Just before my sister moved down to Okinawa almost 10 years ago, a huge, flat carton arrived at the front door--she had won a color TV! One of those things you KNOW you will never, ever in a million years win, right? She hadn't even bothered to open it then, just let it be sent that way. The TV was set up on a small table in her basement apartment. Well, it made the table look small.
Altho' for a few weeks, I didn't get to see my critter friends at the park, I got to see animals in their natural habitats anyway, via nature TV shows that flashed across that large screen. That's a bat flying over the surface of the water!
Oh--hanging around the edge of the monitor frame are Joyce's graduation tassel on the right side and the longer thing on the left is the blue ribbon at the end of which is the medal for winning the voice contest. And the Clione plankton, monkey, and turtles on rock down the side of the picture are souvenir magnets nearby.
After my stepmother's funeral, I saw my sister running around to the banks, city office, post office, etc., taking care of legal matters concerning the accounts, bills, house, property, inheritance. Many great leaders would be willing to make "brave sacrifices" necessary to stand at the front of a large army. But I wonder how many would spend hours in the dark reminding elderly parents to take their medicine (repeatedly because they forget if you tell them just once) or would humble themselves to work in languages they had to constantly ask for help? I'm sure Joyce felt a lot better being handed a medal for first place than being given repeated explanations by the clerk.
Daddy had several small handwritten memos in his study: "No holiness without humility." Qualities of humility, meekness, integrity have been so forgotten, even in the contemporary Church. But I think I saw one medalist that, at least unconsciously, hadn't forgotten.
