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What a sad day it was last weekend with the passing of the Pope. You don’t have to be Catholic to recognize what a truly special person he was. His popularity is apparent by the hundreds of thousands who have turned out in Vatican City to pay their respects. Locally there were thousands of ceremonies to pray for John Paul and for the future of the church.

My first clear memory of Pope John Paul was when he visited a farm in central Iowa. A farmer had written letters to the Pope in hopes of bringing him to Iowa. To his disbelief, Pope John Paul wrote a letter back saying he would love to visit this farmer’s home. Around 150,000 people later, the Pope arrived by helicopter and spoke to the masses, then visited with this farmer. My grandfather was one of those thousands who were lucky enough to see the Pope on that summer day. In fact, my grandmother still has a photo of the Pope shaking my grandfather’s hand.

On the subject of passing away, I received a nice phone call from a reader letting me know of a mistake I had written about last week. In my article, I wrote that a living will would run you around a couple of hundred dollars, but in fact I was wrong. This gentleman told me that you may pick up and fill out a living will absolutely free. You just have to either go to or call the Minnesota Health Care Directive. You will only need two witnesses or have it notarized by a Notary Republic. The phone number of the MN Health Care Directive is 651-296-2770. Again, thank you readers for keeping us informed––it is much appreciated.

What a spectacular weekend we just had. Both days were absolutely perfect. I even got my lawn mower cleaned up and running. Now if we could just get plenty of rain during the week and have weekends like the last one, we would be set.

Last week I wrote about people out on the ice on Easter weekend and how I hope nobody would fall through. Well, just two days ago there were about 20 people out on the lake fishing. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were even children out on the ice with their dads. A local firefighter told me that the ice is absolutely without question not safe. So please do not risk your life and for sure do not risk your child’s life just to get a few more panfish before the ice is off.

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