Chapter 2: Grandma's house

Chapter two.

Reg and I lounged in soft chairs on the wooden porch of our beautiful home. “So how did you get to us in time?” I asked. “I thought the mission was ruined. Who were those people anyway? What are we to do with their kids?”

“The children will be divided among our families until we find living relatives. When you didn’t arrive at the portal I began to scan the surrounding area and saw the soldiers head into the woods. I immediately got Adam to reach out and search for you. He found you in the farm house and told me you were panicking. I started to panic and opened a portal in that poor woman’s house immediately. You should have seen her face as our people poured into her living room out of the wall, taking down the soldiers, gathering the children, picking you up, and jumping back into the wall. Then Jo popped back in to pick up that vase of flowers that had gotten knocked over and left a gold coin saying “Thanks for taking the risk” and jumped back through the wall. I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe! Jo cracks me up. Always tidying up and rewarding people”

I smiled as I thought about Jo. Snarky, tough and sweet. My little sister who had been through so much. But that “so much” was what had made her become who she was now. She was saved for these last days because she had prepared for it and now she truly stepped into her power by stepping into God’s power through her covenants. It was amazing.

I remember the turning point… when her covenant of garment modesty became more important than the world's standard of tough, sexy, or more “nobly”...the exposure of body to protest social body shaming. She just came to rest in the complete acceptance of self as God's creation; strictly obedient and safe in her covenants. Actually, she was even more tough and sexy because of it.

I gazed around our neighborhood. Each home was bright and colorful with grass and gardens and flowers and fruit trees. In the distance several temples could be seen in all directions. Tall white and gold spired temples that reached for the heavens and glowed with their own light.

An outdoor school house shaded by wisteria and rambling rose took up the rest of our block. I often taught there.. All ages, all grades. School the way it should be…short, fun, authentic, and relevant.

Teaching was my true calling, but once in a while I was asked to go crazy places and rescue children because I had volunteered to serve that mission. Besides, it was kind of fun. Reg was my companion who set up the portals, planned the pathways, and kept ever watchful in case I needed rescuing. We don’t have to worry when we use the temple portals, but when there isn’t a temple, it gets dicey. He was so diligent at this that even in death’s grasp , I somehow never felt like I was in danger. Reg would always be there to rescue me and with God’s help that’s how it went.

“Hey guys!” Bishop Webb came striding down the street stopping at our beautiful front garden. He smiled as he walked through the arched trellis blooming with wisteria.

“Did Reg do this?” he smiled.

“Yes, in his spare time he is the Master Gardener.” I laughed

“I thought that was Autumn!”

“Where do you think she gets it from?”

“Your Grandma Maurine, that’s what I’d guess. Man, she’s the plant whisperer around here.” Byron crooned.

“Where did you see her?”

“She and your grandfather Ray are at the ward farm right now teaching the youth how to harvest wheat and corn. Maurine is also doing a medicinal plants workshop.”

“Pretty awesome!” I smiled, “ I’m going to head over there now and say ‘Hi’”

I hopped off the bench swing, “Reg, you want to come?”

“Uh, no I need him, we have some recon to do in Taiwan, Spring and Calen are already there with some others leading out.” Byron said matter of factly.

“Who’s watching Caluna, Lillian, and Luthor?”

“I think Courtnie is.”

Byron and Reg walked out onto the street.

I grabbed my bike which was leaning on the fence and pedaled off in the opposite direction. I loved riding my bike through Zion. The air was clean, the streets were clean, people walking and biking everywhere that was local. When we needed to travel we flew or transported via portals for greater distances. Some people were getting good enough at transporting their bodies that they didn’t need portals. Sadly I was not one of those.

The farm was about five miles from my house. As I peddled past the fields of food I thought back of the time Reg and I were on a road trip to see Autumn and Aaron in Iowa. Miles of corn fields with big signs labeling the lots of corn by their experimental number. Back then the gadianton’s were doing all kinds of experiments to get the most money for their efforts with no regard to human or planet health. It was appalling. There was so much sickness because of our food.

They messed with its DNA, sprayed herbicide on it to force a bigger harvest as it died, and sprayed it again with rodent poison to keep any grain from being wasted. How did we survive? Commandments, that’s how. First of all the Word of Wisdom gave the health boost we needed to keep grinding forward. Then the prophet said to plant a garden, so everyone who did, had something unpoisoned to eat. The last few years before Zion, Reg and I had stopped eating meat completely due to the horrible way that animals were kept and the chemicals they were shot up with to keep them alive until they could be turned into money at slaughter time.

Here everything was as God had intended it to be. The food was pure and undefiled, full of nutrients, grown in rich, clean, healthy soil and watered with pure clean water. EVERYONE could taste and feel the difference. Sadly, we didn’t eat meat here, but there were “meatish” options that made food life OK for me.

I sped down the smooth grassy road. The wind blew in my face, drying the sweat as it formed and cooling me. There were many puffy white clouds against the blue sky which made me smile. I saw grandma Maurine in the herb garden with about 5 or 6 children, who were packing soil into little pots and lining them up on the outdoor shelves. She was fit and slender with nice curves. Her eyes were sparkling and clear and her hair thick and dark. That was NOT the grandma I had grown up knowing, it was how she looked in all her old pictures, well not that either. She looked better than all her old pictures.

Shortly after Zion was established the Celestial people began to be resurrected. Grandma Maurine left this life only able to say “ba ba ba” after her stroke. No matter how hard she tried to talk to us it always came out “ba ba ba”. She could understand us and thought she was replying normally, but no. How it frustrated her! Grandpa had already passed. She could not take care of herself and her children took turns caring for her and relieving each other of the burden/blessing of caring for an elderly parent. Maurine had been overweight her whole life. I always sarcastically blamed her genes for my weight problems. The day grandpa Ray came forward and brought her up from the grave was amazing and wonderful! Many of us family members were there to welcome them both.

Their daughters and son and grandchildren crowded in to hug and talk and exclaim and ask questions. “Was that hard to do?”, “How did you know what to do grandpa?” “What does it feel like?” Maurine and Ray jumped up and down and whooped and grandpa Ray spun grandma Maurine around and gave her a big kiss. Instead of scolding him or telling him to stop she kissed him back and they just held each other and looked at their huge posterity grinning.

Grandma wasn’t very nice to grandpa when I was a kid. She would scold and criticize him and boss him around in front of us grand kids and complain that he was “deaf as a post”! As if he was going deaf just to bug her. Grandpa would just smile and jolly her about. I remember speaking up once, saying, “don’t you think it bothers him that he can’t hear?” she just made some excuse for why she was mad at him. I felt sorry for Grandpa.

As a kid hanging out at their house I thought she was mean and not very loyal to him. I guess they both figured things out while in the spirit world because they were genuinely happy. “She did the best she could with the tools she had”, as mom would always say. Clearly now as she had come forth in the morning of the first resurrection, so that must have been true.

She smiled and waved. I felt like a little kid, even though I was a grandmother myself. She looked younger than me! I parked my bike and walked over, helping myself to a fantastically sweet and juicy nectarine from a basket near the gate. As I bit into the soft delicous flesh I observed the wrinkly skin on my hand. This bio suit was getting old.

I didn’t die during the transition so I would still have to “live to the age of a tree” and then be twinkled. I didn’t like waiting for that. Reg was twelve years older than me which meant he would twinkle first and he’d be all young and vibrant and I would have twelve years to go…ugh. However, the healthy food and water, the light of the spirit and power of the priesthood was so rejuvenating here that it took years off my body. It wasn’t going to be so bad. I looked away from my hands, snorting.

Hey “Hedo!” Grandpa Ray shouted from the “tractor” nearby. He called it a tractor because he used it to harvest but it was NOTHING like a tractor. It was basically a huge hover craft of sorts. It was completely silent and could sit in the air perfectly still with no sound. With the hatch open, the warm breeze tousled his thick black hair. He smiled, taking in the beauty and working the controls. He had a couple people in the craft with him, teaching them how it worked. With a few movements on the main panel the cobs just lifted up and the corn stalks released them and let them go.

The hovercraft drifted down the rows picking up corn. In another field, young children were playing in the corn and pretending to be “pioneers” from the old days. They were picking corn and putting the ears in baskets and having great fun lugging them around. When the ears were too high up they just levitated to the needed height.

There weren’t a lot of corn fields, due to the fact that it just wasn’t needed. Some of the animals ate corn, but there weren’t a ton of animals. Not like how it was before Zion. Here, no one ate meat, so there wasn’t a need to have tens of thousands of animals being fed millions of bushels of grain in muddy pens, crowded and sick until slaughter time. What a nightmare of an existence. Cows loved grass, ate corn sometimes and happily gave us all the milk we wanted. It was wonderful. Chickens still gave eggs when they weren’t fertile. So we still had fun food like pudding and crepes. But no bacon, no hamburgers, and no fried chicken.

Grandma Maurine gave me a hug. She dismissed the class to do whatever their assignments were and I helped her put the tools away and sweep off the work tables. “Remember when I used to make fake beef jerky with gluten?” she asked with a little laugh in her voice.

“ Yah, I haven’t thought of that in a long time.”

“Well, I’ve come up with the best recipe that’s so flavorful it’s like eating a steak!” she exclaimed.

I was doubtful, I had had “impossible burger” in the “last days” times and it was pretty delicious. It had given me hope that maybe I would enjoy food in the millennium. I was a carnivore for sure. The thought of no meat made me sad. I figured I’d miss the steaks but a good hamburger could satisfy me in a pinch. Now grandma was fooling with plant based steaks…how could the texture or taste be anything close?

I followed her into the kitchen of the farm house where she and grandpa lived.