09 Dec 2001 #0150.html

Celebration and Graduation

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Dear Paul and Kate, Melanie and Jared, Bridget and Justin, Sara, Ben and Sarah, Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt via hardcopy,

cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts, and Sherri Nelson.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"Thane, thanks for your e-mail. I'm taking the liberty of responding to you by putting you on the weekly e-mail I send out to my kids and family this week, and if you are interested in being on in regularly drop me a note saying so. For everyone else, Thane, Uncle Glenn's, Mom's youngest brother's, second son, sent me a wonderful Christmas Story on Tuesday, and I want to start this week's Thoughtlet with it:

`One Christmas we had a interesting experience that I would like to share. Halfway through December we were doing the regular evening things when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a small package with a beautiful ceramic lamb inside. We looked at the calendar and realized that the 12 days of Christmas were beginning!! We waited excitedly for the next night's surprise and only then, when the gift of a matching shepherd, did we realize that the lamb was part of a nativity set. Each night we grew more excited to see what piece we would receive. Each was exquisitely beautiful. The kids kept trying to catch the givers as we slowly built the scene at the manager and began to focus on Christ's birth. On Christmas Eve, all the pieces were in place, but the baby Jesus. My 12 year old son really wanted to catch our benefactors and began to devise all kinds of ways to trap them. He ate his dinner in the mini-van watching and waiting, but no one came. Finally we called him in to go through our family's Christmas Eve traditions. But before the kids went to bed we checked the front steps-- no baby Jesus!! We began to worry that my son had scared them off. My husband suggested that maybe they dropped that Jesus and there wouldn't be anything coming. Somehow something was missing that Christmas Eve. There was a feeling that things weren't complete. The kids went to bed and I put out Christmas, but before I went to be I again checked to see if the Jesus had come - no, the doorstep was empty. In our family the kids can open their stockings when they want to, but they have to wait to open any presents until Dad wakes up. So one by one they woke up very early and I also woke up to watch them. Even before they opened their stockings, each child checked to see if perhaps during the night the baby Jesus had come. Missing that piece of the set seemed to have an odd effect. At least it changed my focus. I knew there were presents under the tree for me and I was excited to watch the children open their gifts, but first on my mind was the feeling of waiting for the ceramic Christ Child. We had opened just about all of the presents when one of the children found one more for me buried deep beneath the limbs of the tree. He handed me a small package from my former visiting teaching companion. This sister was some what less active in the church. I had been her visiting teacher for a couple of years and then, when she was asked to be a visiting teacher, she requested to go with me. I had learned over time they didn't have much for Christmas, so that their focus was the children. It sounded like she didn't get many gifts to open, so I had always given her a small package - new dish towels the next year's Relief Society lesson manual - not much, but something for her to open. I was touched when at church on the day before Christmas, she had given me this small package, saying it was just a token of her love and appreciation. As I took off the bow, I remembered my friendship with her and was filled with gratitude for knowing her and for her kindness and sacrifice in this year giving me a gift. But as the paper fell away, I began to tremble and cry. There in the small brown box was the baby Jesus. He had come! I realized on that Christmas Day that Christ will come into our lives in ways that we don't expect. The spirit of Christ comes into our hearts as we serve one another. We had waited and watched fro him to come, expecting the dramatic "knock at the door and scurrying of feet" but he came in a small, simple package that represented service, friendship, gratitude and love. This experience taught me that the beginning of the true spirit of Christmas comes as we open our hearts and actively focus on the Savior. But we will mostly likely find him in the small and simple acts of love, friendship and service that we give to each other. This Christmas I want to feel again the joy of knowing that Christ is in our home. I want to focus on loving and serving. More than that I want to open my heart to him all year that I may see him again.'

This week started with a wonderful blessing, in it's own way, kind of like Thane's story. We received a FED-X package at 2:35 PM on Monday with a check in it for $5,000. I was expecting the package, yet feared something had happened when it had not arrived by 2:00. Also, I'm afraid Andrea has also become a little skeptical of my optimism. Anyway, the check came, we met our obligations, and life is wonderful. I am reminded of a quote from the Savior in the New Testament (Matthew 6:24-34:

`No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot server God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than rainment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'

I'm certainly not advocating not having insurance, savings, nor not paying tithing. However, as any entrepreneur, I have learned there are times of building and times of growth. We are in a time of building, and sometimes it seems a little tight financially. Yet, we always seem to be blessed and always seem to find a way to make ends meet, even in the building times. I was very touched on Friday evening, as we took Melanie, Jared, Sara, Rachel, and Matt out to dinner to celebrate Melanie's graduation, and how both Sara and Melanie were trying to pay for their portion of the meal. You both exhibited the self-reliant type of spirit I am most proud of in you kids, and I'm glad you didn't argue when I paid the tab. It is going to be OK. And that message especially goes to Heather and Audrey, because I know you are both very worried about tuition for next semester at SUU. It's going to be OK. And I admit I am writing these words to comfort me too, even though I truly do believe our current cash crunch is going to work out just fine.

I had another busy week, although not as busy as last week. Gary Crouse and I had lunch at Lupe's on Tuesday, and he gave me several good suggestions about how to get the technologies and drilling projects we have been working on into oil companies. I'm busy following up on these suggestions.

At 9:00 Wednesday morning Dick Coons, Sam LeRoy, and I spent an hour and a half with three geoscientists at DDD Energy. They have 60 3-D seismic surveys and no one to interpret them. It also seems they are short on cash to pay upfront for G&G work. However, once they get though a reorganization this month, it looks like this client alone will keep Dynamic busy and in positive cash flow for the next couple of years. I can hear some of you reading these words and thinking: paycheck; insurance; credit card bills; savings. Oh well! The world needs optimists to counter all of the stuff!

Thursday evening the missionaries cancelled a missionary split, and so I went to a dinner hosted by a Manhattan Company named Data Synapse and my friend Tom Eliseuson (../9745.html). Some of you might recall me mentioning Tom Eliseuson at the recent SEG convention, and the fact his new company had 3 employees on the top floor of the World Trade Center Tower, the first to be hit by the terrorists and the second to collapse. This is that company. They only have 37 employees. I had a very nice discussion with the two founders, and expect I will end up on a technical advisory board and have a couple of meetings a year in Manhattan (Melanie, maybe this can fit into your New York vacation desires). I was also able to talk to a couple of other friends which might lead to some business. Friday I went by Chroma and talked to Bob Wentland about the Analog Atlas (0149.html) and how I see the geologic geometries we plan to capture in the Atlas will guid geologic fingerprint pattern development in the next releases of Chroma technology. My other meetings on Friday were postponed until next week.

Friday after school Rachel, Matt, Andrea, and I packed our bags and headed out for Austin. Our first stop was at Ft. Bend County Line Road to pick up the digital camera from Ken and Nell Turner. Isn't it amazing how we can coordinate things with a cell phone these days. We got to Austin at about 6:00 and had the wonderful Chinese celebration dinner mentioned above. Melanie, you really are a beautiful woman. And you glow with your pregnancy. It was so much fun to watch the sonogram. Jared, can you convert some of the best parts to a digital file and e-mail them to me, and I will put them up on the web. I am so proud of both of you. It was fun to go see the movie `Behind Enemy Lines' with you. I chuckled as you stopped and talked to Kurt Williams in the Movie parking lot in Austin, with his the knowledge his parents live two blocks from our house in Katy. For those interested in my reviews, I enjoyed the movie as an action movie. I don't care for whining, spoiled Americans, as the pilot/star was depicted, and I doubt if the movie had much more related to what actually happened to the actual downed pilot than the facts he was downed and rescued. The story line seemed pretty implausable to me, and the movie felt like a composite of dozen's of local Serb/Bosnian's experiences, not U.S. Airmen. Rachel, Matt, Andrea, and I stayed at the LaQuinta Inn where I stayed when I worked at the Bureau of Economic Geology. Between getting there at about 12:30 and the blackout curtains, we slept in until 9:30 Saturday.

We got to Melanie and Jared's about the time Ben, Sarah, and Ethan arrived. Both Andrea and I were super impressed with both Melanie and Jared's and Sara's apartments. Much different than living environments when we went to college. Melanie's Graduation was nice and short. One hour from start to finish. Afterwards we all gathered for a photo and to find out the Doctor wrote: `It's a girl, we think.' It will be nice to have a Granddaughter in the Spring. And with a lot of driving time to reflect on it since then, I feel like Melanie will be an absolutely wonderful mother and Jared an equally wonderful Dad for an oldest daughter. Congratulations. What a wonderful celebration and graduation.

Matt, Rachel, Andrea, and I left at 2:00 for Denton, north of Dallas and Ft. Worth. We arrived at her cousin's wedding reception at 5:30, and it ended at 6:00 PM. We talked until almost 7:00. I took a lot of digital photos, which I hope to get put in the photo directory (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/family) sometime before Christmas (of course, I still have last year's Christmas photos to put on the web site). Carol Joy was Andrea's Dad's youngest sister, and she has 5 children. As Andrea told me the trials of their family, I couldn't help but remember Randy's comment to me that `Andrea is the only divorce our family has had.' Just as I went through a similar experience to my Uncle Tony and Uncle Glenn, Andrea went through a similar experience to her Aunt Carol Joy and Aunt Nadine. There are family scripts we too often end up playing out, and it is up to us to be the renaissance person and to stop the scripts. The older I get the more I am convinced this only occurs by our serving (giving the 12 days of Christmas nativity to someone in need) and faith (trusting in our Lord and Savior that He will provide for us and guid us). We got back to the house at curfew time (12:01 AM) this morning. It was a great trip and provides hope and faith in the future.

And Melanie, congratulations again, and thanks for the opportunity to participate in your celebration and graduation."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. To download any of these thoughtlets go to http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 2001 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.