09/01/07

Hey Yo,

Getting an early start for a change this week. It’s Saturday, My Birthday! I got your card yesterday. Nice timing. Brinlee loves it more than anything. For some reason she thinks that song is awesome. Here’s your quiz for the week. Who is that? I have that on the iPod actually. In fact, I only got it a week ago from the night manager at the Bindery. We did a hard drive swap and that came over with his stuff. Drop me your answer this week or let me know if you don’t know. I’ll let you know next week. It was another crazy week for us of course. Is there any other kind? I’ll actually jump into that shortly. My stomach is growling somethin’ fierce. I’m powerful hungry. So I’ma bust it upstairs for a hearty bowl of Campbell’s Chili. A proud sponsor of the NFL. I’m going to throw a little bag o’ Fritos in there too to crunch things up a bit. Throw down a coke to deplete my oxygenation ability of my blood stream and wind me a little and do it all while I watch a show on TraVo. That’s not really how my training regimen will go come Noviembre, but I’ll be ready. Actually, there are some good college football games on right now. I might see if USC and Nebraska is playing right now. I’ll check back in soon.

Ahhhhhhhight, It’s 11:00 Saturday night. So much for getting an early start. Oh well. We had a nice date out and about. The girls spent the evening over at Ma’s and Pa’s and had fun. We went out and saw the new Bourne Ultimatum and ate at Quiznos. No biggie, but I wasn’t that hungry. So it was a little more low key, but still fun. We did a little shopping at Target too. Suzanne got me an Xbox game and a bungie web net for the bed of my truck. That will come in handy. We also accepted an offer on our house this morning. So, we will start looking pretty seriously at some houses now and get ready to make an offer ourselves. This couple is a fairly young couple, he’s 25 and still in school. That was my age and status when we moved in here ourselves 7 years ago. She is 23 and they just had a youngin’. I guess a little girl of 2 months or something. They will be moving into a super cool ward. I will miss this ward like crazy. I hope we move into a stellar ward. It’s going to have some huge shoes to fill from our current ward. I hope it’s not a tester ward, especially with the NFL season starting up now. That’s all I need is a tester ward to make it a challenge to go on Sundays. Not that I’d strongly consider just that, but it’s a drag when it’s a temptation in the back of your mind to stay home and watch the games instead. I’m sure it will be a good one. Brinlee came home tonight and dove right back into that birthday card you sent. Pretty funny. Oh, and Aynslee started crawling the other day. So she’s a mobile force to be reckoned with now. It’s cute to see her little laid back but fun loving personality develop. Let me get to your letter and respond. So you laid out a long letter and it daggered up huh? I hate that. Yeah, John’s all moved in and his new offices are SWEET. You should see his set up now. He has like a 2000 Sq. foot spread with multiple offices and rooms. It’s pretty crazy. So he has mad amounts of new lappers that he can dispense and all can run wirelessly on some high speed internet action. He can fill a whole auditorium with them. That’s where we did it, is in one of those new auditorium style classrooms in there. That building is super nice. Way nicer than the old POST. Your rant on TV viewing was pretty funny. I was actually the same for a couple of years. In fact, I think I resented peeps who were all into TV because it was such a time waster. I was full time student plus full time working two jobs and trying to date and have a social life at school at the same time. I managed to do it, but the first thing that has to suffer is your sleep schedule. I was hammering my body just so I could fit it all in. But it was all good. I worked two jobs for almost the entire time I was home from my mission to the 3^rd year of my marriage. I still managed to do institute council at SLCC too and have a productive dating life. That’s what propelled that. You should get active in institute when you get back in school. It’s a productive chick getter. I never had time for TV. I didn’t have any shows really and I only got super into TV like a few years ago and the TraVo has a lot to do with that. It makes it so easy to never miss one of your shows. I have cut back on a few though. Since that funeral and hearing all of the productive things James did with his family and his life, I felt like such a loser leaving there. I decided to cut back on a few shows in my season pass to make room for more productivity. Which I’m happy to say, that I have done exactly that. But I agree, the mission definitely gets you in a good routine of productively using your time in the most effective manner, scheduling out your day, doing what matters most and not wasting any time. I got some good habits from there which have carried over to the philosophy of working at FranklinCovey. They preach that hard core, of course, since a lot of the church and Covey’s philosophies are the same. I have still be reading slowly but surely in my PMG. It’s just that it takes so much scripture chasing and referencing since I’m in my new set with no highlights, I want to hit up every scripture it references. So I’m not way far into it yet, but I’m getting along. I can proudly say that I’m way farther than anyone else in the familia. I will have it done and read completely by the time you are home. In fact, the other night, it gave me a great line of study that lead to my 10 min. spiritual thought to lead off our presidency meeting this Wednesday. It’s all on Knowledge. I got a good few sources that were spurred on by the PMG book. It’s up to us what we do and we only do it once a month since there are four of us and 4 weeks generally in a month and we trade off. It’s up to us what we choose, and that is the hardest part most of the time, coming up with a topic, but I’m going to rock them with some doctrines on knowledge. I’ll try to remember to put it in your letter next week if I give it this week. You got the Spencer W. Kimball quote right on.

So are you still in your three-banger? I guess I never answered your question as to where we are looking at houses… We are looking as far south as Herriman but mostly in the riverton area, also some South Jordan and some West Jordan. So we won’t move far away. It will be along the bangerter route and close enough for some easy transport to and from any tennis court and or other sundry activities and hangout locale. So don’t worry about that. We will still get lots of hanging out on a regular basis in. now that it’s finally cooling off at night, I go out to take the garbages out or something and look up at the sky and think about our late night chats. I love this time of year when it starts cooling down some. But it’s still unseasonably hot for some reason. It should be much cooler by now. But we are running our air conditioner right now and it’s 11:41 PM. What’s up with that? It’s been expensive to keep it cool this summer. That reminds me, I’m supposed to get our average bills for utilities to Brent to give this other couple for some reason. Even though they offered and we counter offered and it was accepted, they still want the utilities. Maybe just to budget or something. But these two are super thorough. In their walk through of our house, they went through EVERYTHING. I mean, they opened drawers in our dressers, closets, cupboards, my shop outside, heater vents, attic access, crawl space, etc. I’m lucky I wasn’t around here or they probably would have given me a full body cavity search and deep explorative anal probe. I felt violated when I got home to see what they had gone through. I mean there’s looking at a house and then there’s certain boundaries you don’t cross. You don’t need to know what my underwear looks like or what size and brand of condom I fancy. I’m actually not too embarrassed about that part, if you naw’m-sayin’,… BAM Suckas! Since when did you start into that Bam and Boom Shaka laka action? It’s been funny reading your letters with those expressions in them.

So how are your investigators doing that committed recently? You’ll have to give us updates on them and what else is new and exciting in your area, companionship, District, etc. Did you hear about the Baseball game in Greensboro with the … what the freak? Greensboro Grasshoppers or something random and cheesey like that? And the someone else Intimidators. Ha ha. Nice minor league lame-o names. I guess the game got a little ragged and they cleared the benches and rumbled right in the middle of the field. Hey, if the Bees here in SLC threw down like they do in Hockey, I might be more inclined to go to more of those games. They are fun in the FranklinCovey suite though, I must say. I’m going to hit up a couple more of those next summer fo-sho! Well boyo, I’m going to head up and hit the rack. I’m tired. It’s midnight now and high time for a sleepy head to hit the pillow. I’ll check in with you tomorrow to wrap this up.

Back, it’s Sunday night at 9:07. Gramps was just over here visiting. It’s nice to catch up with him every so often. I don’t get enough chances to do it, so I welcome every visit. He brought me a little birthday love.

Church was good today. I need to set up Home teaching interviews for Wednesday night. I don’t mind doing those. I guess I should drop in your quote of the week and be off so I can get some Sunday reading done with my PMG. I can’t remember if I have shared this one or not. I have heard it once before somewhere and I thought, that is the perfect quote to send to Mike, but I just came across it again and thought, I will send it again even if I have sent it once before.

It’s by Hugh Pinnock. “The day obedience became more of a quest rather than a nuisance is the day I gained power.”

How apropos for a missionary to remember that quote. It’s a great one to share with your district/zone if you are having any obedience issues. If missionaries would only look at obedience as a quest rather than a nuisance, they would gain so many more blessings, find more readily whom the Lord has prepared, and teach with more conviction and power than ever. I liked your words on obedience and your encouragement for the family to be more obedient to the commandments rather than looking at them as suggestions. Let this quote marinate for a while with you and anyone you choose to share it with. I just thought it tied in well with the theme you put out there in your last letter. I don’t ever share my letters with the family that I write you, so if you want to put that quote out there with your next encouragement on PMG or reading scriptures, feel free to do so.

I think I’ve said what I needed to say this week. I’ll sign off and let you get to the rest of your letters and P-day activities. I hope things are going great with your area(s) and companion(s). ha ha. I’m going to go up and enjoy some B-day cake. I’ll check ya’s later. Have a great week. Looking forward to hearing from you tomorrow.

Love,

Trav