David Carpenter in Idaho, a naturopath who has served as the president of IIPA, sent me a link to this video.  I watched it several times.  It really brought tears to my eyes.  This is an inspiration to all of us who dream big that it is possible to make dreams come true.  It is Susan Boyle singing for Britains Got Talent.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Click here to view it.



I don't know how your holidays were, but I had the best Christmas I've had in many years.  Three of my five children were with me for Christmas, along with my wife Helen.  This was her first American Christmas. (New Year's is the big holiday in Russia and Christmas is celebrated on January 7 with some different traditions, like Father Frost instead of Santa Claus.) 

That was special enough, but I even got everything I wanted and one surprise I wasn't expecting at all.  The following pictures tell the story pretty well.

   

Everything else was opened and my kids said, "Oh, here's one more present for dad."
When I started to unwrap it, I recognized the package contained a 1/2 reel to reel
video of stuff I had produced in high school. I thought, what's going on here...

Then I realized that my kids had managed to get this old video converted to DVD.
I had not seen this material in about 30 years.  I was thrilled as the following pictures
clearly show...

  

You see, I was the director of our High School TV station EAST-V back in 1971-72. 
We were one of the first schools to have a TV station. Right as we were getting ready
to graduate there was  fire at the school.  I had managed to salvage some of the video
clips of stuff we'd done. 

Unfortunately, I had never updated the format of the video, so I thought it was lost
to me.  My son's David and Ezra arranged to have it transferred at a place in LA,
then produced the DVD for me. 

My son also posted the clips to YouTube.  Here's one of my favorite productions.



The military visited our school and we video-taped them and overlaid
scenes for the song "One Tin Soldier."  In other words, we made a
music video.  I originally intended to major in broadcasting and
my first year of college my botany teacher wanted me to switch majors.
She asked me what I intended to do with a broadcasting major.

I told her I wanted to set video to music. 

She said, "I can't image there would ever be a market for that!"

I like to tell this story as an example of believing in the power of
our own dreams and ideas.  Little did she realize how popular
music videos would eventually become.

Oh, and here's one more clip.  A short one, with a 17-year-old
Steven narrating.



There are more of these on YouTube, including one of my favorites,
my friend Chad Booth doing a fake beer commercial.  (I helped write
the script.)  My user account is abcherb.  Check it out.

I had intended to post this blog before Thanksgiving, but I was too busy making pies!  So, I posted two of my pie recipes for you to read instead.  You can try making them for Christmas if you like.
I really enjoy cooking Thanksgiving dinner and since this was Helen's first Thanksgiving I wanted it to be a memorable one.  Two of my sons, David and Ezra, joined us for the feast.
I want to share with you a tip for a great turkey.  I always get an organic turkey because they feed so many antibiotics to turkeys, but what really brings out the turkey's flavor is to brine it.  I put the turkey into an ice chest and cover it with salted water and ice.  Use 1/2 cup regular salt or 1 cup Kosher salt per gallon of water.  Let the turkey brine overnight (about 8-12 hours, but no longer). 
Remove the turkey from the brine in the morning and rinse it thoroughly.  Pat it dry with paper towels.
Brining really brings out the turkey's flavor. It also helps keep the meat moist when you cook it.  I'll never cook a turkey again without doing it.
Another great tip for cooking a great turkey is to cover the breast meat with a little tin foil tent for about 1 hour of the cooking time.  The dark meat cooks more slowly and this allows the dark meat to get a head-start on the breast meat.
A final tip for cooking a great turkey is to use an oven thermometer to tell when it's done.  I use a probe thermometer that sounds an alarm when the meat reaches the correct temperature.  It helps ensure the bird is cooked just right.  The breast meat should be 165 degrees and the thigh should be 170 to 175. 

It's that time of the year when buzzing children with sugar seems almost mandatory.  As a parent trying to keep my kids away from sugar, Halloween was always a tricky holiday for me.  I didn't want my kids to miss out on
the fun, but I also hated to see them completely wired and high on sugar.

One year, I bribed my kids into going out to dinner and movie instead of going trick or treating.  Another idea is to have a party for them and their friends where you can serve healthier "treats." 

Recently, I read a suggestion for giving out toys instead of candy to trick or treaters.  It's not a bad idea.

It's Helen's first Halloween, so we'll probably contribute to the tooth decay of a few kids by handing out some candy.  I'm not as rigid about such things as I used to be.  (I've never believed that what you do occasionally is as important as what you do day by day.)

Anyway, halloween is the time for monsters, so perhaps one day a year it's OK to let the kids eat a bunch of sugar and act like monsters.  It's all in good fun anyway.

Well, as you probably already know, on July 22, 2008 I went through with it and married Elena (Helen) Gavrilova from Russia.  I've been single now for 10 years, so it was quite a big step for me.  After my last (third) marriage ended in divorce in 1998, I decided I needed to work on myself because there was obviously something I needed to heal inside to develop the kind of relationship I wanted with someone. I've had a couple of girlfriends since then, but no one who has even lived with me.

The story of how I met Helen is interesting and I thought I'd share it with those who are interested.  Several years ago I was listening to an audio series by Hans Christian King called Stop Searching and Start Living.  He talked about the importance of defining very carefully what you want in every area of your life and asking for it.  For instance, he said, if you just ask for a relationship, God will hand you the first relationship that comes along.  He suggested you define exactly what kind of a partner you were looking for and what kind of a relationship you wanted. 

I realized that I had done this in my professional life, but had neglected to do this in my personal life. I decided to think very carefully about what I wanted, especially in a relationship.  I wrote down the qualities I wanted in a partner and the kind of relationship I wanted to have with her.  As Mr. King suggested, I prayed and told God that I wanted a partner like this and a relationship with her that was like this (and I added or something better because I knew God might know better than me what I needed) or I wanted to stay single for the rest of my life. I was not going to settle for anything less.

I was not raised with the idea that you ask for what you want and sit back passively and wait for God to bring it to you.  So, I decided to do my part by putting up my profile on various websites and otherwise trying to meet women.  Mr. King said that you have to trust that once you ask, the wheels of the universe start moving to bring you what you want, but like a journey from one place to another you have to cross the distance in between.  So, I figured that each date I went on, each person I met was bringing me one step closer to being the kind of guy that would be attractive to the kind of woman I wanted.

After about a year and a half of doing this, I was feeling pretty discouraged.  I had not been able to get past a second date with anyone before alarm bells would start going off inside of me and I'd just want to bolt.  It just never felt right.  This was in the fall of 2006.   Shortly after returning from the TAC trip to China, I told God, this is frustrating, if she's out there, please bring her to me.

Five months earlier, I had put a profile up on an international dating website for Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, etc.  This somehow put me on other Russian dating sites and I would up getting all kinds of emails from attractive, usually much younger, Russian women.  It was kind of fun, but I ignored them, thinking it was ridiculous to pursue a relationship with someone that far away, that young and from a different culture to boot. 

Well, within a couple of days after I told God to bring her to me, I got an email from Helen. There was something about her eyes that seemed kind (and perhaps a bit sad) and something inside of me said "write to her."  My logical brain kicked in and said, "no, she's too far away, she's too young and this website is too expensive."  However, for the next few days I kept going back to her picture and kept getting the feeling to "write to her."  After four or five days, I decided, "she seems like a nice person, it might be nice to have a pen-pal," and so I decided to write to her on that basis.

I figured I had nothing to lose, so I was completely upfront about the fact that I had been married and divorced three times, had five children, was still recovering financially from my last marriage and some problems with previous business partners.  I figured that if this scared her away, it would save me wasting my time and money.

Her responses were very kind and genuine and something about what she wrote back to me felt like it entered my heart and touched a place that had been dead for a long time, a feeling of romance.  I talked to my men's group about it because my logical brain said, "this is nuts," but something in my heart felt drawn to this lady.  My guy friends said, "go for it."

I found out later that the reason she had written to me was because she had a temporary job as a translator for the dating agency and because she was single they had her write to some of the guys to get them to write back (you have to pay to send emails and have them translated).  I was one of the guys she picked to write to, but she was no more interested in finding a foreign guy than I was in looking for a foreign woman.

We corresponded almost daily for four months, and I started to lose interest in dating anyone.  Still, I resisted the idea of taking it further.  After all, she was a lot younger than I was and it would cost me several thousand dollars just to meet her.  But, my heart kept telling me that I should pursue this.

After four months, she wrote me some things and they so touched my heart that I knew I had to meet her and I also knew I was going to ask her to marry me.  I found some Russian phrases on the internet and constructed a marriage proposal in Russian and memorized it and bought an engagement ring.

So, in May of 2007, I went to Krasnodar, Russia and met Helen.  We spent the whole week together and it was wonderful and I did ask her to marry me, in Russian.

I went over and saw her again in September and spent a week with her in Moscow. 

I won't go into further details except to say that Helen is very different from any woman I've ever been with.  She is what I asked for (and better). 

I think the lesson I want to share with you is that defining what you desire carefully, asking for it and trusting your heart to guide you towards it (your head won't) does work.  I don't know what's next, but I do believe that the almost miraculous way I met Helen is enough to tell me that this wasn't my doing.  I would never have pursued anything that appeared so foolish or illogical.  But somehow there's a destiny that brought the two of us together.  Where we go from here, only time will tell, but I have much greater confidence that God hears our heart-felt requests and will guide us towards the good desires of our hearts if we allow Him to.

In May, I spoke at Nature's Sunshine's Rising Star Convention in Provo, Utah.  I decided to attend the entire convention so I could take a tour of their new manufacturing plant.  (I worked for the company in the 1980s and was very familiar with the plant they used to have, but I had never toured their new facility.)  If you've never had the opportunity to take the tour, I can assure you that NSP's quality control is second to none, which is one reason I continue to use their supplements as the primary product line I carry. 

My fiancee, Helen, took the tour with me.  It was fun because we actually saw some products they were bottling for their rapidly-growing Russian subsidiary. 

Here's a picture of Helen with one of NSP's founders, Gene Hughes.

Last Friday, May 2nd, my son David who has been working with me at Tree of Light Publishing for nearly 7 years got his associate degree in Computer Science from Dixie State College.  David will continue to work part time at Tree of Light for at least another year, but he plans to get a bachelors degree in Computer Science.
Here's a photo of David and I after the graduation.


Here is another photo of him with my fiancee, Helen, after the graduation.

Exciting news.  After months and months of red tape, my Russian Fiancee, Helen arrived in the United States on May 1st.  Here's a shot of her I took on May 4th when we went to Zion National Park.


We haven't set a date yet.  She is here on a "financee visa" which allows her to stay for three months.  After that she either has to marry me or return to Russia.  Although we've known each other for 18 months, we've only actually been able to spend two weeks together, so this a chance for the two of us to make sure this will be a good match. 

Meanwhile, it's great having her here and I'm having fun showing her this little part of America.

Yesterday was April Fools Day and it was also the day that my Russian fiancee, Helen, had her interview with the American Embassy in Moscow for her visa.  The man who interviewed her said she qualifies, but she is missing one piece of documentation they need - her birth certificate.  Her mom sent her a copy March 4th and it never arrived - got lost in the mail.  It will take her two weeks to get another copy and then she'll be able to get her visa and come to the United States.
I figured they weren't going to give her a visa without her birth certificate because I know what sticklers governments are for paperwork.  The stacks of documents we had to file for this visa application and the length of time it has taken to get this far has been quite an education in bureaucracy.  On my end I had to file an application and about 20-30 pages of support material.  On her end she had to fill out an application with over 200 questions, supply police reports and other records, including financial records from me which had to be sent to her in Russia. 
Anyway, forgive me, but the whole experience just makes me want to vent a little of my frustration about the inflexibility, illogical and essentially unreasonable nature of government bureaucracies and paperwork.  For starters, just think how many trees have to be cut down each year just to create the paper to run government bureaucracy!
When I see people pushing for government regulation of this or that, I think - why do you want to create more bureaucracy.  I tell people, "if you want anything done as inefficiently and in the most costly manner possible, ask government to do it."  If it was a private company that had to review and approve visa applications and make money doing it, it would be done a lot faster and a lot more efficiently, but of course, there are some things that governments have to do.
I think what bothers me the most however is that we have millions of illegal aliens who didn't have to go through this massive bureaucracy to get here and still get the benefits of being in America.   Several years ago I had a class scheduled before the Nature's Sunshine Convention in Salt Lake City which was to be team-taught by Canadian named DeAnna Hansen.  She made the mistake of telling the border officials that she was coming to teach a class and got detained at the border.  She called me and I tried talking to the border officer who told me he was just protecting American jobs and economic interests.  I said, well, you're certainly not protecting my economic interests because not only do I have 50 people who have paid to be at this class (which my American-based company is making profit from), but I also plan to record this class and offer it for sale as a product.  He still didn't let her through.
Afterwards, I went online to try to find the visa application I would need to get DeAnna to be able to come to America and teach a class legally.  Not only were the forms so confusing and difficult that I probably would have had to hire an attorney to help me fill them out, I couldn't even figure out which form I needed to file! 
I sometimes feel like our system rewards people who dodge the system and punishes people who try to do things legally.  Have you ever felt that way?
The odd thing is that we've allowed numerous American manufacturing plants to be shut down so American corporations can open overseas manufacturing plants where they can hire cheap labor and get rid of American jobs.  Of course Americans love this on one level.  It means we can buy lots and lots of cheap goods from other countries.  Unfortunately, when we buy from other countries, but don't sell as much as we buy we wind up with trade deficits and our dollar loses value in international trade (which is happening right now, by the way!)
It's not that I care much one way or the other.  Either open up the borders and make it easier for people to enter the country legally or keep all the restrictions and be tougher on people who are here illegally, but it doesn't make sense to me to just allow millions of people to be here illegally and then make it take over 10 months and a mountain of paperwork to get someone here legally.
Okay, so government doesn't have to make sense, does it?  It's government and bureaucracy and paperwork are just part of the way government operates.  Still, I wish Americans could vote in some government officials who would drastically reduce the size of our bureaucracy before it buries us all in a mountain of paperwork!

When I was young I had terrible sinus problems.  My nose was constantly plugged up and I was a mouth breather.  After changing my diet and doing some colon cleansing these problems cleared up for many years. 
In recent years, however, I've faced a new problem - allergic reactions.  I'm not sure exactly what triggers my sinuses to flare up, but I know it has something to do with dust and particulate matter because when I work in my garden or do other yard work it will trigger reactions that make me feel awful the next day.
This is very frustrating for someone who loves to garden.  Especially when it's increasingly clear to me that the best way to get really high quality food is to grow it yourself.
So, I've been searching to discover what I can do to rid myself of this problem so I can enjoy tilling, chipping branches, cutting weeds, hauling compost and so forth without paying for it with a day of feeling miserable and stuffed up.  I've tried wearing a dust mask while I'm doing these kinds of tasks, but I still get a reaction - possibly because my eyes are still exposed to whatever it is in the dust around here that irritates me.
The last two weekends I've had some good success in that I've been able to do a lot of work in the garden with only a little bit of sinus irritation, which pleases me greatly.  Here's what I've done.  Besides wearing the dust mask if I'm tilling or doing anything else which stirs up dust, I drink lots of lemon water or fresh grapefruit juice throughout the day.  This provides me with natural vitamin C which is an antihistamine.  I also take 2 IF Relief and 2 HistaBlock periodically throughout the day (about every 2-4 hours).  This reduces inflammation and allergic reaction.  Finally, on the off chance that it is a fungus or something in the soil (my neighbor thinks it is and he has worse problems than I do) I've been spraying colloidal silver (Silver Shield) up my nose. 
It seems to work very well and it's a heck of a lot better than taking those anti-allergy drugs.
Oh, I've already planted carrots, radishes, lettuce, beets, parsnips, turnips, onions, Swiss chard, spinach, peas and string beans.  This weekend I'll be putting in some tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cruciferous vegetables and possibly some grapevines and fruit trees.  If any of you sign up for my herb walk this summer, you'll get to see my garden (and taste some of my homegrown veggies, too).  Go to www.treelite.com to learn about the herb walk.