Dear Joshua Sugata, Mark Trollinger and Dr. Sherman:

        First of all - Sugata and Trollinger, you two have a unique way of interacting with such humor that is very precious, fun and funny. Interactive humor and laughter is a blessed gift that lightens the load and the ennui of others. Thanks for that, you two! : )

       Dr. Sherman, born in Denver and you like radio?  My Grandpa John Givan and Grandma Rosemary in Denver had one of those old radios that was as high as my waist and ran on tubes from the 1940s. It was a real classic. She also had the hand crank washing machine outside in the backyard near her huge kitchen garden. When she was older, she added electricity to it but still refused to get a modern Maytag washer. She liked feeding the dirty clothes into that thing through the rollers, washing it in the tub and hanging everything out in the sun on the clothes line. My parents brought me home to 2363 South Decatur on top of that huge hill as a baby. That was my first home. 

       You're talking in the introduction about the LDS, I was blessed by Mormons in the Idaho dairy farm during childhood as my dad visited them and I played in the barn and ate some of the best homemade food in the world. My girlfriend for four years at Cortez High, Phoenix came from a model LDS family. The mother was a terrific homemaker, my friend and her older brother diligently ran their own newspaper routes as high school students to work and save money. Her father was deacon of that ward.

     The wonderful part of youtube is that it gets online students into multimedia. CWV CATS are something I use every week in every class I teach. Right now that is just a lot of ENG-106, but in the past, I taught literature online to our sophomores and seniors including ENG 450 Shakespeare several times. A spiritual calling is a lifetime journey. It is a growth in experience and humility. Abba, God our Father does allow us to go through some hard knocks of life sometimes. Look at how Saint Paul suffered quietly and humbly earning his own way as a tentmaker ( like Aquila and PriscillaP so he did not have to ask the church to pay his daily expenses. Usually he did not say anything, but when the other 11 apostles questioned his spiritual credentials and he got mad, what a list! "Shipwrecked and a day and night in the open sea, bitten by poisonous snakes, whipped, etc. " The Apostle Paul was a stubborn as an ornery mule, and also a very gifted and educated man, but if you got on the wrong side of him, you were in trouble. His rhetoric was like the sword's blade or tongue of our modern Mark Twain. He  knew how to layer that sarcasm on with biting humor, like homemade, churned butter on a slab of hot, piping homemade wheat bread just out of the oven. Only the person getting roasted, was is his critic! LOL. 

       The relationship with your household members is a daily lab to practice maturing in Christ in social and spiritual communication and manners. This is especially true when one or both of you work out of your home. Having two home offices, landlines, and cell phones and computers going out of one house while you still are dealing with all the activities of daily living in the household can get really hairy. You have to think ahead, organize and one of you must put the other's career first and be very supportive and very, very flexible. Two kings or two roosters or two queens under one roof will not work!

       Saint Paul uses athletes as illustrations. I have used the comments of famous professional boxers such as George Foremen and Sugar Ray Leonard as posts for my students. I have also used links to motivational Youtube Christian workout music as motivational teaching post. I no longer throw a football, a frisbee or play volleyball with friends or students like I used in my 20s to 40s to as I am older now, but those memories still bring me great joy. I still love to sing and dance. I also think that motivational comments from people like topnotch scientists can reach people. This is also true of encouraging stories of people who overcome hardship, such as Michael Faraday dealing with mental illness in his middle-age, but with a supportive wife he overcame it and went on to his best electric inventions in his golden years. Blessings and Lopes up! : )

Instructor Rachel Lynne Givan, Syu Ra chi

[email protected]

(845)505-3629