Pet Peeve

I have realized in the last couple of days that I have a pet peeve. It really frustrates me when a member of the church that I respect talks ill of any of their priesthood leaders or discredits them because they have made a mistake in the past. I think that this pet peeve dates back to when I was a young Aaronic Priesthood holder and my father was called to be the Stake President. I watched my dad struggle to do the best that he could to follow the will of the Lord even when it was difficult. I watched him and my mother get made fun of and ostracized because of their dedication to following the priesthood. Then I went on my mission and watched missionary after missionary criticize and murmur about my mission president. I have seen people apostatize from the church over a small disagreement with their bishop/stake president/mission president. I don't believe that church leaders are perfect. Believe me, I knew better than anybody else that my Dad was imperfect. But I believe that when the priesthood speaks in its stewardship, all discussion ends. the only discussion that should ensue is how to carry out their directive. Call this blind obedience if you want, but to me it is not blind. I know that God is my father, I know that Jesus is my Savior, and because I know this I know that the Keys of the Kingdom are in the Hands of Thomas S. Monson and the Quorum of the Twelve and the have delegated that authority to our local leaders. It is a very sensitive subject for me because of my history with my Dad being what he was in the church. I find myself getting angry when I hear some one discredit a source because they think that they are smart enough to recognize the error in the statement given by a General Authority. "O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the councles of God." I am grateful for the influence of my parents and the affect that it has had on me. Hold tight to the priesthood and you are holding tight to God.

Worst Luck Possible

So I officially have the worst luck in the world, at least in Utah. Do you know the scenes in the movies where the bad kids are trying to get the good guy to do something bad (such as knocking down mailboxes with a bat)? They sit there and do it for an eternity and finally the "good guy" succumbs and picks up the bat. Before he can even take a swing, the tell tell flashes of red, white, and blue flash on. The bad kids take off leaving their unfortunate victim holding the evidence. I feel like that has happened to me a couple of times. I was obviously doing something wrong, but I wasn't the first one to do it, I was just the first to get caught. One of my friends gave me a moped that he had had for several years. It was unregistered, uninsured, and it had a dangling tail light. he reassured me saying that cops don't care about mopeds in Provo and provided several stories as evidence. It took about a week for the cops to pull me over and slap a nasty ticket on me. I was now shouldered with the responsibility of getting the moped registered, insured, and fixed. Left with the bat in my hand. The 2nd example happened today. I ride the bus to school everyday and have done so for a month and a half without any problem. I use a bus pass that my friend gave me. Apparently the state of Utah frowns on this (why i do not know since the price of passage is paid already, but that's a topic for another day). On occasion the cops will get bored and decide to ride the bus around. They do this under the pretense of making sure that everybody has paid for their passage. So every week or so i would pull out my pass and show it to them and they would nod their heads and continue on. Well today must have been a particularly slow day so they decide to check my ID to make sure the names match. I explained to them the situation of my pass and they then informed me that what I was doing was illegal. I was then escorted off the train (not in hand cuffs, to bad really that would make a much more exciting story). the officer then sat me down and wrote me a pretty big fine and took my bus pass. No warning, no mercy. I guess that this is what I get for living in a state with one of the lowest crime rates in America, bored cops. I guess that it is a good thing, I mean, who would want a poor college student out on the streets on an unregistered moped, or taking advantage of a friends kindness. The streets need to be protected from the likes of me, for the safety of the children of America. It really is a good thing. I wish that I did not have to be the victim of these bouts of bad luck but it is teaching me about integrity and doing things the way that they are supposed to be done. Just wish that my teachers weren't so expensive.

The Vibrality of Youth

I love being young. It is a wonderful thing to realize that I can stay up to the wee hours of the morning and still function at a decent percentage of my max capacity. Its not just me, its every college student in existance. I am constantly amazed by how little sleep the average 18-27 year old gets. It creates an interesting culture surrounding college towns. Social Websites such as facebook enhance this. At any time I can get onto facebook and it is almost a guarantee that one of my college buddies will be on. Whether I talk to them or not is a different matter. Then you factor in the hours of homework that a student has to do on top of going to class and (on occasion) work. I know people who work till midnight and then come home and do the hours of homework, sleep for 4 hours, wake up and go to school. Its a rough life. Personally I don't have this schedule. I wake up in time to catch the bus to school, sleep on the way to school, attend school, get on the bus and do homework, get home and play. Its a rough life I know, but I do what I can to get by.

Tribute to my Father

I was pondering deep thoughts about the universe today and I had a burst of realization. I realized that I did not cherish the time I had with my Dad before I left for college. I think back on the 3 interesting months that I was home and I am slightly embarrassed by what I did. I spent so much time complaining of being mis-treated that I overlooked the wonderful opportunity that I had to bond with my Dad man-man. I realized today that we are more alike than I thought. I think that we might even have some of the same insecurities/issues.

Issue #1 One of the issues that I thought of today is a memory from those 3 months. I remember sitting on my computer playing a game online when my Dad walked into the house with one of the seasons of Smallville. Generally when he rented one of the seasons all the boys would watch it with him. I remember that we kinda ignored him because we were to entranced into our game. "I got this so we could watch them together, but I guess that I'll just watch them by myself" he said as we ignored him. One of my main issues is that I'm a pretty loud guy. So people hear me and assume that I'm doing good and don't bother to check on me and talk to me. My father is also a loud person, and very social. So I as his son always assumed that he didn't really need me to "hang out" with him. I look back and realize that he was trying to get me to be with him. I am his son who he loves dearly. I think that he wanted our 3 months together to be a time were we bonded. And just as I get ignored because I'm loud and social, so does he. But just like I need to be recognized and loved, so does he.

Issue #2 Throughout my life I surrounded myself with some stellar friends. Alex Alvis, Brandon Packard, and Nate Jarrell. These 3 friends had everything it took. They were funny, nice, educated, sweet, sincere, worthy priesthood holders. I was all these things also but i got lost in the background because of the quality of my friends. It didn't diminish our friendship at all, in fact I loved being with them because it made me want to be better. My father married the most wonderful woman in the world. We tout her praises to everyone that we meet. My Dad is her biggest advocate. As a result, my Dads good qualities fall in the background because of the company he keeps. But my Dad has some amazing characteristics that have profoundly affected my life. I am so grateful for him. I am going to name off just a few of the characteristics that I have noticed.
#1 obedience- I learned obedience from my Dad(my mom to, but this blog is for dad, lol). I didn't just learn it through his words "obedience is the first law of heaven..." but through his actions. From driving through a ditch because a General Authority told him, waking us up at 5 a.m. to have Family Scripture study, putting up with his rambunctious kids at FHE, to something so simple as not yelling at his children. Dad, I learned unquestioning obedience to the priesthood from you.
#2 Choice- My Dad should not have been the dad that he was. He had a poor example of how a father should be. He chose to be the best dad that he could. He made time for us. He tried to do things with us(A/E working the garden). He balanced a hectic work/church schedule to make time to be home. Most importantly he decided that no matter what happened his children where going to know that he loved them. Cherished were the times on my mission when a member would get in contact with my parents and come to me with a confused expression on their face and tell me, "Your dad told me to pass this message on to you, "Guess What?""
#3 Pro-activity- I don't know how many times I went and asked my Dad to go somewhere and he would ask, "Is the yard mowed? Are your chores for Mom done?" If I could answer these questions affirmatively then the world was my oyster. If not, the answer was inevitable, "nope, come talk to me when the job is done" I learned to not even ask until I had finished the job. As a result I would do my work (usually) without being told.
#4 Priesthood- I learned how a priesthood holder should act, who they should be, and where they should be from my Dad. He was an example of the priesthood to me. He was constantly serving others and volunteering his sons to serve others. When he received revelation to do something, he did it, no matter how controversial or hard the decision was. He was an example of the the phase "When the priesthood speaks, you listen and obey"
#5 Missionary Work- I am constantly amazed by how good my Dad is at missionary work. When he came to pick me up from my mission, he was more gung-ho about inviting people to hear the message of the missionaries. While we were visiting a couple that I had baptized the wife's non-member mother and sister showed up. Before we had left the mother had committed to learn more about the Gospel. Just a couple of weeks ago he was in Austin to sit in with his sister as she began the lessons with the missionaries.

I could go on and on about the good qualities that my Dad personifies; testimony, service, love, humility, passion, determination, diligence... But I want to keep this blog shorter than 10 pages. Needless to say, my Dad is a wonderful man/father. The cool thing is that as lucky as my Dad is to have my Mom, she is just as lucky to have my Dad. This puts me in the truly blessed category to have both of them as my parents. Dad, guess what...I love you.

Happy Valintines Day

Why do we have Valentines Day? I think that its so that everyone who is married or is in some other type of companionship can show off their successful lives. While all us single folk are stuck with wondering what could have been. I had an interesting weekend myself. It started on Friday afternoon when I had the chance to meet one of the officers of the Provo Police department. He decided that I had way to much money for my own good(as was shown by my 1985 moped scooter bike) and slapped a nasty ticket on me($1400). It then turned pretty fun. I went to a Pool party that my summer employer puts on every Friday. There I met a really cool girl. We hit it off and later as we watched "The Dark Knight" in my employers theater room we ended up snuggling a little bit and holding hands. Naturally I was pretty excited so I get her phone number and we decide to get together soon. I kinda had a plan that if we started to hit it off even more I was gonna ask her if she wanted to come eat diner at my sisters house for Valentines Day(which was amazing BTW Laurie). But we were not able to get in touch with each other until I was headed over to Laurie's house. Bummer. But I just found out from one of her friends that she didn't hold my hand because she liked me but because she didn't want to hurt my feelings. I've noticed that that always works. I'm going to do something that I know represents a certain type of emotion when I know that I don't have that emotion and try to say that I didn't want to hurt the person. I was the victim of a Mormon version of a One-night-stand.

Insomnia Stinks

This week I have been hit with a bout of Insomnia. To put it simply, it stinks. I know that I've had insomnia wince I was around the age of 14, roughly around the time I started High School. But I think that I might have had it before then, and its probably self induced. Some of my earliest memories of my childhood are me staying up till the wee hours of the morning reading/finishing my latest fantasy novel. That continued on for a while then when I reached high school I was truly introduced into the world of video games. This didn't replace my reading, it just pushed it back to the later hours of the night. So through out high school i got used to the schedule of going to bed around 1:00 a.m. and being woken up by my dad at 5 a.m. during the school week. The weekends usually consisted in going over to my friend Nate's house on Friday night and playing video games till 5 a.m. sleeping till 7 a.m. then going home at 8 a.m. to do chores. Wash, rinse, repeat for Saturday night.
As a teenager this worked for me perfectly. I barely even realized that I had a harder time falling asleep than all my friends because I was so caught up in the material world that I lived in. It was rough on my mission. Going to bed at 10:30 p.m. was torture. Sometimes I would lay in bed staring at the ceiling till 3 a.m. Eventually my sleep pattern stabilized and I was able to go to sleep by mid-night. When I got home from my mission I got back into a similar routine as I had had prior to the mission. I'd usually go to bed around 2 a.m. and get up at 6 a.m. to go to work. Now I 'm in college, and this last week was the worst I've had since I left for my mission 2 1/2 years ago. On some nights I didn't fall asleep till 6 a.m. On average I went to bed around 3 a.m. I disguised it to my room-mates and friends by watching movies and playing games with them until they went to bed, but after that I would take a shower and attempt to sleep. Eventually after and hour or so of attempting, I would succeed.
This problem makes school work very difficult. I'm lucky that all my classes do not require my attendance to learn the material. In fact I actually learn the material better when I study it alone. This gives me the opportunity to catch up on sleep when needed. But it is something that I cant take advantage of to often. Plus if I'm sleeping during the afternoon, I'm not doing school work.

My Great Failure When it comes to School

I want to start this blog off by saying that I DON'T think that I am a super-genius, cause I'm not. But I do recognize that I am an intelligent person. My greatest problem when it comes to school is that I get really really bored during class. It generally starts when the professor goes off on a tangent about things that I deem are irrelevant. So at that point my mind selects from an ample selection of distractions that has been provided by the Fantasy books that I've been reading since I was around the age of 5. I begin to philosophize and ponder on the subject and before I know it, not only is the tangent over but so is the class. It entertains me, but also makes going to class almost completely pointless. I think that I would do better with a tutor and an on-line course. I also think that I might have a strange combination of ADD and OCD. I'm easily distracted from things that are important by things that are enjoyable, but at the same time, if i have parameters put around me(A/E you cant go anywhere this weekend until the yard is mowed) I'm very good at getting the job done, and doing it well. And yes, I did write this post in the midst of a tangent during my finance 101 class that is about to end(30 minutes later, I know that its a tangent because it started with the phrase "I digress from my topic but...")

Life as a Chaos Nexus

This last Saturday evening I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that I'm a Chaos Nexus. Just about anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I found this out on a date unfortunatly. It started off well. It was a nice night so I took her to my sisters house to make cookies and play the card game rummy. This part of the date went really well and we had a ton of fun. After that we got on my scooter to go to a park to swing on the swings. The park that we found didn't have swings in it(a park without swings what is up with that?!) So we improvised and decided to play the version of tag where you cant touch the ground. In the process of climbing over a wall I hear a big rip. I look down and realize that I have a new addition to the crotch of my pants, a window. So I decide that I need to stop by the Apartment real quick so I can get some new pants. As we are driving there my scooter runs out of gas, so I get to push it about 1/2 a mile to the gas station. As we're pushing my scooter it starts to snow! So we fill it up with gas and decide to watch a movie instead. Ya for these kind of dates that make my life interesting.