4/20/08

Hey Yo,

Yet another week has passed already and time for another letter. I guess I’m sans letter from you again this week, but I will still bust out a faithful letter. This was a semi eventful week. Besides my typical 50-60 hour work week, we had a little bit of fun on the side. I got free tickets to the Bees game in the suite or a free movie sneak preview down at Gateway. I opted for the sneak preview so that the girls could go see the new Dr. Seuss movie Horton Hears a Who and Mike Woodbury (who’s in town for a few weeks before shipping off for Turkey) and I could go see the sneak preview. We all met up at the Gateway and ate at the Dodo. Then went up, got our tickets and went to the movies. The girls liked the movie a lot, Mike and I liked our ours OK too, it wasn’t the best movie I ever saw, but it was definitely good for free. I took Mike back to FC where he parked at my office and Suzanne and the girls headed home after their movie. We got home close to the same time. Yesterday (Saturday) I went with a manager I work with to the Crossroads of the West Gun show at the South Town Expo Center. It was OK. Lots of cool guns, lots of cheap Ammo, I actually negotiated a new concealed class with a dude there who will not only do it $10 per person cheaper than the place we were going to do it a week from Wednesday, but he will come out and do it on site at FC. So that will be pretty cool. Oh, and they also go wait in line and take care of the State business for you too. So it will save us all 10 bucks, a trip to the Ghetto in WVC where the class was going to be, and a trip and wait in line at the State to get our paperwork turned in. I’m pretty excited actually. They had some sweet 50 cal. Sniper Rifles there that would be a BLAST to shoot. All they were good for there were to covet and admire just looking at. They had a way sweet tactical Shotgun there too that was all pimped out with the works with pressure sensitive flashlight commands, heat shields, extended magazine, collapsible stock, vented barrel, night sites, shell holders, etc. It just looked awesome. That guy is actually going to call me tomorrow with some information on a magazine extender for my shotty so I can increase capacity for the home defense mode it’s in now with my 18 ½ “ barrel.

I’m listening to some Moleni Brothers right now. Good stuff. Too bad you can’t listen to that, even though they bring the spirit hard with their Pacific Islander style of church music.

Last night, we had a baby blessing for Rick and Monica’s new baby boy. That was kind of cool to do it on a Saturday at the Church with just the family. We had Ricks side and Monica’s side all there. Ron presided and conducted being the first counselor in the Bishopric there in his ward. We had a song, a prayer, the blessing, a testimony meeting, a closing song and prayer and then some serious refreshments in the gym. After all that, Rick’s side of the family had a family meeting in the Relief Society room, we cleaned up the gym, put away the tables, chairs and swept up and then played a couple mean games of hoop. That was fun. I am seriously out of shape, but we had a good time. I haven’t worked out or sweat like that in a long time, so that was good for this old fatty.

Friday, I had lunch with Clark and Shirley McKenzie from New Zealand. Do you remember her? You might not have ever met her at Snowbird. I hired her the first year I did the International program and she was great. She’s returned most years, minus one or two is all she missed. We went to the Training Table over by my work. She is about to go to NYC and then to Cancun for a while and then after her little vacation, she’s heading up to Roche Harbor in Washington for a summer of work up there and then home to NZ for a while to decide if she’ll return to the Bird one more year. After lunch, I went back to work for an hour and then met back with Clark and we went golfing with my other former Intern Tyler Hooper. I think he is the one who took your picture for the website that one day. You were up on the Snowbird Website for seriously a year and a half it seems like. So that was good times. We hit up Stone Bridge over my Lake Park across Bangerter from my work. That was fun.

I have been chatting with Shelli Lyn while I have been typing your letter. We’ve been comparing our tunes and making some recommendations. I got a CD from her recommendations and have been listening to that while I type too. One of the songs was on Smallville a few weeks back. It’s good stuff. She is going to take the concealed carry class with me on the 29^th. Ha ha. Kind of unexpected, but cool eh? Shelli a concealed carry chick. That’s cool. I’m hooking her up with a 9MM for $100 bucks too. Now that’s a screamin’ deal.

Well, it’s time to put down your Quote of the Week and bust out.

“A good leader encourages followers to tell him what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear.”

- John C. Maxwell

I think we were talking a week or two ago about gathering information out in the field to bring back to the President. This is one of the biggest challenges I found was how to get missionaries to tell me what I needed to hear and not what they suspected I wanted to hear, or to hear past the fluff and get to the real issues so we could make things better and improve instead of hearing the warm fuzzies only and possibly neglect some real issues that may be impeding some real progress in that particular Zone. That was one long sentence. Anyway, you get the point. So I like this quote because that really is a quality that few leaders possess or know how to achieve. They love to hear what they want to hear and have a problem finding or encouraging ways to hear what they truly need to hear to gain the results they should be striving for. So that is my challenge for you this week and beyond. Look for ways to encourage that and hear what you need to hear.

That’s about it for this week. I’ll hopefully hear from you this week. Keep up the hard work.

Love you,

Trav