Life Brings Changes, Growth, and Humor

The next five years in Thousand Oaks brought many new experiences in my life which gave me opportunities to learn and grow.  My main focus at this time was my family and trying to be a better mom.  I worked harder at having quality Family Home Evenings.  With seven children now ranging in age from a a new baby to those dreaded teenagers it was hard to reach them all.  Jeanie and Debbie were now in high school having graduated from Waverly Junior High school (Jeanie was valedictorian.  Kathi was in sixth grade and Jon had started kindergarten.  That left me at home with just the baby for at least part of the day.  This gave me an opportunity to attend the traveling "Education Weeks" which were held in California in areas where there were a large number of church members.  They were kind of like the education weeks now held on the BYU campus every year only on a smaller scale.  These usually lasted 2 or 3 days, and you could attend classes you were interested in.  I loved these opportunities to learn more about the church.  When one was being held in the San Fernando valley, about twenty miles from our home, I decided to take Lea and go.  I packed her up in her carrier, took extra bottles just in case I couldn't find a time or place to nurse her, and took off for the day.  I didn't know how this was going to work but I took a chance.  I wasn't disappointed.  Lea was SO good through all the classes so I was even able to take notes.  Dad and I also took the opportunity to attend the monthly "Know Your Religion" series which were held in stake centers in the evening.  I loved learning all I could about the church and my testimony grew from these opportunities.

A great tradition was established during those first years in Thousand Oaks.  The bishop in our ward arranged a campout for the all the members of our ward  Every summer he would reserve a camp sight at Lopez Lake, a resort about 150 miles away.  We went that first year and every year after.  But that was only the beginning.  When the ward quit going, the Mortensens did not.  Our family loved to camp, and as the resort grew and grew with boat rentals, waterslide, and slack lines added our family grew and grew with it.  At first we would rent a "patio" boat for our family until it no longer held our growing family.  We have been going every year to Lake Lopez for the past 48 years and counting.
Those now attending range from the 60 to 70.  About ten years ago we buried a time capsule at the lake which we will did up on our 50th anniversary.  I just hope I will still be around.  I hope to do a whole posting on just our experiences at Lake Lopez over the years.  So many wonderful memories.

I just have to include some humor in this post.  I hate to read boring histories that are more like travelogues.  So .... I cannot help but laugh even now when I recall this incident.  It began when we decided to buy a few chicks with the idea of having our own eggs and even some home grown dinners.  Dad had had a lot of experience killing and preparing chickens for eating in his youth.  That last idea soon came to an end when the kids started naming all the chicks.  I only remember one of those names which was, "Roadrunner".  They loved playing games with the those chicks until they grew into hens and one rooster.  It was that rooster who soon became a problem.  He would roost at night in the tree in our back yard right in back of our bedroom.  Do roosters crow early in the morning?  Yes!!  And sometimes all night.  It was one of those "sometimes" nights that my husband could not sleep because that rooster would not stop crowing.  I could only watch as he jumped out of bed, and dressed only in his underwear, he ran outside, climbed up that tree, grabbed the rooster by the neck, shook him violently five or six times while yelling, "shut up you dumb rooster" (or something even worse), then threw him to the ground.  Needless to say that rooster ended up on our Sunday dinner table.  The boys favorite part of this incident was when Dad chopped of the roosters head and talked him into letting go of its' legs.  You don't have to guess why they thought that this was "cool".

Answers and Blessings Come

I left you hanging in that last post for a long, long time ( 6 years).  If you have been trying to follow this blog I'm sure by now you have just given up.  I won't try to explain or make excuses, but the Spirit has been prompting for quite some time to  "get with it again" or I will be running out of time.  When the Spirit speaks I try to listen.  So now my history, which is contained in this blog, has become a priority.  My eyesight is going as is the mobility in my hands, not to mention my brain which is losing cells at an accelerated pace.

Now to get back to that last post in which I left you hanging.  It ended with Jon, now about 4 years old, asked me question about the baby I was caring for at the time.  He loved that little baby and cried every time her mother came to pick her up.  Now for that question which he asked.  One day when that baby went out the door he turned to me and asked, "How can we get a baby we can keep?"  How could I answer that question when doctors had told me after the twins were born that I would never be able to conceive again because of medical issues.  We had been blessed to have Jon join our family because of a special blessing Jim (my husband) had been given when he was "set a part" as new elders quorum president in our ward.  Because of that miracle we named him Jon which means "Gift from God."                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                     The answer which I gave to Jon's question answer was, "We'll have to ask Heavenly Father" to which he said,  "Let's go ask Him right now".  What do I do?  I certainly didn't want to destroy the innocent faith he had that God does answer prayers.  He'd learned that in Primary.  Did I have the faith that Jon had?  Now I had to test it.  So we went together to the bedroom,  knelt beside the bed and Jon said a simple prayer asking God for a baby sister "in the name of Jesus Christ."

What was the result of this child's prayer?  Nine months later we were blessed with new baby girl whom we named Lea Rae.  After her birth neither I nor any one in the family could call her "my baby" or "our baby".  If we did,  Jon would say, "She's not your baby.  She's my baby.  You didn't pray for her.  I did."  From then on Lea was his baby and he showed it by the way he doted over her.  But she was blessing to our whole family.


Note:  As long as it has taken me to write this short posting, I will have to live to be 100 years old to finish the history of my life in this blog.  But I'm going to keep going as long as I can.

Life Begins in Thousand Oaks

As I return back to my history, we had just moved to Thousand Oaks, California. The community at this time was relatively small, about thirty-five thousand. We liked that. The house we rented was older, but quite adequate for our family. I only wished it had had a family room ... then it would have been perfect. Well maybe not quite perfect because I really hated trying to keep that antiquated asphalt tile in the kitchen clean and shiny. It required a lot of scrubbing, waxing, stripping, and then more scrubbing, and waxing. It was a pain.

We liked the schools, and the ward where we attended church. There were only two wards there in the Conejo Valley (the valley where Thousand Oaks was located) and our stake center was in Simi Valley, over the hill. The first calling in the ward that I received was a teacher of the Guide Patrol which were the eleven-year-old boys in Primary. They were actually out of Cubs and in the regular scouting program once they turned eleven. However, the regular scouting program was under the direction of the Young Men's organization, and boy didn't graduate into that program until they were twelve. So they remained under the direction of the Primary. This was different from what the local councils and scout executives were used to, and they never quite understood what the "Mormon" church was doing to the scouting program. So I not only taught scouting skills but, but the teachings of the Articles of Faith which the boys had to memorize before they graduated. At that time Primary was held on a week day and was longer in length than it is now, so I was able to get it all in. This was my first exposure to the scouting program, and I loved it. Just a short time later I was also called to teach the "Theology" lesson once a month in Relief Society. Relief Society was also held on a weekday at that time.

Shortly after we moved to Thousand Oaks I became acquainted with a young sister who had recently given birth to a baby girl. She was a school teacher by profession and was anxious to get back to work, but needed day care for the baby. She asked if I would consider it, and I accepted. I figured a little extra spending money couldn't hurt, and it had been over three years since I had the fun of a new baby in the house. Jon was the only one home during the day as all the other children were in school. So he became my "big helper". Oh, how he loved that baby!

Every day he would cry when the mom came to pick her up. It was at one of these frustrating moments that he turned to me and asked me a question ... a question that not only took me by complete surprise, but one that I didn't know how to answer. I needed help.

So Blessed

It's been a long dry spell of blogging for me. It's time to get started again, especially since it was one of my New Year's resolutions. And in just two days it will be May. A little slow getting started I would say. But before I continue with writing about my life, I have to write about this incredible month of April, 2011, in which I experienced so many blessings and so many answers to prayers. Some of these are:

• My recovery from one of the longest bouts of depression that I have had in a long, long, time. SO grateful for that.
• Relevant messages received from latter day prophets at the General Conference of the Church in April. So many seemed directed just to me.
• The celebration of the atonement and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The realization of His great sacrifice and His love for me was so real and meaningful to me this year ... more so than I can remember in the past. I am so grateful to Him.
• The successful surgery on my little great grandson, Brayden, who suffers from leukemia. What an amazingly brave little guy he is. And what dedicated and loving parents he has, especially since there are three other small children in the home who need their love and attention as well.
• The passing of a very critical test by our daughter, Rochelle, who had so little time to study and tried to keep the Lord and family first in her order of priorities. Why am I not surprised that she passed this test with relative ease. She will testify that her performance was beyond her own expected abilities. Prayers were answered.
• A new great grandson, Lennox, born and two baby great granddaughters, Abby and blessed.
• A great granddaughter, Nicole, baptized.
• A grandson, Jared, and his wife, Ashley, both graduating from Brigham Young University.
• A new grandson joining the family through adoption. The long and tedious process of adopting children from Ethiopia had recently become more difficult because of new restraints and red tape. Again, I believe, it was through family prayers the Dagim slipped through as one of the last to avoid these new restrictions. Our new grandson should be in his new home with Len and Kathi in about a month. We are excited to welcome him home and into our family in about a month. Another special blessing.
• A special dream I had which I knew was not JUST a dream, but a warning from our Father in Heaven regarding our family. We all know the evils and the lack of integrity that surrounds us all in these latter days. This is Satan's last chance to gather souls to his cause. No one, no family is exempt from his efforts, including ours. We need to be watchful and diligent in teaching and being proper role models for members of our family. We are being targeted and we will be vulnerable if we begin to yield to even the smallest of temptations or compromise, even a little bit, the teachings of the restored gospel. This is how Satan gets his foot in the door. We must remain valiant in being true disciples of Christ and in raising righteous families. And that begins with me.
• My wonderful, awesome, sensational, family. No greater blessing than that! Love you all.

Thousand Oaks - Our New Home

It was the end of summer of 1969 when we began looking for a home close to Canoga Park where Jim had been transferred. We had been successful in selling our home in Novato which had been left in such bad shape. We were not able to make any profit on the house due to the cost of repairs and realtor fees, so we knew we would have to rent again even though we had been paying on that house for five years. That experience led me to resolve that I would always leave any home we rented in better condition than when we moved in.

We really didn't want to live in the San Fernando valley which would have been closest to Jim's work because it was hot, crowded and costly. So we began looking in the Conejo Valley, further north and west. Development was just beginning to "take off" there so it was still considered somewhat rural. We liked that, and it was still only about a 30 minute drive for Jim. That wasn't too bad for California where people were used to long commutes in order to live in nicer communities. With all the kids in tow, we began looking in Simi Valley, a newer small city. It was nice, but there weren't too many places to rent, especially to a family with 6 children. We were getting a little discouraged and the children were getting tired of being in the car as we drove from place to place. So we stopped at a little store to get them snacks and drinks and to let them run around. In the store we began talking to a man and mentioned we were looking for a place to rent without much success. Well, to make a long story short, this man mentioned that he had just bought a new home in Thousand Oaks (the next community over the hill from Simi Valley) and was looking to rent his current home, also in Thousand Oaks and he didn't seem too reluctant to rent to a family of 8. I guess it was because the home had 5 bedrooms. We were able to rent that home at a ridiculously low price, and it just "felt" right. Our prayers had been answered.

It was a few weeks before we were able to move in, and school was about to start, so we moved into a motel. The kids loved that because there was a swimming pool. The first thing they did when we arrived was put on their swim suits and head for the pool, with little Jon (who was now just 3 years old) and us right behind. All of the older children had taken swimming lessons and were pretty much water safe, so they just ran and jumped into the pool. All of a sudden we watched in horror as Jon ran right after them and jumped into the pool, clothes and all. It only took seconds for Jim to jump in after him, fully clothed as well, to haul out a sputtering and choking little boy. It was time to get Jon some swimming lessons.

The next few weeks were a little crazy taking Jeanie and Debbie to Waverly Junior High School and Kathi and the twins to Glenwood Elementary school and then picking them up after school every day. We were looking forward to moving into what would be our home for quite a few years on Dryden Street in Thousand Oaks. And best of all, we loved Thousand Oaks!

Saying good-bye to Huntington Beach

Random memories associated with our 2 years in Huntington Beach include:

* Being a "widow" with 6 kids much of the time

* Kathi's beginning love affair with guinea pigs & learning that they can't be left out in the

sun very long (especially if they are black)

* Young Jim's love affair with books (or most likely his love of competition)

* Debbie's continuing love of dancing and dancing lessons (she was getting good!) She even

gave lessons to the neighbor kids on our back patio.

* Jeanie's special friendship with Stephanie, our blind next door neighbor

* Rochelle, the quiet achiever in school, great reader and student, but not as competitive as

Jim.

* A little two-year-old boy on his seagull-decorated tricycle, dressed as a cricket, riding in

the 24th of July Primary celebration.

* A visit from my good friend, Irene Laycock, who came from Novato to do a

Primary workshop for our teachers.

* A trip back to Novato by myself to speak at a Primary workshop for her. I drove

all the way without getting lost. Those who know me know that that is a near miracle.

* Spending a lot of money buying our first encyclopedias, Childcraft, and Science Year books

We wanted our children to have good books available to help them with school work.

* Discovering that renters rarely take care of someone else's property. I'm talking about our

home back in Novato that we rented. When Jim drove there to check on it he found it a

wreck, so we decided to fix it up and put it on the market.

After two years in Huntington Beach, Jim received a change of responsibility at Hughes, and a transfer to the facility in Canoga Park. He would no longer be the director over field engineering which meant no more long-distance traveling ... Yea! He was made a supervisor over design requirements for missiles and missile launchers being used in the Vietnam war. So here we go again ... another move. But this time we had the hope that this move would be a permanent one.

Another Test of Faith

SUNDAY, AUGUST 29, 2010

I was not the only one to have a church leadership problem in Huntington Beach. I only include these negative experiences because I want anyone who reads this blog, especially my family, to know that we all have experiences in this life that could test our testimony of the truth if we let them. Priesthood leaders are not perfect. They make mistakes. But we can either let these weaknesses drive us away from Christ and His church or we can learn to be understanding, compassionate, and patient as we all grow in the gospel.

This was a challenge that Jim had while he was serving as Young Men's president. The incident took place at a fathers and sons outing where the traditional planned balloon fight was in progress. The boys and their leaders were all involved, having a great time when someone noticed that not a single member of the stake presidency was participating in the activity. Instead, they were all sitting and visiting in their nice dry trailer in which they had camped. The boys AND their leaders decided it was time for them to get a little wet like the the rest of them. Knowing Jim, I'm sure he was right there helping to make this decision. He has been known to throw the first balloon at any such event. But instead of balloons, they were waiting with buckets of water as they called out to the stake president in his camper. But it was his counselor that opened the door and stepped out. The Jim and his counselor let him have it with buckets of water and took off running. The not-so-happy counselor began chasing and yelling at them. As he ran, he stumbled and fell, bruising his pride. Now he was REALLY mad. He got up, stood in the bed of a nearby truck, and yelled at the boys, fathers and their leaders in not-so nice language that if anyone threw one more balloon that he would "beat them within an inch of their life." The boys were shocked at that response, as were the leaders, and most of them and their fathers packed up and went home. This annual fathers and sons camping experience was ruined.

It was a month or so later that Jim went in for his temple interview, and wouldn't you know, it was this counselor who did the interviewing. When he was asked if he had any bad feelings toward any priesthood leader, he responded that he had problems with him, the counselor, and he told him why. He told him that he thought his language and actions were unworthy of a stake priesthood leader. Not knowing what to do, the counselor sent him to see the Stake President.

It was at the next stake conference that is leader humbled himself enough to apologize to all the members of the stake, especially the boys, for his inappropriate behavior. Jim was able to raise his arm to sustain this man, and thereafter held no grudges. That was humbling for him as well.

As I said, we can learn from these kinds of experiences, or we can become bitter and resentful. But I choose to not let anyone, not even my priesthood leaders, destroy my testimony or drive me away from the Church. Christ is perfect and His church is true. That I cannot and will not deny for any reason. And I know Jim feels the same way.