Heaven just got a little richer at the expense of mortality. We lost President Hinckley last night. What an enormous loss.
When Dana told me the news, I was not shocked, but was certainly sad. His health has been failing, and the cubicles of Church employees have been buzzing with whispers about him for the last few weeks. He was, after all, 97 years old. Many have said that he was simply not the same since his wife died.
What I loved most about President Hinckley was his humanity. He laughed at himself. He told us to be less rigid and more understanding. He was inclusive, forgiving, tollerant and kind. He told us to stand up for what we believe in, but also to make room for others to stand up as well. He lead the Church I love to greater things than anyone would have dared dream. He was a great man, a spiritual giant, and a true Prophet of God.
I am sorry for the rest of us, but I am happy for him. If ever a soul deserved Heaven, it was him. He spent his entire life in service to others. At an age when most men are sitting in retirement homes watching television, he was traveling the world, building up the church, and lifting hearts and inspiring millions of people. He never slowed down, and worked until 2 days before his death. That kind of dedication is marvelous no matter what the cause, and that kind of dedication to God is especially beautiful.
I love that he was a simple man. Smart but not arrogant, witty but not mean, firm but not harsh. He was such a great leader. He inspired me to live a better life every time I heard him speak. He made me want to be my best self. He showed me the way. He helped me stay close to God. In short, he was a prophet.
I will miss hearing him at General Conference. I will miss his short direct sentences and his little jokes at his own expense. I will miss his clear guidance. I will miss his full lower lip and his non-existant upper one, as they form the words of the Gospel and testify of Christ. I will miss his moving testimony, and his obvious love for the saints. I will miss him.
Heaven is a richer place today for having Gordon B. Hinckley return there. In his quiet, dutiful and unassuming way, he was a hero. He always will be.
God be with you 'til we meet again.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
A Bit About Compasses
I tried to resist for a while, but then when an opportunity presented itself, I gave in and went to watch The Golden Compass. I had heard so much rumbling about this alleged atheist film, written by a man who -gasp!- creates a world where God dies. (Heck I dunno. . .Nietzsche anyone? Why is this a big deal every time someone writes it?) I heard the books were written as an answer to C.S. Lewis' masterful and delightful Chronicles of Narnia series, which are a thinly veiled allegory of Christianity.
I have no beef with anyone writing a book about atheism. I have no problem with them writing a book about atheism as a tit-for-tat to another book about Christianity. Similar things have been done in both directions, like the Invictus poem, which was then countered by a Christian version which I think was called "Pilot of My Soul" or something like that.
Suffice it to say, I find no earth-shattering threat in such a book. I don't even find a china shattering threat. However, I am also somewhat selective of which ideas are supported by my money, and I am not exactly thrilled to financially empower an idea with which I do not agree. This film and book are precisely such an idea.
I got around this scruple by getting free tickets to the theater. Problem solved, and I could settle my curiosity about this thing without funding it at the same time. The movie I payed for was I am Legend. -Fan.Friggin.Tastic- but that is a post for another time maybe.
Golden Compass looks really good in the previews. I guess that is what previews are for. Unfortunately however, the previews were much better than the movie itself. This movie fell flat on its mildly intelligent face almost from the very beginning. I have not read the books, so I cannot speak for them, but the movie was insipid and uninspired. There were a few parts that were decent. I like the idea of having your soul be an animal that accompanies you everywhere you go. You would never be lonely, then. I also like the idea of the talking polar bears who wear armor. The bears had a really cool fight scene (it was. . .erm. . .jaw-dropping, you might say). But that is where the praise has to end, more is the pity.
The cadence of the film was incredibly rushed. We were launched into this story about some little girl who can read compasses before we even know enough about her to care about her, and that is the pace of the whole show. The character development is non-existent. The plot is also loose and vague. For unexplained reasons, only this little girl can read this magic compass that tells only the truth (which poses some major philosophical questions about situations when there are more than one truth, but I digress). The fact that she can know is somehow a threat to the big, bad church. Why that is a threat is also unexplained, except it has something to do with a substance called Dust, which is also unexplained, but which you could imagine as a sort of life-force.
The big, bad church is kidnapping kids. They want to separate the kiddies from their animal-souls. Why? Wish I could tell you. Also unexplained. Another unexplained point is why little-miss-compass-queen feels she is up to the task of saving said kiddies from their prison in the frozen North. She makes a promise to rescue her little buddy, but she herself is an orphan with 0 resources to mount an escape. Not letting that stop her, she tries anyway.
The part of the movie that bothers me the most is the air-cowboy. Some people call him Maurice (wee-whew). Little-compass-queen lands in this rough-neck northern town where she knows literally no one. She has a random conversation lasting maybe 20 sentences with this old cowboy, and somehow in that time earns the man's undying devotion. Why? Also unexplained. The only even slightly nice or impressive thing the compass has done to this point is told the little girl where the bear's armor is. She tells the bear (who is an alcoholic outcast in the town) where the armor is, and then he, too seems to owe her his life.
It is all too convenient, all too contrived. Even for an allegory. There were brief glimpses of a possible sub-text. There were some obvious corollaries between things in the story and real-world groups or ideas, however these corollaries were so strained and comical as to lose their potential power. A church that wants to tear the souls away from children to make them more teachable? Please. How about a church who consumes the souls of children to give them power or something. Much better.
The only thing I really liked about this movie was Nicole Kidman's character. This role was so effortless, I think it was not really acting, but just her being herself. You see, I have this suspicion that she is really a horrendous beast of a woman, who happens to look fantastic.
In the end, I left the movie feeling two things: disappointed that the ideas behind the movie were too weak to have any power in movie form, and thankful to C.S. Lewis for writing the Chronicles of Narnia with such clarity and power. One ironic thing I saw: the preview for the next Narnia movie played before the movie started. Sweet.
I have no beef with anyone writing a book about atheism. I have no problem with them writing a book about atheism as a tit-for-tat to another book about Christianity. Similar things have been done in both directions, like the Invictus poem, which was then countered by a Christian version which I think was called "Pilot of My Soul" or something like that.
Suffice it to say, I find no earth-shattering threat in such a book. I don't even find a china shattering threat. However, I am also somewhat selective of which ideas are supported by my money, and I am not exactly thrilled to financially empower an idea with which I do not agree. This film and book are precisely such an idea.
I got around this scruple by getting free tickets to the theater. Problem solved, and I could settle my curiosity about this thing without funding it at the same time. The movie I payed for was I am Legend. -Fan.Friggin.Tastic- but that is a post for another time maybe.
Golden Compass looks really good in the previews. I guess that is what previews are for. Unfortunately however, the previews were much better than the movie itself. This movie fell flat on its mildly intelligent face almost from the very beginning. I have not read the books, so I cannot speak for them, but the movie was insipid and uninspired. There were a few parts that were decent. I like the idea of having your soul be an animal that accompanies you everywhere you go. You would never be lonely, then. I also like the idea of the talking polar bears who wear armor. The bears had a really cool fight scene (it was. . .erm. . .jaw-dropping, you might say). But that is where the praise has to end, more is the pity.
The cadence of the film was incredibly rushed. We were launched into this story about some little girl who can read compasses before we even know enough about her to care about her, and that is the pace of the whole show. The character development is non-existent. The plot is also loose and vague. For unexplained reasons, only this little girl can read this magic compass that tells only the truth (which poses some major philosophical questions about situations when there are more than one truth, but I digress). The fact that she can know is somehow a threat to the big, bad church. Why that is a threat is also unexplained, except it has something to do with a substance called Dust, which is also unexplained, but which you could imagine as a sort of life-force.
The big, bad church is kidnapping kids. They want to separate the kiddies from their animal-souls. Why? Wish I could tell you. Also unexplained. Another unexplained point is why little-miss-compass-queen feels she is up to the task of saving said kiddies from their prison in the frozen North. She makes a promise to rescue her little buddy, but she herself is an orphan with 0 resources to mount an escape. Not letting that stop her, she tries anyway.
The part of the movie that bothers me the most is the air-cowboy. Some people call him Maurice (wee-whew). Little-compass-queen lands in this rough-neck northern town where she knows literally no one. She has a random conversation lasting maybe 20 sentences with this old cowboy, and somehow in that time earns the man's undying devotion. Why? Also unexplained. The only even slightly nice or impressive thing the compass has done to this point is told the little girl where the bear's armor is. She tells the bear (who is an alcoholic outcast in the town) where the armor is, and then he, too seems to owe her his life.
It is all too convenient, all too contrived. Even for an allegory. There were brief glimpses of a possible sub-text. There were some obvious corollaries between things in the story and real-world groups or ideas, however these corollaries were so strained and comical as to lose their potential power. A church that wants to tear the souls away from children to make them more teachable? Please. How about a church who consumes the souls of children to give them power or something. Much better.
The only thing I really liked about this movie was Nicole Kidman's character. This role was so effortless, I think it was not really acting, but just her being herself. You see, I have this suspicion that she is really a horrendous beast of a woman, who happens to look fantastic.
In the end, I left the movie feeling two things: disappointed that the ideas behind the movie were too weak to have any power in movie form, and thankful to C.S. Lewis for writing the Chronicles of Narnia with such clarity and power. One ironic thing I saw: the preview for the next Narnia movie played before the movie started. Sweet.
Friday, January 4, 2008
A Bit on Politics
I intentionally avoided watching the Iowa caucus results yesterday, but I could not avoid hearing about them this morning. Truth be told, I am pleased with the surprising results. Hilary in 3rd place makes me happy. I was starting to feel like an outsider for finding her untrustworthy, unappealing, and utterly undesirable as President. What could she possibly hope to bring to the table? She can't even control her own house-hold, or her husband. How could she possibly hope to control the entire country?
I was thrilled that Obama did so well. His policies may not be completely what I am looking for, but then again, I have never been sure why people care so much about the empty promises presidential candidates make. Nothing a president wants to get done can happen without Congress and the Senate. The president writes no bills, and can't even go to war for two months without congress approving it. I hear all these big promises the candidates are making (like getting rid of the IRS. What a joke) and I ask myself: with what congress? Which senators are you going to kill off so that you can fill their seats with your puppets? In the end, it is all so much hot air. Politics in America is too complicated for any one person, even the President, to create change on their own.
What I like about Obama is his charisma. He is young, he is intelligent, he is well spoken. I would be proud to call him my President, and I think he is a person the world would respect. After having a mediocre bumpkin rancher in the Oval Office for 8 years, lord knows we need someone respectable in the office. At least someone who has a mastery of the English language. I can't tell you how often I have felt embarassed by Dubbya when I have been traveling abroad, especially in Europe. The Europeans have a history of not liking American politics much, but they have generally respected our President. They completely respected Clinton and Reagan, for example. Dubbya, however, they revile. He is an international laughing-stock and a liability for the country.
So hurray for Obama. I hope he pulls it off, and gets the Democratic nomination. At least he will present me with an attractive option.
I hope my other option is Mitt Romney. I really like the guy. I have met him. One of the smartest, most well-spoken, talented leaders I have ever seen. I worked as a volunteer for the Olympics in 2002, and he single-handedly turned that fiasco into one of the best olympics in modern history. He is also a man I would be proud to have as president. Again, people fault him for changing his official stance on abortion and gay rights, but he will not, as President, be able to change any of those things himself. Those changes are up to the senate and the Supreme Court. Even if the President appoints 5 new justices to the court in his term, those justices still are the ones who will decide the legality of abortion, not the president.
I was sad to see that Mitt got 10,000 less votes in Iowa. I hope that he has something else up his sleeve, since Huckabee threatens to just be more of the same in the Bush ilk. I read that his main supporters are gun clubs, home-school families, and Christian fundamentalists. In other words, the extreem right. The same people who refuse to allow Romney to be a Christian even though he ends his prayers with the words: in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. These are not the people I want chosing my next president. I don't want fundamental anything chosing my president. I want main-stream, popular America chosing my president. I want a president who can and will appeal to both sides of the nation.
We will see what New Hampshire brings. I hope Romney can rally more voters, and I also hope that Huckabee will be shown to be the light-weight dreamer that he seems to be. If all politicians are full of hot-air, then Huckabee could be the Re/Max balloon.
OK, I am gonna calm down, and get back into my own work-a-day life. No matter who wins the election, America will still be the best place on earth to live, still have the best people, still be my home. I just hope I won't have to be embarassed about my president for another 4 years.
I was thrilled that Obama did so well. His policies may not be completely what I am looking for, but then again, I have never been sure why people care so much about the empty promises presidential candidates make. Nothing a president wants to get done can happen without Congress and the Senate. The president writes no bills, and can't even go to war for two months without congress approving it. I hear all these big promises the candidates are making (like getting rid of the IRS. What a joke) and I ask myself: with what congress? Which senators are you going to kill off so that you can fill their seats with your puppets? In the end, it is all so much hot air. Politics in America is too complicated for any one person, even the President, to create change on their own.
What I like about Obama is his charisma. He is young, he is intelligent, he is well spoken. I would be proud to call him my President, and I think he is a person the world would respect. After having a mediocre bumpkin rancher in the Oval Office for 8 years, lord knows we need someone respectable in the office. At least someone who has a mastery of the English language. I can't tell you how often I have felt embarassed by Dubbya when I have been traveling abroad, especially in Europe. The Europeans have a history of not liking American politics much, but they have generally respected our President. They completely respected Clinton and Reagan, for example. Dubbya, however, they revile. He is an international laughing-stock and a liability for the country.
So hurray for Obama. I hope he pulls it off, and gets the Democratic nomination. At least he will present me with an attractive option.
I hope my other option is Mitt Romney. I really like the guy. I have met him. One of the smartest, most well-spoken, talented leaders I have ever seen. I worked as a volunteer for the Olympics in 2002, and he single-handedly turned that fiasco into one of the best olympics in modern history. He is also a man I would be proud to have as president. Again, people fault him for changing his official stance on abortion and gay rights, but he will not, as President, be able to change any of those things himself. Those changes are up to the senate and the Supreme Court. Even if the President appoints 5 new justices to the court in his term, those justices still are the ones who will decide the legality of abortion, not the president.
I was sad to see that Mitt got 10,000 less votes in Iowa. I hope that he has something else up his sleeve, since Huckabee threatens to just be more of the same in the Bush ilk. I read that his main supporters are gun clubs, home-school families, and Christian fundamentalists. In other words, the extreem right. The same people who refuse to allow Romney to be a Christian even though he ends his prayers with the words: in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. These are not the people I want chosing my next president. I don't want fundamental anything chosing my president. I want main-stream, popular America chosing my president. I want a president who can and will appeal to both sides of the nation.
We will see what New Hampshire brings. I hope Romney can rally more voters, and I also hope that Huckabee will be shown to be the light-weight dreamer that he seems to be. If all politicians are full of hot-air, then Huckabee could be the Re/Max balloon.
OK, I am gonna calm down, and get back into my own work-a-day life. No matter who wins the election, America will still be the best place on earth to live, still have the best people, still be my home. I just hope I won't have to be embarassed about my president for another 4 years.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
2007
This has been a banner year for me, in many ways. I took my last school class EVER in 2007, as well as my last test EVER. (unless I decide to get my PhD, but I digress) I graduated from the U with my masters, and even passed the Clinical Social Worker exam. I got a great job with LDS Family Services, moved out of my student appartment, and bought a new car. This is the first year where I have been in Germany twice in a year (but I was there only for the first 3 days of 2007, and then went back in December, so it almost doesn't really count as being twice in a year)
I feel really blessed right now. I have an amazing and wonderful wife who loves me, I have a great family, four of the cutest neices anyone could ask for, I am healthy, and I live in a wonderful country. I have a great job working with good people, and I get to talk for a living.
Yeah, all in all, 2007 has been a good year for me. Dana is going to write a Year in Review letter, which is something she does every year around New Years, so I won't duplicate that work, but I just wanted to throw it out into the ether that I am thankful and feeling very blessed.
Of course, that is not to say my year has been perfect. Plenty of stuff to gripe about, but now is not the time. I will get to that in 2008.
For now, I would also like to mention some of the things I am looking forward to in 2008:
-August 8th.
-A new president (please, I don't care who it is, just get rid of the Bushies)
-A new place to live, in some new part of the country, with. . .
-A new house, which will be a huge first for me
-September 15th (I turn 30)
-The Olympics in China (I may be off my rocker here, but I think there is gonna be some kind of revolution in China during the olympics, when the international press is there already, and the actions of the government cannot be hidden by the state-controlled media. Hopefully nothing happens, but if I were a discontent Chinese laborer. . .)
So there it is, my last post of the year. I think I will close with some one-liners from Demetri Martin.
-Digital cameras are great, because they allow us to reminisce immediately.
-I remember when I was really into nostalgia.
-When you are a battery, you are either working, or you are dead. That is a crap life.
-When they named the animals, they must have started at the end of the alphabet. By the time they got to Ant-eater, they were just out of creative ideas.
I feel really blessed right now. I have an amazing and wonderful wife who loves me, I have a great family, four of the cutest neices anyone could ask for, I am healthy, and I live in a wonderful country. I have a great job working with good people, and I get to talk for a living.
Yeah, all in all, 2007 has been a good year for me. Dana is going to write a Year in Review letter, which is something she does every year around New Years, so I won't duplicate that work, but I just wanted to throw it out into the ether that I am thankful and feeling very blessed.
Of course, that is not to say my year has been perfect. Plenty of stuff to gripe about, but now is not the time. I will get to that in 2008.
For now, I would also like to mention some of the things I am looking forward to in 2008:
-August 8th.
-A new president (please, I don't care who it is, just get rid of the Bushies)
-A new place to live, in some new part of the country, with. . .
-A new house, which will be a huge first for me
-September 15th (I turn 30)
-The Olympics in China (I may be off my rocker here, but I think there is gonna be some kind of revolution in China during the olympics, when the international press is there already, and the actions of the government cannot be hidden by the state-controlled media. Hopefully nothing happens, but if I were a discontent Chinese laborer. . .)
So there it is, my last post of the year. I think I will close with some one-liners from Demetri Martin.
-Digital cameras are great, because they allow us to reminisce immediately.
-I remember when I was really into nostalgia.
-When you are a battery, you are either working, or you are dead. That is a crap life.
-When they named the animals, they must have started at the end of the alphabet. By the time they got to Ant-eater, they were just out of creative ideas.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Love at First Sight
There is a new love in my life, and I have only seen pictures of her. She is exotic, sexy, smart, and beautiful. She has everything I am looking for and more. She has a British body, but that doesn't bother me, since she has German brains. Who is she?
The Tesla Roadster
Seriously, this car has everything I am looking for in a vehicle. 0-60 in 4 seconds, 130+ mph top speed, Lotus designed body and chassis, looks to spare, and then (to top it all off) 0 emissions, and the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon. That's right: One-Hundred-and-Thirty-Five-Miles-per-friggin'-Gallon.
Those who know me also know that alternate fuel vehicles are sort of a passion of mine. I was in love with the hydrogen economy for a long time, but the blume is off the rose now, since that whole idea seems to be perpetually stuck at 20 years away from whenever now is. Electric cars, however, are coming of age, and the Tesla Roadster is poised to (hopefully) give the oil junkies a run for their money.
The car has more linear torque than just about anything else on the road. This is just endemic of electric motors: plenty of torque. In otherwords, floor it at 60, and you can no longer reach the stereo. Floor it at 100, and you will have to wait till 135 to open the glove box. This car is also quite stunning, and according to all reports handles as well as any other top sports car.
The price tag is prohibitive for middle-classers such as myself. $100,000. However, I am still excited about what the Tesla means for folks like me: in five years, an "economic" version will come out. A family car, something like a sedan, based on the same technology. Sure, it will likely be more expensive, but the car moves down the road for the jaw-dropping rate of $0.02 a mile. That is right. Two cents per mile. I don't care how much the sticker price is, that kind of efficiency is killer.
Another great thing is the idea of no more gas stations. Drive home, plug the car in, and forget about it. Unplug it in the morning and drive to work, to the mountains, to wherever, and then plug it back in again. The real beauty here is this: you could power your car off of clean electricity. If your house is solar powered, so is your rocket sports car. That has me all aflutter.
My plea to Tesla is this: roll out the non-high end edition as soon as possible. I will be among the first in line. I would gladly pay $400 a month for a car like that, seeing as how I would be paying $0 a month on gas. Right now I drive a Jeep Patriot that gets 25 mpg, and I pay $350 a month for the lease, gas up twice a month for $40. Making my Jeep cost me $430 a month all told. So even if the more modest descendent of the Roadster costs in the 40,000 range, I will still save money on it while feeling better about myself at the same time.
The Tesla Roadster
Seriously, this car has everything I am looking for in a vehicle. 0-60 in 4 seconds, 130+ mph top speed, Lotus designed body and chassis, looks to spare, and then (to top it all off) 0 emissions, and the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon. That's right: One-Hundred-and-Thirty-Five-Miles-per-friggin'-Gallon.
Those who know me also know that alternate fuel vehicles are sort of a passion of mine. I was in love with the hydrogen economy for a long time, but the blume is off the rose now, since that whole idea seems to be perpetually stuck at 20 years away from whenever now is. Electric cars, however, are coming of age, and the Tesla Roadster is poised to (hopefully) give the oil junkies a run for their money.
The car has more linear torque than just about anything else on the road. This is just endemic of electric motors: plenty of torque. In otherwords, floor it at 60, and you can no longer reach the stereo. Floor it at 100, and you will have to wait till 135 to open the glove box. This car is also quite stunning, and according to all reports handles as well as any other top sports car.
The price tag is prohibitive for middle-classers such as myself. $100,000. However, I am still excited about what the Tesla means for folks like me: in five years, an "economic" version will come out. A family car, something like a sedan, based on the same technology. Sure, it will likely be more expensive, but the car moves down the road for the jaw-dropping rate of $0.02 a mile. That is right. Two cents per mile. I don't care how much the sticker price is, that kind of efficiency is killer.
Another great thing is the idea of no more gas stations. Drive home, plug the car in, and forget about it. Unplug it in the morning and drive to work, to the mountains, to wherever, and then plug it back in again. The real beauty here is this: you could power your car off of clean electricity. If your house is solar powered, so is your rocket sports car. That has me all aflutter.
My plea to Tesla is this: roll out the non-high end edition as soon as possible. I will be among the first in line. I would gladly pay $400 a month for a car like that, seeing as how I would be paying $0 a month on gas. Right now I drive a Jeep Patriot that gets 25 mpg, and I pay $350 a month for the lease, gas up twice a month for $40. Making my Jeep cost me $430 a month all told. So even if the more modest descendent of the Roadster costs in the 40,000 range, I will still save money on it while feeling better about myself at the same time.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Spiritual High
Something really fantastic happened to me over the last week, and no, it was NOT the Marie Calendar's Thanksgiving dinner I had. (blech)
No, what happened was I regained contact with one of my old converts from Germany. She found me through Facebook, which I just recently joined, and she just happened to be searching through some of the groups I am a member of, and saw my picture staring out at her. She dropped me a line, and we have been writing ever since.
So the story behind this particular girl is this: she was the perfect investigator. She was curious, active, thoughtful, sincere, intelligent, and fun to teach. In Germany, or all European countries for that matter, such a person is about as rare as a 4 dollar bill. She was one of a kind, and teaching her was easily one of the high points of my mission.
Well, it turns out that in the 8 years since her baptism she has served a mission in Russia, and her mother has also joined the church. Who knows how many lives she has touched or how many people she has helped come closer to God. I feel so humbled and blessed that I was able to be even a small part of that story.
I always hoped that someday I would hear that my work on my mission was bearing great fruits, or that the child of someone I converted went on a mission or something. I never dreamed that I would be hearing those stories so soon.
For me it is just one more testimony of missionary work. My mission never ceases to be a source of joy and pride for me. When I think of all the wonderful things that have happened to me as a direct result of serving for those two years (including my wonderful wife Dana), it is clear that I have been blessed by my service as much or more than the people I actually served. I think that is the way God intended it to be.
No, what happened was I regained contact with one of my old converts from Germany. She found me through Facebook, which I just recently joined, and she just happened to be searching through some of the groups I am a member of, and saw my picture staring out at her. She dropped me a line, and we have been writing ever since.
So the story behind this particular girl is this: she was the perfect investigator. She was curious, active, thoughtful, sincere, intelligent, and fun to teach. In Germany, or all European countries for that matter, such a person is about as rare as a 4 dollar bill. She was one of a kind, and teaching her was easily one of the high points of my mission.
Well, it turns out that in the 8 years since her baptism she has served a mission in Russia, and her mother has also joined the church. Who knows how many lives she has touched or how many people she has helped come closer to God. I feel so humbled and blessed that I was able to be even a small part of that story.
I always hoped that someday I would hear that my work on my mission was bearing great fruits, or that the child of someone I converted went on a mission or something. I never dreamed that I would be hearing those stories so soon.
For me it is just one more testimony of missionary work. My mission never ceases to be a source of joy and pride for me. When I think of all the wonderful things that have happened to me as a direct result of serving for those two years (including my wonderful wife Dana), it is clear that I have been blessed by my service as much or more than the people I actually served. I think that is the way God intended it to be.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Random Ramble
Long time, no blog. I would say sorry about that, but so far I know of exactly one person who reads these words (Hi, Will!) and saying sorry would basically apply to myself, and I would not be sure what I was appologizing for: for not writing, for not giving myself something to read, or for neglecting something I started with good intentions of maintaining. Long story short: no sorry. Deal with it.
Today I am in a happy, almost silly mood. May have something to do with the excess of sugary food that seems to spawn in the office, and then mysteriously makes its way into my stomach. Wherever the mood came from, I am enjoying it. Rather like people in the early spring stop to enjoy the feeling of the sunshine on their shoulders. It makes them happy. However, Sunshine in your eyes can make you cry, but that is not an emotional thing. That is like: pepper in my nose makes me sneeze type thing. Anyway, this mood is a good one, and I am feeling like there is nothing in the world that could really bother me right now. (OK, Michael Jackson always bothers me, as does Ann Coulter and Martha Stewart and Dr. Laura among others, but they bother me in a distant way, like knowing it is going to snow in three days when I want to go camping. Not in the ruin-my-mood type of bother. But I digress.)
All this happiness has got me thinking: people should send out notices when they have good moods, so as to get the most usage out of the mood. For instance, I should call all my clients who bug me today and talk to them, because today they would not get me down. I can call my great clients when I am back to normal, and use today to deal with the pains in my posterior.
People in general should do this. Wait until you feel really great to do something that bugs you. And why not? Because it would ruin your mood? Would it not be worse to wait until you were really pissed off to do something that bugs you? You are then even more pissed off. What we are talking about is regression to the mean. Just makes sense to me.
So I am off: calling my pesky clients now. I will return and report.
Today I am in a happy, almost silly mood. May have something to do with the excess of sugary food that seems to spawn in the office, and then mysteriously makes its way into my stomach. Wherever the mood came from, I am enjoying it. Rather like people in the early spring stop to enjoy the feeling of the sunshine on their shoulders. It makes them happy. However, Sunshine in your eyes can make you cry, but that is not an emotional thing. That is like: pepper in my nose makes me sneeze type thing. Anyway, this mood is a good one, and I am feeling like there is nothing in the world that could really bother me right now. (OK, Michael Jackson always bothers me, as does Ann Coulter and Martha Stewart and Dr. Laura among others, but they bother me in a distant way, like knowing it is going to snow in three days when I want to go camping. Not in the ruin-my-mood type of bother. But I digress.)
All this happiness has got me thinking: people should send out notices when they have good moods, so as to get the most usage out of the mood. For instance, I should call all my clients who bug me today and talk to them, because today they would not get me down. I can call my great clients when I am back to normal, and use today to deal with the pains in my posterior.
People in general should do this. Wait until you feel really great to do something that bugs you. And why not? Because it would ruin your mood? Would it not be worse to wait until you were really pissed off to do something that bugs you? You are then even more pissed off. What we are talking about is regression to the mean. Just makes sense to me.
So I am off: calling my pesky clients now. I will return and report.
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