Our YSA consists of the students who go to University of Florida, Santa Fe College and any YSA in Gainesville between 18 and 30. This is the Santa Fe campus - really beautiful - lots and lots of trees and green grass and shrubs and hedges .. Mike took the missionaries for an appointment. They are on bikes and Santa Fe is 20-30 minutes by car, so he takes them. We enjoy being at that campus. They have one of the largest American flags in the area and it is wonderful to see.
One of our sister missionaries had stomach pain off an on, quite severe at times. Urgent Care diagnosed it without x-ray or MRI as kidney stones. Finally, at her companions insistence we took her into the ER. It was not kidney stones but appendicitis. 
There is a restaurant here called the Flying Biscuit. We had never heard of it until we were at the Interfaith Progressive Dinner (University Avenue has a number of churches in a row - meaning on the street but a bit of a distance apart, you easily work off one part of the dinner before you get to the other.) They had people introduce themselves at one point, name, what church they were members of and where they liked to eat. Mike's answer - you won't be surprised .. at home, he said. Quite a few mentioned The Flying Biscuit, and about a week later, we met one of our YSA there with her husband as they were on their way from Tallahassee to the temple. I served with her in the branch when she was the Relief Society President last summer. And the biscuits are great!!!
Cheese sandwiches, chips and root beer floats for the dinner before Institute -- we don't have really wonderful grills and this is what happens when you turn your back for a couple of seconds ..
It is never fun to try to find a doctor when you are away from home, and one of our many tender mercies has been Dr. Kamal Singh from India -- he has taken good care of the few health care needs we have had. Not only is he good, but we never have to wait very long if at all.
A little over an hour from Gainesville is the Oak Grove Cemetery, right by Lake Butler. It is next to the church that was built in 1907. The area next to it is the cemetery and is mostly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lots of cool stories. A person cannot be buried there without permission of the cemetery board and they have to meet very strict criteria because there is no charge to be buried there.
The saints built this little church house in 1907 and used it until 1997 when
they built a chapel in Lake Butler.
It has been added on to over the years, but the interior remains the same.
The room at the back has been converted into an apartment and someone lives there and takes care of the building and the cemetery.
The inside is still in great condition ..the pews are amazingly comfortable.
Sacrament table, the original, with stool for those blessing the sacrament to kneel on.
They also had this old hymnbook which I well remember.
Mary Lou Griggs Schroeder and her husband Don are serving as MLS missionaries. They came out at the same time we did and we have shared a lot of sight-seeing.
You are all familiar with Gently Raise the Sacred Strain - Mary Lou's great grandfather Thomas C. Griggs wrote the music to this song. Another hymn he wrote the music to is God is Love.
We have a FHE group, consisting of the Ed and Marsha Haddock, Ken and Lene Lewis, the Schroeders and us. This is Don, Mike and Ken.
Mike found this headstone - my dad's mother was a Kartchner, but you always wonder if somewhere along the way the spelling was changed.
We are always amazed at the beautiful world our Father has given us, down to the smallest detail.
Willford Jordan was instrumental in baptizing over 700 members of the church in this area. His story is fascinating .. just a bit of it below and the link for the whole story is at the end. We love ya'all and will see you soon. Note the spelling of the river is not, but Suwannee.
He was a country boy, born in an isolated logging camp
overlooking the Suwannee River in western Florida. Though he came to know a
wider world, he never got the country out of his heart. But people throughout
northern Florida, southern Georgia, and other parts of the United States
eventually blessed his name because of his Christlike characteristics and his
love of sharing the gospel.
As a teenager, his father told him he needed to find out for
himself if the church was true. IImpressed
by his father’s words, Wilford followed his counsel. “I sat down and told the
Lord before I began to read [the Book of Mormon], in a simple prayer, that I
would probably never read the whole thing, but I’d like to know as I read it
whether it was true or false.
“I didn’t hear a voice, but I had a burning within my bosom
and a conviction within my mind that it was true. And before I finished reading
in Alma, in the fortieth chapter—I remember the scripture well, Alma
40:7–13—I had such a conviction and a feeling that I knew it was the truth.”
For the remainder of his life, this testimony was indelibly lodged in the heart
of Wilford Jordan.
To those who came to know him, Wilford was a throwback to
horse-drawn wagon days and simpler ways, more at home in the woods beside a
campfire than he was in a modern kitchen. The stream, the forest, the lake—all
of nature—was a supermarket to him. An invitation to a cookout at the Jordan home,
down the road a piece from the Oak Grove Chapel in rural north Florida, was
truly an event.
An exciting array of entrees prepared by Wilford, whose
skill as a chef was acknowledged throughout north Florida and south Georgia,
awaited his guests. He prepared crawfish tails, armadillo, squirrel, possum,
raccoon, land or freshwater turtles, and rattlesnake loin with a businesslike
flurry. ..
Wilford Jordan, gracious host, paled in comparison to
Wilford Jordan, man of the Spirit. Except for brief periods when he served in a
bishopric or as a stake high councilor, Wilford’s only callings were those
associated with the stake or general Church missionary effort. He never ceased
his missionary labors, beginning with a call to a full-time mission in 1942 and
ending with his service as a counselor in the Florida Tallahassee Mission
before his death in 1985. During this forty-three-year period, the number of
people he baptized ranged from as few as ten in one year to a high of
fifty-four in another. In all, he performed more than seven hundred baptisms.
The world would have been relatively unchanged by Wilford Jordan’s
sixty-five-year journey through it, except that he taught the gospel as few
others do.
…
His death made local headlines not only because he was so
well known, but also because of its unusual cause. Although he had handled
reptiles for much of his life, Wilford was bitten by the severed head of a
large cane snake, a type of rattlesnake common to the area. (It was customary
for him to catch snakes and keep them caged until he had time to kill and skin
them. The prepared skins were then given to prisoners at the nearby state
penitentiary, who fashioned them into belts; the edible flesh was properly
prepared and later eaten.) He had been bitten once before and survived. Wilford inadvertently brushed his hand against the
head and three or four inches of body that had been placed to one side. Snake’s
heads are able to deliver bites for some time after they are removed, and the
bite he received was severe. Poison from the wound at the base of his right
thumb moved quickly to all parts of Wilford’s body, resulting in his death
after three painful days.
Elder Mark E. Petersen of the Quorum of the Twelve once told
Wilford Watts Jordan in a blessing that he had been foreordained to be a
missionary on earth. Perhaps he has the privilege of continuing in that labor where he is now. But thousands who knew
him or knew of him in mortality can only offer deeply felt thanks to his family
for sharing him while he was here.
Debbra
