01/07/08

E. Babs,

What’s upwitchu? Sorry for missing your letter last week. I wasn’t at work for almost 2 weeks with the holidays and still didn’t have internet at my house, so I was sans internet everywhere. I’m still without internet at my house till tomorrow hopefully, so I just woke up at 5:00 AM to get to work super early and bust out an e-mail to you. It is great to finally be moved and done. We filled 3 moving trucks and some pick ups and got all of our junk moved. I can’t believe how much stuff we have accumulated. I used to be so lean and I liked that. I could live out of two suitcases on my mission and those were lightly packed suitcases. Then I could fit all of my stuff in my one bedroom when I got home and I was good to go with enough room to move around in there still with no worries. Now I fill 3 big league moving trucks and still have to pack up 3 pick ups to their rafters and I still have stuff stored at Clint’s house. It took me 3 pick up loads to get it all over there too. So there’s that much stuff still to come back to our house. Rediculous! I think it’s time for a yard sale this summer. But it’s done and it’s been nice just to un box at our own pace and get stuff put away as we have time. Everyone has come to visit now, so everyone has seen the place. Stosh came over last night. They were the last to see it. Little A-Jax is all over the joint. He’s a wild man! At one point, we looked over and he was up on top of our dining room table and about to hang on the chandelier. Staci ran and got him down, but he was pretty proud of himself for his conquering of the table. Mom is a little bit grumpy at how far away it is, but let’s put it this way… it takes me 30 min. to get from my garage to Ron’s church up by Big Cottonwood and that’s driving like a Sunday driver. It does however take 40 min. to get to Mom’s on a slow day because there is red lights all the way, but 40 min. isn’t that bad. I could do that in a half hour too if I took Bacchus there, but I haven’t tried it yet. She thinks we will see a lot less of each other, but the drive doesn’t bother me, not to mention I’m just up the road at work every week day as it is, so it’s not like there is this huge void between us. It’s just not the 1 ½ mile hop, skip and jump it used to be, which is too bad. That convenience was nice. But really, it isn’t as bad as she might make it out to be.

We went to our new ward for the first time yesterday. It is huge! It’s a smaller building than our old one and more peeps in the ward than our old one, so I felt a little Closter phobic at one point or another. But it will be nice. I must have had 20 people come and shake my hand and introduce themselves. I met a few close neighbors and a few who live on streets I’ve never heard of, so it will be a challenge getting to know everyone and remembering their names. I knew every single active member in our ward by name and what they did for a living and where they lived. Now I’m back to a clean slate and I know about 3 people in the ward by where they live and some of them I don’t remember their names. Oh well. It will come. The lessons were good in both EQ and Sunday School. Even though I didn’t get much from Sunday School because Aynslee was being high maintenance. Brinlee liked her class and her new friends. So that is good that she took right to it. We still don’t have blinds, so anyone who wants to come see what the new neighbors look like, they need only walk up to our side walk and watch us live. That is annoying to me, who appreciates a good bit of privacy. Especially when we have a glass shower that looks more like a display case. But I can shake it with the best of them, so I make the most of it. Just turn up the bass and get lost in the music while I’m in there, you know? I still can’t get my truck in the garage. I finally got enough cleared out and put away that we could get the CRV in there, but the truck may be a while till we can fit it in there. it is my goal this week to fit it in there. I have to get it in because it has been freezing-butt cold lately and my truck freezes solid out there. It’s a worry that it will even start every morning. As much as I like winter, even way more than summer, I am having a hard time with the cold this year. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe my old age is getting to me. But I’ve had a hard time getting warm some days. That’s still better than trying to get cool. I’d much rather be too cold than too hot. But it’s been a really cold winter here. Actually, we had one really weirdly warm day last week where we were right in the middle of the warm and cold front. It got so windy that I seriously thought we’d have a tornado. I went to the home depot closer to Tooele to get a new cord for my dryer and I practically had to floor it driving south toward Tooele because the wind was blowing so hard in my face that my truck could barely go 60. When I got to the parking lot, my truck was shaking from the wind and it was howling outside my window. I barely opened my door and it flew open and would have crushed a mad dinger into the truck next to me if I had parked any closer. I could barely close the door when I got out. Then walking toward the front door, my coat was unzipped and it was flying behind me like a poor man’s superman cape. I had to lean way into the wind just to make any headway. I saw a guy walking out of the far doors and he had a couple of aluminum vents for his roof and they both rocketed out of his cart and started tumbling toward me with deadly velocity. I would have tried to stop them for him, but I was scared of those sharp metal edges hurdling toward me at about 50 mph. So I got the heck out of the way and he just watched his $50 worth of roof vents fly north for the winter. It was sad for him, but it was funny in another kind of way too. I had a hard time not laughing as I pushed my way through the wind to get inside. It was nuts! If I didn’t have those 75 year warranty HEAVY DUTY tiles on my roof, I definitely would have been up there re-shingling regular asphalt shingles. In fact, I wonder if my old house lost some of those 25 year old, cracked and shoddy Mama Jammers. I bet that new guys is going to be ticked if that happened.

How is the weather there now? One of the coolest things out there is the fact that Stansbury Park has an observatory a few blocks away, so there is a city ordinance that there are no street lights, so it’s kind of dark in all of the neighborhoods at night which means no light pollution and the stars are WAY bright! I love to look at the stars out there, they are radiant. I hated that about living in the WJ where you could see about 3 or 4 stars on a really clear night. Especially after Jordan Landing went in. In fact, our community we live in is called Starside for just that reason.

Let me think what else is new… You are probably too young to remember the American Gladiators from the late 80’s and early 90’s. But they are back on, new and improved. I watched last night for its premier. It was kind of cool to see these cocky tough guys get worked over by these big gladiator brutes. Ha ha. The chicks are pretty burley too. So I’ve had fun watching that since I grew up on the original show. I think I’m going to a movie with John tonight. That is his Christmas gift. Just a Man Date paid for by me. He ditched me on the weekend for his girlfriend, which I guess is understandable.

I don’t know if I told you, but I won my EQ league championship by 2 pts. Phew! That was a tight game! So I claimed what was rightfully mine and what I personally guaranteed at the beginning of the season anyway. So I backed the smack! In our league however, Austin edged out a victory over the Silent Assassins who just can’t seem to get that elusive championship. He is always in the top 3, but can’t ever pull off the ultimate victory. So Austin came in and snuck out a victory. Silent Assassins was 2^nd and Clint was 3^rd. I came in 3^rd to last. Pretty pathetic to fall from first all the way to 3^rd to last, but what can I do? I won’t play 2 leagues again, it was too distracting. My real team suffered for the energy I had to put into winning the other league. But Ghetto Fabulous will be back next year with a fury and get back to top 3 form again. You might just be taking over Austin’s championship team because he made some comment about retiring his jersey and leaving the league so no one can beat him. I can’t believe that he’d actually quit, and personally I think that is kind of cowardly to leave after winning it all, and especially with you coming back, I thought he’d want to play for sure. We’ll see if he was just messing with all of us. But either way, you will have a team when you get back.

The NFL playoffs have been exciting, even though my Steelers just got knocked out by Jacksonville. I’m just getting excited for the annual Jacobs Superbowl party. That’s always a good time.

It was good talking to you on Christmas. You sounded happy. Have you had transfers or anything that has effected anything? How is E. Newton? How is your area? How are your investigators? Did you have some more baptisms this week? Send me all the updates you can, it’s been a while since I updated your blog, mostly due to the holidays, the move, and not having internet access to get to it. But I will update it like crazy with any updates you have for me. Oh, and if you are sending a picture card, CD, or any other kind of love my way, here is my new address…

240 W. Holland Drive

Stansbury Park, UT 84074

Get that down in your address book or whatever you have there.

What else can I tell you about? It’s almost 8:10 now, so I need to get focused on work soon and let you go. I don’t have any resources to research out a quote of the week, but let me see what I can find here at work…

I’m going to give you two quotes this week and sorry that they are not by prophets or scriptures, but I find them inspirational for your situation anyway…

“Just because a group of people has a bunch of boards, hammers, and nails does not mean they are building a house or even anything recognizable. Some leaders think they are doing their job because there is a lot of hammering going on.”

- Laurie Beth Jones

I think you can relate to this as you strive to be an effective leader in the mission field. It’s easy to lead people to do a certain job and let mediocrity take care of the rest. But it takes an exceptional leader to train, observe, and further instruct in every activity the people under their stewardship should be doing. Don’t let those in your zone just go on hammering without guidance, plans to follow, or careful instruction. Help to make sure that your whole Zone is working together to build something incredible for the Kingdom!

“The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.”

- Harold Geneen

I honestly think that a little bit of heartfelt showing of support goes a LONG WAY with people that you are serving as their leader. If you show them that you genuinely care for them, love them, and will support them however you possibly can, they will go to the end of the earth for you.

Take those however you want to. Throw them into the Leadership Epistle collection of quotables if you want.

Make sure to send your epiphany of the week to me too and any other good juicy updates.

OK. Well, off to work. Time to get started with another work week. Take care, work hard, and remember how much we love and support you back here. Have a great week!

Love,

Trav