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 4th 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
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