sight! It’s good to know that the earth, the moon and the sun are still moving in their proper paths, and that God is still over all His creations, in the heavens above and on the earth below. That we are His creation too, and are His sons and daughters. That as He guides the affairs of the universe, He will also direct our paths aright, but only if we will call on HIM and obey HIS word. He is our Heavenly Father. He loves you. Jesus loves you. And I love you too. 

Marie