Fortie Family Flyer
January 11 – 17, 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Well, it finally caught up with me. I have a great computer with over 20,000 pictures I have taken on it plus all our family letters, all my genealogy, poetry, writings, talks, stories, scripture study notes, etc. and on Friday I went to look at an email from facebook about a comment one of my cousins made about a picture and a virus attacked me and I pushed the button that I thought was the one to delete it but they had cleverly disguised it and it was the button to download the virus. Needless to say, after pushing the button I realized what had happened and I tried to use my anti-virus program to scan for viruses and eliminate it but it had been disabled, I then tried to restore my computer to an earlier setting but it had been disabled so I turned it off and it will no longer start. My hard drive is no more. Hopefully it didn’t find my external hard drive so I will have all but the last few weeks of my work and pictures. I’ll have to take it in somewhere and see what can be done. We are down to the entire family using the old family computer for homework, photography, letter writing and other activities (I guess it could be worse, we could be in the middle of an early blizzard with handcarts in the middle of Wyoming or something but it does seem pretty bad in our modern life filled with a great need for computers in work and school).
Other than that, not much to report. Oh, as I was coming home from printing pictures the other night I was on Bangerter Highway approaching the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and was in a fairly thick fog. As I got to the temple the fog was suddenly gone like passing through a wall and I could see that there was a ring of clear sky around the temple. It was so cool I really kicking myself for not having my camera to take a picture. The temple was in a circle of clear sky that was about a half mile across with the temple right in the middle. It wasn’t even gradual fog but a wall of fog all the way around. Once I drove into the fog again the temple really had a beautiful glow about it for a little ways before it was completely gone again (note to self - keep camera with me at all times). The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see anything around the intersections and I was so fascinated about how the temple looked that I miscalculated how far I had gone and passed the street to my subdivision; crazy night that was.
The rest of the week was work, cleaning around the house and taking care of sick people. The girls both go to physical therapy for knee, hip, ankle, and lower back problems. Tami has been sick for more than a month, ever since she got the swine flu shot. She finally got something to take to help her get over bronchitis. Sometimes I think she is going to cough her lungs right out. On Friday night we played Chinese Checkers since she couldn’t really go out. I also went and got a couple of burgers from Arctic Circle that were on sale for 60 cents and we ate them at home. The kids are busy with work and school. We have had some silly crazy nights around here that most people would shake their heads at because of our crazy humor, but we are all we’ve got and don’t know any different.
I took Michelle to the dentist and she has some work to be done so we will be back.
I got a call this week from Susan Wright who runs half of Murray (the Murray Mansion, Ballet Studio, Costume Shop, Wedding Chapel, Limousine Service, Arts in the Parks Program, and other business’. I used to do all their videos for them (wedding and ballet) and she said she was going to retire and had a good ballet program that she wanted to film to make it available to people in small towns that don’t have the facilities that she has. She said I was the best and she wanted me to do the video (that was very kind of her to say). I told her I had been out of that for some time and didn’t have any equipment anymore. I told her that I knew someone in my ward that did videos and would check with them and get back with her. Jared said he would be glad to talk to her and that I could tag along since I know her so well and know what she expects.
After talking to them about videos and my brain was thinking along those lines, I was doing some genealogy (Uncle Eldon sent me an email about the Cox family web sight so I was looking at that and some other notes about our ancestors in the mid 1600’s in Massachusetts on the new family search website and the Geni.com website). (Once you start genealogy it is amazing how information tends to just start flowing to you without you even telling people you are looking for stuff). Anyway, I was reading a journal of a missionary who came across the same ship that Alexander was on coming from England and when the missionary told about the train trip from New York to Salt Lake with each stop in detail and some of the interesting things that happened along the way I decided to follow the trip on Google Earth. I was able to follow the tracks all the way from city to city and found that only one place no longer exists (in Wyoming). It was so interesting that I thought it would be fun to gather several journals and take the same trip by train filming the whole trip with commentary and readings from the journals along the way; what a cool documentary that would be. Of course you would name names so people would hear the names of relatives that come across on these trips in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and see what they went through. It would be nice to see if we could get some funding to do something like that, gather information and head across the country stopping at each place talking about old buildings that might be standing and what they did in each place. One Sister’s, little baby died a few minutes before they got to a stop for lunch and they waited long enough for her to bury her 7 month old baby (I think that was the age) in a little town somewhere in Wyoming or Nebraska before they continued their journey. What a hard thing to do for that poor mother. These stories would be interesting to tell right in the places where they happened. Maybe I’ll have to see about doing something like that.
Well, Sunday was full of meetings for the girls and genealogy visits for me while Tami was home sick. It is now late and I must rise early. Hope all is well at your place.
All aboard,
Ken and clan
From Elder Fortie:
So this week... it's wet... it's raining like the Lord has forgotten his promise to not flood the earth again. Today was finally supposed to be my p-day (I'll explain why it's "finally" in a second) but now it looks like I'm going to go spend it pumping water out of flooded members and investigators houses that are mid thigh deep in water... oh joy...
But on a cool note, the reason my p-day got delayed till today is because Elder Hinckley (eldest son of the late Prophet, president Hinckley) of the quorum of the 70, came to our mission and did a meeting with all us zone leaders, and then he did a conference with all the missionaries and trained there, and then afterwards, each zone leader and the assistants each had an individual PPI (personal priesthood interview) with him! It was really cool, and he is just like his dad. During my PPI however him and I came to a terrible realization... I am the oldest missionary in the mission!!!! I started my mission in January 2008, and it is now Jan 2010, all the other missionaries who started before, or at the same time as me, went home a few days ago... I am the oldest missionary in the mission! He thought that was hilarious as that dawned on me and my eyes went wide and I said "oh no! Elder Hinckley, how hard would it be to get my mission extended even more?" He smiled and said "well Elder Fortie, break your other leg!" I laughed but I wanted a serious answer! It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't what I expected it to be, we just had a jolly old time him and I, me being myself, which is a bit of a scary thing I know. He said he loved it, told me I'm the happiest and funniest missionary he's seen, and that he had heard nothing but amazing things about me and told me to keep doing exactly what your doing, president Wade uses you as the model for the mission. Which is exactly the same thing that President Packer said to me today as well when I talked to him. So that was a very great exaggeration and a nice lie on their part hahaha. No I appreciated the time I got to spend with him. Afterwards he gave me a big hug and I couldn't help but think "hehe, I just got to hug the prophets son... hehe" though I was surprised about how casual and natural I felt talking to him. I didn't feel intimidated or nervous at all. I went in their cracking jokes as usual as if he was my old friend and we had a great time. By the way Dad he saw your picture of the Oakland temple hanging in the dining room of the mission home where he stayed and he LOVED it!
So that was my Monday, which is normally p-day so it got pushed back to Tuesday, but then I got a phone call and they said they needed me to go to San Francisco on Tuesday to work on some of the mission cars. So then my p-day got pushed to today, Wednesday. So Tuesday, in what could have been a monsoon, I went out into the rain and worked on cars for 3 hours till I was soaked to the bone, but I got the job done and I enjoyed getting to at least drive through my good old San Fran. So now here I am, on my way to do e-mail, when we get a call about all the flooding houses that need rescuing, so there goes my p-day haha. Such is life I suppose... I don't know what keeps us running sometimes. Sometimes I'm amazed we even have time to fill our car with gas to make it to our next sight of madness and mayhem! At times we don't even have time to do that as the low fuel light had been on for about 25 miles this past week, we rolled into the gas station though and were able to toss 30 seconds worth of gas into it (didn't have time to wait for it to fill up) to get us through the day till we could find a second to fill up.Oh, on another note, this past week we were driving home from somewhere, and saw these guys in this SUV with a flat tire, that seemed to be in trouble. It was pouring rain, and they looked totally bewildered, they didn't know how to get the spare tire off of an SUV, which unlike cars where the spare tire is just in the trunk, it hangs by a steel cable underneath the back of the vehicle and you have to lower it by a special lever through a small key hole in the back of the vehicle. So we pulled over and me in my white shirt and slacks, got in their to fix their tire. My two companions (I had two for the day because one was trainging but his greenie hadn't come yet so he was with us till his greenie arrived) weren't sure how to do it, none of the 3 guys in the SUV knew, so I was forced to get down in the puddle under the SUV only to discover the thing was broken and wouldn't release. So I had to take it apart, then once I got that done, the guys jack didn't belong to the vehicle so it couldn't get it high enough off the ground to put the new tire on... So finally I had to jimmy rig the sucker to get it up in the air enough to get the new tire on. Something, possibly just my own common sense because of the akward nature of the jack, or possibly a little inspiration told me to out jack from our car, as a back up catch in case it fell off the other jack. So I did so and thanks to our wonderful friends who I think were high, who we were changing the tire for, the car did indeed fall off the jack when one of the fools leaned on the car... But gratefully the back up jack got it. So I got the other tire on finally, and then I told the guy "don't torque it tight while it's still on the jack, just tighten it part way, then we will lower it and tighten it all the way." Well, I don't know what they were speaking, some ghetto Oakland language that I didn't honestly understand half their English, and maybe therefore they didn't understand all mine, because sure enough, the moment I turn my back he jumps on it like an angry monkey after a mango, and torque the sucker down real hard, pulling the car off of the back up jack!!! By now I was about to throw the tire iron at them and walk off, but luckily the tire was far enough on that it stayed on and kept the car from falling. So we tightened it on all the way till, then I had to get under the car (now safely set on 4 tires) and untangle the jack from out of the frame. His jack got a bit bent up, but ours luckily was fine, but by the end of it, I was soaked, dirty, my white shirt was black and gray, I was cold and tired as it took me about 1.5 HOURS to do the stupid thing, and a little more then frustrated with their lack of intelligence. But they were certainly grateful and I told them to go up and visit the temple Visitors center some time. All in all it was an interesting time...
Well I got to get going, I hope you are all doing well and that life keeps moving forward for you all. I'm tired and worn out but loving every minute of it. So keep on keeping on and I'll do the same!Love Elder Fortie.
January 11 – 17, 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Well, it finally caught up with me. I have a great computer with over 20,000 pictures I have taken on it plus all our family letters, all my genealogy, poetry, writings, talks, stories, scripture study notes, etc. and on Friday I went to look at an email from facebook about a comment one of my cousins made about a picture and a virus attacked me and I pushed the button that I thought was the one to delete it but they had cleverly disguised it and it was the button to download the virus. Needless to say, after pushing the button I realized what had happened and I tried to use my anti-virus program to scan for viruses and eliminate it but it had been disabled, I then tried to restore my computer to an earlier setting but it had been disabled so I turned it off and it will no longer start. My hard drive is no more. Hopefully it didn’t find my external hard drive so I will have all but the last few weeks of my work and pictures. I’ll have to take it in somewhere and see what can be done. We are down to the entire family using the old family computer for homework, photography, letter writing and other activities (I guess it could be worse, we could be in the middle of an early blizzard with handcarts in the middle of Wyoming or something but it does seem pretty bad in our modern life filled with a great need for computers in work and school).
Other than that, not much to report. Oh, as I was coming home from printing pictures the other night I was on Bangerter Highway approaching the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and was in a fairly thick fog. As I got to the temple the fog was suddenly gone like passing through a wall and I could see that there was a ring of clear sky around the temple. It was so cool I really kicking myself for not having my camera to take a picture. The temple was in a circle of clear sky that was about a half mile across with the temple right in the middle. It wasn’t even gradual fog but a wall of fog all the way around. Once I drove into the fog again the temple really had a beautiful glow about it for a little ways before it was completely gone again (note to self - keep camera with me at all times). The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see anything around the intersections and I was so fascinated about how the temple looked that I miscalculated how far I had gone and passed the street to my subdivision; crazy night that was.
The rest of the week was work, cleaning around the house and taking care of sick people. The girls both go to physical therapy for knee, hip, ankle, and lower back problems. Tami has been sick for more than a month, ever since she got the swine flu shot. She finally got something to take to help her get over bronchitis. Sometimes I think she is going to cough her lungs right out. On Friday night we played Chinese Checkers since she couldn’t really go out. I also went and got a couple of burgers from Arctic Circle that were on sale for 60 cents and we ate them at home. The kids are busy with work and school. We have had some silly crazy nights around here that most people would shake their heads at because of our crazy humor, but we are all we’ve got and don’t know any different.
I took Michelle to the dentist and she has some work to be done so we will be back.
I got a call this week from Susan Wright who runs half of Murray (the Murray Mansion, Ballet Studio, Costume Shop, Wedding Chapel, Limousine Service, Arts in the Parks Program, and other business’. I used to do all their videos for them (wedding and ballet) and she said she was going to retire and had a good ballet program that she wanted to film to make it available to people in small towns that don’t have the facilities that she has. She said I was the best and she wanted me to do the video (that was very kind of her to say). I told her I had been out of that for some time and didn’t have any equipment anymore. I told her that I knew someone in my ward that did videos and would check with them and get back with her. Jared said he would be glad to talk to her and that I could tag along since I know her so well and know what she expects.
After talking to them about videos and my brain was thinking along those lines, I was doing some genealogy (Uncle Eldon sent me an email about the Cox family web sight so I was looking at that and some other notes about our ancestors in the mid 1600’s in Massachusetts on the new family search website and the Geni.com website). (Once you start genealogy it is amazing how information tends to just start flowing to you without you even telling people you are looking for stuff). Anyway, I was reading a journal of a missionary who came across the same ship that Alexander was on coming from England and when the missionary told about the train trip from New York to Salt Lake with each stop in detail and some of the interesting things that happened along the way I decided to follow the trip on Google Earth. I was able to follow the tracks all the way from city to city and found that only one place no longer exists (in Wyoming). It was so interesting that I thought it would be fun to gather several journals and take the same trip by train filming the whole trip with commentary and readings from the journals along the way; what a cool documentary that would be. Of course you would name names so people would hear the names of relatives that come across on these trips in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and see what they went through. It would be nice to see if we could get some funding to do something like that, gather information and head across the country stopping at each place talking about old buildings that might be standing and what they did in each place. One Sister’s, little baby died a few minutes before they got to a stop for lunch and they waited long enough for her to bury her 7 month old baby (I think that was the age) in a little town somewhere in Wyoming or Nebraska before they continued their journey. What a hard thing to do for that poor mother. These stories would be interesting to tell right in the places where they happened. Maybe I’ll have to see about doing something like that.
Well, Sunday was full of meetings for the girls and genealogy visits for me while Tami was home sick. It is now late and I must rise early. Hope all is well at your place.
All aboard,
Ken and clan
From Elder Fortie:
So this week... it's wet... it's raining like the Lord has forgotten his promise to not flood the earth again. Today was finally supposed to be my p-day (I'll explain why it's "finally" in a second) but now it looks like I'm going to go spend it pumping water out of flooded members and investigators houses that are mid thigh deep in water... oh joy...
But on a cool note, the reason my p-day got delayed till today is because Elder Hinckley (eldest son of the late Prophet, president Hinckley) of the quorum of the 70, came to our mission and did a meeting with all us zone leaders, and then he did a conference with all the missionaries and trained there, and then afterwards, each zone leader and the assistants each had an individual PPI (personal priesthood interview) with him! It was really cool, and he is just like his dad. During my PPI however him and I came to a terrible realization... I am the oldest missionary in the mission!!!! I started my mission in January 2008, and it is now Jan 2010, all the other missionaries who started before, or at the same time as me, went home a few days ago... I am the oldest missionary in the mission! He thought that was hilarious as that dawned on me and my eyes went wide and I said "oh no! Elder Hinckley, how hard would it be to get my mission extended even more?" He smiled and said "well Elder Fortie, break your other leg!" I laughed but I wanted a serious answer! It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't what I expected it to be, we just had a jolly old time him and I, me being myself, which is a bit of a scary thing I know. He said he loved it, told me I'm the happiest and funniest missionary he's seen, and that he had heard nothing but amazing things about me and told me to keep doing exactly what your doing, president Wade uses you as the model for the mission. Which is exactly the same thing that President Packer said to me today as well when I talked to him. So that was a very great exaggeration and a nice lie on their part hahaha. No I appreciated the time I got to spend with him. Afterwards he gave me a big hug and I couldn't help but think "hehe, I just got to hug the prophets son... hehe" though I was surprised about how casual and natural I felt talking to him. I didn't feel intimidated or nervous at all. I went in their cracking jokes as usual as if he was my old friend and we had a great time. By the way Dad he saw your picture of the Oakland temple hanging in the dining room of the mission home where he stayed and he LOVED it!
So that was my Monday, which is normally p-day so it got pushed back to Tuesday, but then I got a phone call and they said they needed me to go to San Francisco on Tuesday to work on some of the mission cars. So then my p-day got pushed to today, Wednesday. So Tuesday, in what could have been a monsoon, I went out into the rain and worked on cars for 3 hours till I was soaked to the bone, but I got the job done and I enjoyed getting to at least drive through my good old San Fran. So now here I am, on my way to do e-mail, when we get a call about all the flooding houses that need rescuing, so there goes my p-day haha. Such is life I suppose... I don't know what keeps us running sometimes. Sometimes I'm amazed we even have time to fill our car with gas to make it to our next sight of madness and mayhem! At times we don't even have time to do that as the low fuel light had been on for about 25 miles this past week, we rolled into the gas station though and were able to toss 30 seconds worth of gas into it (didn't have time to wait for it to fill up) to get us through the day till we could find a second to fill up.Oh, on another note, this past week we were driving home from somewhere, and saw these guys in this SUV with a flat tire, that seemed to be in trouble. It was pouring rain, and they looked totally bewildered, they didn't know how to get the spare tire off of an SUV, which unlike cars where the spare tire is just in the trunk, it hangs by a steel cable underneath the back of the vehicle and you have to lower it by a special lever through a small key hole in the back of the vehicle. So we pulled over and me in my white shirt and slacks, got in their to fix their tire. My two companions (I had two for the day because one was trainging but his greenie hadn't come yet so he was with us till his greenie arrived) weren't sure how to do it, none of the 3 guys in the SUV knew, so I was forced to get down in the puddle under the SUV only to discover the thing was broken and wouldn't release. So I had to take it apart, then once I got that done, the guys jack didn't belong to the vehicle so it couldn't get it high enough off the ground to put the new tire on... So finally I had to jimmy rig the sucker to get it up in the air enough to get the new tire on. Something, possibly just my own common sense because of the akward nature of the jack, or possibly a little inspiration told me to out jack from our car, as a back up catch in case it fell off the other jack. So I did so and thanks to our wonderful friends who I think were high, who we were changing the tire for, the car did indeed fall off the jack when one of the fools leaned on the car... But gratefully the back up jack got it. So I got the other tire on finally, and then I told the guy "don't torque it tight while it's still on the jack, just tighten it part way, then we will lower it and tighten it all the way." Well, I don't know what they were speaking, some ghetto Oakland language that I didn't honestly understand half their English, and maybe therefore they didn't understand all mine, because sure enough, the moment I turn my back he jumps on it like an angry monkey after a mango, and torque the sucker down real hard, pulling the car off of the back up jack!!! By now I was about to throw the tire iron at them and walk off, but luckily the tire was far enough on that it stayed on and kept the car from falling. So we tightened it on all the way till, then I had to get under the car (now safely set on 4 tires) and untangle the jack from out of the frame. His jack got a bit bent up, but ours luckily was fine, but by the end of it, I was soaked, dirty, my white shirt was black and gray, I was cold and tired as it took me about 1.5 HOURS to do the stupid thing, and a little more then frustrated with their lack of intelligence. But they were certainly grateful and I told them to go up and visit the temple Visitors center some time. All in all it was an interesting time...
Well I got to get going, I hope you are all doing well and that life keeps moving forward for you all. I'm tired and worn out but loving every minute of it. So keep on keeping on and I'll do the same!Love Elder Fortie.
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