Jen Mertlich

 This girl is from a small country town called Wilson, which is now West Haven, Utah.  As a young girl Jen and her family lived right next to her grandpa and his farm.  She spent time helping her grandpa on his cattle farm and riding the tractor when they would cut down the corn.  Jen grew up with one older brother, a younger sister and a younger brother. 

                At college Jen was determined to go on a mission.  The week before she turned in her mission papers her stylist was cutting her hair and asked if she could set her up on a blind date with a boy who just got home from his mission.  Due to Jen’s determination to go on a mission she had told the stylist no thanks.  The stylist encouraged her that he is the nicest person and if she was not married that’s who she would’ve wanted to marry.    Jen still turned the set up down.  To Jen’s surprise a week later she received a phone call from that boy asking her on a date. Jen relented and decided to go on the date.  Jen and Ty started dating in August and by October she felt like she was going to marry Ty.  However, because of school and Jen still considering going on a mission it took a year to get engaged. Jen and Ty got engaged at Lake Powell, which is one of their family’s favorite vacations to take every year.   Jen and Ty were married in the Salt Lake Temple. 

Ty served his mission in Canada Halifax mission which also includes Maine.  Ty stared school to become a dentist but switched and got his degree in Engineering from Utah State.  Jen started her college studies at Weber State in Premed because she always wanted to be a doctor.  However, she was worried about that interfering with being a mom so she finished her degree in Elementary Education at Utah State. Jen always felt and valued education to be a very important part of her life.  Jen taught for a year at Bunderson Elementary in Brigham City and for a year at Edith Bowen Lab School.  After two years of teaching Jen got pregnant with their oldest child and decided to stay home with her children.

                Jen has three beautiful children.  Her oldest, Cade, and her twins, Abby and Ella.  Her favorite hobby is her children. 

                In high school Jen spent a lot of time and loved cheerleading. Jen now loves to read. She reads anything from Hunger Games to serious novels.  She just loves to read!!! Jen and her family love to go boating. Jen also loves to travel. Her favorite place is Grand Cayman Islands where they went to Sting Ray City, go to a turtle farm, and snorkel.   Hawaii is her next favorite place in a close second.  Her family also likes to ski. 

We hope you all get to meet this beautiful, wonderful women. Take the chance to say hi to her.

Jill Peterson

Jill Peterson is from North Salt Lake and is one of 4 girls in her family.

                Jill met her sweet heart at a single adult dance at the Saltair. Jill’s friend that was with her knew Brock. Her friend had dated his brother.  After talking to Brock he asked Jill to dance.  That next night Brock had asked Jill on a date were he was hypnotized.  Five months later they were engaged and four months later they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 22^nd 1999.  This Friday will be their 16^th anniversary. 

                Brock is from Kaysville.  Brock served his mission in New Zealand.   

                Jill and Brock continued to go to school after marriage at Weber.  Jill got her nursing degree. She worked at a Rehab center where she worked with spinal cord, stroke and head injury patients to help rehabilitate them.  Some of her favorite patients included Elder Haight and President Monson's wife.  Brock got his technical sales degree.  Brock now manages the local Camping World.   

To celebrate Jill graduating from nursing school Brock and Jill went to New Zealand.  Jill loves to travel. Beside New Zealand her favorite places to travel was Germany and Barbados.

                Jill got pregnant her last month of nursing school.  She now has three beautiful children.  Reagan, Eli and Whitney.  Jill finds great joy in watching her children’s successes form them playing soccer, football and tumbling. 

                Other things Jill enjoys are crafts, genealogy and to travel. 

                Besides travelling later in life Jill would love to go on a mission with her sweet heart. 

                We hope you all get a chance to meet this awesome mom, wife and neighbor.   

Melodi Christensen

Melodi was born and raised in Bountiful Utah. She is the youngest of 4 children and has 1 brother and 2 sisters. 

 After graduating UVU with her Associates degree, Melodi started attending the University of Utah. She graduated with her degree in Business Management. 

 While attending the U of U Melodi and her brother were roommates. After graduating she still continued to live with him while she was deciding what her next step would be. At 21 she was wondering if she should go on a mission or perhaps start law school. She continued to attend a singles ward at the U of U.

 That's when her husband Josh entered the scene.  After meeting at a student ward, they knew they were meant to be together. She said she always thought you should date at least a year, but they knew it was right and 5 months after they met they were married. 

 After marriage they lived in the Avenues of Salt Lake City for 4 months while Josh finished his degree in Medical Biology from the U of U. They headed to Texas so that Josh could attend Parker, a Chiropractic school in Dallas. They loved Texas. Melodi said the whole state was such a family friendly place to live. 

 Once Josh finished school they moved back to Davis County to the historic district in Farmington. Although they weren't planning to move, they decided to move closer to their daughters school, Jefferson Academy. So after fasting and prayer they and their 3 beautiful daughters were led to our awesome neighborhood and even to the very street they live on, Sea Biscuit. They are thoroughly enjoying living here and especially love their neighbors. 

 We're so glad that they were pulled our way. What a great contribution Melodi makes to our Relief Society and their family to our ward!

Trisha Grant

 

Trisha was born in Bellevue Washington and spent her growing up years in the suburbs of Seattle including Woodinville and mostly in Snohomish. She had 5 sisters. Both her parents were converts to the church. She is related to Naomi Randall who wrote the song I am a Child of God. She knows this because whenever  her grandmother would attend church with her, her grandma would tell Trisha about it. Trisha's dad joined the church when he was a teenager and her mother joined the church after meeting him. First they were married civily which meant later they were able to take their kids to the Provo temple for the beautiful experience of being sealed together as an eternal family. 

 

While growing up, Trisha loved all things horses. She rode both English and Western style but mostly western style (Western style is the more rodeo type and English is the more horse jumping type). She did all kinds of riding including patterns, showmanship and trail riding. As a teenager she even won state for trail riding. A lot of this riding however happened on Sunday so as a teenager Trisha was inactive. 

 

As Trisha graduated from High School, her father told her if she wanted to go away to school he would pay for it if she would attend Ricks College (at the time it was a 2 year college but now is BYU Idaho). One night after moving to Idaho, Trisha was feeling really sick. Her neighbor happened to be in the nursing program at the college so she came over to help Trisha. This neighbor happened to know a lot about the gospel and started teaching Trisha things about the church. As they talked, Trisha came up with more and more questions and her questions became deeper and deeper. She was so fascinated by the gospel and the things her neighbor was telling her. She thought it sounded fabulous!

 

She was so enthralled with the new things she was learning about the gospel that she wrote to her dad telling him to send the missionaries over to her best friend still in Washington. Well, one of the missionaries who went to visit her friend started writing Trisha. So between the things this missionary was telling her about missionary work and the stuff she was learning at church and from her neighbor, Trisha decided she wanted to serve a mission. By the time she came home the next summer she had submitted her mission papers and received a call to serve a mission in the Philippines. 

 

She loved her mission. She said , for her a lot of the reason she felt like she served a mission was so that she could learn the gospel. After having been inactive for a while, it felt so good and was such a great experience to learn what the gospel was all about. She loved her mission so much she extended twice and almost ended up serving a 24 month mission. Her parents wondered if she was ever coming home. 
 

After completing her mission she went back to Ricks College for a semester. While at home, between summer and fall semester she started attending an institute class and as part of being in institute was set up in a family home evening group for singles. There she met 3 great friends one who was named Nelson Grant. Every week after the Family Home Evening group Trisha, Nelson and another guy and girl would hang out and play games until about midnight. They had so much fun. She became best friends with Nelson but made it very clear they were just friends. Little did she know, it was too late, he was already in love with her. Finally, after her dating several other guys her girlfriend set Nelson up on a date with someone else. This really angered Trisha. She became very jealous. From that experience she realized maybe she should try and date Nelson and see if their relationship could become more than just friends. Sure enough 4 months later they were engaged.

 

Unfortunately, life deals us many hard blows and after 5 years of blissful marriage and 3 beautiful daughters (including a set of twins who were 9 months) tragedy struck. One morning while Nelson was driving his UPS route, he was in a car accident and was killed. That left Trisha alone with her children. The accident received an enormous amount of media coverage and was so tragic for the community that everyone knew who she was and her situation.
 

After two years of living in Snohomish with her girls, Trisha decided she needed to move on. She wanted to live somewhere where she wasn't constantly reminded of the tragedy. So she packed up her and her three little girls and moved to Pleasant Grove Utah. She said this was one of the happiest times of her life. Her and her little girls did all kinds of fun things together. They went out to dinner all the time, went on outings and would pick up and do family trips whenever they felt like it. They were having a blast just being together. Trisha also attended esthetician school, very part time and got her master esthetician's license.
 

As part of being single Trisha started dating, but she was very protective of her little girls. She wasn't interested in bringing men around them. So she joined ldssingles.com. Here she met many friends and mostly they would just chat on-line. Online dating was a new frontier and Trisha even went onto a radio talk show explaining to people how to participate and how to maintain your safety. With one of the friends she met online (his name was Vaughn) she started a site devoted to lds singles who were widowed/widowered. A new widower named Dave Call came onto the site and her friend Vaughn told her she really needed to meet him. He mentioned that he also had 3 boys and a set of twins nearly the same age as hers.
 

So one night they hooked up on the phone, because he lived in California and she lived in Utah. Trisha had been praying for years, very specifically about what she wanted in a husband. The first time they talked, they talked from 9 at night until about 8 in the morning. While they were talking the Brady Bunch was playing on TV in the background and Trisha felt like she had been hit over the head with a hammer. She knew this was the person she was supposed to marry. He had every one of the qualities she had been praying for in a spouse. After dating about 9 months, they were married and just like the Brady Bunch, Trisha brought her 3 little girls into the marriage and Dave brought his 3 little boys.
 

Trisha still works as an esthetician. She loves it. She has a salon in her basement and is able to be home and available for all of their children. She still has horses and loves all animals. She feels like animals are apart of her being and it would be very hard for her not to have them as part of her life.

Now that she is facing her children leaving home in the next 3 years, she is looking to the future. She's still working out what she wants to do with it, but she feels strongly that she would like to be there to help people as they face death. She said that when her 1^st husband died it was tragic that people didn't know how to talk to her. So many people just wouldn't talk to her or would just act like everything was business as usual. Her experiences really openned her up to realize that people need someone to show empathy and kindness to them without showing  feeling that they have to have something to say that's going to make everything all better or giving pitty. She hopes she can be there and help others in that situation.

Mayleen Lund

Mayleen was born and raised in Syracuse Utah. In fact she lived in the same house from the time she was born until she left home. When she was growing up in Syracuse it was a very different from how it is now. It was before all the farmland was sold off. The whole city was one stake and their ward was very small with a large land boundary. She doesn't consider herself raised on a farm but her dad kept a 1 acre garden. He had a tractor and the whole shbang. However that was a very good thing because Mayleen was the only girl and the youngest of 7. Her dad had to keep those boys busy.

Mayleen attended Syracuse Elementary, Syracuse Jr. High and Clearfield high. After having lived in one house her whole life she was anxious to get out on her own and live somewhere else. So she attended her first year of college at Snow College in Ephraim Utah. She had a lot of fun. But after the first year of College she decided she wanted to become a dental hygeniest. There weren't very many school who offered that program so she ended up coming back up North and attending Weber.

Because not many schools offered the program, getting in was very, very difficult. In fact getting into the program was harder than getting into medical school. She knew she had to bump up her chances so she took a job in a dental office.

It just so happened that 3 of the men and one of the women working in the office were related. They had a nephew on a mission. After meeting and working with Mayleen they decided she needed to marry this nephew so they could keep her in the family. One time when the nephew's mother came to the office, the Aunt said to Mayleen, « Come and meet your future mother-in-law. » Mayleen was terribly embarrassed.

Even though Mayleen's grades were good, she still didn't get into the dental hygenist program. This left her questioning what she wanted to do with her life. She didn't want to keep pouring money into school if she wasn't going to be doing a job she loved. She was almost missionary age, but she didn't feel like that was what she should do, so she took a year off and went up to Boise. Up in Boise she worked as a vet tech with her sister-in-law.

During that time she sorted out her options and decided she did want to finish school after all. She looked at her credits and decided pursuing a degree in health administration would be her best bet. She wanted to go somewhere new though, so for her 3^rd year of University she attended Utah State University.

During her third year, that missionary nephew came home from his mission. Immediately, the family set up a date for Mayleen. Well, little did Mayleen realize that when she was supposedly introduced to her future mother-in-law, she really was. The nephew was her husband, Chris. They hit it off and got engaged.

Chris, however, lived in Layton and so with the marriage a commute to USU was not an option. So for Mayleen's fourth and final year of College she came back to Weber and finished her degree in Health Administration at Weber State University. She knew to go on a get a job she would need more education, so immediately after her graduation she started working on her MBA through the University of Phoenix.

While going to school she continued to work in medical clinics. First in the the Ogden Clinic, next as a Clinic manager at the UofU. Currently, she works for Health Port as the district manager. She does all the hiring and firing and training in the Clinic. How fortunate for Mayleen that she didn't get into the Dental Hygienst program. Health Administration has served her well. She enjoys her career and work.

Because of schooling and work, Mayleen and Chris waited 4 years to begin their family. This created a great deal of harrassment from Mayleen's father who was desperate for grandbabies who lived close by.;) But now they have 3 beautiful children. Lauren who is 10, Drake,7 and Zachary who is 5.

When Mayleen isn't working and taking care of her beautiful children she loves to spend time doing yard work (I wonder where she acquired that hobby). She also is an avid reader. Her favorite books include TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE HELP, and Leadership books.

Mayleen also really enjoys vacationing. Her favorite vacations she has been on are DisneyLand and Hawaii. Both of these places she has taken her children. Locally they love to go to Lake Powell and hang out on Chris's parent's houseboat. They also love going to Bear Lake where they stay in Chris's grandparent's cabin.

We are so fortunate to have Mayleen in our ward!

Amanda Louder's Organization Class

Here is a link to the notes from Amanda's class
Organization Class Ideas.pdf

Recipes from the Stake Women's Conference Luncheon

Chocolate Chip Cookies

8 ½ ounces cake flour

8 ½ ounces bread flour

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

1 ¼ cups (10 ounces) butter, at room temperature

1¼ cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

16-20 ounces chocolate chips.  Mix different kinds of chocolate (bittersweet, semi sweet, milk, butterscotch, white) according to preference

Directions:

 1.  Sift together cake flour and bread flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and set aside.

 2. Cream together the butter and sugars until very light, about 5 minutes.  Add the eggs mixing until fluffy then add the vanilla.  Gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

 3.  Press plastic wrap against the dough and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, up to 72 hours. I know this is a little unusual but allowing the dough to rest will soften the gluten and make a very tender and wonderful cookie.

 4.  When ready to bake reheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

 5.  Scoop1/4 cup of dough, roll into a ball and place on baking sheet (you should get 6 on a sheet depending on the size of the cookie sheet).  Bake until golden brown but still a little soft in the center, 12 minutes, depending on your oven.  Allow cookies to cool several minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe makes 25 jumbo cookies.  Adjust baking time for smaller sized dough balls.

Sandwiches from the 2015 Women’s Conference

Bread: Focaccia

Spread:  Sun dried tomato mayonnaise and store bought pesto

Filling:  Turkey, ham and spring mix

Sun Dried Tomato Mayonnaise

2 cups mayonnaise

1-2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes, rehydrated or oil packed and well drained

In a blender, food processor or by hand finely chop the sun dried tomatoes and garlic.  Add to the mayonnaise and stir/process until combined.  Can be used right away but is best if it sits for a few hours.  *I usually add a 3-4 Tablespoons of finely grated fresh parmesan cheese and about 1/2 tsp of dried basil.

Focaccia Bread

The bakery in Harmon’s and Granato’s in SLC have an excellent focaccia bread you can purchase already made. To save time and money for the Women’s Conference luncheon we came up with something we are calling “Pho-caccia” made with pizza dough purchased from the Sam’s Club food court.  They are sold in boxes of 20 for about $16.  Heres how we made it.

2 pizza dough balls, thawed in refrigerator overnight (we actually used 2 and 1/3 to make the thickness we desired)

1/4 c olive oil

2 tsp course salt

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 tsp dried or 1-1/2 T chopped fresh Italian herbs (rosemary, thyme, basil, parsley)

Prepare a 12 x 16 bun pan with 1 T of the oil and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp of the salt. Roll cold dough into a rectangle and place into the pan.  When dough comes to room temperature spread on 2 T oil, the garlic, and 1 tsp of the salt.  Using your finger tips push the dough to fit the pan.  As you are doing so, spread your fingers out and make a lot of holes all the way through he dough allowing the oil into the holes.  This will help to flavor the otherwise flavorless dough and create the characteristic craggy look of focaccia.  Let the dough rise until nice and light, about double in size.  Before baking, drizzle with the reminding oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and the herbs.  Bake on the bottom rack of the oven at 425 degrees until done, about 15 minutes.  Let cool 20-30 minutes before removing from the pan or you can leave in the pan until serving.