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High Priests lesson on Kindness

An application for the lesson on “Kindness” in High Priests Quorum

On Sunday Dec 16, 2012 in the High Priests Quorum Meeting we had a lesson taught by Brother Stone. The lesson was from the Teachings of the Presidents George Albert Smith Chapter 21: The Power of Kindness.

I had a chance to try out what was taught and this was the experience that came from it with some historical information to set the stage.

On April 20, 2011 I was laid off from my position with Provo Craft as an Image Specialist. I went without income for about 10 months before starting as an SOS Temp employee. I was asked to go to work for a place called SupraNaturals in February of 2012. I was working on what was called Line 7. I worked there making boxes and inspecting product labels as they came off the line. About a month later a Line Lead came to myself and Laurie and told us that she had noticed how we always seemed to be able to keep busy and know when someone else needed help and would then go and help them without being asked. I was also given several opportunities to work on other lines and in the course of just a few weeks had worked on line 2 putting on bottles on the very front end of the line. I had worked sifting a health food dry drink mix, inspected bottles of Vitamin D as they came off line 3, put platic bottles on Line 4 as they packged vitamin tablets, learned to disassemble, clean and reassemble the filler on line 5 and many other tasks across all of the lines. A couple of weeks later the same line lead asked if I wanted to run the filler machine called a KISS Packaging machine. I said I would be willing to try it and soon was running it the whole time. Having had a background in maintenance I was also able to fix it and make it run better that it had before for other operators. I was having a lot of fun and learning a lot. Soon after that my Supervisor found employment in Salt Lake City and a new Supervisor was hired. I was soon thereafter asked if I wanted to be employed full time by Supra and so June 4, 2012 I became a regular employee of Supra. Well when I became an operator in Line 7 and a full time employee a fellow worker by the name of Kenny told me that I would soon be carrying a radio. The reason for it was, according to him, that he knew I would be in the line when my line lead most likely would not be there. So I was soon given a radio to carry. It was at that same time that I had been talked to by one of the three main bosses, Jed Mower, and asked to apply for a position to run a sleever machine. I applied but another fellow was hired and I was left to work on line 7 as a machine operator. A month or so after that I was approached by my supervisor and asked if I wanted to learn to run the FOGG filler on line 2 and not to read too much into it but that they also had another young man who wanted to learn it so they might give it to him. Well I never heard anymore about that for about a month and then one day was assigned to Line 2. I had worked various parts of line 2before while a temp employee so I knew a little about the room. In fact one day I had been asked to empty some bottles of drink that they were filling that day back into the holding tank for the pasteurizer. The temperature in the tank is 185 degrees F and it was a very hot task. I was able to stay in and empty all 120 bottles but was very sweaty when I came out of the room. It was my first taste of how hot that line was during the production process.

The operator Jeana was pretty nice and told us that it was her sauna room. Since I had a radio I became used to listening to the banter that would take place between some of the other operators as they would talk over the radio. Line two especially since Jeana seemed to like to make fun of her supervisor Jed Marshall. She always seemed to be belittling him but he seemed to always give it back as well.

At 90 days after I had been employed in September I was given a very high rating on my evaluation and found later that I was the only one that had actually been given a 90 day evaluation out of all of the employees in my department. In early Oct I was then asked to cross train in line 2 on the FOGG filler. I was to soon discover that they had trained the other young man but that he would miss two ot three days every week and they finally wanted to have me do it since I was very dependable. I then started in what would become a nightmare. I think I even understand why the other young man would miss so many days since I was soon wishing I could also but that wasn’t my mode of operation. I was asked a number of times if I enjoyed running that machine and I would always say Yes since I really did. It was a fun machine and much more complicated than any others that I had operated while at Supra. However Jeana was a great operator but very poor trainer and had very poor people skills. I would soon come to realize that the bantering across the radio with Jed was more of a power struggle than I could have ever imagined. Jeana loved to banter since she knew she had the upper hand in the fact that she was operating the front end of the line and Jed the backend. It is a situation where it is very important to run both ends of the line as evenly as possible since if the back end went down and the front end could then no longer operate the product would have to be put into a cooling cycle called cool down in order not to burn the product that was pasteurizing at such a hot temperature. There was basically a window of 10 minutes before it would start to burn I was told. Well I learned fairly quickly or so I thought until she started to have me run it by myself and then I quickly learned that there were a lot of little details that she hadn’t taught me. That would have been OK except that she handled it by yelling at me and making very snide comments somewhat under her breath so that I couldn’t totally understand what she was saying. Then she would get mad at me for even the slightest mistakes and when the supervisor or maintenance people would come in she would make comments that didn’t particularly say it was me but the intension to point the finger at me regardless of what the reason really had been. I started to dislike going to work and even dreading each day that I would get up where before I had really enjoyed it because I knew I was appreciated in the work that I had been performing.

Here are a couple on instances where I was really struggling to even stay ay work.

We were running a product for Young Living that was being processed into square bottle when the machine was really designed to run round bottles. There was a lot of bottles being broken in the machine and that was somewhat disconcerting to begin with. However part of the operation also requires putting mess sleeves onto the bottles after they are filled. A few bottles can be missed but not many so Jeana said that since we were short handed (we needed 5 people just to sleeve and we had 3) that she and our supervisor, Brandon, would help out. Well due to a few other problem neither one of them actually helped so I went and while running the machine would try to help sleeve the bottles. Then all heck broke loose and Jeana ended up coming in and taking over on the machine. Since I was still trying to learn then I would stand behind her and watch as closely as I could. All of a sudden she threw her hands into the air and said here do it yourself and walked out. Later I was told by Brandon that I was not operating the machine and that she was having to do it all. In response to that I said I had been trying to and he responded that he had mostly observed that she was doing it all. I just about lost it then and told him that we needed to talk after this was all done. Well that never happened but things seemed to settle down a little so I just kept trying to do my job and not get Jeana rattled.

Another time a red light went off and since I hadn’t been trained what was happening I tried to stop production and get things settled down and her response to that was I should have done things totally different and now QA could make us go through the entire process to be sure things were OK. Well we did have to redo about 100 bottles that had processed before I knew what was happening. Another time with a different red light on a different machine I hadn’t noticed it was on until she yelled at me asking how long it had been on. When I told her I didn’t know she blew into a rage and again started talking somewhat under her breath across the room.  These were just three examples of how she was handling it. Brandon on the other hand had worked with me a couple for days when Jeana was not there and each time he would answer my questions and help me understand how the process worked. It is that kind of training that I really need since I don’t make mistakes as easily when I understand the process and reasons behind why the process is operated.

Well I was beginning to understand now that Jeana’s mode of operation was to belittle, and even abuse people. She was not physically or sexually abusive but rather very emotional, verbal and mentally abusive. I was really struggling to go to work with a decent attitude. One day just a week or so before the main event I had been asked by one of my co-workers how I put up with Jeana. I merely said it takes some patience. THEN, came the day when I would get a lesson. I had been praying almost nonstop during the working days for Heavenly Father to help me cope with and understand Jeana and it would take a lesson on Sunday in the High Priests Quorum meeting to give me the help I needed. It was on Marie’s birthday December 16^th that I would sit through a lesson taught by Brother Dennis Stone on Kindness and how President George Albert Smith would handle situations with kindness and diffuse any problems. I decided that I would need to try that with Jeana. So Monday I went to work and sure enough the first thing Jeana told me that morning was about something that she had told me I needed to do each morning but I had apparently missed the very first step in the process and thus it was doing no good at all and she made sure I knew it. Well I asked her to show me what I had misunderstood and simply replied I already did it. There was no offer to explain what I would need to know to do it correctly as she figured I should have already learned it. Well a little later in the day when I asked what the process was for doing a product to product push that we would have to do that day she said in a somewhat angry tone that we had done it a hundred times and I should already know and stomped off. Well as we went through the day I knew that she was really quite concerned about it herself because several times as I would look aver toward the part of the room where she was sitting I could tell she was reading the operating procedure for that very process. You see our supervisor had left for a buffalo hunt on the 14^th and he was the one who usually did that process for us, which by the way had only happened once since I had been started to train on line 2. That night as we were ending the day and calculating the product we had used and finishing the paperwork I went up to her and told her that I really thought she did a great job on the product to product push I told her I could tell that she had been very concerned about it but that I thought it went very smoothly. She didn’t look at me but in a more quiet voice that I had expected told me that she had been concerned and that it had gone pretty good. Well that was all that was said and then I told her as I left that I appreciated how well she had done it.

The next day she was scheduled to have it off and I was also going to take it off but decided to go in for 6 hours at least and help put bottles on the line as we completed what had not been done the day before. So I enjoyed that day and then went home to play with Brooklyn and Kade. Wednesday I again approached the day with great apprehension but went to work expecting it to be as the others had been. I was really surprised however that Jeana seemed to be a whole different person. We were even able to discuss parts of the process that I was not still really sure of why we did what we did. Of course I approached it not as a direct question but rather by just making a comment that would lead into a discussion if she wanted. I found that I went home that day feeling much better about how things had gone even though I still did not totally have all the answers that I will need to operate effectively. Thursday and Friday were even fun even though someone had parked in her spot Thursday morning and she was pretty upset about it before even getting into the plant. I saw others get the abuse that had been directed toward me many other times and even though there were a couple of instances where she could have done it to me again during those two days she still was very civil with me.

Well, Heavenly Father had taught me how to handle the situation and at least for now it is working. I will just have to keep looking and commenting in kindness to her during work days and hope to keep the attitude in the proper form needed for us to both be able to work together. Thank You Heavenly Father for the lesson on Kindness I will never forget that one.

Letters from 1941

In 1941 my mother's sister Velma Alvira Hansen was serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Oakland California. My mother in the meantime had moved to Duchesne Utah and met a young man (if you call 32 years of age young) and they decided to get married. Now for me a 6th child in the family and not knowing my parents until they were "more mature" I found some of the things in these letters from my mother and her mother and sisters a little hard to comprehend. For instance one sister wrote that they were silly. My mom and dad Silly? Well you must read the following letters to see what I mean. The first images here are from that event of which they were referring. I am not sure of the portrait but it had to have been around the same few years at least, maybe when she was a student at University of Utah, my siblings might know for sure and be able to correct me. (Her hair style however is the same in all of the images.)

(Aunt Velma sent these to me in 2002, about a year after mother passed away.)

I decided to add a picture of the home that mom talks about when she says that Kermit was working on putting in the flooring and other references to the home he was getting ready. I took this picture on our last trip to Duchesne this past fall. The inside looks nothing like what it had even at the time they were married since the current owners have allowed livestock to enjoy it's interior for the past several years.I was surprised to see furniture was still in it as well.

Salt Lake Temple at night

Lori asked for a picture of the SLC temple and I am glad that she did since it made me go looking through my hard drives for them. I found these that were taken while Marie and I were visiting Temple Square in Dec of 2007 with our BYU Single Adult ward. It was a fun evening and brought back a lot of memories of the fun that we had while we were called to work with the 166th ward and several others at BYU. It has been one of the most rewarding five years of our lives. I am so impressed by the youth of today and how well they are living the gospel. In fact it was interesting that last night as we were photographing a Christmas party at our Dentists office (they have Santa there each year and this was the 7th time they have done it), a young family of four came in and as we were there working the young man said that we looked so familiar to him. After a few questions we determined he was in the ward when we were first called in 2006. Each day the world gets smaller.

Photo Book

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Christmas Traditions for Kinsey

To my Granddaughter “McKinsey”                      Dec 2, 2012

A Christmas Tale

Dear McKinsey;

I have been thinking about your letter and trying to remember what it was like when I was 7, wow, WOW, WOW, that was a long time ago.  I am having a hard time remembering that far back, however I was hoping it would be OK to put a few things from my childhood that would include from my earliest recollections to when I left for college at age 18 down instead. You might find them a little of interest as well.

You asked for several things specifically so I will put these into the areas you requested as much as possible.

1.     How are you? Well I am doing great. I am loving life and working hard and trying to be good. (That was included so that if Santa happens to ask you about me you can let him know I am trying to be on his “nice” list not the other one.

2.     How did I spend the holidays when I was your age. Well I am going to write it as a general progressive age as I explained earlier.

A.   When I was young like you I had a great time during the holidays going up on the hill behind our home in Duchesne and tunneling into the snow that would blow off the bench and over the cedar trees that grew on the hill. It was fun because we could go into the snow drift and then find an area under the trees where there was no snow and it would be like a little bear den inside where it would be surprisingly warm and cozy. I remember burying a treasure chest one time but for some reason cannot ever remember when I dug it back up if I did.

B.    Since I lived on a farm we had things that most other children did not have access to and in the same way we didn’t have other things. What I am specifically referring to here though is snow sleighs or discs like the plastic ones now. My father however made up for the difference by taking an old disk from one of the worn out pieces of farm equipment and welding two metal pieces onto each side for handles. We then dragged that old metal disc to the top of the bench and would ride down through the trees on the snow. It wasn’t a real easy task however at first since it probably weighed at least what we did and maybe more. We had to take turns dragging it to the top of the hill. Then since it was so heavy it rarely would go down the hill until we had dragged it to the bottom several times thus packing the snow to where it was solid enough that the disc wouldn’t just sink into it and stop. It was a lot of fun though after we got the trails made and we would ride it two or three times down the hill before we were way too tired to continue. That wasn’t all bad though because then the trail was already made for the next day, unless it snowed again.

C.    Until I was 8 I had to do the dishes with my sisters and so part of the day was also spent doing household chores like the dishes.

D.   We also had a little pond on the lower part of our property that was about a half mile from the house. We would go there in the break from school for Christmas and ice skate on that little pond. Except for one year when it didn’t freeze and when we all went down there (my brothers and sisters and I ) we were disappointed to find it dry with no water and no ice. I remember that day well because I thought that since I couldn’t see water in it then I could just walk across it and as my family watched (while laughing as well probably) I walked about 5 feet into it and then sank to my knees in mud. I was a surprised, mad, little boy.

E.    After I was eight and had a fight with my sister, Leesa, when we were doing dishes. I became old enough to do the real chores, milking and feeding the cows and feeding the other livestock that we had after that day. So then my time all year as well as the break was to go out at 6 am and milk the cows and feed the livestock and then repeat that chore around 5 again that night. (I soon regretted having gotten old enough to do chores like my brothers.)

That pretty well takes care of that section. If I think of more then I will come back to it. Oh and if you want to know more about the fight with Leesa I think it is on my blog somewhere. Look for something about a sugar bowl lid and me pretending I was hurt when she threw it at me and hit me in the head with it. It was the last time I ever did dishes when the girls were there.

3.     What kind of presents did you get?

A.   One that I remember from, probably about the time I was two or three, was made by my grandmother Poulson (Nana, as we called her.) We had an old couch and one year mom and dad bought a new one and so Nana took the fabric off of the couch and made us each a stuffed animal (your dad might remember having seen it since I still have it somewhere I think). It was suppose to be a bear and so it was a two dimensional piece meaning that it was flat and had three legs. One at the back, one in the center, and one for the front leg and they were all on the same level. It was grandma’s best effort to make it flat so they could be like pillows yet get some stuffing into them. I loved that old bear as you could probably guess since I still have it somewhere unless your grandma finally succeeded in throwing it away.

B.    I remember getting a small thought book in our stocking every year. They were full of small stories or thoughts since we would have to give talks in church they were given to us so that we would have things to help us write our talks. We had Sunday School for the children on Sundays (like primary now) and Primary during the week so we had lots of opportunity to give 2 and a half minute talks. (See above)

C.    I remember getting a brand new large toy dump truck, in fact I think it was in the shed for several years here as well. Anyway I ended up with it but it was actually given to my brother and I both as a joint gift for the sand tire (an old tractor tire filled with sand that we played in.)

D.   I also remember getting a plastic model car kit each year that we would put together for a few days following Christmas while still not in school. I forgot to mention that in the first list. I have some pictures of at least five of them that I will attach to this email letter. Maybe I will snail mail this and if I do I will just send the pictures in an email since I don’t have printed copies of them.) (see below)

E.    I received an Brownie Starlite  Camera outfit one year. My first real camera and you know where that got me. (see below)

F.    I also received a pencil holder that I helped dad make for the rest of the family as well. We made one for each person. We worked out in the barn for several days cutting small blocks of wood from a cedar branch then peeling off the bark and drilling the holes and then varnishing them. I had a lot of fun with dad and my brother Lynn as we made those gifts. (see below)

G.   We always had a few pieces of hard tack candy, nuts of all kinds and an orange in our stockings. Once in a while there would be a piece of chocolate candy as well. Mom use to threaten that she would put coal into our stocking if we didn’t behave well enough. I think she would tell us that was so she could remind us of when she was young and her mother actually did give her only coal one year because she had earned it as she would say by not having been obedient to her mother. We were lucky enough to never get any. Once in a while there might be an apple as well depending on how well the apples were in the cellar that year which we had picked from our own trees in the yard that fall.

H.   That pretty much sums up what I remember other than the new shirt, pants and socks that we would each get from the Sears mail order catalog. (Yes, there were usually under clothes as well.) New clothes made up the bulk of the presents under the tree each year. 

4.     What kinds of games did you play or songs did you sing?

A.   We usually had one or more puzzles that we would work on that were set up in the family room during those days at home. We seldom watched TV since all we had was an old black and white one that didn’t get very good reception.

B.    We had games like “Monopoly”. In fact I think that was the only game we had until several years into my teenage days when we received  “Clue” as a family Christmas gift. We did have a few card games like “Old Maid “ and “Fish” that we would play as well but mother would never allow face cards in our home so I knew nothing about those kinds of games, (Kings in the corner, Solitaire, Etc.) “Phase 10” and the other ones like that had yet to be invented.

C.    Songs were usually Christmas ones at that time of the year and hymns the rest of the year. We always sang “Silent Night” and the other traditional hymns that are written about Christ and Christmas. My family loved to sing around the piano on just about every Sunday evening in the year and usually it was just so we could get Dad to sing “He’s my brother’ or “No Man is an Island”, and then there was one about the great deep where he would sing a deep base line for us. I cannot remember the name of that one at the moment. (It might be “The Mighty Deep.) My sister Alma taught me to sing the Alto part to “Love at Home” when we were asked to sing in church for Sacrament meeting one Sunday and then later several other songs as well. We were able with 7 children and my parents to do pretty good 4 part harmony.  

My dad had a very beautiful base voice and often would sing at funerals throughout the county of Duchesne with three other men as a quartet. So singing songs was a very important part of our family.

5.     Did you have any special family traditions?

A.   I guess I just answered part that question when I wrote about the songs.

B.    We also had traditions of baking cookies and bread to pass around to friends and neighbors in town. We would make quite a lot of cookies but it was never enough. It was fun though. Once in a while we would also make some candy and my favorite one to make was “Animal Candy” a hard tack candy with a name that never made sense to me.

C.    We would also go caroling on wagons loaded with hay and pulled by a tractor. It was fun but usually very cold so we enjoyed hot chocolate after we got home.

D.   We also had a tradition for a few years of my life while Nana was still living. She would come up from town (dad would always go get her) and watch us open our Christmas presents. One year however she was in bed for several months in mom and dad’s bedroom. She had suffered a stroke and we were taking care of her. We would always come home from school, get off the bus and run in to see grandma laying in bed. It was hard for me as a ten year old to see her that way but she was so very special to us. That was 1963 and I remembered President Kennedy was assassinated that year. Well just before Christmas Grandma had taken a turn for the worst and she passed away the on Dec 26^th. Mom always felt like she had held on long enough to get past Christmas so she wouldn’t spoil it for us.

E.    One other tradition of sorts that wouldn’t or shouldn’t be classified that way was the annual forgetting of Santa to bring out one or more presents. Actually I don’t really remember if it happened more than the one time but it did happen that year that he left it under mom and dad’s bed and it was forgotten by mom and dad. It was a tether ball and pole with stand that dad had obviously helped Santa make for the present of the ball so we would have a place to play with it when we got it. Mom forgot it until nearly half way through the day.

F.    Of course we always had Family Home Evening on Christmas Eve when we would sing the songs and read the story from Luke chapter 2 of Christ’s birth. It was always a part of our Christmas that I didn’t like at first but later became aware of how special it really was for me. I know that Christ lives and am so thankful for His gospel and all that His atonement means to me.

G.   Another tradition that I had for only a few years was the going to bed and then going into my sister’s room and looking down through a hole into the front room so we could see Santa. He never came while we were watching through that hole though and must have been alerted to it by mom and dad. It was a square hole about 12 inches wide and across. It was a hole that was put there when the home was built so that the warm air from the wood-burning stove in the family room could heat the bedrooms. By the time I came along in the family though dad had installed a coal furnace in the basement so the wood burning one in the family room had been moved to the shed but the hole was still there. I only had it for a few years since I helped dig two room under the family room that then became my bedroom and study room.

H.   Along with the rooms upstairs though was always the tradition of sitting on the platform at the head of the stairs while waiting for mom and dad to get up and say we could come down to open the presents in our stockings. Then we would go back up and get dressed for the day and at that point go do the chores (or before I was eight) wait for dad and the older boys to come in from choring as we called it. We always had to take care of the cows and other animals so that they wouldn’t suffer while we opened presents. We would also eat breakfast after chores were done before opening the presents under the tree.

I.      Another tradition that I just remembered was going to Roosevelt about 30 miles from Duchesne to buy presents for each other. We were usually each given $5.00 to buy for 8 other people. I remember the only way that would happen was to go to the “5 and Dime” store in Roosevelt where little gifts would only cost 50 cents or so.

J.     I guess that it wouldn’t be considered a tradition by most people but there was the annual day spent looking through the sears catalog and telling mom which shirt and which pair of pants we wanted and then having to try and figure out the right size to order. Not real fun but we did get to look at all the toys and at least make our wishes even though we seldom got any of them.

Well that is about it. I hope you have not been too bored by the length. I am known to write a lot when given the chance and it can get boring to a 7 year old. Your dad may have to explain a lot of it to u as well or we can video chat and I will explain it too.

I love you very much and tell your teacher thank you for giving you a writing assignment that would make me take a wander down memory lane. It has been fun. Remember to look at my blog to see the pictures and I will also put this with it so that it is recorded in my history as well. It also appears that I was able to remember that long ago, wow. WOW, WOW that is amazingJ

Love,

Grandpa Poulson