Of Family History, Love of Family, doctors, and Prophets

This has been an interesting week!

As the week started we had quite a few appointments scheduled, We got telephone calls asking us to shift some, and a few people weren’t home when we arrived, so we ended up with fewer than we had hoped for. Therefore we found ourselves driving around trying to think of someone we could visit.

We thought of a sister in a nursing home. Her name is Clydella Likes. She is about 83, but is alert and very pleasant to talk with. She recently had a bout with pneumonia, so has been in the intensive care end of the nursing home. We found her still in that part of the building, and began talking with her.

A sweet member, Clydella Likes who is recuperating here in a nursing home.

Almost immediately we began talking about her family, so Sister Howlett got a piece of paper and started writing down what we were hearing. Her meal time was approaching, so we had about an hour to gather as much information as we could. She was amazing! She could remember names, birth dates, places where people were born or died, etc. for all of her children, her and her husband, and her husband's parents and siblings. She could give the death dates and locations for most of those that had died. We were amazed at her memory. We invited her to consider going to the temple, first for herself, then to be sealed to these family members after their work is done. She began to hope to do so.

After we had finished the other visits for the night, we came home and wanted to get all of the information into PAF while it was still fresh and we could interpret the notes we had made. I started entering the data with Sr. Howlett helping to interpret the notes. Once I had it started, she got the other computer going and went up to FamilySearch to try to confirm as much of the information as we could against other sources.

Clydella Likes listening to Elder Howlett tell her about the PAF files we had printed up with her information she gave us.

It was amazing how acurate Clydella’s information was. We found some minor things to change (like the years of birth or death that she had been trying to figure out), but Sister Howlett also found information in census records that gave us the names of some of her grandparents, and even the place of birth of great-grandparents. We kept at it until after 11 P.M. before we quit. The next day we finished putting everything we had into PAF and printed it so we could take it to her. It was a few days before we could return to the care center to show her what we had. The next thing is to create an account for her and get the data entered into new.FamilySearch and compared with existing records there. What fun!

Elder Howlett had been having some severe pains in his lower back, on the right side which have been increasing in their occurance and intensity. The pains had finally been subsiding a little, but though they didn’t last as long, they were still troubling him, and when we got a call from the mission president, we expressed our uncertainty about how things were going – particularly about the kind of care we were getting in the local health facilities. We had decided to change some of our arrangements for local care, because we weren’t going to be able to see the doctor we had signed up with until the middle of May.


Beautiful Pike's Peak is just west of Colorado Springs.

The mission president’s wife, who is a nurse, talked with us too, and it was suggested we make a trip to Colorado Springs and see an LDS doctor there who had done a good job with several missionaries in the past. The next day, we made some more phone calls, including one to this Colorado doctor, and we decided to make the trip. We went to the walk-in clinic in Garden City and got copies of all of the records they had created. (By the way, this experience suggests that there is some real important work being done in the recording of medical records and keeping them filed properly. We had no idea of the extent of that side of the medical business.)

Wednesday morning we were on our way at 07:35 A.M. We were in Colorado Springs in time to get to the Doctor’s office to start our care before the lunch break. After the office cleared out, we had two nurse practitioners and the doctor (a D.O.) working with us. They reviewed the records we brought with us, then investigated things on their own. They answered lots of questions we had had, and suggested possible new ideas to explain the symptoms.

A similar Microcurrent Therapy Machine was used on Elder Howlett.

After all this they put Elder Howlett in a comfortable recliner and connected him to a "Microcurrent Therapy Machine" that fed a very low current (100 micro-amps maximum or less than 0.00001 amp) of selected frequencies of AC between contacts placed at the neck and ankles. The frequencies they selected were the ones known to stimulate the gall bladder cells. The treatment lasted more than an hour. When it was over, the pains had reduced to a much lower level.

As we left the office our plan was to get something for breakfast (Elder Howlett had been fasting all day), see how pains went through the night, then contact the doctor again in the morning. The mission had an apartment that was not in use, so we had a place to stay. Then we contacted our nephew and neice, Jeffrey and Mindy Whitford who live in Colorado Springs, and arranged to spend the evening with them. They dropped everything on their schedule so we could spend the time together.


Mindy and Jeff Whitford in their home.

What a pleasant time we had with Jeff and Mindy. Jeff is in Special Forces of the Army as a medic but will get further training this spring at Ft. Bragg, NC in Intelligence. He will become a Sergeant 1st Class this August and later this year be deployed again, perhaps to Iraq. Mindy is a Research analyst at Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs and doing very well. They are trying hard in many different ways to begin their family.


Jeff and Mindy's only family until they can have their own children: two black Shepherd/Lab dogs and one tan Lab dog. They are learning obedience.

We went to their home Wednesday night and for the first hour got all kinds of updates. Then we went out to dinner, and stayed more than two hours eating and talking. (That’s the German way, called “Gemütlichkeit” or socializing at the dinner table. We learned to love it while we were in germany.) Then we went back to their house for another hour of talking. What a pleasure!

This morning, we went back to the Doctor’s office, and we discussed what to do. The doctor repeated some spine manipulations done yesterday, then put me on the micro-current again, but this time for only a half hour. The resulting decisions include having the HIDA scan done according to the appointment we have here in Garden City. We will then have a copy of the report sent to him, and we will talk by phone regarding what is next. We feel much more confidence now, and already the distress of the problems is only about 15% of what it had been. The evidence is still suggesting the culprit is the gall bladder, and certain other things we thought were possibilities have been eliminated. Elder Howlett feels much better, and we have some wonderful memories of time with Jeff and Mindy. We made it home, tired, but in time to make it to an appointment tonight.

While driving over and back Sr. Howlett read from the biography of President Thomas S. Monson ”To The Rescue”, so we are now really looking forward to the general conference this weekend. We're going to see as many of our contacts as possible to be sure they know about it and can participate.


Sister Howlett read this book while Elder Howlett was driving to and from Colorado Springs, about a 4 hour drive one way. What a great book!

We crashed last night before posting this, and today's been another interesting day, so we're going to tack a little more on. We had a lot of appointments scheduled today - some because we had moved them so we could make the trip to Colorado Springs. We had a lot of good meetings, until the last one. The family wasn't home, so we went to the list we had made earlier of people we'd like to visit if we could find time. We hurried, and got two more visits that were really worth while. At the first place we decided to visit we found two relatively new members together, and they were stewing over a movie that they had seen. They were quite upset, and our arrival was just at the time when we could help them through the crisis. After that visit we decided to visit another family, and we were just finishing when the inactive husband came home. It was a perfect opportunity to chat with him, and he is on for our visit to them next week. We couldn't have planned for such a day of being useful. We love it when (God's) plan comes together.

On Friday, 1 April, all five sets of full-time missionaries enjoyed a BBQ steak dinner done for us at a new member's back yard. Several of the Elders had previously gone over to Gil Asebedo's house to clean up and put sheet rock on the inside walls of his outside workshop. So he held a BBQ dinner for us all. We loved being invited to the delicious dinner.
At left we see the inside of the workshop. At the back is Elder Gomez, another new member named Kirk Wilson, and Elder Viehweg. Elder Lyman is on the left and Elder Howlett on the right of the table. These two were tasting Gil's grilled hot peppers. They were HOT! (picante AND caliente!) Above is Gil Asebedo, the new convert who graciously Barbequed our steaks in his back yard. Yum!