Utah Chicken

If there's one thing I learned in the South, it's how to host a party :-) Tonight Alyson and I had all of the other students over for dinner. Everybody brought tasty food, but they all liked my "Utah chicken," as they call it, the best. Mom sent me one of our favorite chicken recipes, which is always good when she makes it, but surprisingly it was good when I made it too! We had a really fun evening together.

My talk at church today went well--at least everyone said it did, but maybe they were just being nice. They are very kind people, and they're determined to take good care of me since I'm far from home. It's especially nice when taking care of me involves food :-)

This afternoon Catherine and I interviewed a man who lives here in town and who stayed with the Dudley family back in Washington D.C. He thought Tilford was a great guy--in fact, at one point his emotions overcame him and he started to cry. He was really nice and we enjoyed talking with him. He wondered where I'm from, and when I told him Utah, he got all excited and wondered if I was a Mitt Romney fan :-) (It's funny that Mitt Romney is the governor of Massachusetts but is probably associated more with Utah in people's minds!)

Tonight Kristen said that she found some love letters at the Dudley house written to Tilford from a lady named Halle who was engaged to him at one point. But I guess he waited around too long to do anything about their wedding, because the letters got progressively more bitter. On the last letter, she addressed it to "A Distant Acquaintance," and signed it "Miss Harriet C. Watson" instead of Halle. We wonder if maybe he really loved Halle but was just too hesitant to get married at that time, and later wished he had married her (he did keep all of her love letters). Maybe that's why he was a little cold to his own family? Hmmm, he was a very complex man.