It's a Little Less Scary Out There

Whew!! We made it although the mentality of the citizens out here leaves you wondering. One proposition that passed had to do with animals not being able to roam freely and living in too crowded conditions. Wouldn't you think we'd be a little more concerned about the living conditions of people instead? Another proposition that didn't pass had to do with the notification of parents if their under age children wanted an abortion. In other words, people care more about animals than they do their own children. Yes, indeed, we must have that same law on our books that Arkansas was trying to get rid of.

Scary Times

Everyone keeps reminding us that we're not doing our part in keeping up with the blog. What can we say other than we live rather dull lives and that we've spent countless hours during the past 4 months working on Prop 8. For the benefit of those who keep up with our blog (besides our kids), we were called to serve on the finance committee which entailed spending 2-3 nights a week keeping track of the donations that were sent in by the church members to ProtectMarriage.com. We helped process millions of dollars and hopefully, it will all pay off when the election is over this week. Steve has also been involved with the members in our area who are making phone calls, walking the precincts, and will be doing exit polling on Tuesday. The members have been very generous with their time and money.

This is a picture that our bishop e-mailed to us that reflects the battle we've undertaken:



The following is from an e-mail that was forwarded to me of an experience of one sister up in Northern California:

"I had a very disturbing experience yesterday that I would like to share with those of you that live outside of California (or outside of the San Francisco Bay Area). This weekend we have stake conference. Our stake conference always begins with a stake temple session on Friday or Thursday night. Early Friday morning I received a call from the second counselor in our bishopric to let me know that there would be numerous protesters outside the temple, and to remind everyone to stay calm and to drive carefully. The beautiful Oakland Temple is located right across the bay from San Francisco, very close to the city of Berkeley. Apparently the opposition to proposition 8, the amendment that seeks to make marriage in CA between a man and a woman again, has realized the deep involvement of the church and begun to protest right outside of the temple and harass temple patrons. The fastest way to get to the temple from our house is to take the 680 freeway, but the exit is a bit tricky. The off ramp is extremely short and straight uphill. You then make an almost blind left turn, an immediate right and another left into the parking lot. As we approached the off ramp, I realized there would be trouble. There was a backup onto the freeway from cars stalled on the off ramp. As we moved forward inches at a time, we realized this was due to a large group of loud protesters who were standing on both sides of the street, yelling, screaming and waving signs. When we got to the top of the offramp, ready to make our turn, one protester jumped out right in front of our car. It took my husband all his self control to carefully maneuver around him to the left and proceed to the temple. I tried not to listen to all they were shouting at us, but I was shaking as I got to the temple front door. Several of the sisters, especially the ones driving on their own, were crying (which made me snap out of it and go into RS President mode to comfort them). Later, as I was sitting in the perfect quiet of the chapel, I couldn't help but think of Lehi's dream, and the people who mocked the Saints from the big spacious building but 'we heeded them not.' It was a truly surreal experience, I'd never thougth that I would have to go through an angry crowd to get to the temple. As we left late at night, the protesters had dispersed, temple security (who all looked very large and Tongan) stood by the gates. I never saw a single police man. Please pray for those of us in California fighting for prop 8--it's getting kind of scary out here!"

It has gotten scary and also very ugly too. The opposition's ads accuse us of hate and discrimination and our signs are stolen or destroyed almost as fast as they are put up. Two more days -- please do remember us in your prayers.