cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Diane Cluff, and Maxine Shirts
"This last week was pretty quiet. I spent the first part of the week getting ready for a major presentation to Landmark Graphics senior executives. Only to be told, after I finished putting the presentation together, they are doing too many things, and consider it a distraction to start a new conversation with me. So they passed on meeting with me. Oh well! I must admit, I am quite disappointed. I guess it is my lot in life to be rejected by some of my children, and it is sad that I put Landmark in the same boat as the ten of you. I guess it is only appropriate since, I probably put more effort into raising Landmark than into any one of you. In case you can't tell, I'm a little bit down today. The presentation is on the web at http://www.walden3d.com/ig/details, and concerns the Infinite Grid(SM). I am using it for conversations with Roger Anderson, Phillips-Conoco, MicroSoft, and others. Hopefully something will come of all of this effort.
After Landmark cratered, I rekindled refinancing the house. It should be a done fact by the end of the month. I'm working with two different groups, and they both seem very positive about closing in that time frame. It really hurts me to not have the cash to send Matt to his Nielson Family Reunion. I understand his biological Dad has $300 less expenses per month and he could pay for him to come up if he wanted him to be there. And I understand Andrea does not want to put any more debt on credit cards. And it still does not make me feel any better about not being able to send Matt up to Utah to spend time with his sisters. Oh well!
There was a lot of time spent with Frontera Resources, who are going to look at two of Dick Coon's deals. Contact was remade with Dr. Jude O. Amaefule, who along with Dr. Amos Nur at Stanford have formed an oil company called Emerald Energy Resources Limited. Emerald has won with competitive bid the largest block on the coastline of West Africa: OPL-229. They are looking for some funding for drilling some wells. It is an exciting opportunity, and I will write more about it next week. I went out with the missionaries on Thursday. We visited a family I have visited many times since moving here. Before the wife would never come out and talk to us. She owned a pink cadallac she had earned selling Mary Kay Cosmetics, and in those days this job was her religion. We taught a third discussion to their 45 year old son, who has forgot anything he knew about the church, and has some serious health problems. He has a disease where the proteins around his nerves are breaking down and his nerves short curcit, making it so he can not walk and causing great pain. I'm sure this kind of thing happens to active members of the church too, and it was really interesting to see the love of a mother, and the desire for her son to understand the importance of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Riley Skeen came to town for interviews, and we spent the evening with him Friday, after going to the 4:30 movie: `The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood.' It turns out Reg Spiller of Frontera Resources was the one who hired Riley to go to Ethiopia and QC (quality Control) seismic acquisition a few years ago. What a small world.
Riley has decided he wants to become a real estate agent, and to sell property around Cody, Wyoming, where he lives now. I took him over to Dick Coons house, and we talked about some of the 150 acre ranches available for sale around Cody. He convinced me this is a place I want to look, when we finally get some of our work to come in. Dick even sounded interested. Cheryl wasn't so excited though. It was fun to catch up with Riley. He is going to be back down in about 10 days. Jude told me earlier in the day he is going to hire Riley to work for him on evaluating marginal fields in Nigeria. Hopefully I can also get some consulting money out of Jude to help meet some of our bills. Philip Nelson got home about the time Riley was leaving. All week Philip was working until about 10:00 every night. Philip had a gift for us, Cinemark movie coupons. Something we will definitely use. We ended up talking about the re-establishment of the united order and the building of the New Jerusalem. I sure like Philip. He has been very good with Matt. They played pool every night when he got home, no matter how tired he was.
I spent most of Saturday, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning preparing for my last substitute Gospel Doctrine lesson: Psalms. The lesson manual called for going through all 150 Psalms in one week. Saturday afternoon, Andrea came in and said, `What are you trying to do, write songs for all 150 Psalms?' My answer was yes. However, the way I did it was different. And I didn't quite finish. I read through and marked 135 Psalms with my red (historical), yellow (sin), green (first principles and trust in the Lord), blue (temples and restoration), and orange (creation and light and truth) colored pencils. Then I identified a cord pattern that could be played for each different theme. This was simply preparation so when someone said sing Psalm XXX, I could. After all, all of the Psalms were originally sung. Singing the Psalms was one of the ways they were passed down from generation to generation. Of course, they were not sung with the tunes I made up. And that's OK. I just wanted to demonstrate how they might have been shared. And it seemed like the lesson turned out pretty good. There were a lot of nice comments by many different people.
Sacrament Meeting was the Moores. Ryan, who just came home from a mission in Poland was the final speaker. He talked about pride. David Moore has just been called on a mission to the Phillipines, the same mission that David Shirts went to. He gave an excellent talk. He and Angela sang the intermediate song acapella. What wonderful voices. I had no idea David could sing like that. Rachel, too bad you weren't still here. I think you would have really liked it. The Moores had just come back from Jakarta for this event, and her parents had come to visit from California. It was a very special sacrament meeting.
I had my Byzantine tile montague of Christ and our picture of the St. George Temple hanging at the front of the Relief Society Room for Gospel Doctrine. And after Brandon Peterson, who is home from school for a few weeks, gave the opening prayer, I pulled out my guitar and asked everyone to turn in the Old Testament Hymnal to Psalm 8 and I sang the following words to a tune written on 20 October 1985:
I really like the tune and the words, and often find myself singing
this song when I pick up the guitar. Several in the class
actually joined with me, reading from The Eight Psalm, and
singing along. It was scary and it was fun. Then Coleen's
Dad raised his hand and asked me to sing one of the Psalms
back towards the end. It worked out pretty good. Then
Brother Stine read the 24th Psalm. I didn't want to butcher
such a famous verse with one of my tunes. Then Sister Jasper,
who just moved here with her family from Couer d'Alene, Idaho,
where Robert Shirts was their children's seminary teacher,
pointed out Psalm 46:10, which reads:
I had her read D&C 101:16, which reads:
Then I sang `The First Prayer' (see ../0044.html and
../0104.html). By the end of the last chorus almost everyone
in the class was singing with me. And I think everyone saw
that Psalms was more than just ancient poetry. As I finished,
Colleen Moore's father raised his hand and said, `I'd like
you to sing Psalm 121. So I did:
And I hope that each of you will read these songs many
times, teach them to your children, and come to know
the beauty, the light, the truth, the knowledge, and
the wisdom captured in these ancient ancient psalms."