On the sweetness of Mormon life–

Your wife, your lovely one, has gone this Saturday to the temple to see sealed a young woman she shepherded through the Personal Progress program. You and your children pull a few BYU football videos to watch.

When Bronco Mendenhall appears, your toddler son shouts ‘Gampa!’ Your dad also has sunglasses.

Saturday evening you bake. You promised your young men each a cheesecake if they watched all five sessions of conference. You don’t know how to make cheesecake. Your wife shepherds you through the recipes. You discover that cream cheese is expensive. You discover that cream cheese is nasty to knead. You make several large cheesecakes and cut them into smaller squares, nine squares for each.

Sunday morning your daughter asks why you have a bowie knife and your replica cavalry saber laid out on the table. You explain that it’s an object lesson. You will tell your young men about the Roman style of fighting in close order with short swords and the Gallic style of individual fighters in loose order with long swords. You will tell them to work together. You will quote Elder Dube on oxen pulling in the yoke. “Romans made a turtle with their shields,” your daughter informs you. “Good lesson, dad!”

You find out you are being released from working with the young men and called to the Elder’s Quorum.