May 31 - June 6, 2010

Fortie Family Flyer

May 31 – June 6, 2010

Dear Family and Friends,

            Well, catching up is sooo hard to do (it is now December). The only thing I have notes on for this week is Michelle’s accident and a flood in Salt Lake. Funny thing though, I didn’t have this written down in my day planner (I suppose ‘cause you can’t plan these things) but Paige reminded me that I had a grandson this week. Since we have only seen him once it has not yet registered in my brain that his birthday was the 6^th (I suppose I am waiting for his first birthday to get that anchored in). So, now that my memory has been jogged I recall that we kept getting text messages about how far along Paige was and we thought that it was taking soooo long that perhaps Nathan, with all the excitement, forgot to call us to let us know they had a baby. So we called now and then and he just kept saying not yet. Finally after what seemed like days (come to think of it, I think it was days) we got the word and Nathan later put it on Facebook:

“Nathan has a boy who was born on 6/6/2010 the 66th aniversary for D-DAY, at 9:11 p.m. His name means one who is as strong as a warrior, war, strength, hero, guide, and leader. His middle name is Ranger and he is being blessed in our church on July 4th. All of this was just coincidence, kind of crazy. Thank you everyone for your comments and love. Wyatt and Paige are home, happy and healthy.”

Welcome to the planet earth little Wyatt, get ready for a wild ride, things are a little crazy here in these last days. Don’t worry though, you have great parents who are going to get you ready for your future and help you be what you came here to be. Well, we now have grandson number 2 and the pictures we have seen on facebook (aren’t computers great) let us know he is a cute kid (I’m not sure if it is appropriate to say that someone who is as strong as a warrior is cute but I think we can do that for the first few years anyway). Well, we are very excited to see him at his blessing in July (which, since I am writing this in December, has already happened (some kind of time warp thing)).

As for the rest of the week I can only go by those few notes I have in my planner. Any spiritual insights and meaningful scripture messages in answer to prayers that may have come my way in this first week of June are gone. No wonder the prophet and apostles have asked us so many times to write these things down as they happen.

            Anyway, Michelle was bragging the other day that she was doing soooo much better than the boys with her driving. Of course pride goeth before the fall. It really wasn’t too serious but bad enough to have insurance involved and make us worry about prices going up. She was taking a friend home from work and pulled into the friend’s driveway fairly late at night. She only stayed long enough to see that she got into her house. Since it was late and Michelle didn’t think anyone would be coming in the thirty seconds it took to drop her friend off she simply backed out of the driveway without looking properly and unbeknownst to her the neighbor across the street had pulled up in his work truck and parked in front of his house, right in Michelle’s path. She was in our truck so she backed up and caught his bumper just at the edge and took it right off (it was probably a Chevy). The only thing it did to our truck is crack the taillight but his truck looked like it had been in a major accident with parts lying all over the place. Needless to say, she was in tears when she called. I headed over there (only a few streets away) and the guy was real nice about it so we exchanged insurance info and he put his bumper in the back of his truck and we headed home. It is interesting that he was so nice to us about it but when he took it in to have them look at the damage and get it fixed he told them she had pushed his truck up over the curb and it hit a tree and smashed in the door. The insurance company called about that and I said it was not up on the curb when I got there so I took my camera over the next day and took pictures of the tire marks, the tree and the curb and from those pictures they could tell that he was not telling the truth so they refused to fix the damage on the side of the truck; interesting how some people are.

            My scooter is finally working again so I have been riding around here and there enjoying the freedom of a motorcycle; it truly is addicting. 

Well, that is all I remember from the week. I’m sure other things happened but they are gone. We go to movies now and then or out to eat once in a while but all those just blend together and who knows when they happened.

            We did have an interesting Sunday that I just happened to write down in my planner so I know when it happened (though I will never forget what happened). We went to dinner at my parent’s house with Chad and Alicia who live in their basement. Interestingly enough, my parents along with Brian were in Montana at the time to see Whitney’s graduation and have my dad ordain Alan to be a High Priest. We had a nice barbeque and then got out a game to play in the back yard that we gave Chad for his birthday. We were having a fun time when he got a call from a priesthood leader in their ward telling him that the extra snow we got late in the year and the warm temperatures have combined to create a serious flood for the houses along the creek down by the Wal-Mart in the Fort Union area. They were looking for volunteers to go help sandbag along the creek to stop the homes from getting flooded. Jason and I of course said we would go with him. I was already in my jeans so Chad loaned me an old T-shirt and off we went. I do wish I had my waterproof boots to save my leather boots from damage being in a lot of water but you can’t have everything (and they actually held up pretty well). We drove down to the Wal-Mart not knowing what to expect and as we arrived we could see a line of people ready to sign up to help. You could tell they were mostly LDS people who had been called by their leaders. It was quite amazing to see the power of the church as hundreds of people came with only a moments notice to spend the night helping people they had never met (there was more likely a thousand or more as there were hundreds just on the one street we worked on and we could see just as many across the creek and who knows how far up the creek they went on both sides). Another interesting thing was the look on the faces of the people who were there to go shopping or to eat at the restaurants on Sunday afternoon who had never experienced that power and unity within the church that had mobilized all these people. They would stop and watch us gather from far and near with a purpose and unity that they couldn’t comprehend as they tried to figure out what was going on. They stared at us almost like we were creatures in a zoo, wondering how and why we had all come down to that shopping center at once and were not going into the stores but instead were getting tools from an emergency center table very near the raging creek (going right through the parking lot of the shopping center) and heading for the neighborhood across the street. That was a very powerful experience to me seeing the difference between the two groups. One, a brotherhood working in unison to overcome a disaster and the other group doing their own thing in life, wondering what was going on but not making any effort to join in and be a part of that powerful group or helping others by being a part of the solution – just going shopping thinking of themselves.

Anyway, we headed to the neighborhood and firemen with bullhorns were directing us to go to the piles of sand that had been dumped in the street to start creating sandbags. Some shoveled, some tied and some piled them up. Once we had created the sandbags we then through them into buckets of tractors or into beds of trucks of some of the volunteers to take to individual houses. After putting sandbags in the vehicles we jumped in on top and went with them a half a block away and we then jumped out and created a line from the closest point the trucks could get to the creek all the way (usually winding through gates and gardens) through backyards, which were usually a few inches deep in water, to the creek itself and started tossing fairly heavy sandbags from one person to another barely keeping ahead of the floods. The first time we saw the creek really caught us off guard. Any other time of the year it was a nice beautiful little creek moseying through these beautiful back yards but now it was a raging torrent that was about 2 feet above ground level and kept out of peoples homes by a thin wall of sandbags that was only a few inches above the water level. As we were working the rain began to fall so we knew it was going to get worse before it got better and we were just barely keeping ahead of this powerful force coming down out of the canyon’s as it was. We raised the height of the walls and made them wider in some of the weak areas until we were out of sandbags then we went back to a new sand pile and did it all over again in a different back yard. It was interesting, though it was exhausting work and I was not in the best shape it was still very invigorating to be a part of something so powerful and doing a good thing for people in need. After a while we would get to know some of the people we worked with and even created friendships in that five or six hours of helping others out in a crisis. I even ran into a few people that I had not seen since high school and we had a chance to talk during a few slow moments while waiting for more sand or waiting for a truck to bring more supplies. Luckily it was warm because we were soaked to the bone as we waded through water and as the rain steadily came down on our heads dripping from our brows as we shoveled wet sand into bags and handed soggy heavy sandbags from person to person from the front yard all the way to the creek at the back of someones property. They got us pizza and lots of water and Gatorade to drink to keep our energy up and keep us hydrated as we worked. Finally after a few hours the rain slowed down and then stopped and they told us that the water in the creek usually stops rising around 1:00 a.m. as the cool temperatures of the night slows the melting of the snow in the canyons. However, we got ahead of things enough that a little before midnight they gathered us all around the main fire truck to thank us for our hard work and send us home. I got separated from Chad and Jason now and then as we got assigned different tasks and since there were hundreds of people all in different back yards it was sometimes an hour or so between sightings of them but in the end as they gathered us together the boys found me talking to a few people who lived there who were very grateful for our help and after saying our goodbyes we headed for our car soaked and warn out but feeling good. It was funny because the guy in charge of the whole thing who stood on one of the fire trucks with the bull horn was Bro. White, a captain in the fire department, who lives right down the street from us and was in our ward for a long time before one of our many splits. He saw me and asked what in the world we were doing there from across the valley and we told him we were visiting my son on the east side of the valley when he got the call so we came to help. There was also an interesting moment just before sunset, when the clouds let the sunlight through and there was a beautiful orange sky that briefly lit the whole area up and a bright rainbow appeared in an otherwise dark sky. Everyone stopped for a few moments as they were struck with awe at such a beautiful sight in such a dark and gloomy situation. We got home and had to shower and change and I don’t think I ever got those clothes completely clean again but it was an amazing experience. The dirt was ground right in as was the memory of such a powerful moment. We could have said someone else can take care of it so we could continue our game, after all it wasn’t our house that was getting flooded, but we could not have had a more powerful experience to show us the great force behind people in the gospel working together for the common good.

            Well, that’s it for this week. Keep your head above water,

Love from Ken and his clan