While attending the Hilo Stake HP dinner/meeting (see accompanying blog) we met Elder and Sister Keith Crouch who are now serving on the Big Island but are being transferred to Laie in a few weeks and will serve part-time at the VC and part-time proselyting.
We learned that Elder Crouch was baptized in the Ramona Branch in 1968 when about 18 years old. (Most of you know that Ramona is in the foothills beyond Escondido, CA.) Elder Crouch remembered many of the members there,(Don McGoffin, the Tippitts family, others,) and especially remembered President Wallace Gray, president of the Palomar Stake. He sure loves President Gray who helped send him on a mission. When I was a stake missionary we covered the Ramona Branch and held a number of meetings in the Tippitt's "castle" home. There were several daughters in the family who were our ages (when we were teenagers) and who would come to Escondido and participate in some of our youth activities.
It was in 1968 that I was called to be President Gray's second counselor in the stake presidency, but Elder Crouch and I could not make a connection as we talked about the "good ol' days."
