The spot remover

 I was involved in a dry cleaning business in Lander a number of years ago. A couple of members of the church decided to open a dry cleaners in Lander. They came to me and asked for some financial backing. Alan Anderson and I had purchased some property on Main Street that had three buildings and a trailer house. Alan moved into the building with the garage with the hydraulic lift and gas pumps in front. There was a cinder block building on the property next to the garage that the individuals remodeled and installed the equipment and opened the business.

The business did well, but they decided to move and my wife and I became the owners and operators. My wife worked there as well as my daughter Rachel. We also hired some help.

I would go in and do pressing and remove spots on the clothes. We used a special fluid to spray on the items to remove the spots.

I was thinking about spot removal today and this quote came to mind from my high school English class where we had to memorize quotes from Shakespeare.

"Out damned spot" is a line spoken by Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.

She is walking and talking in her sleep about the assassination of King Duncan, in which she is implicated. This was the spot she wanted to get rid of.

We develop spots on our character by transgressing the laws of God and man. After we die the spots on our characters may or may not disappear. To quote Shakespeare again, “The evil that man does lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar. “

We all make mistakes and transgress God’s commandments or laws that will keep us from his presence after we pass from this earthly existence.

Just as we used spot remover at the dry cleaners there is a process to remove the spots on our character that come with us after we die.

We must go through the process of repenting. Only Christ can make us clean again. Only He is the spot remover. He suffered for our sins, but only if we do our part and bring our souls to the eternal dry cleaners by first washing ourselves in the waters of baptism and feeling godly sorrow for our sins.

Examine your selves and get rid of the spots in your life.

Love Grandpa

Conference messages

 Conference messages

During my life I have seen the changes in the accessibility of the messages spoken in conference. The first time I remember was that the messages were compiled and printed in a volume called the conference report. It took almost a year before they were available and most members did not avail themselves of them.

The next thing that I remember was they were included in the church magazine, Improvement Era later the Ensign and now the Liahona.

Now one can read or listen to the messages on the Internet. I have an app on my phone and iPad which has all the scriptures as well as the conference messages.

We need to have access to all the spiritual information at this time, because we will go through a period of trial and testing and we will need access to the words of the prophets even more than ever before.

 

Feast upon the messages!

 

Love.

Grandpa

My first missionary companion

 My first missionary companion 

I recently tried to find out what had happened to my first missionary companion Richard Mac Crandall. I could not find him on Find a Grave or in Family Search. I Googled his name and didn’t find a match. I did find someone who might have been his father in Family Search so I sent a message to some individuals who had added sources with the surname of Crandall.

“My first missionary companion in Germany was the son of this man. His name was Richard Mac Crandall. Are you related ? I would appreciate knowing something about him.

Laurence Gee, M.D.”

His daughter Shauna Jorgenson emailed me back and related that he was still alive and living with his second wife in Oregon. He is no longer a member of the church and does not believe.

While I was in Germany I heard that he was going to go to the Swiss temple to marry a young lady that he met in Berlin when he got released.

Apparently that didn’t happen because of the Swiss regulations. They got married in the Los Angeles temple. Her name was 

Christel Gerda Luise Brandt

They had three daughters and then they divorced. Christel moved back to Germany and raised her daughters there and eventually did come back to the United States. She married again and died in Utah in 1985.

The daughter that I talked with is a realtor here in Utah and an active member of the church.

I did not tell the daughter that I talked to about a number of times that Elder Crandall left me alone. I was assigned to Hildesheim when we met with the mission president in Hannover to receive our assignments and after three days in Hannover he left with someone else and I had to travel to Hildesheim on a train with a German sister missionary Anna Ernst who was assigned there.

After I had been in the country 20 days I took 4 Boy Scouts on a camping trip to Hamelin by bicycle and he said he was sick and sent me alone.

There were a number of other times when I was left alone to travel.

We were teaching a young lady Lillie Goetz. She was working for the British army. We had arranged to go with her to a concert at the cathedral given by the children’s chorus, the Regensberger Domspatzen. When I was ready to go he said he had some branch work to do and sent me to go to the concert alone with her.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXWXpCM8p44&list=OLAK5uy_kt359u1yRwD_rIO_2o-69ieVR2kPHsoOw

He left me to go off with a soldier friend when we were to attend the mission conference in Laboe. I was left to go by myself and missed my train to Hannover where I was to join the missionaries from the district to travel to Laboe. Fortunately the train going north was late and I was able to join them. I had only been in the country for about two months.

I did not think it necessary to share this information with his daughter.

It is not surprising that he has lost his testimony. When we do not obey the mission rules we will be tempted to disregard God’s commandments and find ourselves on shaky ground or out of the kingdom.

My counsel to my grandchildren is to keep the rules and the commandments. 

 

Love. Grandpa