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Pepper and I love hiking, and we haven’t had many opportunities during our mission. Our day in Joshua Tree was great, and we’ve hiked a few other trails. So we were excited to head up to Palm Springs today and hike an area called Murray Canyon.

The hike begins in the desert (of course), and the sun was beating down. Even in mid-March it was edging toward 90 degrees. Still, there’s a different sort of beauty in the desert.

As we approached the canyon, we saw a grove of palm trees.

Coming up to the trees, we were surprised to hear the sound of running water! There’s a spring up in the mountains that feeds a sizeable stream, and that stream runs through the canyon. In the shade of the trees, there’s plenty of refreshing shade and water.

The trail crosses the stream multiple times (I think I counted seven) along its three-mile course, so it’s really cool to hike in the desert amongst rocks for a bit, and then dip beneath the palms for a stretch.

At the end of the out-and-back trail is a large rock formation where the spring water cascades down. It’s called Seven Sisters Falls, although I have no idea why. It’s a little hard to see the waterfall behind us, but it’s there:

We agreed this is our favorite hike thus far in our mission. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

Whenever I cook ground beef for pizza, lasagna, sloppy joes, and so on, I always use the same set of spices. Tonight, as I was preparing pizza, I finally decided I’d just pre-mix all of them into a single “secret blend”. Behold!

It’s like those jars of sand art! Of course I shook it up– otherwise the pizza would’ve been a bit heavy on chili powder. And now I have my very own spice mix.

Our friend Marilyn is a self-proclaimed “word nerd”. She teaches a weekly class called “Roots” where we explore English words that are based on Latin and Greek roots. It’s always insightful to learn about the origin of words, and figure out how to decipher their meaning by knowing their components. But really, we go because it’s fun to hang out with friends (there are many jokes and stories in class) and eat Oreos (which Marilyn brings without fail).

Many years ago, as a high-school English teacher, she jokingly invented the word Magnicephopolis, which means “City of the Big Brains”. It became A Thing, and she even printed t-shirts for some of her students. Years, even decades, later, some of those students will still send her photos of them wearing their shirts somewhere in the world.

Today she gave us a special gift! A Magnicephopolis license-plate bracket:

We’re honored to be inducted into this elite group. Thanks, Marilyn!

“Do y’all want to run the St Pat’s 5k in Brawley with us?”

That was the text we received from the missionaries last night. We hadn’t heard about a 5k race in Brawley, and a couple of web searches came up short. It turned out it was simply the missionaries looking for something fun to do to celebrate St Patrick’s Day (which also happened to be P-day, so they had some time off). We’re fun, and we run, so we agreed and drove up this morning.

The sisters were decked out in full St Pat’s gear!

There’s a nice track at Cattle Call Park, and we think it’s about a mile around, so we agreed to all run three laps (5 kilometers = 3.1 miles). Off we went.

It was a nice morning: cloudy skies kept it from getting too hot, so it was pleasant for running. We did our laps and celebrated at the end with little rubber-ducky trophies that Pepper and I made this morning.

Here’s our little group of champion runners:

We joked about making this an annual tradition, but of course none of us will be here next year, so I guess this was the one and only…

The US Navy’s demonstration flight squadron, the Blue Angels, have a winter training ground just outside El Centro. Since January, they’ve been practicing for their series of air shows. That means we can see their trademark blue-and-yellow F-18s soaring overhead. We spent a few minutes watching them practice last month, and were excited for the official show. We’d seen them back in September at Miramar, but this time it would be only a few miles away!

As a bonus, part of our family decided to join us! Tara and Trent flew in from Salt Lake City, and Dave and Jeanele drove out from Phoenix. Our apartment isn’t big, but we made it work. This morning we headed out. It started with a picture on the flightline:

In the back are our friends Carlito and Margie, senior missionaries who drove out from San Diego. In a crazy coincidence, it turned out they knew Trent as a young man, something like thirty years ago!

Before the show we walked around the “static displays”, where we could climb into active-duty aircraft like this V-22 Osprey.

The Ospreys frequently fly overhead in El Centro, landing in a small airfield in Imperial just north of town to refuel before continuing on to San Diego or Yuma. We grabbed some food and settled in for the show. It’s really cool to see fighters zip overhead at transsonic speed, only a few hundred feet off the ground. Here’s an F-18 doing a flyby:

The final act of the day was the Blue Angels squadron, and as usual they didn’t disappoint. Their aerial discipline is impressive– the distance between wingtip and cockpit is less than two feet.

They also perform multiple head-to-head maneuvers, including one where all six of them come screaming in from different directions.

It was a long day, with plenty of sun, and by the time we walked off the base we were looking a little pink with sunburn.

But it was worth it! Good times with friends, family, and fighter jets.

Every March, the Imperial Valley hosts a massive county fair. Everyone said “you have to see it”, although when pressed for details, most people admitted they weren’t going because “they’ve seen it before”. I’m not sure how to interpret that.

Nonetheless, we decided to go. A couple of our young adult friends, Celia and Veronica, joined us. As it happened, it was the coldest, windiest evening in the nine months we’ve lived here. That kept the crowds at bay!

Despite the weather, we had a good time together. We spent a lot of time looking at the (indoor) exhibits, like the rock and gem show, a ton of booths, and of course a lot of livestock (it was a county fair, after all). One poor goat had somehow stuck his head through a hole in his enclosure and was trapped. Celia and Veronica helped him out.

Celia also decided to have her face painted. Somehow this caterpillar matches her personality.

While looking at the sheep, we bumped into a couple of the Blue Angels’ ground crew!

We’re going to the air show tomorrow, so it was cool to see them– and about a dozen of their fellow airmen– wandering the fair.

We had funnel cake (a staple of county fairs everywhere) and chatted for a bit while we watched people wandering the food stands and rides. One of my favorite things was the Strolling Piano, which was a woman playing a keyboard and singing… while driving around the grounds!

The piano was always in motion, and we couldn’t figure out if she was driving it while playing (perhaps via foot pedals or something?) or if she had an accomplice nearby who was steering her remotely. Regardless, it was hilarious and cool at the same time.

Good times were had by all.

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates the triumph of Queen Esther over the wicked royal councillor Haman. In our Institute class, we’ve been studying the “villains of the scriptures”, and it seemed fitting to discuss that story this week.

One of the traditions of the holiday is to make little treats called hamantaschen, which means “Haman’s pockets”. They’re delicious little cookies shaped like triangles (the pockets, I guess) with fruit in the center:

Recipes for them abound on the internet, so I found one and went to work.

Notice how nice those look on my pan! Beautiful little triangles with fruity centers! But after baking, they looked terrible.

The dough completely collapsed, and they looked like pathetic little biscuits with a dollop of strawberry jam. I dubbed them hamantraschen.

That said, they still tasted fine. We brought them to our classes, and everyone seemed to enjoy the snack.

Oh, and another Jewish tradition on Purim is to dress in costume. We thought we’d do that, so I was Haman (or rather, a generic villain, complete with a top hat, cane, and dastardly mustache). Pepper was the beautiful Queen Esther.

And yes, we taught class in costume.

Learning about the Purim customs made our otherwise mundane lesson much more fun!

Six weeks (a transfer) seem to fly past. Another group of missionaries is heading out to new assignments. We’ll miss some of these amazing men and women.

Sister Jones:

Elder Glassey:

Sister Olsen:

For some reason these fifteen missionaries seemed to click really well. It’s been awesome to be a part of the work with them.

Somehow this second group photo captures the spirit of the group a bit better:

Onward and upward!

Because I’m such a nice guy, I occasionally make a bunch of chocolate-chip cookies for the missionaries. Last week I whipped up a batch.

After baking them, I sampled a few (quality control is very important!) and realized they tasted… off. Too salty. And they didn’t flatten out much; they were sort of hemispherical. A few had burned because I’d used a dark pan. Hmm.

I thought about it a bit and realized I’d not only used the wrong measuring spoon and put in three times the salt, I’d used baking powder instead of baking soda. Big mistake. That said, the missionaries all devoured the cookies and told me they were fine.

But it didn’t sit right with me, and today I made another batch. I was more careful with my measurements, and double-checked my ingredients. The result was much better.

The lesson: follow the recipe. In life, there are things we should be doing, and if we stray too much from the path, we find ourselves in a bit of a mess. Too salty. Shaped wrong. Burned.

I know what I need to be doing. Am I doing it? Am I following my recipe?

We’ve had enough pizza parties with the missionaries that now they ask when we’ll host another one. Who are we to deny them such pleasures in life? Our apartment isn’t very big, so we have to split them up. First the guys.

The next night, the gals came over.

Alas, we’ll only have a few more of these before we finish our mission…