After many years and this second physical attempt, I found the grave of Betty Maud Clements in a Blumenau, Brazil cemetery yesterday morning. Her granddaughter — who died two years afterwards — is buried in the same grave.

I genuinely loved this quick trip to Blumenau and feel like really accomplished something good.

I spent the rest of the day site-seeing, reminiscing and generally enjoying the first city of my Brazilian mission in 1978-79.

Apparently, the straight, white, Mormon, male patriarchy have all of the answers.

Homosexuality ‘not in your DNA,’ says LDS leader
(more…)

Today is the 50th birthday of my twin brothers, 11 months younger than I (I’m still 50 as well, until next month).

Larry–Have a great day and know that we love you and are thinking of you on this momentous occasion.

Jerry–We miss you.

I’m sorry we couldn’t all be together for this day.

My brother just sent a photo of the marker we had erected for my brother who died last November.

I like the Comic Sans font (chosen by his twin brother).

Today, 21 July 2008, is the 100th anniversary of my grandfather’s birth in St. Joseph, Missouri.

He died when I was four, so I have limited memories of him, but I definitely do have memories. He had a huge impact on his son’s life (my Dad), which impacted we six grandsons as well.

Though he probably wouldn’t have lived to celebrate today regardless, it would have been nice to have him long enough for our entire family to know and appreciate him.

In his honor, I completely re-did our family’s genealogy/family history website and launched it today.

Happy Birthday, Spike!

A quote from my Mom today after I sent out this picture: “Wouldn’t Grandpa Spike be proud? He always said he wanted a grandkid for every tree on the place at Wheatland. Guess this would be pretty close.”

We arrived home early this afternoon after having spent lots of time with my honey’s family in Fairview since last Thursday night. We had a great time and as always, appreciate our families even more.

There were some 60 people there between Friday and Saturday, with only our immediate family by the time we left today.

The raison d’être for this event were these five folks (my honey’s dad on the bottom left):

Me and my honey:

Christopher and Allison demonstrate how we all feel:

See you in 2009?

The reunion is in the process of breaking up and we’ve had a great time. All of my honey’s father’s brothers and sisters and their families have left and only we core “immediate family” are still here. We’re eating lunch, bowling with the Wii and in my case, downloading over 800 photos I’ve taken over the last two days.

I hadn’t seen many of these folks since 1988, when I last attended, in Grover, Utah. A lot of people are older, a few have died and many of us are now in our prime (as far as we know:). It’s a nice mix of young, middle and older people — all of whom can learn something from each other — if they pay attention.

This is a great family with strong bonds and lots of love — just like mine. We are very lucky to be a part of this on both sides!

We had dinner with my honey’s dad tonight. He was in SLC to pick up a couple of his kids flying in tonight for the family reunion this weekend. Great guy.

We both took off tomorrow and Monday, so with the 4th of July on Friday, we have a nice 5-day weekend. We both need the break.

He’ll work on a couple of costumes he’s got in the pipe and I think I need to re-do my genealogy website. Last week I installed the latest version of the PHP-based software I use to host the information and I hosed something. I’m seeing cryptic messages about not being able to build display data from the database on certain pages. I may just re-do the CSS and graphics while I’m at it. It’s been a couple of years and I don’t like stale.

Once again, the LDS church is in trouble with another religion for competing for the same souls after-death. Click HERE for the article in today’s Salt Lake Tribune.

It reminds me of last year when I took my genealogy roadtrip to St. Joseph, Missouri and was told by the cute little old lady in the NW MO Genealogical Society‘s office that they had “records that the Mormons don’t know we have. And we’re not going to give them to them.”

She then winked at me conspiratorially as she took me to the original Buchanan Country courthouse records sequestered in hundreds of boxes in their basement to see if any of my ancestors had been in “trouble with the law” (I suspected they had; for the most part, I was wrong).

I guess I do genealogy to trace the past and to understand where I came from; the LDS are doing it to feather what they believe is their eternal caps, with little regard to the feelings and beliefs of others who are currently sharing this same world. Ballsy.