Author: Timothy Willis

Dear Family, Sophie married Luke Wonnacott shortly before noon on Friday in the Washington D.C. Temple. The rest of the month is kind of a blur. It’s New Year’s Eve and I don’t have a lot of time to write, but let’s see what I can remember. Apart from being a last-minute addition to the…

Dear Family, Crystal learned this month that if you need a good spine surgeon, it’s really helpful to be Roland Kent’s sister. If you are a faithful reader of my letters (and have a good memory) you already know that Crystal’s back surgery last spring — performed by a surgeon more conveniently located to us…

Dear Family, Hopefully all of you have learned by now that if you don’t want the details of your latest health challenges chronicled on the internet, then you’re probably better off not sharing them with me. I have genuine concern for how you’re doing — and I’m actually good at keeping secrets. But you have…

Dear Family, Riding my bike to work in the rain multiple times this week brought to mind a cherished childhood memory that I sometimes wonder whether my mother remembers the same way I do. The distance from my childhood home in Moorestown, New Jersey, to the middle and high school I attended (the two schools’…

Note: For the latest from Sophie (including her rhapsodic musings about Riga, her harrowing journey from Latvia to Utah to Alaska and then back to Utah, and her always-exciting adventures working at the BYU Bindery, read here. For an account of Ari’s summer as a counselor at Science Camp and Adventure Camp and dealing with…

Dear Family, One of the downsides of writing a letter at the end of every month is that important events at the beginning of the month tend to get short shrift, if not forgotten entirely. This is definitely shaping up to be one of those months, especially since almost all of this letter is being…

Dear Family, Sophie is back in the former Soviet Union. Two and a half years after having her time in Eastern Ukraine cut short by the Russian invasion, she got herself into a BYU study abroad program to Latvia for the summer. For reasons you might have to be a former missionary to fully understand,…

Dear Family, I don’t know whether to feel amused or horrified by the fact that my simply typing the letters m and o in succession into Google Chrome is enough for the browser to (correctly) guess that I’m trying to get to “montgomerycountymd.gov/safespeedpay,” the website where I pay citations issued by our county’s robot army…

Dear Family, I like almost everything about our neighborhood, but I’m grateful not to live under the tyranny of a homeowners association. We have an active neighborhood civic association, which I admire, even though I seldom attend the meetings. I believe I currently belong to the association, though I’m never certain. My membership frequently lapses…

Dear Family, I’m appreciative of you who have inquired and expressed concern about Crystal’s ailing back. (I’m also appreciative of you who haven’t. If you don’t know what I’m talking about and would like to, feel free to read last month’s letter.) Physical therapy and pain meds are helping, but she’s still in frequent pain…