I am 70 years old.  At the age of 69, due to the changes I felt in my body, I became an old man.  Yet I’m healthy.  I’m happy.  I can still do anything and everything that I want to do.  I take no pills.  My mind is better than it’s ever been.  I’m working, writing, learning, and serving.  I have callings at the group, ward, stake, and temple levels, and I love each one.  I’m still useful.

To be needed is a basic human need.  I can see where old age could be lonely and depressing if one wasn’t needed.  When the children are grown and independent they don’t need you any more, so an older person had better be prepared with other interests and with other service to perform.

I’m very fortunate.  I’m surrounded by children and grandchildren.  There are so many that I feel overwhelmed when they all come to visit as they did yesterday for Father’s Day.  I realize this morning that I didn’t even get to say hello to several of them.  They’re excited to see one another, and are best friends.  That warms my heart.

I feel sorry for people who have no children.  I feel sorry for parents whose children all live far away.  I’m truly the most blessed man in the world.  My wife loves me.  My children love me.  I saw or heard from all 10 of them yesterday.  I live in the most choice spot in the world.

Best of all I have a testimony of my Savior.  I grow closer to Him and more grateful to Him with each passing year.  I look forward to seeing Him.  I have not the slightest dread of death.  Because of sacred covenants that I have been privileged to make and to keep, I am bound to my Father in heaven and to my family for eternity.

I never tune in to the news any more, except to Fox News updates sometimes when I’m in the car.  There is no one in the government who I admire or trust.  If you don’t have a team to root for, why go to the game?

I live in the most gorgeous spot in the world.  It’s also one of the very youngest.  Unlike every other area, it has no history.  Humans have only lived here since 1863—154 years.  Previous to that Indian bands came through the valley on a seasonal basis, but they couldn’t stay because of the hard winters.  The hard winters also made it impossible for big game to live here.  Denver Markle told me that when he was a boy living in Rock Creek that it was a newsworthy event to see a deer track here in the valley.  The deer had to over-winter on the other side of the mountain in the breaks of the John Day River.

For those same reasons I’m fairly certain that no one lived here year-round in the days of the Nephites or the Jaredites, either.  No one has ever lived here until modern times.  The only ancient artifact that has ever been found in the area is one Indian arrowhead found by my mother on a gopher mound up on the Mountain Place.  I have it.  I’m aware of some excavations that archaeologists did during construction of Pilcher Creek Reservoir where they found evidence of old Indian campsites, but other than that, this area has no significant human history.  My little paradise is pristine.

That’s probably a good word to use for my family, too.  Pristine means “uncorrupted, fresh and clean.”

Who else in the world can say that he has a pristine religion, a pristine family, and lives in a pristine place?

(Postscript:  My brother, Tim, has a couple of stone pestles that Indians used in some ancient time.  His potato diggers brought them across the conveyor belts with the potatoes).