cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. and Diane Cluff.
"The boundary and Bishopric of The Nottingham Country Ward changed today.
I drew a map of the new ward boundaries as a reference for each of you
(http://www.walden3d.com./thoughtlets/gifs/NewNCW.gif and .../NewNCWsmall.gif).
The new Bishop is Bishop Vaughn Camp and his councilors are Brother
George Schultz and Brother Jeff Jurinak. It is nice to see direct proof
of the growth of the church.
At the same time this change is hard for me because Rob, it places you outside of Nottingham Country Ward and in Katy 2nd Ward. Hopefully there will be someone there who can and will motivate you in regards to the church better than I have been able to.
I have lived in several different wards in my life, and Nottingham Country Ward is the best in most catagories. I don't remember a ward prior to The Cedar City 3rd Ward. I was in a couple of different student branches at the University of Utah. The first summer in Denver I was in a Singles Branch in Downtown Denver. The second summer in Denver we went to a ward in Lakewood. In Dallas we were in the Dallas 1st Ward. When we first moved to Houston we were in the Maplewood 2nd Ward. Then we moved to 1307 Emerald Green and have always been in the Nottingham Country Ward.
Wards provide an interesting slice of life. For me the Nottingham Country Ward has revolved around my callings: Home Teacher, Cub Scout Pack Committee Chairman, Teachers Quorum Advisor, Priest Quorum Advisor and Young Men's President, 2nd and then 1st Coucilor in the Bishopric, Primary Teacher, Stake Missionary, member of the Ward Choir, and now 1st Assistant in the High Priest Group Leadership. There have been years in the Nottingham Country Ward when I have felt like I have no friends and I felt very isolated. These were mostly the years we had money, and Landmark was a big deal in my life. There have been years when I have felt very judged and misunderstood. There have been a lot of Fathers and Sons Campouts, scout campouts, July 4th celebrations, choir practices and performances, joint choir presentations with the Catholic church next door, Christmas Caroling, Home Teaching visits, splits with the missionaries, missionaries over for dinner, High Priest Christmas Parties, major scout trips (to the Buffalo River, Philmont, Packard, the White River, Brazos Bend, Ander's place, etc.), and on and on and on, which are the significant memories of my life in Houston.
As I look back over the 15 years since moving to Katy, most of my truly treasured memories are associated with the Nottingham Country Ward. I postulate that each of you who choose to take advantage of your local ward will find the same thing. As each of you who read these Thoughtlets know, I have a lot of memories. I've mentioned twice before (../9848.html and 9905.html) that Grandma Hafen told me I have "too many memories.' And so I hope it registers that the memories I treasure are the ones associated with Ward activities. As a test of this postulate, why don't those of you active in your ward each drop me a note sometime over the next few weeks summarizing and comparing your treasured memories both in and out of your individual wards. I always envisioned these Thoughtlets as being a two-way dialog, and they have become nothing more or less than electronic sharing of my personal journal. Guess I keep making this effort because I believe it is or will prove to be useful over time. It is nice to have Sara say, `I read what you wrote about the Business Cards. Thank you.'
This last week was very busy. I left for work about 6:30 or 7:00 each morning. Didn't go running all week. Monday morning John Howell and Roger Anderson and I reviewed a portfolio analysis John had worked up. I was back over to the office for the 9:00 Sales Meeting. Some improvement, and it still looks really bleak. Monday afternoon was spent with the software team working on CoRe Explorer User Interface issues. I gave the lesson in Family Home Evening. The Slawsons came again, and brought homemade cupcakes. Tuesday was spent working on follow-up on the Monday meeting. Tuesday evening there was a parents meeting for the kids playing football. Matt is playing, and is really excited about it. I went from there to the church to listen to two talks in BYU's telecasted Church Education Week. Wednesday morning I took the Lexus back in to see if they could get the engine light to go off. We had a meeting about CES, which Roger now defines as Creative Enterprise Solutions, LLC. In the afternoon we presented the portfolio results to Rick Zimmerman. Neat meeting. I got back in time to go to part of another Church Education talk. Andrea was very diligent in attending several of the talks during the week. Thursday started with an 8:00 breakfast meeting to prepare for the meeting with the President of DST Corporation. We ended up planning the meeting until it was time to go to the meeting. The meeting was great, and I will write more about it if something real turns up in the follow-up meeting in San Francisco on September 1st from 1-3:00 PM. I missed the MechDyne training. Oh well! Andrea and I went to the Scarlet Pimpernel in the evening. This meant she could not go to the Church Education Satellite Broadcasts at the Nottingham Country Ward. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a good show with real talented actors. It was only the second performance I recall going to in the Wortham Center. Andrea says it reminds her of the Randall Theater in Cedar City. It is just much taller.
Friday was a hard day. I was in again at 7:00 in the morning. We had a meeting about the Stratal-Slice technology I have been so excited about (9929.html, 9931.html, 9932.html) at 8:00. There were four of us in the meeting (Dave Monk, Peter Duncan, Steve Hunt, and myself). We each took different sides of the argument about how to best proceed, and ended up agreeing we were not being honest to Noel Tyler and needed to cut off the agreement. I was the logical one to call him, since I pushed the agreement through. It was hard. I still did it. We also talked about the idea of $1 million for 1 thousand leads (http://www.walden3d.com/gifs/1Kfor1M.gif). It is good to have colleagues who can check assumptions and point out flaws in logic. It is still hard to see ideas set aside. Oh well! There was a developer's meeting at 9:00. Looks like the relationship with MuSE is actually improving a little each week. Sara and I had a nice lunch at Carabba's. Sara, I'm glad you like Italian food. She left for UT Austin on Friday evening. We learned about making video tapes in the CoRe Exchange Meeting. I dropped Rachel and Matt and several friends off to see a movie in the evening. Andrea went over to the Nottingham Country Ward to participate in another Church Ecucation Broadcast. I was tired and just stayed home after going by the theater.
Saturday we went for a run, worked in the yard a little, ordered the diskettes from our honeymoon, and worked on catching up my e-mail filing at the house. Roger, Honor, Forrest their son, and Honor's mother came over in the afternoon for some bar-b-que'd hamburger's and hot dogs. We had a fun time. Matt and Forrest hit it off well. We talked about a lot of different things. Most of it was centered around you kids and what you are all doing. Family is the one thing that outweighs the influence of the Nottingham Country Ward in my life. They left just before I took Rachel and several friends to the Stake Dance.
Then this morning we learned about the changes in Nottingham Country Ward and leadership boundaries in Sacrament meeting. As the meeting started one of my friends walked up and said `Hi Bishop.' I laughed and said `B.S.' Andrea corrected my language, and we sat back and watched the changes. I am glad I will never have to worry about taking on the emotional and spiritual responsibility around ward leadership. I have enough of an issue facing up to my responsibilities as your father and example. I do pray for each of you daily. I will love you no matter what your choices. I do hope and pray you will not get caught up in the great and spacious building Nephi and Lehi saw in their dream. I have tasted of the fruit of the tree of life. I know the gospel is true, and that true happiness can be found living the commandments and following the example of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray each of you will also find this out."
