Week 6 -- A Simple Wedding and Being a Politician's Wife

We live in an unincorporated area of Western Riverside County. There’s a vote in a few weeks concerning becoming a city. John has been active in that cause (Measure A) and, with that, John is running for City Council.

John has had many “Meet the Candidate” events in recent weeks but with the family and Relief Society commitments, I haven’t been able to join him at one yet.

This Wednesday was another very sweet Relief Society related event –the wedding of one of our recently activated sisters, Elvira, to her boyfriend, Carlos. Bishop Lauritzen married the couple in the Relief Society room and then we had cake and sherbet and Sprite floats while everyone just lingered in the hall by the kitchen -- my kind of reception!

After that fun wedding, I made it over to one of the local high schools, to see John in action, as one of the members of a field of 16 candidates for a total of 5 open seats on the, hopefully, soon to be council. (Measure A needs to pass to gain city hood before a council is needed.)

John held his own on the panel very well.

John is a pretty humble guy and isn’t too good at telling people how great he is, but to me, that’s what makes him stand out among the crowd. I do know that he’s very patient (he has been married to me for 33+ years and we do have four very outgoing, talkative children). He can sit and listen and engage in long conversations with anyone long after I’ve looked at my watch and said, “sorry, gotta run.”

It was kind of fun to stay and hang with him after the event to meet and shake hands with the other candidates and people from the community. Now I know how first ladies and other spouses of politicians feel. It felt great just to stand next to John and show unwavering loyalty to this great guy and just hope that others can see what a good man he is.

On Saturday, we drove around town to hang up election signs. Luckily the weather was nice (in fact, almost hot, at 80 degrees).

I told John he should have worked on some sweet dance moves for the end of the question and answer session a la “Napoleon Dynamite” and he would have had the election in the bag.

If you happen to live in the soon to be city of Jurupa Valley, California, please vote for John. But, regardless of the results, its been nice for John to get involved in the community, to meet people have have people get to know him. These efforts will lead to good things no matter what the outcome of the election!