Thursday, February 13, 2014


Sunday, January 26, 2014

Monday, January 13, 2014

Thursday, April 10, 2008

My Orange Art


I was bored at work, so I turned an orange into a piece of artwork. It's suposed to represent how us as a society are constantly trying to fix things that are not broken. The orange is perfect, it came unadulterated from an orange tree, totally in it's natural state, yet we try to fix it by stapling it back together where it is not torn, and taping two pieces that are not separated.

We sometimes look more for faults in things than we should, when we should be looking at the good things, and accepting things for the way they are, and enjoying the imperfections if there are any. All of us can learn to shift our paradigms to the eyes of a child who observes, and enjoys.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

My First Couch Surfing Experience

So, I've joined this website called couchsurfing.com. It's a website designed for travellers who want to stay for free when they travel, and a way for residents all over the globe to meet new people. It is a network of people that open up their homes for free to people who need a place to stay when they are outside their home towns.

So on Monday night, I had Ike stay with me. Ike is from Vermont, but he was travelling from Denver to Salt Lake via the Amtrak train. He was on his way to California, and needed a place to stay for a night before he went out onto the freeway and started hitchiking all the way to California.

He's a 19 year-old kid who, when he gets to California, will then eventually head up to Seattle to live on a boat off the Puget Sound with a couple of his friends.

I made him a sign that said "San Francisco" Monday night, and then Tuesday I dropped him off at Redwood Rd and I-80 where he started holding that sign and waiting for someone to pick him up. He called me at about 4:00pm, and let me know that he is on his way to California.


Tuesday, April 8, 2008

General Conference Weekend

Wow, general conference was great this weekend. There were lots of great speakers and wonderful words spoken from that pulpit up there in the conference center. It was interesting to watch conference when the new prophet is called into presidency. That will probably be something I only witness twice in a lifetime.

I decided to watch conference at home on Saturday, and it might have been a bad idea. It was Judd and Josh and I for the first session, and I think we all might have gotten too comfortable at one time or another. It was a good session though, even though I might have seeped in and out of consciousness.

I watched the second session at home as well, and then for the priesthood session I was able to go with John Busch inside of the Conference Center. That was a really good priesthood session. I really enjoy President Monson's personality, and his goofyness. You should have heard how loud that Conference Center got when he wiggled his ears. Wow. It was interesting, one of the conductors that was directing the music was actually in institute director that John and I had back in the student singles wards when we worked up in downtown Seattle on our missions. That was funny to see him up there on the big screen.

The Sunday conference sessions were great. I watched again the morning session at my house, and then for the second one, Emma Dille came up to have lunch with me, and then we went to the visitor's center on Temple Square to watch the last session. I enjoyed a lot of talks from that one. Jeffrey R. Holland's talk was great. He never backs down from being bold, and he always tells it how it is. He just told the world the important things about our church that makes us unique, and what makes us the true church.

I love to hear the conviction in the voices of the apostles. All of them have such a love for the Savior, and being able to listen and hear them speak really does give me strength. They truly are lead by God.
Emma and I walked around temple square for a while, and took some pictures on temple square. She had never been in the tabernacle, which was pretty amazing to me. She really liked it though, and I will take her to Music and the Spoken Word next Sunday, because she will really like it. Plus, it will be my last Sunday here in Utah for a while.
After the last session Emma just caught the Trax back to Sandy, and I walked around for a bit. I walked past some protesters like usual, they are always out there. This highly decorated military officer walked over to the protestors and started yelling at them, which definitely wasn't a good idea. I think it's dumb when people talk to those protesters at all. It's not going to get them anywhere, and they should just not do it and ignore them. They should not even be recognized, that's what they want you to do.


I did find a few interesting things around the protesters though. I found a man playing the bagpipes to drown out the protesters, and I also found a little happy man running around dancing with a smiley-face sign. I'm not sure exactly why he was doing it, but he was having a fun time at it. He was taking pictures of himself with others and the sign, and other wacky things. There's a lot of interesting people who come out for conference.

WSM Mission Reunion

Washington Seattle Mission Reunion!

Man, those are so much fun. It is so much fun to see a bunch of the friends that we served to faithfully around for those two years. It is just an amazing experience, and to be able to see those people that bring you back to those times, and those moment when you were having so much fun doing nothing but missionary work, it just so awesome.

I pretty much hung out with Busch, Duarte, Dickison, and a new addition, Barber this time. They are all people that I enjoyed being around the most in the mission. They were the ones that I leared the most from, and had the best experiences from being around. There weren't many other people I knew besides those guys too, the mission has turned around so much that most of the people that I knew are not coming to reunions anymore. I'm surprised I'm still going, I'm older than most of them.

After we hung out and talked for a while at the reunion, we went over to Cafe Rio where we got some food, and from about 9:30pm until almost 1:00am, we just talked about memories, and the experiences that made our mission worthwhile. What an awesome experience. I will never forget those times when we just stand around and talk about good times, and the fun we used-to have. Yay more missions.