Hiking Casa Grande Mountain Park

Our youngest son is serving a full-time two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona. In his most recent email to us, he told us that he and some other missionaries hiked around Casa Grand Mountain Park on their P-day (preparation day).

P-day is the one day a week that LDS missionaries use to take care of personal things like food shopping, laundry, emailing home, etc. The rest of the week is spent sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's especially fun to receive photos from our son. He sent these awesome pictures from their hike.



He said that they hiked in the morning. Looking closely at the photo below, I noticed headlights on cars along the highway as well as other lights that appear to be at business locations.



Our son told us that the hike was "lots of fun" and that there were "Jumping Cholla cactus everywhere." He said that one "grabbed onto" a fellow missionary's shoe but that thankfully it was "at the sole of his shoe, so it only burrowed into the rubber."



Yikes! It's a good thing the cactus only penetrated the sole of that missionary's shoe. The Jumping Cholla cactus is also referred to as the Chain Fruit Cholla. You can read more about it in an online article called Jumping Cholla. From what I read in the article, it sounds like getting pierced by one of this cactus' spines would not be fun at all.



Our son is loving his mission in Arizona. In one of his recent emails he said, "I love this work. I know that God loves each and every one of us. The Atonement can be applied into every single aspect of our lives. We just need to look for it. The Tender Mercies of the Lord, as well, are everywhere. Seek, and ye shall find."

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

David Archuleta: GLORIOUS from Meet the Mormons

David Archuleta, runner-up on Season 7's American Idol TV show, is an amazingly talented musician. He has performed a beautiful song for the Meet the Mormons movie. It's called Glorious. And it is aptly named, because the song truly is glorious. I hope you enjoy listening to it in this video.

And speaking of the movie Meet the Mormons, it has been very well-received. In fact, it ranked No. 10 nationwide on the day it was released, which was last Friday, October 10th. If you haven't seen it yet, I hope you will take the opportunity to go see it.

To see where it is playing in a theater near you, click HERE.  By the way, net proceeds from the movie will be going to charity, specifically the American Red Cross.

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Meet the Mormons

I want to let all of my awesome readers know about a wonderful movie that's coming to theaters this Friday, October 10, 2014. The movie is called Meet the Mormons. The movie tells about the lives of six members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their families who live in different parts of the world.

The movie was shown at a premiere event yesterday in Salt Lake City. An article about the premiere shared the positive reactions of those who watched the movie. Some of the words used to describe the movie were the following: touching, inspirational, and enlightening.

Our family is looking forward to seeing this movie. And I'd like to invite all of you to see it too.

Here is the Meet the Mormons movie trailer. I hope you'll enjoy watching it.

To see where Meet the Mormons is playing in your area, please check out the movie's website by clicking on the link below.

Meet the Mormons

By the way, all net proceeds from this film will be going to charity, specifically the American Red Cross.

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Angela's Awesome Bread

Have you ever named a recipe after the person who gave it to you? That's what I did with this amazing bread recipe. I don't even know the actual name of the recipe. I named it Angela's Awesome Bread because it IS awesome, and my friend Angela gave the recipe to me.

This bread is really delicious and pretty simple to make. There's no hand-kneading involved. At all. So, here we go. I'm going to show you how easy it is to make this amazingly awesome bread.

First of all, place 2-1/2 cups of warm water, 1/3 cup sugar and 3 (3/4 oz. each) packages of yeast in your mixing bowl.



Mix together with a dough hook attachment and then let it proof until bubbles appear.



Add 1/3 cup of softened butter, 6 cups of flour, and 1 tablespoon salt. Mix. Then add 1/2 - 1 cup of flour until dough cleans the sides of the mixing bowl. It should look something like this.


Remove the dough hook and place a damp kitchen cloth on top of the mixing bowl. Place it in a warm oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, replace the dough hook, and mix for 10 seconds.
Repeat this process for an hour.



Grease a large cookie sheet.



Then dump the dough onto the cookie sheet.



Form the dough into two loaves. Score the tops of the loaves with a knife and place in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Turn the cookie sheet and bake for another 10 minutes.



Remove from oven and place cookie sheet on a wire cooling rack.



Place loaves of bread directly onto wire cooling rack.



It really is that easy! I hope you like this delicious and simple bread. It's especially good served warm topped with butter and jam. And it makes excellent toast too. Yum!

RECIPE

Angela’s Awesome Bread

Ingredients
2-1/2 Cups Warm Water (120-130 degrees)
1/3 Cup Sugar
2 Tbsp. Active Dry Yeast [I use 3 (3/4 oz. each) packages of yeast.]
1/3 cup Softened Butter
7 Cups Flour
1 Tbsp. Salt

Directions

In a Kitchenaid Mixer with dough hook attachment, mix together the water, sugar, and yeast.
Let the yeast mixture proof (until bubbles form). Then add the softened butter, 6 cups of flour and the salt.

Mix together and add ½ cup – 1 cup flour until dough cleans sides of bowl.
Remove the dough hook and place a damp kitchen cloth on top of the mixing bowl. Place bowl in a warm oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, replace the dough hook, and mix for 10 seconds. Repeat this process for 1 hour.

Form into two loaves on a greased cookie sheet. Score tops of loaves with knife.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn cookie sheet and continue baking for 10 additional minutes.

Remove from oven. Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by!

© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Music Monday ~ Vocal Point's "Happy"

I really like Pharrell Williams' song "Happy." Lots of musicians have made covers of this fun song. I've seen a couple of these covers, but I just recently watched this version by Vocal Point, Brigham Young University's amazing 9-man a capella group.

Did you know that the 2010-2011 Vocal Point group competed on NBC's The Sing-Off television show? Yep! They did! And the group made it to the top 5 in that competition. They also have produced numerous CDs over the years.

I hope you enjoy Vocal Point's cover of Happy!

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

He's Home!

Last Friday, our third-oldest son returned home from serving a two-year full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.



He served his mission in the Massachusetts Boston Mission, which includes most of Massachusetts, all of Rhode Island, and parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut. During his mission, our son served in Keene, New Hampshire, Quincy, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, and Manchester, Connecticut.

We hadn't seen our son in person for two years, so as you can imagine, the reunion we had with him at the airport was wonderful! This is a picture of him hugging his dad.



And here they are together waiting for our son's luggage.



Our son loved his mission and served faithfully. He returned with honor. We recently received two emails and a letter from people in the areas where he served. They had such kind words to say about our son and his service while he was on his mission. It was heartwarming and touching to read what they said about him. The following paragraph is an excerpt from one of the emails that we received:

"I just want to tell you how grateful we are to you and your family for being willing to share your son with us for a short time.  He is a wonderful missionary and carries the Spirit with him wherever he goes.  He has been a great influence on our family and the members of our ward.  We will miss him so much, but we are also very excited for you to welcome him home after a 2-year absence.  Just know that he has served faithfully and has helped to change many lives for the better.  We know he will continue to do so as he returns home and moves on with the next chapter of his life."

We're so proud of our son's selfless service to our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ and to the people in New England. Well done son! And welcome home!

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

A Beautiful Wedding

In a previous post here at Jana's Place, I told you about the upcoming wedding of our second-oldest son. Well, the wedding took place about three weeks ago. And it was beautiful!

On my genealogy blog, I wrote a blog post about the wedding and shared some photos taken by Marielle Hayes, owner of Marielle Hayes Photography. If you'd like to read that post and see those beautiful photos, please click HERE.

The gorgeous photos I'm sharing with you today were also taken by Marielle Hayes. She did a fantastic job!

Our son and his fiancé (now wife) were married in the Oakland California Temple. They were sealed for time and all eternity. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that marriages performed in the holy temple can last throughout the eternities and not end at death.



I love this photo of our son and daughter-in-law. It's just so sweet! It was taken on the beautiful Oakland Temple grounds.



Isn't she beautiful?



I'll end this post with this gorgeous black and white photo of our son and daughter-in-law.



Oh, and isn't our son's boutonniere awesome? It was made by our daughter-in-law. It's a paper flower. How fun is that? She also added a few in her bouquet.

Thanks for stopping by!


© 2014 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved