Thanksgiving & Investigators Update

Taken from his e-mail this morning...

I miss the Orange rolls out here, but we had a really good meal anyway, the members are really cool and really try to help us feel at home, we've already had 4 offers for Christmas day, so we'll have to plan our time wisely. That is, if we are still here. Transfers is this Thursday, so we'll find out what's going on tomorrow night, so you won't find out till next week. I think we'll both stay here though so I'm not too worried about it though. Our investigators are doing really well, we had 3 at church on Sunday, and we should be having a Baptism on the 9th. His name is Victor Holland but he's a DJ so we call him DJ Sir Vic. Hahahaha, he's cool. But we're hoping to have a white Christmas (In a baptism sort of way). We should be having probably 3 baptisms in December, we're thinking, but we'll see.

Sounds like he's not only well fed, but well blessed with the success they have been seeing lately. Keep praying for his safety and success. We'll find out if there are any changes from Transfers on Monday morning.

11/25/07

What’s shakin’ youngin’? that’s a lot of apostrophe’s in one sentence! How are things going? It’s been an eventful week. You had to know that you would get a substantial letter from me this week with all the goings on back home. What with the holiday, family togetherness, football, etc. going on. The BYU/UTAH football game is on in two hours too. So you will get the update there as well. We were going to go rabbit hunting today, but the game interfered with our plans. John is perturbed because he went to Cabella’s and bought a brand new gun for the occasion and then the Emery’s dogged out. There’s no messing with the holy war every year though. They don’t miss it. Well, where should I start? How about the football game? I think you were pretty excited to hear how that went. So we’ll go there first. I could only round up 6 guys this year and Brad rounded up 8, so we had them give us one so it would be 7 on 7. That makes for a good number when you are playing a smaller field. Not as much congestion on the field. The dudes Brad brought were big! Not as athletic and ruggedly handsome as the Abercrombie models of last year, but they looked big and tough. However, I brought a couple of big ringers myself this year. Clint’s soon to be brother in law (Rachel’s Sister’s sort of fiancé) and his cousin who was the Kearns football team captain a couple of years ago. These were some bigguns! Of course, we had a couple of shrimpers like Austin (who is coming into his own size wise) and his friend Tyson who is almost 16, but a tall and skinny feller who probably weighs about 100 lbs when he’s soaking wet. Those two looked pretty intimidated by Brad’s team, but when I was laying out the ground rules for everyone at mid field before the game started, about not going for the highlight reels, no blowing someone up just for kicks and giggles, etc. Just get them down. The big boys on his team all said, “Oh good, cuz there are three guys I don’t want to get hit by on your team and they pointed to the two ringers I brought and me.” So they were intimidated themselves and that leveled the playing field when my team heard that. We determined to just go two hand touch on kick offs too since we’d all be running full steam and more likely to eat a blindsided shot without even knowing it was coming in the commotion. So the rules were layed out, we won the toss and opted to receive and the game was under way. I of course had on my cup, mouth guard, high school football jersey, cleats, and rib pads, ha ha. I missed a key pass on the first series because I had an open lane to the end zone so I turned up field and prepared for my glory before I actually had the ball under control. I was pretty mad. Oh, it didn’t help that my bobble poopered into the hands of one of their team and he ran it back ALL THE WAY for a TD.

1-0 them.

Then we lengthened the field because it felt too small after that. They kicked off again and in two plays, we bombed a pass down field and ran it all the way in for a TD. We lengthened the field again.

1-1 tie.

Then we kicked off to them for the first time and stopped them deep in their territory. I was playing middle linebacker with the big boy from Kearns. Everyone else was covering the pass. They handed off to one of their big boys and didn’t have anyone blocking for him. I hit him like a mack truck. His problem was he slowed up and stopped just before I got to him because he got confused between a kick off and a real play because it was his first offensive play and it wasn’t touch anymore. I put a pretty good boom shaka laka on him, only to prevent myself from getting hurt. He went down like a ton of bricks and was like Oh $#!*, I forgot it wasn’t touch anymore. He wouldn’t make that same mistake twice. That dude had a mouth on him too. So I’m editing for content. They made a long pass for a TD after a couple more plays.

2-1 Them.

We lengthened the field under my protest. It was almost regulation size now and I wasn’t in the mood to cover that much ground all day. But it stayed lengthened. We got the ball and our QB started sucking. He threw a pick and they ran it back to make it 3-1 them. We got the ball again and he missed me for a pass again even though I was wide for a TD. He said “my bad, it’s coming to you again this time”. The whole field heard it and I was like, yeah, that’s wise. Well, I got open again and he got it to me for a dramatic bobbling catch in the end zone. It didn’t look like I was going to come away with it, but in the end, it was secured in my arms and a nice TD.

3-2 them.

We kicked it off and they were running it back and I had Damian (Baybaz Ballaz in our fantasy league) in my way of the runner. He was determined to lay a hit on me, so I hit him about full steam. He has about 30 lbs on me at least and you could hear our bodies thud about a block away. I felt my shoulder pop and we both deflected about 2 feet back from each other. He had the wind knocked out of him, I had a hurting shoulder but I caught the runner about 10 feet from the spot and brought him down. They went on to score after a few downs making it 4-2 them and one sore mother of a shoulder.

Our lousy QB (the loner from their team) tossed up another pick so it went back to them again and we removed him from QB duties. I made one more key tackle with the sore shoulder. And almost laid some wood to Brad, but he cowarded out of bounds when he saw me about to hit him after seeing my two or three big hits already. And that would prove to be my last play of the game. We were only ½ hour into the game at this point. They were tossing the ball to a receiver mid field and we had two guys defending it. Our big boy from Kearns and Austin’s friend Tyson. They both went up at the same time and collided at full speed. Austin’s friend hit dude’s shoulder face first and he was out. His limp, unconscious body fell to the ground where he hit head first again and it was like all in slow motion. I watched the whole thing from about 20 feet away. His body started doing weird things at that point. His hands clutched up and his eyes rolled back to the back of his head and he started making these noises like he was totally knocked retarded. I mean, I seriously thought he got brain damage. All the guys who were around him and saw it too all yelled call 911. Rachel and her sister were there to watch and they called on their phone but got put on hold. The blood started gushing from his face and we couldn’t tell where it was coming from for sure because it looked like he was just generally bleeding from his face. His eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, all seemed to be bleeding. He was still making the retarded noises and we couldn’t get him to come to. I began thinking what we would tell his family, what I would tell Suzanne’s family, what we would do with him now. We had to get him to the ER, an ambulance would take too long. After about 20 seconds of this, he started coming to, but he was still moving around weird from the pain I guess. We didn’t know if he hurt his neck, so we stabilized him and told him to stop moving. We didn’t know if we should take him to Jordan Valley since it was the closest if he wasn’t insured there, so we were asking if he knew where he was insured. It was taking a while for him to answer any of our questions. But he finally told us his mom’s name was Karen, gave us her number, told us she drives a black Mitsubishi and we made the call. She was on her way to pick him up and take him. so we asked him some more questions to make sure he knew what day it was, where he hurt. Etc. he knew it was Thanksgiving, he told us his elbow hurt and his collar bone. But he was bleeding bad from his face still. It was running down his throat and he was gagging on it, so Brock, on Brad’s team told him to spit it out. He spit pretty forcefully and spattered us all with blood and mucus. It was a treat. We got him propped up and helped him walk to the parking lot. He was still dizzy and woozy and bleeding like a stuck pig. We saw a gash inside his mouth in his cheek that was bleeding pretty bad and his nose would not stop either. He was covered in it. I knew that when his parents showed up and saw the scene of his clothes and his face looking like we just dumped a bucket of blood all over him, and saw the big fellas that were there, they would flip. We got him to the parking lot, he asked us if we were going to call his mom and we told him we already did. He looked confused and said, how did you get the number? We told him that he gave it to us. He said “I did?” What number did I give you? We didn’t know if it was her home or cell so I asked what their home number was and that was not it. I asked what her cell was and that was it. He was so confused. Then he looked down, paused for a minute and said, why am I all bloody? We explained what had happened again and he was like whoa! I don’t even remember playing. He remembered coming to the field, and then kind of remembered a couple of plays at the beginning of the day. I was starting to worry for him now. I told him he had a serious concussion and he shouldn’t take any naps today after his thanksgiving meal or before. I ran back to tell the guys that we were losing most of my team since he was going to go obviously, but Austin and Clint would be taking off too and while I was out there, his parents came and picked him up. I heard his dad looked at him and to everyone’s surprise said, Oh, you didn’t stop the game for him did you? He’ll be fine. Ha ha. Well, they took him to an instacare and they said because he’s a minor and the extent of what he needed looked at was too much, they told them that he should go to Primary Childrens hospital. Well, they went home first to get some stuff and he blacked out again to where they couldn’t bring him back. So they freaked and rushed him up there. He apparently was in and out of consciousness the rest of the day and was up at Primary’s until 9:00 PM. So 12 hours of hospital stay, no Thanksgiving for his family, pretty stressful. He had 10 stitches put in his cheek for the gash, and he had a mouth guard in. reminded me of you when you almost bit your freakin’ tongue off with your mouth guard in. I just don’t get how that can happen. He had a broken collar bone, amnesia, given a restriction of no sports or intense activities for two straight weeks, and monitored the rest of the night for a coma risk. Is that crazy or what? I thought his nose was broken for sure, but I don’t think it turned out that way. I don’t know why it was bleeding so bad! Anyway, he is OK now I guess. The big fella felt pretty bad about it, even though it was an accident. I was getting the stink eye most of the night at the Emery’s Thanksgiving meal, but it was a freak accident that would have happened if we were playing flag or touch football too. They were both just defending a pass and didn’t see each other. So that was it for about half my team, they all went home. A few others did too, so we still had 10 guys there. There was another team on the field next to ours setting up cones and warming up. They looked beefy enough, so we asked them if they wanted to play us. They had 11 to our 10, it looked pretty even. They said they had been watching us play earlier and didn’t want to play us. So that was that. Chickens! So we look forward to this day for 364 days, and then after a half hour with not too much action, it’s over. Oh well, my shoulder probably would have only been hurt worse anyway. It still hurts a little actually, even now. It’s Sunday night at 7:00 PM, so that tells you it’s been a few days since Thursday morning. I will see how it goes in about a week, if it still hurts. I may go see a Physical Therapist. Everyone asked me if I’m still going to play. I told them I still have at least a year or two more left in me before I hang up the cleats or just move to flag football. I have to play at least one more game with you and your boys. While we are talking football, I will win both my leagues this week. I’m still pretty low in our main league, but will secure a lock in the playoffs in my EQ league. More than likely the first round bye too. Not sure if I like the playoffs system, but we’ll see how it goes.

So Thanksgiving… I love the way we have it set up. Mom and Dad seem to plan it for the Friday after, at least the last couple of years, and that works great for us. We can hit up Suzanne’s family on Thanksgiving, make a day of it, not feel rushed, not over eat by eating twice, that kind of thing. Then we can do it all again the next day. So we had two great meals on both days, made whole days of it at both places, and it was nice. Everyone was there at Ma’s and Pa’s house. It was super crowded in there. Now that Don and LeeAnn’s family is back, there are 5 more people and a dog that come and share the table. We all ate in the front room. We bottlenecked pretty bad at the entrance to the kitchen, but it worked pretty nice. It was cozy and gave both tables plenty of time and close quarters to talk amongst ourselves. Grandpa gave a teary speech honoring Grandma and all of us which was nice. Everyone stuck around for a while so we could hang around and chew the fat with each other. It was a fun night. You will be back for the next one putting away mad dark meat with me and Gramps. We are the only dark meat eaters in the family. In fact, I took away both legs from the turkey since no one ate the dark meat with me and gramps, or wanted to take any with them afterward this year.

So the stuff last week in church wasn’t anti. It was stuff from the prophets that I hadn’t ever heard before. Probably went a little deeper than it usually does, but it was interesting to read up on some of the history and timeline of what the church has done with Blacks and the Priesthood. I wish I would have researched that all earlier. Would have helped resolve a ton of concerns and answer a lot of un answered questions that I wasn’t able to do with my brothers of another color in the Big City. So, just another topic I’m going to add to my personal gospel research list. Which is only two topics right now, but I only got started on that recently. The other topic I have on there is the enabling power of the atonement. That was talk given in our stake priesthood leadership meeting about 8 months ago by a guy in my ward that I have never particularly liked a lot, but I gained a huge amount of new found respect for him after that talk and learned more from that talk than I have in any other talks I’ve heard outside of General Conference talks.

Oh, so the BYU/Utah update, you probably heard by now, or maybe not, but BYU won in a last second TD as that game always ends. Oh well. I kind of expected BYU to win this year because they are top of the conference, but still, I got my hopes up because Utah took the lead late in the 4^th quarter and looked like momentum was swinging in their direction. Not to mention, I was in a house full of Cougar fans all wearing their cougar blue and I was the only one wearing red and seeing red after that last second win. It’s all good. I’m not a cougar hater like most Utah fans. If the U Has to lose, I hope it’s to BYU and that’s it.

I’ll jump into the Quote of the Week and wrap this up for this week.

“Let us learn our duty. Let us, in the performance of our duty, follow in the footsteps of the Master. AS you and I walk the pathway Jesus walked, let us listen for the sound of sandaled feet. Let us reach out for the carpenter’s hand. Then we shall come to know Him.”

- Thomas S. Monson

At this stage of your mission, aren’t you amazed at how close you feel to the Savior? It’s almost like you have a friendship, a partnership, a working relationship with him, right? I loved that feeling and long for it still. I still feel it to a high degree, the more obedient I am, and the more I’m doing for good, I feel that way more and more, but still like I’m a few steps down from my mission in regard to that closeness on such an intimate level. But I really came to KNOW Him on my mission and that felt like 19 or 20 years too late. It’s amazing how much more you feel like you know someone you have not met face to face in this earthly life. Have you read Jesus the Christ all the way through? That is my next book as soon as I’m done with my Skousen book and PMG. I can’t wait to get back into that. It’s my favorite book outside of the BofM. If you haven’t yet, you have to get into that soon. Don’t put it off to long. If I only could have understood that sooner on my mission. I mean, I feel like I read it at the right time for when I was prepared to understand it fully, but I wish I could have comprehended it earlier on. I really feel like I developed a much truer sense of who the Lord is from that book. Shoot me an update on that and what’s going on with your journal.

What did you learn this week?

I’ll be looking forward to hearing about that too in your reply. What else is going on? How are your investigators? What happened with Transfers? That was this Thursday weren’t they?

I’m excited to hear back from you on all the updates and hear how your Thanksgiving was. What did you eat? How was it? Didn’t you eat a fried turkey last year? I still have never had that.

Well, keep working hard. I love hearing about all the success you are having and the great experiences that continue to build you for the rest of your life and beyond. It’s also inspiring to think about the way you are effecting other people’s lives for the rest of eternity too. That is a humbling thought.

Well, keep reaping the rewards of your hard work and obedience.

Talk to you soon,

Love,

Trav

11/18/07

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Yo!!

This letter comes to you just days before our turkey bowl. I hope you’ll be thinking of me on Thanksgiving morning. I’ll be out there manning up for yet another year. You’ll be playing with us next year. I need to find all my gear though. I haven’t been able to find it. That may cause problems if I can’t find my rib pads, cleats, mouth guard, cup and jersey. What about Scott? Is he going to come play? It’s at 9:00 at the soccer park. Should be fun. I’ll rely on you to organize the annual bowl after this year. You will have more contacts that play than I will. I’ll still bring a few guys to the field, but you will need to provide the majority. I will provide the opponents too since they are the funnest to play against. Especially if they bring their Ivy League Row Team models. You will love playing against them! I think I have John talked in to shooting some video from the sidelines so we can make a highlight reel. I’ll have to throw a bunch of other homeland footage on there since I’ve promised you a video forever now and you haven’t seen anything yet. It would be a nice touch having some football highlights. We’ll get some Aynslee footage on there, some Brin Muffin, some new house, etc. it will make for a nice video.

Austin went on his first date last night. Ha ha. It was Sadies, so a girl asked him out. Oh, I told you about that part. He had a good time anyway. I’ll peep his pics when he gets them back. Sounds like they might do a little follow up this Friday with a little movie action and who knows?... maybe a little kanoodling! He is way pumped about football. He’ll do pretty good if last year was any indicator.

I’ll give you the full recap next week. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving! We are hitting up the Emery’s on T-day and then Ma’s and Pa’s on Friday after. Good thing they are both paid holidays for me and Suzanne. I wouldn’t want to go to work after eating that meal. I’m going to do some damage to that bird. We are going rabbit hunting that Saturday after. That will be fun. I haven’t been hunting in a while. I haven’t shot my new 12 gauge that I’ve had for a year plus now either. So I’m going to get that out and show it a little action finally. I’ll name him Boomer. So I’ve got Old Reliable (old faithful was already taken) and Boomer.

Sounds like you have had some sweet success going on lately. The referrals sound pretty choice. Yeah, Brinlee is pretty outgoing. She has a fun personality. She’s still tentative in certain situations where she doesn’t know anyway, but she’s pretty forward now and brave. She will go right after something if she is comfortable with it. She wasn’t shy at all with that presentation in church. It was funny. Our neighbor across the street came back to church again. I think it will be a regular thing now. We have a good fellowshipping ward. So we have a lot of interested people all vying for his attention and well being. So you get the scoop on the changes to the introduction page in the book of Mormon? It’s not much. At the end of the second paragraph, it says “After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.” But now the change says and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians. They just added among and took out principle. No big deal. We were talking about Pres. Kimball and his lifting of the priesthood ban with the blacks today and it was super interesting the stuff we were discussing and the materials he brought. Stuff I had no clue about before and I had to deal with that ALL THE TIME in Harlem. That was the hot topic. I was always like, dude, I was 2 when that happened. I don’t know anything about it.

I hit up my 3 families for home teaching today. I’ve been 100% for as long as I can remember now. They were good visits. I love to do the message when it’s the after conference Ensign. I get to pick some of my favorites and go with why I liked them instead of a set message that the husband probably already covered or will cover next week himself. So I will share my thoughts likewise with you today in place of my quote of the week.

1) L. Tom Perry on Raising the Bar:

You remember his son was on the track team and competing for the state track meet.

“After experimenting with the Fosbury flop, Lee decided to return to the western-roll technique that he had used previously. Still, through the end of the summer into the fall, he practiced high-jumping for many hours in our backyard.

One evening as I returned home from work, I found Lee practicing his jumping. I asked, “How high is the bar?”

He said, “Five feet, eight inches.”

“Why that height?”

He answered, “You must clear that height to qualify for the state track meet.”

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I can clear it every time. I haven’t missed.”

My reply: “Let’s raise the bar and see how well you do then.”

He replied, “Then I might miss.”

I queried, “If you don’t raise the bar, how will you ever know your potential?”

So we started moving the bar up to five feet, ten inches; then to six feet; and so on, as he sought to improve. Lee became a better high jumper because he was not content with just clearing the minimum standard. He learned that even if it meant missing, he wanted to keep raising the bar to become the best high jumper he was capable of becoming.

What an appropriate missionary specific motivator was this talk? I found it struck so close to home because I sometimes fear raising the bar for several reasons. I fear rejection, failure, disappointment on so many levels. But I realized that this is what life is for. I harp on the subject now of realizing true potential, challenging ourselves, testing our meddle. It’s all about raising the bar to see if we can find our real potential and find out what more we can do. I hope you do that on a regular basis.

2) Henry B. Eyring:

When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. Let me tell you how that got started. I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.

He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”

You already know my thoughts on this. One of my very few regrets from my mission, next to not taking enough pictures, is not writing in my journal enough. I have some good entries in there, some powerful spiritual experiences, but I chinced on the common stuff that wasn’t so common after all. I realized after I got home, I was living an extraordinary life out there, one that was closer to God’s side than I would ever be again in this mortal life, more than likely. I took for granted what I was experiencing, seeing, witnessing, and living. Now that I’m home for so long now, I have forgotten some choice experiences that I can’t get back. Experiences that my parents, brother and sisters, wife and children and my posterity will never know now either. Write it all man! Write it all. It won’t be boring! I promise.

3) one of your favorite talks, Elder Douglas Callister:

I have a testimony. It urges to be expressed. I bear witness that the power of the living God is in this Church. I know what I know, and my witness is true. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

This talk was great on Testimony, but just the ending, his short and simple testimony is beyond what it is in words. It is short, yet so powerful that it can rock your world. That is a man of spiritual power. That is what we all can do if we but seek to share our testimony more frequently. Another motivator for me to find ways of sharing my testimony with others and living it. I love this testimony. I have never thought of someone’s testimony in the way I think of this one. 5 very short sentences. Yet 5 sentences that justify a Boom Shaka-laka from! Keep testifying with boldness, power, and authority, in a way that a missionary can.

4) the quote I was going to pull from Dallin H. Oaks talk on Good, Better, Best is not as applicable to you right now. But the idea is the same. When we talk about prioritizing our time with good, better, best. I love his concept. I can be torn between spending a few moments more at work to get it done, or I can spend those few more moments with my family, bonding with them more. That idea. You can apply this to any aspect of missionary work. You can go out and work hard and talk to as many people as possible. That is good. You can go out and go out and talk to as many people as possible and pray frequently for guidance on where to go to find the person(s) the Lord has prepared for you so you are more effective. That is Better. Or you can Prepare yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually, on a weekly and daily basis. Preparing yourself for the morrow, studying out of the best books and scriptures and PMG, so that you have studied out the word in your mind, so that you will be given what to say in that moment you will need it, then continue the steps, in 100% obedience, exercising faith in every footstep that you will receive the blessings of inspiration and spiritual power. You can add any steps I have left out, and that is best. You get the point. I love that concept and again, found myself totally inspired from it. I can liken that concept to so many aspects of life.

You can prepare yourself each week on P-day, getting the things done that you need to so that you are ready for the week ahead of you and bust out a few short letters. That is good. You can prepare yourself, and spend a little more quality time on your letters to satisfy the family back home who support you, love you, and feed off of every word you write home, and that is better. Or you can prepare yourself, and spend quality time in letters that strengthen your family members back home with quality updates, uplifting experiences recapped, and sharing some of that powerful testimony that you share with those around you, because that is what truly buoys up your sometimes spiritually hungry family back home. That is BEST! Ha ha. That is just another example and in no way meant as a suggestion, rebuke, or anything like it. I’m just throwing it out there. I know you are busy. One of the points of this talk is all about time management. That is something that none of us are perfect with. I know it’s tough to find time to write everyone who wants to be written. You do a good job. I don’t feel starved from your letters, so again, don’t take any of this as a call to change. Just keep doing what you can do. Most of his talk is about spending more quality time with family, church callings, other priorities. I am finding all kinds of examples of where I can improve with his concept though. Well, that’s what I’ve got for this week. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving. What are your plans? Do you have a Dinner Appointment somewhere good? I hope so. Nothing like having no options and eating something weak. Mom sent me a couple of Budget Gourmet frozen meals of Turkey and mashed potatoes that we could microwave. It was way thoughtful. Thankfully, we didn’t have to heat them up on Thanksgiving. We had a D.A. Then they just made me a couple of good meals a little later on. Ha ha. Then we’ll be talking to you on the phone in a short month following. I actually played a mean game of football in Central Park with our district on Thanksgiving my first year. It was the coldest day of the year, I am certain. For some reason, it was just frigid cold. They do the macy’s day parade on that day too, televised all around the country. We were going to go down and look at the big floats and balloons they march around, but after the game, we were just to dang cold and went back to our apartments. The second year, we played our district against a bunch of brothers who were there in a park by our midtown pad. We were just going to play some 5 on 5, but there were about 10 of these dark skinned brothers there so we asked if they wanted to play. Tackle of course. That was way apostate, but they put the challenge out there when they got done laughing so hard about how bad they would beat us. That park was all chewed up too and was more hard packed dirt and rocks than it was grass. That’s the game where I just lit a guy up on the opening kick off so that he would be timid the rest of the game with me. It worked! We worked them over too. We were all pretty good though. We only had like one guy that was sort of un-athletic shall we say. But we all left there with our P-days all torn up and our arms, knees and legs bloodied up from the rocks on the ground. It was one of the funnest games I’ve played. We didn’t get any teaching appts out of the deal with them, but we earned some serious respect and street cred with them. Most of them had seen us around, just in our whites and ties. But who knows, maybe that turned into a teaching appt. later down the road when they saw some others walking through or knocking on their door. That’s how I like to think of it anyway. Or maybe it was that dude who I blew up and he told them to get lost as he looked out their peep hole. You never know I guess.

Well choch, I gots to get to bed. It’s almost midnight and I have to wake up earlier than normal tomorrow. Have a great Thanksgiving week and keep up all the good work. Make sure to drop us some good epiphany again that you had this week, or a good experience you had. As far as my PMG update goes, it’s going slower than I’d expect. I guess I’m hitting it for only 10 min. a night if that and spending more reading time on that book by Cleon Skousan. But I’ll rededicate soon. Are you hitting up everyone else still? I wonder if they even know where their books are. I haven’t heard anything from any of them on it. When you write them, you can tell them they have just over 250 days to get them read. Give them the math on how many pages they’ll have to read a day to get ‘er done.

OK kid, I’ll see about that video hopefully. Talk to you soon.

Love you,

Trav

Elder Hyde Companion Bio

Full name: Austin Nathan Hyde
Where are you from: Boise, ID
Where did you work before you came on your mission: American Eagle, Golf Course, Albertsons
What are your hobbies: Sports
Girlfriend at home: Too Many
What are you going to be when you grow up: Entreprenuer
What will you do the first couple of weeks after you get home: Sleep, get back in shape
What do you like most about your mission: Elder Alexander
What do you like least about it: Biking
What is your favorite Cold Cereal: HoneyCombs
Where is your favorite place to eat: Mongolian BBQ
What is your favorite movie: Saving Silverman
What were your favorite TV shows before you left: Seinfeld
Favorite talk of last General Conference: Elder Ballard, Elder Cook, the ones on PMG
What is your favorite scripture verse(s): Alma 36:24-26

11/11/07

Yo boyeeee,

I just got my computer fixed. It’s been out since Tuesday night. I have been battling this software beast known as PC-cillin that I installed for spam, spyware, etc. protection. And all it did was camp on my computer, prevent me from opening any programs, and refuse to be un-installed, stopped, or generally contained whatsoever. I literally put 4 days and some countless hours into fighting this thing with all I had. I just got rid of it literally at 9:15 tonight. Just in time to squeeze out a late e-mail to you. It’s Brinlee’s big numero quatro birthday tomorrow. She has been having fun with her little parties she’s been having already. She thinks she is so big at 4. She’s fun though. Aynslee is getting more of a mischievous side now. She plays jokes it seems and laughs when she knows she’s got you. She has just recently been throwing little baby tantrums too where she flops back and bonks her head on the floor and flops her arm over onto the floor all loud. She’s so cute though, that it doesn’t bug. I kind of still like watching it.

It was an eventful day in Church today. We had the primary program, so Brinlee was in that. Her class got up to say a part at the microphone. All the kids in her class were timid and got up there and barely mustered out a line like “I will go to Church” or “I will read my scriptures”, etc. Then Brinlee storms the mic and blares out “I will say my prayers” all loud and woke everyone up. She had this big smile on her face, like YES, NAILED IT!. The congregation laughed after she did it and walked off still proud of herself. Then I saw my across the street neighbor there, the one that likes the little kids. I went up and welcomed him. In fact, I took his kid to the primary room, then took them to the relief society room where we have gospel doctrine. Then I took him to EQ with me and left his wife in the RS room. He seemed to have a good visit there today. So I guess that’s good. We also released our Bishopric today in a surprise move. That was unexpected to the ward. I knew it was coming from being in the EQ presidency. We have been handling some stuff our bishop normally would handle, but his health hasn’t been great. No one in the ward knew that though, so it was kind of a shocker today. The new bishop just lives a few houses up from me. The EQ president became the first counselor and a guy I used to home teach that I really like became the second counselor. So it will be a good bishopric. That means some shuffling of the EQ presidency. I’m glad I’m moving! Ha ha. In fact, TJ, the EQ Pres. Was hassling me saying are you ready to take that sign down in your yard yet? I assured him that it’s never been more solid and neither has my move been more solid. He said we need you to be the new president. I pointed to Jeremy, our second counselor that was sitting next to me while he was distracted. TJ said he’s already been there, done that in his other ward. I said all the more reason since he has the experience and qualifications already. Anyway, we have been chiding each other today. But I will be able to fly under the radar a little longer in this new ward and that will be great.

In Gospel Doctrine, we discussed the change in the introduction page of the book of mormon. I had heard them tease that in the news but didn’t hear the story. What do you think of that and how does that affect you if at all? It’s such a minor change that I don’t see it effecting anything, but as a missionary, where you may get a question or two about it since it hit the press, and because you give out BofM’s all the time, if you have seen the change already, I was just curious.

I won the main fantasy league game this week, so I move to an impressive 3-7. But I think I’ll lose in my EQ league, which may just finally cost me the number one spot. Blah! Oh well. I have been way more focused on other things as of late.

On to your last e-mail. Sounds like your teaching a bunch of peeps and doing well at progressing them lately. How is the dude who was getting wrapped up in JW stuff?

I never got a companion bio answering the questions I asked on your new companion. Make sure I get that this week. It’s not optional. I’m sure he’ll enjoy having the spotlight for a while anyway. I’ll paste the questions back in here in case you don’t have them from the last letter…

Full name:

Where are you from:

Where did you work before you came on your mission:

What are your hobbies:

Girlfriend at home:

What are you going to be when you grow up:

What will you do the first couple of weeks after you get home:

What do you like most about your mission:

What do you like least about it:

What is your favorite Cold Cereal:

Where is your favorite place to eat:

What is your favorite movie:

What were your favorite TV shows before you left:

Favorite talk of last General Conference:

What is your favorite scripture verse(s):

Just copy and paste this in your e-mail and fill in the blanks or print it off and write me a letter this week with the answers. But let me know in an e-mail if you are going to do that anyway. Here is the quote of the week for this week…

“A Man’s mind should be single to the glory of God in everything that he starts to accomplish. We should consider that of ourselves we can do nothing. We are the children of God. We are in darkness, only as God enlightens our understanding. We are powerless, only as God helps us. The work that we have to do here is of that nature that we cannot do it unless we have the assistance of the Almighty.”

-Lorenzo Snow

I know you already have a firm testimony of this concept. You learned it at an early stage in your mission. But the more you know it, work according to the precepts that you are nothing without God’s assistance and everything you accomplish is through His will, so you should keep your mind single to His Glory, the more effective you will be.

Keep up the good work. You make us all proud constantly. Thanks for being a good example to the family and sacrificing your time and talents to the greatest cause you will ever be a part of. Make the most of your fleeting time as it will be over before you know it. We pray for you daily.

Love you,

Trav

11/03/07

What’s shakin’ Babs?

It’s Saturday, 4:47 PM right now. Just got home from the storage place upgrading the size of my unit. Ha ha. That sounds funny! I just quadrupled the size, so I have a ton more space to fit all my junk in now until we move. I came home and Suzanne and the girls are gone, so I thought I’d drop you a letter. It’s been an average week at work. Not all that eventful on the home front since our buyers lost their financing and we are on our 4^th contract now with buyers. Frustrating. We are still planning on closing on the 15^th and moving out on the 16^th and 17^th. In the mean time, if we don’t have any promise on the house, then Shelli Lyn might be moving in and renting the joint on the cheap until the buyers get their house sold and can close on ours. It would get Jukka out of the house and from driving Sami crazy, making her pee and poop on ma/pa’s bed. Ha ha. It gets Shelli A LOT more room, and a garage, and a sweet place to call her own for a while and all for far cheaper than she was paying rent in the projects she was living in prior. It’s mutually beneficial not only for her, but it saves us from hemorrhaging money while the house is unoccupied, but we still have to pay the mortgage on it. So I’m pretty excited about that action. She might bring in a roommate, if not, I told her I’d even split her payments, it’s still half the cost of what I’d be paying, so it’s still great. But if she brings in a roommate, it will bring her payment down even further.

Getting to your last letters… So how do you like the new apartment? What happened with your old apartment? Why did you have to move? That’s cool about E. Van Leeuwen being made AP. He seems like a stud. Now it’s just a matter of time till E. Leavitt gets there, don’t you think? How do you like your new companion? I need a comp. bio on him. So here are the questions I’ll need answered by next letter on Monday…

Full name:

Where are you from:

Where did you work before you came on your mission:

What are your hobbies:

Girlfriend at home:

What are you going to be when you grow up:

What will you do the first couple of weeks after you get home:

What do you like most about your mission:

What do you like least about it:

What is your favorite Cold Cereal:

Where is your favorite place to eat:

What is your favorite movie:

What were your favorite TV shows before you left:

Favorite talk of last General Conference:

What is your favorite scripture verse(s):

I’m going to be wanting some pictures here soon too boyo. I know you haven’t been taking that many lately, but the next biggest regret of my mission after not entering enough journal entries was not taking enough pictures. I would have taken twice the amount of pictures at least if I could do it all over again. It’s so great to look back on people I knew, sites I used to see, places I visited, companions I worked with, missionaries in my districts and zones, those I split with, etc. Not to mention, they keep your Blog lively and people more interested. Send that card home soon.

Congrats on Sally’s baptism. That’s way cool. So was this last week as you predicted when you said “this will be such a good week”? So games are apostate? What’s up with that? What can you do on P-days anyway? You made it sound like that’s all I did on my mission in your retort back, but we would only play them on P-days or sometimes P-day eves or Holidays that we had an early curfew due to the violent nature of the big city on certain days after dark. But we could own a chess set or a risk board if we wanted to pack it with us. Josh has been playing a lot of risk lately I guess and Staci just texted me today and told me he beat all his friends last night and was ready to whoop up on me. I guess Staci told him I used to be good back in the day and now Josh wants to take me on. I’m going to have to learn him a thing or two in the near future about what it’s like to be owned in a game in such a dominating fashion.

I play the Silent Assassins this week who is the number one team in our league right now at 7-1. Meanwhile the Ghetto Fabulous team that won it all last year is in a humble position of 2-6. Pathetic. I don’t know how the mighty have fallen so bad this year, but whatever! I’m 7-1 in my EQ league and controlling that group pretty well.

So get this, I got the hook ups for the home opener Jazz game two nights ago. Two tickets, front row, Center court, RIGHT ON THE FLOOR!!! I mean our feet were right on the floor where our chairs butted right up against. It was pretty amazing! The Rockets and the Jazz players were close enough that I literally could have tripped any of them as they ran along the side of the court by just stretching my legs. We could hear them talking smack to each other, calling plays, and even practically smell their sweat as they inbounded the ball right next to us. I TiVo’d it and we are all over the TV. It was pretty awesome. They were $800 bucks a piece. I mean, with the two tickets I got, we could have paid our mortgage for two whole months. Part of the package you get with these tickets is you get free VIP parking right there at the Delta Center. No schlepping our way from blocks away to get there. A fancy meal prior to the game on the 6^th level of the Delta Center where you get the biggest selection of the best food. I had no idea that that restaurant was even up there. The food was excellent. I haven’t had that good of food or selection in a long time. I loaded up!! Larry Miller was up there dishing up right next to us too. After the meal, you go down to the lower level and come walking out through the same portal the players come out and come rolling in to the front row. Come to find out, Larry H Miller’s seat was right next to Suzanne. Ha ha. So we sat next to him and his wife the whole game. Camera crews come up by us and interview him once or twice a game. At the half, you roll back through the portal with the players and go into the 100 Club VIP room where you get your snack on and your drink on and rub shoulders with the other millionaires and VIPs from the community. I bumped into Lisa Conelly from Channel 4 that I’ve had a crush on forever. She now hosts Hot Utah Homes on Sundays that Suzanne and I watch. Suzanne can hardly watch it with me because I drool on myself for the whole half hour. So that was fun. I snapped some pics and some video of the Jazz dancers shaking their money makers just feet away from us. The Jazz bear doing his stunts right next to us, Larry Miller chillin’ there next to us, some sweet basketball action right in front of us, etc. But you can’t get any pics over e-mail I guess. Lame! Anyway, it was way fun. I’m not even a big NBA fan, let alone much of a Jazz fan per se, but I could get used to that action if I could get those tickets free again. Xpedx, one of our large paper suppliers hooked us up. I will go to their suite with them a few more games this year, but I won’t get another shot at those court seats again anytime soon. Josh (the biggest Jazz fan as you know) was recording it too and dying that he was seeing me right there by the players. They kept texting me about seeing my thin spot on my dome and generally harassing me throughout the game. Ha ha. It was quite the experience anyway.

Well, I’m going to call it a night. I need to go get my bowl of Oatmeal and take my meds for the night. I’ll finish this up tomorrow and send it off. Chat at you then.

Ahhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, it’s Sunday night at 7:10 PM. Just watched the Pats rally to beat the Colts in what was the battle of the last two unbeatens in the NFL. Now the Patriots are the only unbeaten team and they look to roll through the rest of their schedule now that the Colts are out of the way. They are scary good, which is too bad, because I hate the Patriots and their cheating coach, Belichick. I lost in both leagues this week and am really tanking now with both teams. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve lost the touch. I can only hope to rebuild for next year and start picking up some pieces which will have some promise for next year’s team in our main league. I’m dropping the EQ league after this season. It’s too hard to focus on two teams. It drives me crazy. Church was good this week. It’s been since before conference since I sat through a whole 3 hour block due to Gen. Conf., Stake Conf. and a couple of weeks of going home early with Aynslee. So it was nice to get back to the full block this week for the first time in 4 weeks. I miss it when I’m not there for the full time. Which is weird, especially during football season when it would naturally soften that blow. So I guess it’s good I have that desire to always be there the whole time and not get soft after missing it for so long like most peeps tend to do.

Well, it’s time for the Quote of the Week. I don’t have any theme this time, so I’m just going to dig deep in the hat and pull one out that I like. So this week is from John Taylor.

“When missionaries rise to speak in the name of Israel’s God, if they live in purity and holiness before Him, He will give them words and ideas of which they never dreamed before.”

Don’t you love it when you have been working hard, living right, obeying every rule, and you find that you go into a situation, or are lead to a certain person or teaching experience, and you just start going by the spirit and you begin speaking and testifying with so much power that it gives you chills just to hear the words coming out of your mouth? I loved that!! I thought it was an awesome experience to have words given to me in the moment that I needed them that were exactly what that person needed to hear to be truly taught by the spirit. So I’ll leave that quote with you to ponder on and act upon this week. Live so that you can always be given those ideas and words to be a powerful teacher of the gospel of Christ.

I love you. I hope you have a great week and some great experiences. Make sure to drop me a note on what you’ve learned this week. As for my update, I’m still plodding along with my PMG study. I picked up a new book that I’m wanting to start, but I still need to make a bigger dent in my PMG before I get started on any other book. This one is by Leon Skousen, I love his stuff. He’s quite the scholar when it comes to Book of Mormon history and even history of the country and God’s hand in the development of our constitution and founding fathers. So I’m wanting to dive into that pretty soon. But I’ll be hitting some PMG tonight after I send this off. Then I’ll look forward to a little love from your bones tomorrow in the e-mail. Check you later.

Love,

Trav