April Showers and Misc Flowers

British Bouquet
Thursday evening we were so excited for the visit from Geoff Grant and his family from England. Geoff was an assistant to Tim and Gloria in the Bristol Mission for several months and was a part of the family. None of us have seen him in 10 years. What a delight to meet his beautiful wife Michelle and their two handsome sons Oliver and James. It was fun to have dinner and visit, what a thrill to see each other again.

Gay Ball
The U's Disability Services Center received an award this week from the U's Queer Student Union. Joseph was invited, along with others from the Center to receive the award at their festive Gay Ball (in the photo above right: next to Joseph is Jenny Jones, one of our former EBM missionaries and next to her is Carol MacNicholl, Coordinator of Deaf Services). Joseph took Kate Lyon, left (also an EBM RM) and they had a blast.

April Showers
Marci Smith has been a part of our family since she was born. She and her brother Matt have been surrogate siblings to Joseph since they were children (Oh the stories they could tell). Gloria hosted a wedding shower for her at our home on Saturday. It was fun to have former ward members and so many friends celebrating Marci's happiness. Tim and Joseph helped clean up . . . the refreshments at least.

Jazz in thee Playoffs: Roses or Thorns
When Joseph scored tickets on Ebay for Game Four on Saturday night he hoped for a Jazz win over the Lakers like they managed in Game Three. He took his friend Tina, a true Jazz fan (note the awesome autographed jersey she is sporting in the before and after photos). The Jazz came up short, but Joseph and Tina had a lot of fun anyway.

Scholarship past and present and Spring -Present!

Two Scholarships for Law School at the U
Joseph has received two significant scholarships:

1- The Hinckley Institute's Robert H. Hinckley Graduate Scholarship
"Robert H. Hinckley was a remarkable person who led by example and served his country well. Mr. Hinckley was the founder of the Hinckley Institute of Politics as well as a dedicated public servant in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations. This graduate scholarship was established to encourage students in following his example of public service and political involvement." The specific scholarship description can be found here: http://www.hinckley.utah.edu/scholarships/robert.html and an interesting biographical page on Robert Hinckley, founder of Hinckley Institute is here: http://www.hill.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5815

2- The S. J. Quinney College of Law Leadership Scholarship
The awarding letter said: "This scholarship recognizes your outstanding academic qualifications and reflects our confidence in your promising future. We established this merit award under a new Leadership Initiative in which we plan to recruit, cultivate, and credential the next generation of leaders in the practice of law, commerce, and public service. . . Based on your extraordinary achievements and talents, we have selected you . . . Congratulations."

While the two combined will not cover all the costs of the first year of law school, they are a real help.

The Scholar Past
This week as Tim was organizing the home office he found Joseph's class picture from 1998, the end of his first year in Bristol, England. Joseph Attended the Bristol Cathedral School, (next to the beautiful Bristol Cathedral), beginning year one of his "A-levels" We thought you might enjoy seeing he and his classmates and the school established in 1140 nearly a half-millennium before the Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth England to Plymouth Rock.

Party Time
Last night Joseph invited a house full of friends over for "Fight Night" on satellite. Everyone had a great time.

Spring is Here
Sign One: The Shaffer Cousin's Party. Held each Spring with all the Grandkids of LR & Dora Shaffer (the photo was taken in East Garland UT in 1950) this is the event that gets the family ready for the reunion in July. More sedate and 'visity' without all the GGGgrandkids!
Sign Two: The mysterious appearance of two DUCKS on our front lawn! The were a lovely couple, but not from around here. I guess with the overabundance of rain the last few weeks they felt right at home. They eventually disappeared, but other signs of Spring did not.

Easter 2009

What a Great Week
The Taggart Family was blessed with continued visits with friends this week . On Thursday Tim and Gloria met the Mike and Nenette Ramirez Family in Orem for dinner. It was so great to see all the kids! Tim hadn't seen them since before they moved from the Philippines to New Zealand. And Gloria and Joseph, though hearing about the family for years had never met any of them except Mike. On Friday the whole gang came to meet Joseph at home.

(Photo left to right: Mike, Nenette, Maco, Joseph, Michel, Li-Anne, Tim, Mikee, Carla, and niece Lauri) It was so fun. Joseph even talked Maco and Mikee into doing a Haka dance! They were awesome.

While at Applebees in Orem with the Ramirez family Spencer Morris came up to say hi to Tim and Gloria, introducing his wife Valerie and their darling little boy. Spencer was a great EBM missionary and now lives in Idaho Falls. Another Heavenly Hug!

Easter with the Birds
Gloria went up to Logan on Friday to visit and help out with Easter preparations. Elizabeth, always busy, painted the kitchen last week with a new accent color, a deep red on two walls. It looks great. Saturday she and Denny got a load of topsoil and built garden boxes. the whole family pitched in to help. Grandma helped with the preparations as everyone got into the action of painting Easter eggs.

On Sunday Tim joined them for a wonderful dinner and an Easter Egg hunt in the back yard.

A Time of Gathering

Gathering for Conference

It was a wonderful weekend, centered around the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The messages were inspiring and uplifting. We were thrilled to hear Elder Neil L. Andersen Named to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Our family has had a long association with this dedicated and inspired Church leader. He was area president here in Salt Lake when Tim was Stake President. He was in the area presidency in England just before we arrived in England and then was the Executive Director of the Audiovisual Department for several years when we returned from the Bristol Mission. He was then called to serve in the area presidency in Brazil when Joseph served his mission in Campinas. Tim was able to visit Elder Andersen in that assignment when he went down to begin recording the scriptures in Portuguese. Tim visited with him on the elevator Friday, not knowing the many thoughts and feelings that must have been going on in his mind. As always Elder Andersen's focus was on the Taggart family, and especially Joseph.

A Gathering of Missionaries

The England Bristol Mission Reunion at our home on Friday evening was just great. We had dozens of missionaries with their families. We love the mission 'grandkids'. It was delightful to welcome Günter Sandner from Wuppertal, Germany. We are proud of him and his beautiful family and so glad he could visit during our mission reunion. There were many missionaries attending that we had not seen for quite a while.

It was really great to have President Richard Whitehead stop in to visit us and the missionaries. He was here for conference from Virginia. Richard and Luana followed Tim and Gloria as mission president in Bristol. Our family and all of the missionaries were delighted to see him.

From the Four Corners of the World

We have been blessed with visitors gathered from all over the globe this week: Chris and Jeannie Wills from England have been here with the AV Department. Chris along with Tim, Dave Morris, Loren Ashcraft, Omar Canals and Quinn Orr are assigned as AV Area Support Managers to the various areas of the world. Each conference they meet with the area presidencies to help with their AV planning and needs. The Taggarts and the Wills family have known each other since the days in the missionfield. The Wills are such a wonderful couple.

Mike Rameriz is in town with this whole family for conference. He has been one of our great area AV producers for many years. He began his work in the Philippines, then he and his family moved to New Zealand. More about Mike next week, we get to visit with the whole family this week.

Elder Joshua Subandriyo from Indonesia dropped by to say hello this week. He is the member of the Seventy assigned to Indonesia, Cambodia, and Malaysia. What an inspiring leader and a great example.

Andy An, Qingdao China was at our home during the Saturday afternoon session of conference. He was down from Washington sorting out his university plans this week. (After 8 hours of chasing around he learned BYU dropped his masters program last week . . . two months too late for him to apply to another program!). Andy is like a brother to Joseph and to us all. He will soon be made an Elder. He reads everything he can get his hands on and is growing so much. We love him.