Month: February 2025

As usual, this latest group of missionaries wanted to head out to the Imperial Sand Dunes. Although we don’t always go (having been there many times already), today seemed like a good opportunity. Off we went, piling into the mission vans and driving an hour north.

They always love time in the nice warm sand.

We posed for a group shot… quite a few of us!

Afterward, we decided to clean the vans and get rid of all the sand. We stopped at a local car wash and went to work. Not surprisingly, sand was everywhere. Some of it had to be vacuumed out of hair…

And even pockets!

Good times, as always.

Back in June, when we were new to the area, we bought some cacti at a local show. We set two of them outside in the hot sun, and after a day one of them was practically burned to death. We’d been told (by a cactus expert at the show!) that a lot of sun and heat would be good, but apparently they’d grown up pampered or something. We promptly brought them indoors and attempted to nurture them back to life in a cooler environment, with more water.

Anyway, fast forward to today, when the succulent finally expired and the burned one gave up another lobe (of five original lobes, only one remained). We decided it was time to buy some new cacti.

In the back left is the solo-lobe one that didn’t like the heat. At front right is the other “original” prickly, which seems to be thriving. The other two are new, and we’ll see how they do. We hope to take all of them back to Montana as reminders of our mission in the desert.

Our friend Michelle is a geologist, and she has an amazing rock collection. I’ve always enjoyed rocks and gems, and fancied myself a bit of a collector when I was a kid (although my collection was generally just pretty stones I found on the ground). Today she showed me a sample of iron pyrite, popularly known as “fool’s gold”.

This isn’t an ordinary sample, though. It includes two massive cubic crystals, which is really unusual… and probably won’t really fool anyone into thinking it’s gold. Typical deposits of iron pyrite have thousands of crystals like this, but much much smaller and crowded together, making them at least a little more believable as gold.

So cool!

Our friend Tamra gave us some eggs her hens laid. I think they look pretty awesome!

Today was a beautiful sunny day, with the temperature sitting right around… 80 degrees?

We were out in San Diego today, and since we have an annual museum pass, we decided to check out the Automotive Museum. They have an impressive collection of old (and odd) cars. I especially enjoyed the DeLorean.

Of course this car, which would’ve been little more than a footnote of history, is iconic from the Back to the Future series of movies. It was cool to sit in one!

The US Navy’s Blue Angels demonstration fighter squadron has their “winter home” here in El Centro, so they spend a few months here practicing for their air shows. We can see them in the distance almost every day, and it’s fun to watch them. Today we happened to be driving west to San Diego, which took us just south of their airfield. We noticed the formation as we were going past.

We pulled off the road and watched for a bit, enjoying the “practice show” overhead.

It was great fun, and we’re excited to see the real show next month…