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They are required by their church to have a store of food for a year and enough money for six months. They are full of faith and very practical. Great folks. There are a lot of Mormon folks in Clovis, California, just east of Fresno.<<<

Yes, they are special.

I had never met one, until I moved to Arizona.

And have been blessed to have known several.

15 years after we left Wellton, Catherine would phone me and ask me “do you need for me to send the missionaries?”.

Her cure for all that ailed us.

LOL, which still makes me laugh.

Very early one morning, on his way to work, Bill saw an elderly couple, standing by their car, stopped to see if they needed help and they said they were just admiring the orange grove, they were farmers from Iowa, so Bill told them if they wanted more information, go see his wife, she would have the answer.

LOL, they came to see me, a disaster, as we had 5 kids under 6 years old, they needed a home and we took them and a 70 year old man, who came with his own cow, hogs and dog, LOL, as his kids rooked him out of his couple acres and he had no place to go.

Grandpa Ira did bring his own camp trailer for sleeping, but that was all he used it for, it was tiny.

We had a one bedroom mobile, put the kids in the bedroom and slept on the floor in the living room.

Then it was get Bill off to work, get Kendra up and to the bus and then deal with Ira and the other 4 little ones.

And I have 2 Mormon Missionaries from Iowa at the front door.

They had been sent to Wellton, as they had not dealt well with loosing their farm [or the sale of it?, as I recall it was lost], so the Bishop, thought a change of scene would be good and they knew no one in Wellton, except me and I was not a member, so was fair game.

They would come early in the morning, each dress a three year old twin, and brush their hair, join in for breakfast, give me a lesson, and off they would go.

We were lucky right then and had a freezer full of beef and plenty of milk, so I was able to share and they were wonderful folks, lost in a strange town.

I look back on that year and can only recall standing in the kitchen, milking and feeding animals and people.

The public nurse had come to check Ira, the day after the kids came, so she checked them out too, as their mother had mental problems.

I told her how I planned on feeding them and she told me that I was just going to make them sick.

She was right.

You don’t take kids who are almost starving, and feed them all the good food that goes with lots of milk, eggs, meat, and baking.

We had to feed them on tiny saucers, as a plate of food scared them...they would steal food and hide it in the closet, just in case that I also quit feeding them.

The baby, was my grandchild, who had been there, when the other 4 came, at 9 months old, she liked to eat and got a larger plate than the 6 year old.

If you have the room, fostering children is worth it, I still remember having been in a foster home, while my mother was in the hospital, it was a good home.

Later the younger kids were in a bad foster home and it was awful for them, 60 years later, they still talk of it with fear.

I marvel at folks, who have never lived as I did.

It was just turning the pages of life.

Bill built an 8 foot fence, to keep the kids away from the animals, made a play area in the front of the mobile, with no gate.

We had a couple of bulls that were a year or so old, and would be dangerous to a small child, so he built a pen with no gates, used pallets, hog wire and topped it off with barbed wire, it was escape proof and child proof.

And there came a day, that the 3 year old twins went missing.

When I found them, they had managed to go under the hog wire and climb up the pallet slats, and were unable to move.

LOL, They could not escape and the bulls would lick their faces and hair, if they tried to pull away from the tongues, then they got barbed wire sticking in their back.

God, was giving them a lesson, for if they had gotten in the pen, who knows if they would have been trampled or not, so I always thought that he told the bulls “Now you can kiss them, but not too hard.”