I am writing this on the occasion of my wife's birthday. She is LXVII years old! If you write that in Roman numerals, some people will not be able to figure out how old she is and I won't get into trouble by advertising her age!

We were married on August 26, 1960 so this next year we will celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary. Just two more years and our children will be planning a BIG celebration. Patsy and I probably will not attend as we in all likelihood will be on a mission at the time.

I love my wife very much and she loves me. I say this with all surety because it is true. She will confirm the statement at any time you ask her. It is true even when she is upset with me and off pouting somewhere.

Marianne has specifically asked me to relate some remembrances of our time in the Samoan islands when I was teaching for the church at Mapusaga High School.

The Samoan people are, by nature, very generous even though they have very little in the way of material wealth. Many times we were offered a baby or child because they were sad that we didn't have any children at the time. They had plenty of children, so giving us one was to their mind a charitable thing to do. Several of our fellow teacher families did adopt native children while we were there but we always declined a s we knew deep down that we would gave children someday.

We wanted to experience the Islands as much as possible when we were there and so I would take the High School Band to play at all day wedding feasts; We would go to the ocean and snorkel as often as we could. We would take part in as many music and native dancing events as we could. And, we traveled as much as possible, visiting New Zealand and the other Samoan islands. We made many lifetime friends there, as you know, because we have talked about them and visited with them many times over the years.

The years that we spent in the Islands are very special to us and we think of those days often. We look at our old photographs and marvel that we were skinny once!

We experienced many faith promoting events while we were there and I know that our testimony of the gospel grew tremendously during that time because those events simply could not have happened by chance. We love our family and we thank you Father in Heaven constantly for the wonderful people that our children have become. We love you all!

Yours truly, with love....your husband
Garth Wendell Harker