Letter from Peterson's

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Ray:

Your sons have been very generous in volunteering their strong arms to help my wife and I build a fence on the corner of our property.  On 16 Oct 2015, they (with two other young men on their Mormon missions) dug post holes and pulled out some of the old fence.  This was a huge help for me, as digging holes like this is challenging for my chronologically-gifted arthritic shoulders.  A few days later they happened by our next door neighbor's house and saw me working on the fence.  They had finished volunteering their help to someone else and had a little time, so they pulled out a temporary fence I had put up, saving me time.  To thank these four young men for their help, we had the four boys over one morning for breakfast and made them the things they told us they missed.  Elder Ray missed breakfast burritos with jalapenos and Elder Lowe missed bacon.

Later that afternoon Elders Lowe and Ray came back and helped me mix concrete for the fence and pour it into the forms.  This was also help gratefully received, as I had strained my right shoulder cementing in some posts a few days before from lifting the bucket with concrete in it.  We got the work done in a couple of hours and they got to put their names in some 4 foot-long sections of concrete.  I have invited them to return in a few decades and show their children the names and dates they wrote while on their mission.  Yesterday, they returned and mixed and poured the cement for the last part of the fence.  They now are confident in mixing concrete, pouring it into forms, and finishing it with a trowel and edging tool.  They'll probably make use of such skills later when they own their own homes.

Elder Lowe earlier admitted to me that he is not trustworthy around bacon (I have the same character flaw).  As the boys were leaving our house from the breakfast, my wife chuckled and commented to me that she saw Elder Lowe lag behind and go back to the dining table and eat the last three pieces of bacon.  When they were in front of the house, I opened the kitchen window and asked them, "Mr. Lowe, did you steal the last three pieces of bacon?"  In an absolutely priceless moment, he stood there like a deer in the headlights and couldn't say anything.  We all got a good chuckle from his reaction; I hope by now he realizes that we were just teasing him (the boys did so much work that I can't do that I'd have made them another pound of bacon if they wanted it).

Thank you for raising such wonderful young men and giving them your values. My wife and I would be proud to call them our own sons and we think the world of both of them.  Their generosity and selfless help have made them our friends for life.  I've asked them to ask us for anything they need and we'll look out for them as best we can as if they were our own boys.

Don and Glenda Peterson
Boise, ID