Nina and I had a very pleasant weekend. We both took quite a few pictures — and have both uploaded pictures to our picture albums. The main event on Friday was the Vienna Boys Choir concert at the Jensen Center. The concert was just sublime. We followed that on Saturday starting with a session at the Idaho Falls Temple, some shopping, and eating at a favorite restaurant. Sunday evening we hosted the youth of our Ward for a youth fireside where Nina and I talked about the Church around the world.

Preparing for the fireside got us thinking about all the places we’ve lived and gone to Church as well as all the other places we’ve been either on business or on vacation. Going the Church is just a normal activity for us, wherever we are in the world. In our married lives we’ve lived in:

• New Haven, Connecticut, where we attended the New Haven Branch (or at least, that’s where we went to church before we got married, got married in that building, and then left the next day to go to Texas)
• San Angelo, Texas where I was going to an Air Force technical school. The bishop of the ward in San Angelo was able to arrange for me to get into the airborne reconnaissance program which resulted being sent to Japan
• Soda Springs, Idaho. We went to my parents’ home in December, 1964, after I finished technical school. Jim was given a name and blessing there. Nina stayed with my parents for the next six months while I went to Nevada for survival training
• Stead AFB, Nevada where I went to church by myself on the only Sunday I had free while going through a pretty brutal four-week survival training program
• Yokota AFB, Japan where I attended the serviceman’s branch before Nina and Jim came over to join me
• Johnson AFB, Japan where we attended the servicemens branch. Nina and Jim came over in August, 1965 and we left in August, 1968. Before we left I served in the Branch Presidency as a counselor and Nina served in the Relief Society as a counselor
• Danang AFB, Vietnam where I attended the servicemens group which met at the base chapel on Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. That was plenty early and I must confess that I slept through a few meetings. I usually was able to attend once per three-week temporary duty assignment trips to Vietnam. For almost two years I was on a three-week in Vietnam, two-week in Japan rotation
• Lafayette Second Ward, Lafayette, Indiana while attending Purdue University. After getting out of the Air Force in August, 1968, we moved to West Lafayette and attended this ward for the next three years
• Cleveland Second Ward, Cleveland, Ohio. We moved to Mentor on the Lake, Ohio from Indiana when I was transferred to Cleveland by TRW. This time marked lots and lots of driving — for instance, Nina would pick up kids all over northeastern Ohio to take them to Primary on Tuesday afternoons. The drive was so long that she’d bring dinner in the VW bus to feed the kids on the way home
• Duesseldorf Ward, Duesseldorf, Germany. We attended this ward for about four months after we arrived in Germany on assignment from TRW in January, 1973
• Krefeld Branch, Krefeld, Germany where I had been called as the Branch President. We moved to Krefeld and lived there for the next fifteen months
• Munich 2nd Branch, Munich, Germany. TRW had transferred us to Munich so, of course, we moved. Nina was the Relief Society President while we were living there
• Kirtland Ward, Chardon, Ohio. The Kirtland Ward had been formed a few weeks before we moved back to the Cleveland area in the summer of 1976. There wasn’t a building, yet, so the ward met at the local community college, at a rented school building, and at a junior high school until the building was completed. Then the building was burned down by an arsonist and we moved back to the junior high school while the building was rebuilt
• Pleasant View Ward, Pleasant View, Utah. I took a job with Thiokol Corporation (since renamed ATK Thiokol) and we moved to Utah in the spring of 1969
• Tsukuba Ward, Tsukuba, Japan. After Thiokol and a couple of years of independent consulting, I took a job with LSI Logic and an assignment in Japan. We moved to Japan in August, 1995 and returned to the United States in August, 1998
• Fremont Third Ward, Fremont, California. From Japan we had a brief stop in California where we rented a home in Fremont. While we were there only about three months, this was by far the most friendly ward we have ever attended. Shortly after we left, three wards were divided into five wards and the few people we knew were all dispersed into the other wards
• Mountain Shadows Ward, Colorado Springs, Colorado. From California we moved to Colorado Springs and spent a wonderful five years in the Mountain Shadows Ward, including building and moving into a new ward building
• Juniper Hills Ward, Pocatello, Idaho. This is our current ward. We moved here in the summer of 2004 and will likely be here for years to come (but who knows?)

That’s quite a few places to live and attend church. Traveling on business as well as on vacation adds many other locations where we’ve been able to attend Church — Connecticut, South Carolina, West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, California, Oregon, Wyoming, and Washington are places that come to mind in the US. Overseas Church attendance includes Spain, France, Switzerland, Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Belgium. There are surely more that Nina can add to the list. Church has certainly been an important part of our travels! That’s why we need the occasional nice, quiet weekends, I’m sure….