At Pago Pago we picked up Elder Lewis Clark who was returning home after 4 1/2 years in Tonga. He and I became good buddies and had a lot of fun on board playing quoits and etc. His home was in Eden, when we arrived at Ogden his folks met the train, his wife (they were married a week when he left for his mission) had gone to San Francisco to meet him but arrived there an hour after we had left. 

We arrived at Honolulu 8 p.m. A lot of folks we knew at Laie met the boat. Joe Wilson, project Superintendent, Ford and Jean, Walt Hirschi and wife. He built the Ogden Tabernacle and I recommended him to Brother Mendenhall to go to Hawaii. They had a big party and banquet under the palms for us at Laie. A man came up to me and called me by name, I did not recognize him and he said, "Don't you remember when you used to come and drag me out of bed to go to Priesthood meeting?" I then recognized him and said "Skinner". He was a Senior Aaronic man I had worked with in Holladay. He borrowed my table saw and then he couldn't get mad at me when I kept after him to go to meetings. Now he was a set apart worker in the temple, and after he was released from his mission he was in the bishopric of his ward. 

We stopped over night with Hirschi's and next day they took us around Honolulu. 

It was a miserable, wet and foggy day when we went under the Golden Gate bridge and docked at San Francisco. Tony and Grace met the boat. We were back in the U.S.A. It seemed good to be back in our native land, but it was good in New Zealand too.

We stayed with Tony and Grace three or four days and then flew home. All of our children were at the airport to meet us. It was surely nice to seem them all again. We all went to Sylvia's in Bountiful (Sylvia and Jack had moved to Bountiful while we were in New Zealand). We had sold our home in Holladay while we were in New Zealand so when we arrived home we were empty handed. We stayed at Sylvia's a few days and drove her car around, looking for a new car, a house to rent, and getting settled. 

We bought a new Rambler from C. Wood Motor in Bountiful. We rented an older brick house on the Southwest corner of 500 South and 1300 East from Lewis for $80. We moved our things from the basement at 4919 Marilyn and began again to keep house. Daisy's diary complains about the hot weather and high grocery prices. 

Our children were all wonderful to us. Dorothy took care of our affairs while we were away. Sylvia and Jack toted us all over L.A. on our way to New Zealand and put us up and loaned us a car until we got relocated after arriving home. David had finished his apprenticeship and was a very good and skillful bricklayer. He married Neva Belgard in 1954 and now had two fine children and was doing well. Cherry was working for the Church building department when we came home. Rod, of course, stayed with us and came home with us. 

[Page 58]