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While traveling in the Midwest this summer we visited many points along the Mormon Trail. We stopped in Garden Grove, Iowa, to see the marker there. While driving through the town we passed the school and could hardly believe that it was really named the “Mormon Trail School.” We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a picture of some real “Fighting Saints” posed around their sign.

The Merle Fairbourn Family
Cheyenne, Wyoming

I always enjoy your FYI section. Through it I have been able to “revisit” some of my mission friends and acquaintances. I was particularly interested in your article of September, “Maine Musicians Tour Rumania.” I knew the three musicians from my old stomping grounds—the New England Mission in the spring of 1971.

Beck L. Jessop
Yorktown, Virginia

I truly enjoyed your article on June Conference. I am privileged to be president of my Beehive class. One week after I was called I had the opportunity of going to post June Conference. Your article brought back all the many happy memories of that Saturday morning.

Cheryl Meeves
Lakewood, Colorado

Many thanks for your outstanding magazine. I read it from cover to cover every month. It never fails to inform, uplift, entertain, and inspire.

Lowell Gray
Alhambra, California

I have just received the August New Era, and I thank you for the marvelous pictures in it. I congratulate the photographers. I also thank you for the help you give me in my studies in the Church each month. I am 20 and a member of Jesus Christ’s church. I was baptized last April, and I am a teacher in the Primary. I’ll begin seminary this year, and I know you’ll help me with that too. I’d like to thank my friend Susan Boyd who sent me my first subscription to the New Era. All you beautiful people in the Church, I love you.

Patricia Hameury
Le Havre, France

Having just returned from the land of the Brontës, it was a pleasant surprise to receive the August issue of the New Era and find the article “The Brontë Sisters—Young Authors.” Elevated on the bleak, beautiful, heather-covered moors, and believed to be the authentic “Wuthering Heights,” is a lonesome old stone house that one must reach on foot, hiking along craggy paths that are frequented by tourists wrapped against the blustery winds of even midsummer. They are drawn there, as I was, by the genius of the Brontë sisters and the lure of the Yorkshire moors.

The area is stone country, and many days of our vacation were spent at a farmhouse called “Upper Heights,” just a mile from “Top Withins,” the house that is said to have inspired Wuthering Heights.

I am writing this letter to explain that the old house used to illustrate the article is quite unlike these stone homes of two-foot-thick walls, built to last a century or two.

Muriel J. Fearnley
Provo, Utah

I had to let you know how much I enjoyed the September New Era. I read almost all the stories and especially liked “They Will Kill Us,” “A 15-Year-Old’s View of Family Home Evening,” and “The Mormon Lady.”

Jodie Barnes
Rialto, California

I look forward to reading the New Era every month to see what words of wisdom it will contain. It always brightens up the atmosphere and strengthens my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Elder Murray McDonnel
South Dakota Rapid City Mission

I just finished reading the September New Era. It was the first Church magazine I have had the pleasure of reading. Thanks. It helps me. I am presently in the U.S. Coast Guard, stationed at the San Francisco Airport.

I was baptized into the Church a little over two years ago. It marked a turning point in my life and helped me to find peace of mind. Shortly thereafter I enlisted in the coast guard. I went through a tough boot camp and spent some great Sundays with other guys in the Church. I can remember someone saying that there was a reason for us to be there and that our Heavenly Father had a purpose for us.

After two trips to the Antarctic and one to the Arctic on the Glacier, the biggest coast guard icebreaker, I enrolled in aviation school for six months. Then it happened—Millington, Tennessee, and the greatest little branch you’ll ever see. I can’t begin to express my love for those people back there. I had been there less than a month when the branch president called me as a Sunday School teacher. I loved it. My students helped me to gain a testimony of my own. I was living off the joy that everyone else poured into me, when suddenly I found out for myself the sweet, honest, joyful truth of the gospel.

My testimony got me started into many Church activities, such as our roadshow, which took first place. Then there was the branch sweet potato project. I can remember the men and boys working in the field early one morning and then coming back to a good hot breakfast prepared by the sisters of the branch, while the girls watched the little children. Fantastic! I was later appointed teacher of the Blazers in Primary. Just think! I played a part in preparing those boys for the Aaronic Priesthood! You should drop out to Millington, Tennessee, sometime and be filled with the Spirit.

Thanks again for the joy your magazine brings.

Kurt Catton
Los Altos Hills, California

My father ordered the above license plate especially for my sister, and she was very surprised. A lot of people notice it. My sister and I both enjoy the New Era.

Darcy Barrera
Anchorage, Alaska

Though we really do like the New Era, we must tell you that occasionally an Americanism in it bothers us. For instance, in the article on the Brontë sisters, you quoted Charlotte as saying, “Your poems are so good, though, I couldn’t quit reading them.” (August, p. 24.) You know, an English girl who had been raised on the classics would never have used the word quit. We still love the magazine, however.

Valerie and Evey Mary Giles
Gloucester, England