Vision of the Atonement

On March 12th in the middle of the night I had a vision come to me that gave me great joy. Now those who know me know of my hard growing up years from birth to about 9 1/2 years old. Because of these hard years with much abuse from my father, I had a hard time being hugged by my father. Now after his baptism in to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he went through a tremendous time of great repentance. He turned himself around and made me love and appreciate him so much more. I had a great respect and love for my father to see the wonderful service he gave to people all around him. I love him and was glad for him, but the scars from years of abuse were hard to overcome and therefore hugging him was very uncomfortable. I often thought that even though the Atonement could heal those scars and hard things for any of us on this earth, I didn't ever think that it would ever happen for me. I just couldn't fathom how it it could happen. I had great hope but not a lot of faith. It's funny I knew it could happen for others but not for myself even though I have felt the Atonement take place in my life before and with great power. But on March 12th I received the blessing of the Atonement for this trial. I learned that the Atonement not only healed me but my father also. Now you have to realize that I had often wondered since my fathers death how he was doing in his progression.  In the middle of the night I had a vision come to me so very powerful and simple. My Father came to me in my dreams. He had tears in his eyes and he came forth and embraced me in his arms. I found that I was completely comfortable and even longed to have him hug me even longer. I was so very overjoyed and knew that my father had been healed of his infirmities through the Atonement of Jesus Christ  and that I was too as well. He then left and was no longer there. Oh how blessed we are to have the Saviors love. How blessed we are that He lived and died for each one of us. Oh how blessed we are for His infinite Atonement. I give this is the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.      

"Industrial Arts Building"

“The Industrial Arts Building”

Rae (Tholander) Mangum, Bachelor Degree-1978, St. Johns, AZ

I attended Brigham Young University during the years of 1974 through 1978.  I had a dear friend and boss that I worked for in High School as a housekeeper pay for my tuition and books to go to this wonderful university. It was hard letting someone pay my way. I felt a strong need to earn my own way.

My first job I received was working the early morning janitorial shift cleaning the “Industrial Arts Building”.  What a feeling of satisfaction I received from this job. It was perhaps the dirtiest building to clean due to the functionality of the building. For this reason alone I loved cleaning it. I remember the sinks were so full of glues and other materials that had not been cleaned for a VERY long time. I made it my goal to get those sinks spotless. I remember the professors reactions was “amazement”. They had never seen their sinks look so good. I would do all the emptying of the trashes and cleaning the bathrooms etc. first so I would have the rest of my allotted time to really attack those sinks. I chose one sink a day to work on.

Then it was the stairs next. After buffing the hallway floors to a nice shine, I made my second goal to strip those stairs down to the “bone”. On hands and knees and every possible tool I could find, I made those stairs look brand new.

 I loved having the really dirty jobs and making them look as though they were never used. The professors appreciated my work, which gave me a grand feeling of accomplishment. This was also a fun way to pay my way through school. Fun because I loved making a difference.

Love Your Spouse

April, 4^th, 2011: Great week end. I have really been enjoying the conference.  Sunday morning session I was listening to President Dieter F. Uchtdorf speak on “The Road to Damascus”. My mind went a different direction then his talk was on, when he spoke of his wife Harriet in such a reverent manner that it got my mind going to another subject, the subject of loving your spouse with a deep reverence of love and adoration. Of course this was the talk that was given by Elder Richard G. Scott in the Afternoon Session. My mind was drawn to the importance of loving your spouse completely. We all know of the strength and weaknesses of our spouses, more so then other people around the town. My mind kept coming to the fact that we need to feel a deep reverence for our spouses. How important it is to build up our spouses to those in our company throughout the day. We should always look at the positive aspects of our loved one. My mind kept thinking of Joe’s very most positive character trait, He is such a good father to all his children. He has such a patient manner about him. His sacrifice is daily and constant toward his family. He never shows anger or frustration. It does not necessarily mean that he is never disappointed, but he always gives his children and family growing and teaching experiences. He has such great patience and love for his family. When we speak together of the family, he never dwells on their weaknesses; he always has great faith and love for his children. He knows of their great potential. Elder Richard G. Scott said, “If you want to have a wonderful wife, then you need to have her see you as a wonderful man and perspective husband”, I’ll change this to say (If you want to have a wonderful husband, then you need to have him see you as a wonderful woman or wife). Joe, It’s time to tell you that I LOVE YOU! I will commit to you this day that I will spend my life building you up always. Happy Anniversary Honey (April 6th, 1979)

Easter

March 29^th, 2011: Easter is coming up so maybe I’ll write about how Easter was for me when I was a little girl. The thing that I remember and that I really loved about Easter was the new dress, shoes, gloves and hats that we got every year. My mother would sew them for us. She made such pretty dresses for us.

 There are two that I remember particularly. One was when we were living in K-Park housing in Camarillo, California. Mom had made a shirtwaist dress out of pretty white light material with red velvet poke-a-dots on it (The poke-a-dots were tiny). We had a red velvet sash around the waist. We had red velvet shoes, and white gloves and hats. They were so pretty. I just loved them. I have always loved to dress up in a dress even to this day.

The other dress that I remember was a dress that I sewed. After I was in Jr. High, I learned to sew myself. I made my own dresses after that. One of my first Easter dresses that I sewed was out of a simple cotton material with a plaid design of a soft pink and purple color. It came out so very nice and was very proud of it because I had done it myself. Everyone in the family had a dress out of the same material every year. Dad would have a tie made out the same material as well. We were quite the sight at church.

We would then come home and have an Easter Egg Hunt. They were the small chocolate Easter eggs. There would be so many eggs hidden everywhere. There were some that would be found clear into the year; because there were so many hidden and we could never find them all.

 Then in the afternoon or evening we would go to our grandma and grandpa Adams house to eat with them. Grandma would always have a grocery sack full of candy and goodies. We thrilled over it every year.

 As often as we moved, it didn’t matter, because our grandparents always moved along with us. Mom’s, mom just had to be where her daughter was. She was her only child. She had a boy first, but he was born without a face and was badly deformed. He died at birth. Mom also had another brother that was older then her. He died in his twenties (I believe) of Tuberculosis. Mom was born with a cleft pallet and had gone through many operations to be able to talk as well as she did. After mom, grandma never had any more children. She never wanted to be very far from her because of it.

 Our other grandparents (Dads parents), we never saw very much. They lived in San Diego, California. We did go to see them now and then. I remember a Christmas that we spent there. I remember waking up to so many wonderful smells in the kitchen. It seemed that they would be up cooking all night. I remember that was the only year that I received a doll that I actually liked. That was because it was almost my size and I could dress her up. I normally did not like dolls of any kind, but because it was so big, I liked this one.

The only thing that I remember about Grandpa was how he would rock me in a rocking chair while he smoked his pipe. That is the only picture I see of my grandfather Tholander in my mind. He died of lung cancer when I was very young. Grandmother also died of cancer of the lymph nodes.

We were eating our Sunday dinner in Camarillo, California, when we received a phone call from Dads family that Grandma was not doing well and none of them could take care of her. I remember we did not even finish dinner. We packed up a few clothes and left right then to drive to San Diego to pick her up and bring her to our home where we could take care of her. This was one of the few things that I remember about her. Amy and I went up stairs to show her our cat. We really wanted to do something nice for her, but the darn cat scratch grandma on her arm. Grandma was hurting so bad. We felt so very bad about what happened to her. What was supposed to be a good thing, turned out to be very horrible.

When I grew up and had a family of my own, we changed things a little. I had boys, so I did not make Easter clothes for them. We did have the Easter egg hunt though. We had so much fun at all the Easter Picnics that we have gone on with Grandma and Grandpa Mangum. Poor Patricia missed out as she was born the day after Grandpa Mangum Funeral. We still had picnics but they were not the same without Ralph there with us. She did not get the homemade Easter dresses either. We bought some till she was no longer interested in dresses of any kind. She was a tom boy being raised around five brothers. The one thing that our boys and Patricia have looked forward to is finding the money eggs. We would hide several candy eggs and just a few money eggs of all different amounts. But the dollar egg was the prize win. It always seemed that Willie would find so many of those dollar eggs.

One particular Picnic that we really enjoyed after Grandpa was gone was out to a sand wash out East of St. Johns. The kids and cousins would all slide down the sandy banks over and over again. We had our traditional Easter Egg Hunt out there as well. That was one of the most fun ones we had.

Our favorite Picnic spot of all times has been the Diversion Dam that is now owned by Carl Pew. The effort of getting the keys and permission has taken all the fun out of going out there. The road has changed as well.

Japan

March 17^th, 2011: Topic today is Japan. Since the main headlines are about the catastrophes in Japan, I decided this would be a good day to reminisce our days that we lived in Japan. I was five-years-old and Amy was three. We had the whitest hair that the Japanese people had ever seen. It wasn’t just blond it was a natural platinum blond. We were given a lot of attention from the people there because of our hair. Amy and I had the cutest little kimonos and gatas (wooden flip flop type of shoe that the Japanese people wore) to where. Mom would dress us up in our Kimonos and gatas and then take us to the many festivals that the Japanese culture displayed.

 Amy and I learned to speak the Japanese language very well when we were there very quickly. We would use the language to sing with the other Japanese girls up on the stage for these festivals. Do not remember the language very well now though. When you are young you learn languages quick, but if it is not cultivated as you grow older, it leaves very quick as well. I remember very few words now. My mother and father took longer to learn the language, but remembered it longer, particularly mom.

I remember especially playing in a little play house behind the couch. It is humid in Japan and so all the furniture has to be away from the walls so as not to mildew. We had our couch about four feet away from the walls. This was a perfect place for Amy and me to have a play area in. I remember I loved to play back there. It felt like a private spot to be in. By the way, we lived in Tachikawa, Japan on the air Force base Housing. This is near Tokyo, Japan. We lived there for a year.

Another thing I remember about living there was the little candy cart that would come by every day. It is similar to the bakery truck that would come by every day when we lived in California. Only difference is that it was more like a small hand cart that was filled with Japanese candy of all kinds. It would be pushed instead of driven, by a Japanese young man. I loved the candy that was wrapped in a rice paper. You could eat the whole thing. The rice paper would melt in your mouth. I loved it.

I remember just how beautiful the green countryside was. It was so beautiful there. The architecture was also very beautiful. I really loved living there while we were young.

Also I remember mom would take us to a little craft place that she would go to all the time. Don’t remember the name of the place, but mom would do an interesting type of craft done with metal on top of a piece of wood with a modeling type of clay in-between the metal and the wood. She would then use a pointed wooden tool to make the shape of a face on the metal. This would be indented into the metal and then she would put a kind of antiquing on it to bring out the face even more. I believe she did other crafts as well. Mom loved doing things like that. She was very talented in the craft area. I don’t remember what other ones she did while were there.

Well this is off the topic of Japan, but maybe I will take a little space to talk about moms many talents. Mom loved to do crocheting, Trichem hand paint embroidery, embroidery and sewing. She really did a lot of sewing. She made all of our clothes when we were young. I remember the dresses that she would sew with the sashes in back. I loved the sashes in back.

She was also very much into cooking and canning, butchering the cows right on the kitchen table, making butter from the cows milk that dad would milk every day. Jams and jellies, and boysenberry pie, umm yum J. There were three of us girls (Bert, Amy and Me) and of course dad and mom for dinner. She would cook for an army. I whole plate of eggs, tomatoes, etc. Needless to say we learned to love to eat and eat well. When I was young it didn’t hurt us so much. We were as skinny as can be. I weighed 98 pounds clear up through my college years, couldn’t gain an ounce. But now that I am older and have had a few children, I wish I didn’t like to eat so well now. We won’t say what we weigh now. That would be too much information. But mom loved to cook for people to enjoy food. She loved to have people over to eat with us. The missionaries came over gladly to our house many times to eat.

How I got to know Dad!

March 10, 2011: Amy said that Joe (son) was wondering how Dad and I got together. Well we will go back to the beginning. I had just finished my four years at BYU (Brigham Young University). I was taking one more summer semester of just fun classes: Flower arranging, Tap Dancing, and a religion class. In my tap dancing class, for the final we were to do a tap dance with a partner for the whole class. I was fortunate enough to have Johnny Whitaker for my dance partner. He is a famous movie star. He played Buffy in family Affair. This was a series in my youth days. He also played Huck in Huckleberry Finn. He is the one with the kinky curly red-blond hair. Well he was a little older then I and we danced together like we knew what we were doing. Was kind of fun. Was my moment with fame.

 I worked upstairs of the BYU Bookstore in the Book department for the last year I was there. I remember Dan Heap came to BYU to interview teachers to come to St. Johns to teach school. I was contacted by the administration of Education Department to come for an interview. I looked up St. Johns, Arizona on the map, could not find it for the longest time. Finally I found this tiny little dot. That was St. Johns. I decided then and there that I was not going to St. Johns to teach. It was way too tiny for me and I was not married yet. I wanted to stay in Utah and find my husband first.

 That was not the plan Father in Heaven had though. I went to the interview for the practice of it all. I was a very nervous interviewee. I walked into the small room; Dan Heap was standing there waiting for me to come in. I came in and shook his hand. The spirit was extremely strong in that room. I do not remember what was said or what I said, but I did know that I was going to St. Johns. That fact was very clear to me as we interviewed. When we finished with whatever we were talking about, I just said that I was interested in coming to St. Johns to teach. Bishop Dan Heap told me that he thought that I should come to St. Johns first to see the place before I made a final decision. He was a little nervous about me coming here because I was single and he knew that the availability of young men was next to nil. He was afraid that I would not be happy with St. Johns and not stay very long.

 So I took the rest of the money that I had left and came to St. Johns. He was right. St. Johns when you did not know anyone was very homely looking, not very many trees. I love trees and green, two things of which St. Johns was not plentiful in. But I could not turn from what I knew I had to do. When the spirit directs you listen and do. So I spent three days, this was what was required of me. I was given a low teacher discount at the Elm Motel of $12.00 a night from Gwen Udall. She later became one of my visiting teachers when I moved here. After the three days were up, I came to Bishop Dan Heap who was the Superintendent at the time and asked if I could sign my contract. I did and went back to BYU to finish up my summer semester.

 In August of 1978 I moved all my belongings to St. Johns. Mom and dad helped me. Dad was used to driving all day and night, until he saw me do something very scary. I was following them in my new car that Mrs. Harshman had bought for me when I graduated from BYU. It was getting very late and we had been driving for many hours. I was extremely tired. Dad had just passed a vehicle up, so I just did the same with out being aware of another vehicle coming in the other lane. I passed, the other vehicle drove over to side as far as he could safely do and the one that I was passing went to the other side as far as he could, and I drove down through the middle. I never blinked an eye. My dad viewed this from his rear view mirror and decided it was time to stop and have a nap. I could make the trip a lot better after the nap.

 We made it to St. Johns safely and dad said the same thing about the town. He couldn’t believe his little girl was going to live in this place. But he didn’t have a say and so he left me there. I found this cutest little house that was just big enough for one person. I rented the Carry Starleys house next door to Ruth and Dale Davis across the street from the old Pioneer Elementary School. I then went to work on fixing up my classroom. It had not been used for some time and was in bad need of some repairs. I did them all myself. I patched up big holes in the walls, painted the walls, and made some pretty blue checkered gingham curtains for the windows. As long as I was busy I did not feel too lonely.

 I absolutely loved teaching the third grade. I loved my class. They loved me. But as time went by I soon found that the people of St. Johns were right, there were no available young men around. They all went away to other cities to find their mates. I was beginning to get a little depressed. I wasn’t sure why Heavenly Father wanted me to come to St. Johns. Surely it could not be only to teach these wonderful children that I dearly loved. But it seemed like that was the reason. I prayed for answers. For a while I just went day to day doing my job and loving it of course, but nothing seemed to be coming my way. There was one date that I had. Mrs. Young, one of my fellow teachers put me up to a date with some guy from Salt River. We had a nice time and good food, but he was not LDS, and of course that is my first and number one character trait that was a must. So more time had gone by and I got lonelier and lonelier.

 Gwen Richey owned the house that I was living in at the time. She was Carry Starleys daughter. Her mother had passed away a short time before I came to St. Johns. She knew a young man named Joe Mangum that lived right across the street from her. She had always loved Joe and thought about him often to get to know me. Everyone thought that I was, quote from them, “a pretty young thing”. She kept trying to get Joe to come over to see me and talk to me. He tried a few times to come and see me, but was just too shy to get to my door. He would drive his yellow ford pickup up and down my road and then go home. I never knew this till after I had a chance to get to know him. This came about because I would often go next door to Ruth Davis’ house to watch her decorate cakes. She would make the prettiest roses. I would watch and watch, but could never seem to make a rose like her. She made our wedding cake. Daisies were my flowers for the reception so she put daisies all over the cake. It was beautiful.

 Well I was over to her house for quite some time watching her and visiting with her. It was time to go home so I went, but to my dismay I had locked my house keys inside the house. I could not get in, so I went back to Ruth’s’ house to call sister Richey. That is when she sent Joe over with the key to let me into my house. He had no choice but to do as Gwen wanted him to do. He let me in and came in as well. He sat to talk to me. I guess talk to me. He was there for about two hours and said about two words. In two hours since I had to do all the talking, he knew everything about me practically. He decided he liked me and was not going to miss out. He asked me to a football game of which I had to take tickets first before I could go and sit with him. He became more and more comfortable with me as time went by. The only problem was I was not interested in him.

 There were three reasons: first He had long hair that did not appeal to me. I always like a clean cut look (Missionary Look). He also did not go to church or did not seem to be very active. Then he was not a returned missionary. I had always thought that I would marry a returned missionary. These things really bothered me. I kept praying him away. He did not go away. He kept buying me things that he thought that I wanted. He bought me a fish tank and accessories for my classroom. It was frustrating. It seemed the more I was praying him away, the more he kept coming back. I didn’t know what to think. So I got to thinking that I was not really listening to what the Lord wanted to me to do. So I decided to change my approach to my prayers.

 I then decided to ask the Lord what I was to do with this situation. My Frustration then changed to a sure thought of GIVE HIM A CHANCE. I thought Okay. So then I tried really hard to see him in a different way and really get to know him. I found out that he had long hair because His sister Vickie usually cut his hair and she was away to school. He said that I could cut his hair if I wanted to. I had exactly ½ hour of a mini lesson in a BYU homemaking class on hair cutting. So I tried to give him a hair cut. It came out pretty good and I have been giving them to him ever since. He didn’t look so bad. I thought to myself, hummm, he’s pretty good lookin. Then I found out that he didn’t go to church because he didn’t have anyone to go with and he just does not do well by himself. He is a little shy or just does not do well around a lot of people by himself. So I told him he could go with me. And he has been going ever since with me. That left a Mission. Well if you know Joe and his uneasiness around people you would know why he didn’t go on a mission. That was a little hard for me, but I had to go on the answer I got from the Lord. So I just accepted the fact that he knew a lot about the gospel from reading the scriptures faithfully every day. I could appreciate this and let it be.

In October of 1978 he was over to my home and I had fixed him Pork Chops in cream of chicken soup cooked in the oven, this is his favorite way of having pork chops, he asked me to marry him. We have been happily married for the past 32 years. We have 5 wonderful boys (John, Willie, Robert, Joe, and Cyrus) and one beautiful girl (Patricia).

Patricia's Track Meet

March 9^th, 2011: This last week end we spent the day Friday attending Patricia’s Track Meet in Apache Junction. Patricia is an awesome long distant runner. She runs the mile and the ½ mile. This year due to the poor economic situation of the state and education department, they are putting all schools together in the competitions. There is no longer 1A, 2A or 3A etc. Does not matter what the size of your school or the size of the students in your school, you all compete together.

 St. Johns usually can compete with the best of them though. We do not have as many big and powerful athletes, but we have enough. Patricia did very well with those bigger schools. She came in third in both races. We were proud of her. She is awesome to watch. She did have a hurt or pulled muscle. She has been putting ice on it and then heat every other 20 minutes for the past three or four days. Still is this week. Hopefully she will recuperate here soon. Just the same though, she still ran it like nothing was wrong.

 Yesterday though, she complained of getting sick with a cold. Hopefully she can ford it off. She says it is my fault. I’ve been sick for the past few months and especially the past two week with a comeback of a bad cold. When I have a cold, everyone completely stay as far away from me as they can and still live with me. I get to feeling a little lonely at times. It’s frustrating. We go through a can of Clorox wipes every week sterilizing behind me every day. The truth is, everyone at school is sick with this stuff. So it is possible that it could be anyone other then myself who presented the germs to them.

 I’ve been working on getting rid of this stuff real hard. I was supposed to have cataract surgery tomorrow morning at 7:30. But I cannot be coughing or blowing my nose at all after the surgery. So I had to postpone it for another date. I wonder if I will ever stop coughing or blowing stuff out of my nose. It seems to go on forever.

 Back to track though. It is one of my favorite sports. Patricia has been running the mile and 800 since she was in 4^th grade. I am really going to miss it when she graduates next year. Joe was also fun to watch in track. Joe did Soccer. Wrestling, Acadec, Track, and everything he could get his hands on. He was so busy that I’m not sure he had time to sleep at all. He was simply amazing to watch in any sport he played. He always gave it his all and made the sport just absolutely fun to watch.

 I still remember running out on the mat to help him out when he was about to be pinned (one of the few times he was pinned) to go help him out. It was exhausting to watch him wrestle because I felt like I was wrestling with him. However, he never let me live it down that I did that. That was way to embarrassing to him. They even had to do a write up of it in the newspaper. Needless to say, I refrained after that. I really didn’t even know what I was doing at the time. It was just second nature to go help out.

 Joe was something else to watch do the pole vault and High jump. That was his specialty until it came to state in his senior year. He had injured his knee during soccer I believe. It had not healed up sufficiently when it came to the state track meet. He waited till the pole vault got to a certain height, then went in, but was hurting too much to be able to be successful. It was quite the blow for him. So he had one final event left and it wasn’t even his event at all. He loved doing it, but it was not the one he felt that would give him state championship in. That was the 100 meter hurdles. The guy that was supposed to be the favored in the event was right next to Joe in the lineup. He fell right out of the lineup at the gun start. Joe decided that this was his last event and to give it all he could. He took advantage of the situation and came in 1^st with flying colors. That was so thrilling to watch. I can still remember the feeling. Everyone from St. Johns was sitting tight there close to the center of the hundred meter part of the field in the bleachers. We had such a good view of the race. We were screaming so hard, you surely could tell who his town fans were. It was quite the upset for the others. This is the view of his parents and fans of course. He would probably say differently as he was the participant.

 One advantage that I could see is that Joe and Mogli (Michael Madrid) were always good at the same sports. They would push each other in everything they did. Mogli got scholarships in track to go to school. Joe had acadec scholarships to ASU. They both helped each other out in the long run. Both were so much fun to watch. Well my day is over and I have to close for now.