03/18/07

E.A.:

Another week, another letter. The Weeks are going fast for me. What about you? But then I look at your trunkee counter on your blog and it seems like time is standing still. I won’t tell you how many days, hours, minutes, seconds, or milliseconds you have left unless you want me to tell you. I took Brinlee for a drive today to the SteepAndCheap warehouse to pick up my new purchase from there. I snagged an Oakley tactical backpack last night, that goes for $95 dollars normally on the Oakley site and even on S&C’s parent company Back Country.com’s site. But I picked it up for a cool $28 even. It’s super stylie. It looks all swat team style. It’s black with some industrial strength snaps, webbing, loops, etc. It looks way nice. I’m making it my “Go Bag” for a disaster/emergency/fire/etc. type of thing that I can grab on my way out of the house. I’ll fill it full of 72 hour kit sort of stuff. Foods, MRE’s, bottles of water, a purifier, flashlight (battery less) wool or fleece blanket that will work well if/when wet, my swat knife I got a long time ago, but never used. That sort of thing. You know? It will be cool. I just dug through it and it has some cool inclusions they just had in there. I’m way psyched! You’ll have to check it when you get home.

Your e-mailing me and letters home to the fam is working well. That way we spread it all out some. I forward your e-mail to everyone right after I get it and then I read your letters during the week when I visit. (it sees like I just wrote this in my last letter last week. Did I?) Anyway, the set up works well for me at least. I think the family likes it too.

I have pimped out Dark Angel quite a bit lately. The last time I was over at ma’s and pa’s I saw the iPod movies DVD on the desk, so I snagged that and brought it home and put all of those movies on there. I have added some music lately too, so here is the stat sheet…

Music: 9969 songs, 161 days, 39.57 GB

Movies: 21 items, 23.4 hours, 3.57 GB

Podcasts: 11 items, 11.4 hours, 629.9 MB

Audiobooks: 3 items, 5.9 hours, 81.2 MB

Oh, I was going to give you my Pictures stats too, but the iPod is upstairs, so I can’t get that info. But I have about 1 GB on there of Pics alone. I still have 11 some odd GB free space still too. What a cool freakin’ invention that iPod is! When you get home the 80 GB video iPod will be only $300 bills brand new since they will have an even bigger and sweeter version available. I wonder how far off I am. I bet it’s beyond what we expect. Even in that year plus you still have left.

I had a crazy week at work again. This week, actually on Thursday, I had an employee who was acting weird all week, but Thursday, she was way off her rocker. It became pretty obvious that she must have some kind of mental thing and was off her meds all week because of the decline in her behavior and cognitive abilities we noticed. So we pulled her in on Thursday when she was wandering around the machines, dancing, saying really strange things to people, and asked her if she was taking medication for anything? She told us that she was bi-polar (which I hadn’t known before Thursday) and she took meds for that. I asked her if she had stopped taking them, or missed a dose or two or mixed them up. She told me she was fine and her meds were fine, but every so often she would say something that was “off”. We kept talking to her to sort of evaluate the situation a little further and finally decided that we couldn’t keep her there at work. It was her supervisor and me talking to her. At first, we were going to give her the day off with pay so she could go home, take her meds, sleep it off and come back next week. But after a few more minutes, she was declining so bad that I didn’t feel safe even letting her get behind the wheel of her car. We were going to call her a cab to get her home, but even by the time we tried tracking down a doctor she had in her phone, and talking with Valley Mental Health, she had declined even more and I determined it was time to get her to the ER to have someone check her out and get her re-medicated. So I got her friend she is pretty close with at work, and the 3 of us got in the car and headed to the ER. She was saying the most random things all the way in to the hospital, like I smelled like Buck. When I asked her who buck was, she told me it was her dog. I was like, wow, thanks. She said, it’s OK, he’s a Boxer. I thought I smelled pretty good that day but maybe not. Her filter was off between her head and her mouth though. She spoke whatever came to mind. While we were waiting in the crowded ER waiting room, she would engage in conversation with other patients waiting in there. One lady came in shortly after us and my employee stared at her for a minute, making the other lady a little uncomfortable. Finally asked her if her name was Tina. The lady was like no, my name is Pam. She said, yeah right. I know that’s you Tina. The lady goes “excuse me?” my employee goes “you heard me you fat B!*@#”. The lady looked at me and I just gave her facial expressions to ignore her, that’s why we are here, etc. the lady just smiled big at us and my employee goes “Oh, your teeth are so yellow. Close your mouth” then started mumbling some more swear words and looked away all disgusted. This persisted with nearly every new patient that came in who were completely unsuspecting. Finally, the whole waiting room figured out what was going on here and would ignore her, but still laughed at the new (but completely honest) comments that would be thrown at the next new victim. One big black guy came walking in and I just pinched the bridge of my nose and put my head down, knowing that she was going to get me killed this time. She saw him walk in and said super loud to her friend (who is from Bosnia) Wow, look at that BIG BLACK NEGRO Alma. We grow ‘em big here in the US don’t we??!! He stopped and looked at us when he heard the word Negro and looked at me to see if I would be defending that comment. I just shook my head at him like dude, just have a seat, ignore her, do not engage in any form of conversation, or we are all in for it. My look said it all and he had a seat. After a while, he was having as much fun with her comments as everyone else had been previously. The nurses finally caught wind of what was going on and put us back in the family room where we could be isolated from the rest of the group and have some privacy. That was the best thing that could have happened. I was much more comfortable. Especially considering they had a soft couch, soft chairs, and more room to spread out. The doctors who were coming in did not ask the right questions or stick around long enough to figure out just how off she was. Of course they didn’t know her like we did, so they didn’t have any reference to judge her by, but they just didn’t ask enough of the right questions. Between visits, she actually made a run for the outside door telling us that she had to go install a satellite. She took her belt off in the hall and threw it towards the people waiting out in the hall that were over flow chairs from the waiting room. She also gave me a strip show which was more than awkward, but luckily her friend Alma helped her to contain herself there as I looked away in pure embarrassment. She kept talking about being a 16 year old virgin who was pregnant and that her dad was going to kill her. Even though she’s a very young and fit looking 49 year old, but she looks nothing like a 16 year old. The doctors weren’t getting any of the good stuff. She called me about 11 different names and thought I was them on several occasions. But finally, the doctors came in and asked her if she was OK going home. She said she wanted to go home. They said will you be OK going home by yourself? She said she might be scared to. They asked why and she said if everyone in the world knew who you were, you would be scared too. The doctor asked her if she thought everyone in the world wanted to hurt her. She told the doctor, that if everyone in America knew who he was, don’t you think they’d shoot you too? He said do you think you are going to get shot? She leaned back again and just said no. so no matter what he tried to get out of her, she never posed a threat to herself or others. So he said he was releasing her. As he was shaking my hand, I told him I needed to see him out in the hall. So we went out there and I told him flat out that he wasn’t getting it. I told him I’m not a medical professional, but I can see just how messed she is right now and we can’t just release her to her own devices, let alone drive. He told me that part of her anxiety was that her car was going to get broken into and that she should get her car home. I told him that her car was in our parking lot that was patrolled by 5 west valley police cars all night. We have the most secure parking lot in the city. He told me that legally he can’t hold her unless she poses a threat to herself or others. I told him that we need to get her checked in somewhere if not here to get her back on her meds. The only thing they prescribed her was some anxiety medication and this had nothing to do with anxiety. She had a history of mental illness specifically Bi-polar disorder. She came out and saw me talking to the doctor and got mad. He told me that he was going to go get her a crisis hotline number to call and left again. I went back in the room and she stared at me all mad and said do you want to call Amy Joe yourself, Mr. Too big for your Britches. I said is that your sister? She said yes. (up to this point, we hadn’t been able to extract any family information from her no matter how hard we tried.) So I said do you want me to call her? She said “I don’t give a $#!*.” (She had been dropping S and F bombs all night at that point) I said OK. What’s her number? She rattled off 7 digits and I hurried and scribbled it down in my planner. Then I looked at the phone next to me in the room and she said, nevermind, that’s not her number. I said, who’s number is it then? She said I don’t know. I looked at the phone again thinking I would just try it. She said, don’t even try using that phone, it doesn’t work, it’s just a toy phone. So I said OK and left the room and dialed it up on my cell phone as I was walking down the hall to the outside. I was just hoping that it would be the right number since it was 11:00 PM at this point. A guy answered and I asked if Amy was there. He said all bugged, no! who’s this?? I told him who I was and that I was with his sister in law at the Cottonwood ER and relayed the situation. He was like Oh my gosh. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’ll call Amy and get her right there. She had luckily been out with some friends at the Olive garden by Fashion Place not far down the road. So she was coming right in. As I walked back in, she was standing by the door. She said are you ready to go? I asked if they had cleared her to leave. She said they had and that she was just waiting for the plane. I asked her what plane and she said the plane to Iraq. I said why would you want to go to Iraq. She pointed at the TV and said because they need volunteers. I told her that would be fine, and asked if she wanted to wait for it back in that room. She said yes, so we went back to that room. This was like the 3^rd time I had to trick her back into that room. Well, the Doctor came in again and gave her the number to call in the morning to the crisis hot line. I told him look Fooo! She is not going to remember any of this in a minute, let alone in the morning. Secondly, she won’t ever call this number on her own, so set it up so they call her first thing in the morning. Thirdly, I’m not letting her get behind a wheel tonight. From an employers perspective, we have way too much liability here to let her cruise off into the night. He said, well, we are done here. I told him that I had tracked down her sister and we would be waiting in this room till she got here which he was fine with. So we waited it out, but it was a chore to keep her in one place once she knew she could go. While we were waiting, one of my other employees came walking by and we saw each other. He poked his head in our room there and asked what we were doing there. I hadn’t been able to tell him what was up yet before she came over, looked at this full shaggy mop of hair he has on his head and right in front of his wife said, WHOA! Look at that #&@^’n Hair! Then started full on molesting his head. He and his wife were looking at her like what is wrong with you?? They caught on kind of quick though and started messing with her like a sober friend would with their dumb drunk friend. They left shortly after they had their fun with her. I had been in communication off and on with the husband of the sister and coordinating what we were going to do. Finally, the sister got there and we were able to convince her to get in her car with her while we followed behind her in her car so we could get it home. We all had an understanding though that the sister was going to get her up to the U of U psych ward where she had taken her a couple times before. So Alma and I went back to work, while I called the husband again to tell him they were on their way to their house and to get ready for a fight once she found out she was not going back to work to get her car or going home. He called me in the morning to let me know that he got her up to the U and they had her transported to Provo to the Utah Valley Mental Health. She was admitted there for at least a week. They said this was the worst they had seen her in that condition. So they were glad we helped get her to that point. She will get back on her meds, back to normal and should be ready to come back to work after a week. So I’m putting her on FMLA and hopefully she doesn’t remember much if anything that she said or did, or it’s going to be awkward for her to be around certain co-workers and me. Ha ha.

Well, time to get into the quote of the week. You mentioned in your last letter to Ma and Pa that you were sewing some fatting seeds. You had a great attitude about it and I always had the same. I never cared whether I baptized someone or if the guy after me did, honestly. As long as they were baptized, that was all it was about. It’s not a competition of numbers between missionaries, it’s a competition against the evil forces fighting against us who are on the Lord’s side. In light of the seeds you are planting, I always liked this quote by John Taylor:

“We ought to be full of light and life and the power and spirit of the living God and feel that we are messengers to the nations of the earth: we ought to feel the word of God burning like fire in our bones, feeling desirous to go and snatch men from the powers of darkness and the chains of corruption with which they are bound and lead them in the paths of life. We ought to be prepared to go forth weeping, bearing precious seed that we might come back again rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us.”

Well, I’m on page 5 here so I need to wrap this up to give you some time to respond and write some peeps or whatever you do on your P-day about this time of day. I will get your camera card sent off to you this week with Brinlee’s pictures and letter she wrote you. Not to mention some other sundry items that may be of some use. So look forward to that. I guess I’ll send it to your current address. I’m not too concerned you will be transferred. When are transfers again? You think your comp. will go ZL then? I wouldn’t be surprised with all the good you guys have been doing. I can’t wait to hear more about your contact Janet? Great work finding and teaching her. I’ll be in Vegas from Wednesday to Saturday this week. So I will have to get to your next letter on Sunday and pound it out until it’s ready to send that night. No multi-day writing this week. Although, I’m usually writing the majority of your letters on Sundays anyway. That will make for a busy week though. That’s for sure. I’ll be missing my class on Thursday which will hurt. I really have to go to these classes to get the most out of this. I’m not thinking I’m going to pass this monster exam anyway, so what’s the point? I’m so burned out on reading and studying anyway. Seriously. I’m HR’d out. I work with HR stuff all day long, then I come home and read about HR stuff all night long and I do 2 hours study groups on Tuesdays for HR stuff, then 3 hours worth of HR class every Thursday. ENOUGH already!! I have to try to stay motivated though. But I’m ready for it to be over so I can read other things like PMG for instance. There is a great quote in the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I don’t mean to hit you with two quotes in one letter, but I have to give you this one while we are talking about education and learning. I love this quote. I have to go upstairs to get my Tof the PJS book though, so hang on…

K, I have it. You can’t even have this book out there, can you? The fact that this book is apostate in your mission is blasphemy in my opinion, but nevertheless, here is the quote. Hopefully I’m not breaking any rules by sending a quote out of an apostate book which is way more rich in pure doctrine than nearly any other book outside of scriptures themselves. This quote is one of the reasons I hardly ever read anything that’s fiction or novel stuff, I feel like it’s a waste of my time. I’d rather stick to a good church book or educational type of book or business oriented book. It’s on P. 217 under the topic Men are Saved Through Obedience to Knowledge: “We have thieves among us. Adulterers, liars, hypocrites. If God should speak from heaven, he would command you not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covent, nor deceive, but be faithful over a few things. As far as we degenerate from God, we descend to the devil and lose knowledge, and without knowledge we cannot be saved, and while our hearts are filled with evil, and we are studying evil, there is no room in our hearts for good, or studying good. Is not God good? Then you be good; if He is faithful, then you be faithful. Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, and seek for every good thing.

The Church must be cleansed, and I proclaim against all iniquity. A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently ore power than many men who are on the earth. Hence it needs revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God.”

Now don’t get me wrong about me saying I don’t read fiction or novels because I think it will lead me down the path to where I’ll be corrupted by evil. I think most books are good. After reading this over again, I felt like I came across that way. I just haven’t been much of a fiction reader just because I feel like I am wasting time on books like that. Although, I have read my fair share of those books too. I just get way more out of church books and the type I listed before. But knowledge is the key thing I point this quote out for. I found it super interesting when I read this that knowledge plays such a key strategic point in the grand scheme of things. How important is learning and education and increasing in knowledge of every good thing to keep an edge in this world? The devil is so smart that I can never begin to comprehend his wisdom and knowledge in the scheme of all things eternal that I can’t even wrap my head around. He shares that wisdom with his armies who in turn can have an extreme advantage over people who let their brains go to waste, or don’t seek after “knowledge of the things of God”. This quote points out the importance of revelation too. Where if we didn’t have constant learning through fresh revelation to add to and compliment what revelation we already have through the scriptures, then we would fall behind because the devil continues to learn and expand his wisdom. He knows what works to lead people down the path to hell, he shares his insights with his evil buddies who in turn use cutting edge knowledge to fight against the works of the Lord. So my exhortation to you this week is to continue to learn at the pace you have been. I’m amazed at the knowledge you are dropping on us in your letters. You have grown in wisdom so fast, but still have so much to learn. Stay on top of your scripture studies, your book readings, your PMG study, etc. Where are you in Jesus the Christ by the way? I can’t wait to read that again too. That is one of my favorite books! It is so loaded with good information. You really get to know the savior so much better after reading that book.

Well, I don’t know if I even got my point across there. Sorry if I rambled and didn’t make any sense. I’m not really sure if I made sense or not. I’m so tired that I don’t think I’m conveying what I want to, so that’s a sign I better sign off, read a few more pages of homework and go to bed.

Good luck with Janet and keep working your butt off for more investigators. Keep focusing on losing yourself in the work. It’s such a great feeling to get in the zone where you totally forget home, personal interests, hobbies, music, girls, etc. and just zone in to the work and nothing else. It’s almost a zen like state where you are so focused that you can literally draw on the powers of heaven and work miracles. It’s so difficult to tune out the world to such a point where you “lose yourself” in the sense of the phrase the savior meant, but wow, what an experience to get to that point. I feel like I only reached that level I’m referring to for about 7 or 8 months of my whole mission. At it was at the end when I really caught the vision of what I was doing, had some experiences to help push me to that point, and when I could actually focus the way I had to in order to feel that level of closeness to the celestial. I still get chills thinking of those times. I loved every day of my mission and think I did a great job every day of my mission with maybe a few days of exception when I just got lazy and couldn’t drag myself to do all that I should have done. But you increase in ability to zone into that level of spiritual envelopment the more practice you have at it and the more obedient you are and spiritually minded your companionship is. Be focused, be lost in the work, be diligently obedient and strive to do all the Lord’s will and continue to increase in blessings and closeness to the Lord. That’s my wish for you this week and always. I’m confident you have been doing that to perfection, but keep it up. It’s a constant effort, one that you can never coast. When you are riding a bike, think about when you can coast and stop pedaling. Yep, downhill buddy! So keep pumping, keep pedaling and keep pushing your way ever upward. And don’t forget the fact that you are on a tandem bike with your companion. Keep motivating each other. I’m so glad you are in a great companionship where you keep driving each other to better your previous performance. Continue to do that every day.

I love you Mike and we are so proud of you and all that you have accomplished and have yet to accomplish.

Have a great week. Be perfect!

Love you,

Trav