From Dad January 25, 2015

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Re: Letter 8 of 3

Dear Riley:

We received two photos, and a brief report from President Senior, so we know you arrived safely.  We also watched the video of new arrivals and transfers.  You were featured for less than half a second, but we paused it and enjoyed the moment.  President and Sister Senior seem to have a good handle on things and we’re confident you’re in good hands. It’s readily apparent they love the work, the Missionaries, and that they have fun.  You’re in for an awesome life-changing experience.  Riley’s in Thailand!!  We can hardly wait to hear your report on your first days, your assigned area, companion, living conditions, the work, the food, the language, TOILETS, etc…  We’re SO pleased you’re serving. 

We’re still adjusting to the void here at home.  One thing sort of funny is the amount of food we prepare.  We frequently have LOTS of leftovers and are needing to adjust the recipe sizes. Our Riley really ate a lot.  Josie is missing you terribly and acting out in negative ways.  The other day she was talking and trying to make sense of everything.  She needed reassurance that you were simply gone for awhile and not dead like Eric.  We expect she will be completely undone when Cambry leaves for study abroad in April.  Hopefully by then she will have settled in to your absence a little better.

The weather has been fairly nice; mostly sunshine, occasional rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains.  In spite of relatively little snow in the valley, and very little precipitation early in the season, our snow packs are around average.  It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly time to be thinking about pruning and gardening.

Today was Ward Conference and we had good meetings.  The theme was Family History and Temple Service.  I really enjoy the 9:00 AM schedule and for some reason I have a lot more uninterrupted family time.  President B and I went out on Ward Conference visits to two good families last Thursday. I came back impressed by both the Spirit’s prompting to visit certain families, and President B’s leadership.  He has an extraordinary ability to invite the Spirit into a conversation in a completely natural way without seeming overbearing.  I returned home with the confirmation from the Spirit that God is in charge, that He guides and directs this Church, that He knows and loves His children, and that He is an active participant in their lives.

Last Friday, Leadelle and I went to dinner over at Grandma and Grandpa Parish’s.  They had given me a special dinner for my birthday.  We ate duck.  Delicious!  Afterwards, we spontaneously decided to go to the movie and went to see The Imitation Game.  This was the fascinating true story of the men who broke Germany’s Enigma encryption code during WWII.  Germany considered the code unbreakable because it changed daily and each day there were over 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 permutations, only one of which was the correct algorithm to solve the encrypted messages.  Aside from the blatantly political agenda being pushed at the end, I found it very enjoyable.  I went online the following day and found some additional videos explaining the Enigma machine, its strengths and weaknesses, and how a machine was built which exploited its flaw and was capable of breaking the code in less than 20 minutes.  I thought “Riley would LOVE this!”  Building one of the first computers, programming it to solve an apparently impossible problem, and figuring out an approach which, through mathematical deduction was able to streamline the process and drastically improve the speed at which the code could be cracked. According to the movie, the War was won largely through statistical analysis of all the intelligence and calculated decisions of which intelligence to act on in order to win the war without letting the Germans know we had broken their code.  Great pains were taken to hide the fact that the code had been broken even from the highest levels of Allied forces leadership.   This was finally declassified in the 90’s.  (Material for discussion in a couple years.)

Well, it’s about 7:00 AM for you.  I’m going to send this so you’ll get it for your P day.  We love you and pray for you daily.  Chin up! Shoulders back!  It’s a great time to be a missionary.

Love,

Dad