Feb 18th -24th

We survived the Omaha Blizzard of 2019. What a weekend with about 12” of snow and wind of 35 to 40 miles per hour. It all came from 3:00pm on Saturday until  2:00 am in Sunday. Good thing it was Stake Conference. Our Saturday night meeting was postponed until 4:00 Sunday, and the regular session was at 10:00 am. We had to pick up two sisters to get them to the morning meeting, left an hour early. We got to their home and had to walk a half a block through the snow drifts to get them. Arrived at the church 5 minutes before the meeting. Just to let you know the church is 10 minutes from our apartment.

The travel to the 4:00 meeting was even worse. People who think that they can travel in 4 Wheel drive in the snow need a lesson.  They try to run into the snowbanks. They speed as fast as they can and then get turned around going the wrong direction. It's a joke!

Weathermen say it will be until Friday before all roads are cleared. It is still cold and no melting is taking place. Think of the pioneers who lived through these conditions, it is hard to imagine.

The work goes on. We have had some changes to our assignment as missionaries. This

warning on freeway

week a delegation of 7 members were sent out by the church Historical Department for a site visit. The Mormon Trail Center  was given a walk through by the original designer. Over the years the focus had changed from the original design to a missionary center. The Historical Department has taken over and now it is back to a Historical Site. They are thinking of changing the title to Mormon Trail Center Museum.  All missionary additions have been removed, like Book of Mormons , referral cards, and Family Proclamations, only given when asked for, and now just Historical artifacts remain. The focus is presenting Church History, it is a change for the future. It's great we still talk of Christ in relation to the history here.

Buffalo Chips and Pioneers
Many of the pioneer companies were very dependent on an important buffalo by-product, the "buffalo chips" - dried excrement, which were gathered for cooking fires when wood was scarce. These are similar to what we'd call "cow pies" today. John Nielsen recorded in 1856:

"Our journey took us along the Platte River. There was plenty of grass and, to the best of my recollections, a little wood. Where we could not find wood we burned buffalo chips. As soon as the wagons began to make the circle for camp, the race was on. Many times, just as I stooped to pick up a nice, big chip, I was pushed over and would have to go further on." (_Our Pioneer Heritage_, 7:312)

Frederick Piercy, a young Englishman who was not a member of the Church but traveled with the Saints to visit relatives in Salt Lake City, recorded:

"There were plenty of buffalo chips there [North Bluff Creek]. They are composed of grass, masticated and digested, and dried in the sun. It is a common joke on the Plains that a steak cooked on these chips requires no pepper. It is marvellous the wonders time and circumstances work. Young ladies who in the commencement of the journey would hardly look at a chip, were now seen coming into the camp with as many as they could carry. They burn fiercely and cook quite as well as wood." (Piercy, _Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley_ (Harvard, 1962), p. 116)

Another pioneer recorded a description of the frustration often encountered by the pioneers:

"Crossing the prairie there was no fuel other than buffalo chips with which to cook our little meals of bread and meat. Think of cooking your supper, after a long day's walk, over a fire of "chips" with the wind blowing over the great plains, and sometimes rain putting out the fire, and going to bed without any supper, getting up in the morning at daylight to find everything soaking wet and nothing to burn to cook your breakfast with, hooking up the oxen and traveling until noon, trying to find some dry "chips" to make a fire to cook dinner! Such was our life on the plains before we reached the mountain country where we procured sticks to use with the 'chips.'" (_Our Pioneer Heritage_, 8:36)