Grandma Amy's PB

Yesterday I got my Great-Grandma Amy Clarissa Neel Spackman's PB in the mail. This is from my direct maternal line, all my female DNA comes through her. She was born in Oakley, UT in 1896 and died in 1975. (I was a baby when my Mom took me to her funeral in Canada.) Her family moved to the Cardston, Alberta area sometime in the 1890's because they are not in the 1900 US census. And I haven't seen the Canadian census records online yet.

Since the pictures aren't great I will put it up for the family. Even though it is still written out, instead of typed, it is written in the modern style with an opening and closing paragraph, but the spelling and punctuation still need work.

"Stirling Aug 5, 1821

A blessing given by Theo. Brandley Patriarch upon the head of Amy C Neal Spackman daughter of John M and Cora Walker Neal born Dec 30, 1896 at Okley, Utah.

Sister Amy in asmuch as it is thy desire to receive a blessing from the Lord, I place my hands upon they head to pronounce and seal upon thee in the authority of the Holy Priesthood which I hold thy Patriarchal blessing, and I pray God the Eternal Father to inspire the same by His Holy spirit. Though are a descendant of Joseph through the loins of Ephraim, and therefore entitled to the blessings of the new and everlasting covenant, which the Lord has again revealed for the benefit of his children.

Thy guardian angel has been around about your thee and has protected you in the hour of danger, thy life has been spared by the power of God that thou mayest perform they mission upon the earth and fill the measure of thy creation. Let thy life be fulfilled with gladness and thanksgiving unto the Lord for his mercy and His goodness towards thee. Serve Him with all thy heart and mind, keep His commandments and His blessings will be with thee, thy body will be strong _____ [word I can't read] and thine health shall be given unto thee. Put thine trust in God, seek Him in earnest prayer and every righteous desire of thine heart will be granted unto thee and thou shalt live until thou art satisfied with life. Seek for wisdom and the light of the Holy spirit will guide thee in thine labors in life, both spiritual and temporal and thou shalt see the hands of the Lord made manifest in thine behalf. Be thine comforted for the Lord will never forsake thee, and the powers of darkness shall not prevail against thee as long as it is thy desire to serve the Lord, thou shalt be blessed in thine family in thine incomming and outgoing The guardian angel will continue to watch over thee Seek earnestly for the help of the Lord for it shall be thine privilege to go to the house of the Lord and labor for thine fathers house. Be humble and prayerful and every Gift requisite for the accomplishment of thine work on the earth will be given unto thee.

I seal you up unto eternal life to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection and with thine companion and many of thine kindred enter into life everlasting. All of which blessings will come unto thee through thine faithfulness in doing the will of the Lord.

I seal them upon thee in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

FUNK

Friday afternoon I got all excited because my period didn't show up. I took a pregnancy test and it said NO! But I was still hoping, until Saturday morning. I was then in a funk all day. I wanted to make yummy potatoes, but the dishes were all dirty and Dave nor I was in the mood to load the dishwasher. So Dave ordered pizza. And gave me lots of hugs. :) What got me out of my funk was preparing my sunday school lesson for today. It might be because I was reading the scriptures, focusing on something instead of myself, who knows, but I was glad the funk went away.

The thing about socialized medicine, NHS, here in England is that when you register for a doctor you HAVE TO go to the doctor that is closest to you. There is NO CHOICE. You can actually get in trouble for going to the wrong doctor. Well, Dave does not do well with change, so he has had the same doctor for a while even though he has not lived there for about 10 years. Now that we are doing the whole fertility testing I made him change doctors, especially since the old doctor was a 45 minute drive and my doctor was only a 5 minute walk. Dave has his tests this week. I have been thinking that even if his tests come back normal that I want to see a fertility specialist. Yep, all these tests have been with the GP, not a specialist. I'm just not comfortable with the fact that the GP's here in England only have a Bachelor's degree. They don't even have to go to medical school for 7 years AFTER their Bachelor's degree, like in the US. But you have to ask the GP's permission to see any specialist. When I did my fertility testing the GP was a new grad, and so has Dave's, so maybe I can bully the newbie into letting me get a referral to the fertility specialist? Only I would do it nicely like Loralei Gilmore.

David Miliband MP

Last week the university announced David Miliband was coming to campus to speak. He is an MP (I don't know what MP stands for, but it's like the Parliament version of the House of Representatives) for South Shields, which is in northeast England. Back in 2010 "my Dave" voted for him to be the next leader of the Labour Party. Dave is a card carrying member of the Labour Party, which I think is the British version of the Democratic Party. Anyway, David Miliband lost the election to his brother Ed, which is kinda funny.

They had it set up as more of a Q&A, so people were asking all sorts of questions. This guy was blogging the whole time, so you can go to his blog and check it out. Towards the middle of the session the mediator/guy who picked the people for the questions was standing in front of a microphone and clicking his pen. It was annoying, so I stood up and asked him to stop. Then David Miliband asked me if he was doing anything that annoyed me, he wasn't. I got a few laughs and an applause. Actually, if I was a British citizen I would vote for him. He had clear and passionate answers and was able to make bad questions into good answers. Since there was no media there was no pressure for a sound bite.

The bald guy on the right was the clicker.

If you can see the wall behind them it has the list of David Miliband's websites.

Do you think he has a politician power tie on?

Snuggle

Dave and I have been married for 9 months now. Since we are both in our late 30's and both of us were living on our own for a while, I knew that we might have some challenges that typical newlyweds might not have. Before we got married I decided to mentally prepare myself for the compromises and clashes from having our own way of doing the dishes, laundry, etc. Of course you can't prepare for random or emergencies. The one thing I didn't think of was snuggling. I found that this is my favorite thing about marriage. What is your favorite thing about marriage?

cars and sunday school

[I must preface this by saying it is Dave's car, not mine. I would never have bought that car. It's too small for someone as tall as Dave.] Well, Dave took the car to get inspected and it failed. There are multiple things wrong with it and the mechanic said it would cost £400 to fix it. So...yep, we don't have the money right now to fix it so we have to wait until Dave's next pay check. So the past couple of weeks Dave has had to take the bus to work and we have walked to church with our friend Wanda driving us home afterward. I don't mind walking everywhere, but there is the odd need to go farther than around Walsall, which puts a kink in hanging out with friends. Dave calculated that it now is cheaper to have a car in England than it is to ride the bus/train. The bus/train companies have increased their prices so much that it's cheaper to drive. It costs £1.70 to ride the bus/train one way. I will be glad when the car gets fixed. Hopefully a new battery will be installed on Monday so Dave can actually drive it to the mechanics to get fixed!

I have taught a couple of lessons in my new Sunday School class. It's the new member/investigator class. The manual is just the one that they have been using for RS/Priesthood lessons for the last couple of years. However, there is only one person in the class and he is in his 70's. He was baptized about two years ago, but he is a slow learner so that is why he has stayed in the class instead of moving on to to regular adult SS class. In the second class I taught, I found out he doesn't have his PB yet, so I decided to do a lesson on that (instead of the manual) to help him get on the path to get his PB. This really helped me understand where his gospel knowledge is, which is pretty basic. He was confusing baptisms and blessings. I decided the next lesson will be on teaching the differences between the kinds of blessings there are with the Priesthood. I think I will have to do more of a demonstration too, instead of just stand at the front of the class and speak. Good thing the missionaries go to the class, I can recruit them to help. I'll let you know if it works.