07/15/07

What’s shakin’ Homey? It’s that time again. In fact, it’s way early for me lately. It’s Friday night at 10:22 PM. I’m not sure why I feel inclined to give you the day and time all the time, but you get it anyway. How was your week this week? Mine was pretty good. I’m liking my Monday’s off. I won’t so much like this Monday. Or Tuesday or Wednesday for that matter. Suzanne will be in the land of my favorite Football team for 3 days. So I’m left fending for my own with two needy girls. I hope I make it OK. Man, that’s a lot of work to do on my own. I babby about this every time Suzanne goes somewhere, but she’s a champ every time I go somewhere for an extended period of time. I’m not as strong as a parent as she is. Thank goodness for good women in our lives. She is such a huge strength where I am a slacker!! Then at the end of the week, we’ll be in fish lake. So that will be cool. I’m excited to fish that lake. Mainly because I haven’t ever fished it before and second, how can you go wrong fishing a lake named FISH LAKE?

Let me jump into your last e-mails and respond to anything there…

So what did you find out about voting? Anything yet? So that Biltmore house is just 8 bucks to take a tour. It’s nowhere near 40. I guess you could drop 40 in one day though if you did every tour they offer and bought some souvies and stuff, but that would take you more than a full day to see everything there on all the tours.

Kevin at the family reunion is the Kevin of Kevin and Natalie fame. They live down in American Fork area. I don’t know much more than that. But we usually end up talking more than most for some reason.

About the tie pin, I never wore one, but it’s not that we couldn’t. Again, what’s up with the super restrictive rules? There must have been a lot of abuse of every aspect out there before and it got cracked down on hard core. I can’t think of why a tie pin would be outlawed. Anyway, I was asking because I had a brand new one I was going to send out to you, but I guess I’ll just wear it on occasion. I wear my U of U one now and then. It’s just a cool gold block letter U. But the one I just got is from the family reunion. I won it at the park when they asked anyone with a family member on a mission right now. I was seriously the only one there with a family member in the mission field, so you helped me score that. That’s why I was going to send it out to you, but there were a bunch of lame prizes, but this one caught my eye because it’s a sweet black backdrop with a silver outline of Ammon holding his sword as if ready to deflect the evil horde of sheep scatterers. It really is sweet and because it is my guy from the B of M, it would have reminded you of me and it’s symbolic of you fending off the evil forces that would scatter and distract your work you are doing and have yet to do. It’s super cool! So I will be happy to wear it.

As far as the house goes, I think we may just end up waiting for a while longer. Suzanne is having some issues with work and wanting to stay home and quit, so if that’s the case, we can’t move. We can make it on my income alone if we stay in this house. But no way if we move to a big and fancy new bounder. So we’ll see what happens there, but my guess is we will be staying here longer than expected. I’ll update if there is anything to update on as we go.

About my PMG study… I’m on like page 24 or maybe further. I haven’t kept track of the pages really, but it’s in the middle of the personal study section anyway. I would feel like I’m going slow and not doing all that well, but I have been taking my sweet time digesting every little word in that book and looking up and referencing every scripture reference it gives. So I’m feasting on it rather than just reading it. It’s been good. I think I’ll get more out of it the further I go. That whole first section is really geared toward missionary work specifically and how to be a missionary, but the personal study section has been great and I can tell the rest of it will get better for my life as I go further in it. Where is everyone else? Have they all been reporting back? I haven’t done any follow up with anyone since I knew you would be. You will have much more influential powers anyway, so I’m leaving that all up to you. But I’m working on it.

So what’s up with your two member referrals? How did those appointments go? Any progress being made? That’s awesome that you are being blessed based on your goals, efforts, and of course prayers. Way to go. We are interested to hear how those progress, so keep us in the loop.

I’ve been taking Brinlee to swimming lessons lately at the Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She loves the crap out of it and is really cute with what she has been learning. I hate it though because it’s the indoor pool in the older building and there is no air at all and with as hot as it’s been and the water is so warm, it’s super muggy and hot in there. I mean to the point where it feels like I’m in a sauna with my clothes on and I seriously melt in there and sweat at least 2 pounds off by the time she’s getting out. I usually sit there and play games on my phone and try to distract myself from thinking about how hot and sweaty and sticky I am, but it doesn’t’ work all that well. So what is the funnel theory your President talked about in Zone Conf.? and what scripture references did he provide?

What did you do for the 4^th of July? Anything fun? See any fireworks? Did I tell you about the Bees game I went to on the 5^th? I don’t remember if I did or not. Since it’s FranklinCovey Field, we always have the sweet, so I took it for the 5^th and noshed down 3 jumbo dogs, a full sack of popcorn, 3 cokes, and some chips. Wow, I was full. Let’s not forget the watermelon. The game was good too. I have never seen the batter hit the ball into the runner that is running from 1^st to 2^nd base causing an automatic out of that runner being hit, but I saw it twice in that game. I was pretty amazed.

I finally started looking through your pics recently. I couldn’t help but notice that you ended up with a back pack after all my prodding to get a backpack before you left. Did you find that the messenger bag style wasn’t working all that well and that it’s just more of a pain than anything? Or what happened?

OK, I’m back, I took a break in the letter writing for a bit. It’s 12:43 AM Sunday morning right now. I had a busy Saturday. I folded laundry, watched the girls while Suzanne when downtown to her office to get her itinerary for her trip (did you figure out where she is going by the hint I gave you of the hometown of my favorite NFL team?) You better know that. I washed my truck outside and in, out in the front yard. Did some house cleaning, watched a couple of shows on TraVo, picked up some music (I’m up to 11,313 songs at last count), I updated your Blog. It’s up to 3768 visits at last count. I even managed a nap. So it was a good Saturday as far as Saturdays go. I guess I ought to go to bed though so I can get up for Church in the morning after getting the girls ready.

Let me drop in the Quote of the Week first while I’m thinking about it. I was thinking about when you got bushwhacked by some peeps with their minister there or something. I can’t remember all the details. You will have to remind me. But you bore testimony and bailed which was good. I got thinking about that this week because we were at lunch (some of the management team and me) and we were talking about some J-Dub stuff for some reason. Oh, because we were wondering if the Church was the biggest user of Scripture paper (typical exciting conversation for printers to discuss) and we as a church are by far not the largest printer, it’s the J-Dubs for all of their Watchtowers, magazines, pamphlets, etc. they pass out. So as we discussed the J-dubs I told them I would bring in my New World Transgression to show them some of the “research” I did on my mission. They were all curious to see some of the fruits of my labors, but I assured them as interesting as it is now, it was a waste of valuable study time for the first year of my mission before I realized I was wasting my time. In fact, all of the materials I had used in proving them wrong with their own literature, actually cost a young, impressionable elder in my district his testimony and ruined him for the rest of his mission because he delved too deep too fast in all of it. Anyway, I digress. Let me get back to the quote since I appreciated how you handled your situation.

“Who can argue with a testimony? Unbelievers may contend aobut our doctrine. They may wrest the scriptures to their destruction. They may explain away this or that from a purely intellectual standpoint, but they cannot overpower a testimony.”

- Bruce R. McConkie

I finally got to the point where I learned that was the best way to leave that situation. But you figured that out early on which is great. I'd love to hear you bear some powerful testimony out there in a situation like that. as family, it's hard to get your full testimony through letters. I'd love to see a day or week in the life of Elder Alexander, live, in action.

Ahhhhhhhhhight, it’s Sunday night at 10 PM now. I need to get to bed. We have an early start to get out of here with the girls ready for school, drop them off downtown and get Suzanne to the airport by 7:15 AM. Then I am meeting the Comcast goons here at 9:00 am to get the new digital voice package because they are canceling my old service. It’s all good though, some guy that came to my house to notify me told me they’d give me 6 months at 19.00/month. That’s half of what I pay now. Then it would go back to like 45.00 a month after that. Well, that’s 5/month more than I pay now which is a bummer. But I saw on a letter that was mailed to me the day after the dude came by that if I responded now to set up my installation, they would give me 12 months at 19/month. So I called and said that dude set me up at 6, but I wanted 12 months at 19 bucks according to the letter. They were happy to oblige. So I scored. Then after Comcast guy comes, I have a dentist appt. at 1:00 to get a new filling, another bummer, but it’s free of charge, which is good. Then I’ll come home, take a nap, then go pick up the girls around 4:00 and home by 5:00. I need to send you your picture card back along with a few pictures and other items. I’ll have to coordinate a package delivery soon. Any requests for your B-day? In the mean time, write back tomorrow. I’ll look forward to hearing the update.

Keep working hard. You make us all proud.

Love and miss you.

Trav