Matthew Hansen

Finding The One With The Bloody Face

2012-02-19T15:45:00.004-08:00

When I was about 6 I was riding my bike down a certain hill in the neighborhood with some friends. I was zipping along with all the bravado of a kid who had just learned to ride a bike but without any knowledge of how it felt to tumble off his bike at high speeds.

But I was to learn. Long before the days when kids were required by law to wear helmets (like some states require), I probably could have used one here. I hit a spot of gravel and was not prepared for how it would unsteady my ride. Almost immediately my bike went left and my body went right across the road, my face absorbing about 90% of the gravel available in a ten foot area . I was a complete mess - blood mixed with rock, mixed with dust, mixed with tears.

I was almost immediately surrounded by a group of 6-7 year old kids, not one of them having a clue what to do. I was about 2 blocks from my house and no one knew how to get me there.

I was scared and hurt and all that I could think about was I wanted to be HOME with my mom so she could fix it. Then, quickly, a 16 year old girl from the neighborhood slammed on her car brakes by us, grabbed me and threw on the front seat and drove me home.

I thought of this story today as I went to Stake Conference. We had a visiting member of the seventy, Elder William Walker. He travels a lot with President Monson to various temple dedications. Once, just after the Kiev Ukraine Temple was dedicated, President Monson and the group with him were making their way to the cars to leave. The area was surrounded by men, women and children wanting desperately to touch his hand. They were all leaning into him and he was doing his best to accommodate as many as he could. Elder Walker saw a young mother several rows back, holding a little boy in her arms, reaching to him the best she could.

President Monson stopped and saw her need. The crowd parted for him to come to her. He took her hand in his and kissed it and messed up the little one's hair. The woman broke into tears as her tender need was realized.

And Elder Walker's advice to us is to search for those who need and are desperate for a Christlike interaction, who hide in the shadows and are in rough moments. I know how a person needs to feel a Christlike interaction. I also know how good it feels to be on the receiving end and how healing it can be. And for all too few times that I am on the giving end, I will try to follow President Monson's good example to seek out opportunities to do more.

Ghosts Of Valentine's Past

2012-02-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

A Valentine's Chronology

February 1998: I returned from my mission five days after Valentine's day. My journal entry from Valentine's Day that year says, "Elder Norton gave me his sister's address and told me to get in touch with her when I got home. 18 years old. I am totally writing her. Her picture is impressive". I never wrote her. We never married. I never knew if she really was impressive.

February 1999: I previously discussed how I had been dating a girl from work at Deseret First Credit Union. We had gone out 4-5 times and I had gotten her some flowers. I gave them to her after work. She called me up an hour later and told me she had given them away and didn't want to see me ever again.

February 2000: Shell shocked a little from the previous year, I debated whether to give flowers to Elizabeth, a girl who I had met in an English class at BYU. She was very pretty, very smart, very fun to be with and really didn't care for the flowers I got her. She at least waited until the next day to advise me of her decision to not date me anymore.

February 2001: My final year at BYU. I invited 3 apartments full of girl's to come watch a movie with me on Valentine's. 3 people came and 2 left when they saw how few were there. The final girl was this very sweet Mongolian who thought my apartment smelled a bit "like onions".

February 2002: I had begun to date a girl whom I would later be engaged to marry. I spent a week agonizing over whether to send her flowers. She was living in Utah and I was living in St. Louis at the time. Finally, I wrestled up the courage to send her some flowers - totally scored. I had accidentally chosen all the right colors and flowers. It was as if Karma was throwing me a bone.

February 2003: I had been engaged for 15 days at this point. We went to the Market Street Grill at the mouth of the Big Cottonwood Canyon. This was my first opportunity to eat out on Valentine's day and it was a miserable failure. We waited in line for 2 and a half hours, then ate in a super loud and crazy restaurant which cost that poor grad student a little more than he was probably prudent to have spent. Especially since the engagement didn't last. Must have been the dinner.

February 2004: I had ended my engagement to said girl but was still seeing her. However, I was on a business trip to Virginia at this point and spent the evening watching the original Star Wars movie from my Days Inn hotel in Williamsburg and enjoying a large Kit Kat and a Diet Coke.

February 2005: Was living in Peoria, Illinois on my first full month of managing a warehouse and I had a girlfriend who was living a few thousand miles away. I remember buying a 64 ounce Diet Coke from some place and reading The Scarlet Pimpernel in little apartment. It was awfully romantic.

February 2006: I was dating a lovely local girl by then and I was a little sparse on my journal entries at the time. But my memory is that I brought flowers, we had dinner and she didn't tell me she wanted to stop dating me the next day. That happened about 7 months later.

February 2007: I was living in Reno, Nevada now and had just barely begun to date a nice girl. We watched a movie at a friend's house and came back to my place where I literally had no furniture at all in my apartment. I had moved in a week before and had been sleeping on the floor ever since. It kind of killed the romance. She went home.

February 2008: I was now dating a new girl in Reno. We went hot tubbing at a friend's place. It was going swimmingly until the heat got to me and I almost passed out. I spent the rest of the night laying down by the pool.

February 2009: I was in North Carolina where this new girl that I was dating was teaching a Baptist Church group how to do a fox trot, if I remember correctly. I was supposed to be her dance partner as she showed the group. She was so good and I was so not good. The guy standing by me said, "Well gosh, I'm better than HE is." And he was.

February 2010: Diet Coke in Albuquerque, New Mexico

February 2011: Learned my lesson from previous years - I did take out with the girl I dated. And it was glorious and wonderful and great. And I had Diet Coke.

Trying To Dispel A Myth About Mormons

2012-02-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

When I was in graduate school in St Louis I had a lengthy conversation with one of my professors, self-described as a "radical liberal" who felt like America was evil, religion was laughable and that families were antiquated. He knew I was a Mormon and while he was kind to respect my beliefs about not drinking (he would supply a weird celery soda for me at social events for the department where alcohol was served), he felt like my church was beyond silly. He could hardly contain his contempt for the Church and riddled our conversations with hardly veiled knocks on members in general.

In short, he felt like we lived in an alternate universe, one that was naive at best. Our circumstances were fake, our world view also fake and, consequently, our whole religion was fake.

This is a very similar feeling expressed in this disgusting anti-Mormon hit piece in the New York Times, which you can read by clicking on this sentence. The piece is done by Ian Williams, who has written other ugly articles about the Church in the past.

One line from this article says, "In many cases, Mormons see the world, but they don't get it".

While I don't wish to pick at the Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon", this exact theme is carried throughout. The belief is, we serve missions in our own prism, in our own world, wholly unprepared for the "real" world that exists for everyone else in life.

This feeling is carried by millions of Americans, usually those who wish to push their prism of reality on others.

The author of the New York Times article mocks us for not reveling in local customs on our missions and instead spending those two years "in religious conversation".

On my mission I learned to love the addict, the abuser, the drunk and the felon. I learned what it feels like to walk into a home crawling with garbage and open septic tanks leaking into yards and sit on a piece of filthy carpet and to have a very little dinner with them before we taught them of the love of Jesus Christ. And I learned how it feels to see them realize that love and watch their entire lives change as they pushed to feel it more.

I remember going to see a grandmother to ask her to be baptized only to find her home had burned to the ground that morning, killing three members of her family. I remember seeing her sitting on the ground, staring off into space, so shocked she couldn't respond to us. I remember telling her we loved her over and over and not knowing what else to say or to do.

Since my mission was partly a Spanish speaking mission to Florida, I remember helping an illegal immigrant, whom we had just baptized, to get funds for a bus ticket to return to Mexico to bring the Book of Mormon to his young wife. I remember watching him get on the Greyhound bus in Chipley, Florida en route to the border town in Texas. He was sobbing as he said goodbye. He was very sick when he left, and I have never heard from him again.

I remember the woman who lived almost next door to our apartment in Pensacola who was getting beaten to death by her boyfriend. When he went to work one evening my companion and I had a quick prayer with her as she took her young son and fled in a car she had been saving for for 3 years. The boyfriend came home at 2 or so in the morning, drunk, realized she was gone, and came to beat our door down. He was the biggest man I have ever seen and I watched him literally crush the door with his bare hands, and then, for some reason, fell asleep onto our front porch.

I am not sure what cultural events this writer was referring to, but what I did on my mission was learn to walk into dirty homes with broken people who had made horrible decisions with their lives and were an enormous mess. I learned to kneel in prayer with them and ask Heavenly Father to bless their homes and their families. And I felt my own heart sing as I saw it happen. And I am one of millions of Mormons who have done the exact same thing.

I walked into places that I never would have done before in my life and I learned to love the people in those places, people who were Heavenly Father's. I would guess that these are much greater "cultural" moments than going to the best local restaurants, golfing at the best country clubs, clubbing at the best dance clubs, or anything else.

I have friends in the very branch which I attend who spend time each year traveling to places of poverty across the world and performing medical and dental procedures for the most broken.

Mr Ian Williams, I think you are wrong.

My Best Moment Ever WIth Women

2012-02-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

When I was about 11 I was on a family camp out at Payson Lakes in Utah County. I had just begun to realize that girls were something else entirely and while I didn't have foggiest clue how to interact with them I still spent considerable time thinking about them. Like, perhaps, every waking moment of my young life.

My cousin and I would wake about 4:45 and run down to the lake and hop into a canoe as the earliest sun was coming up so that we could fish every single hour of the day.

One day when we were out on the lake we saw a couple of very beautiful girls sporting some swimsuits walking around the trail by the lake not far from us. Seriously, time stood still and I gawked like the boy that I was.

The girls seemed to take a degree of interest in us as well. One of the girls told us we were cute and asked us our age. When we told them we were 11 they looked at each other and laughed hysterically.

I asked them how old they were. They responded that they were 17.

It is still probably the best moment I have ever had with women and I hold it as a badge of honor to this day.

Littlest Ones

2012-02-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

Years ago I was an elementary school teacher at an inner city school in St Louis. I was asked to teach the kids who were designated as learning and behavioral disabled kids. I literally had no training for this position and fear that despite my very best intentions that I did nothing constructive for some of them except for sincerely loving them.

Some of these kids had fetal alcohol syndrome, or had witnessed horrific murders and had another severe trauma, or had no idea who their mother or father were and lived with some nice lady in the neighborhood who had taken in transient kids who were starving and even dying on the streets. One boy had seen his mother and father shot in their heads by a man who turned out to be their grandfather. The boy had not spoken a word in 3 years.

They had substantial and significant problems and were well on their way to unimaginable lives, falling into criminal and other destructive behavior.

One little boy used to wear a jacket or long sleeved shirts every single day to school despite the fact that St Louis had disgustingly hot and humid summers and that the school had no air conditioning. One day, near the end of the year, the boy took his jacket off in a moment of casualness where I had convinced him to play catch with me outside. His uncovered arms revealed perhaps a hundred cigarette butt burns. I was horrified. I asked him how his arms were hurt. His response? "I fell down some stairs", a statement that actually said miles and miles of disturbing and sad things.

I sent him immediately to the school nurse who sent him back to me and told me he was "fine". I was so angry with the nurse that I went and confronted her. She told me she was "good friends with his mother" and knew that she would never do such a thing.

I went up to my classroom and called Family Services. The next day the child was not at school. I got a phone call from Family Services thanking me for my call and that they had found "substantial reason to open an investigation". I never saw the boy again, although I think about him from time to time. I hope he graduated high school and maybe is going to college. I pray for that from time to time.

And so we come to Josh Powell, a man who has this very day murdered his two little boys, just a few short years after most of us believe he also killed his wife.

I am so hurt by this violence to our little kids, so pained at what they undergo and feel and experience in our very midst. Importantly, we always read about Jesus' love for and devotion to children. He adored them and spent time with them and cared for them. He also warned those who abuse them that they were in terrible trouble.

Nothing profound here - I just hope we watch for the struggling children in our communities and do every single thing in our power to help them. Kids have a natural buoyancy. Few things in life are as wonderful as a child's face who has never had a parent or adult run them down or destroy their confidence.

As a happier side note, I hope you enjoy a video clip below of a father and daughter who are clearly doing it right. This happened at Whittier Elementary School here in Utah. My friend is the principal of that school and is the featured teacher in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAVESNguFUc

1999 Dating

2012-01-29T16:31:00.000-08:00

I was looking through old journals from 1999 tonight for some ridiculous reason. I could have benefited from a spell checker at times and I was awfully hard on myself at other times. One time I spent at least a paragraph beating myself up for getting a 97% on a test at BYU.

Most interesting in these journals were my dating adventures. I was probably the worst dater who ever lived.

One time I detailed how I was eating a Frosty in my car with a cute girl in the then completely dark parking lot of Seven Peaks Water Park late one night when she reached over and put her hand on my knee and told me she has liked me since we were 16. She then leaned into me putting her lips about 2-3 inches from mine. I told her I liked her back and then started the car and drove home - I was done with my Frosty after all. I beat myself up that night that I could have had my first (yes, first) kiss of my life. The girl stopped seeing me later that week. She dropped off a bag of Red Vines and told me she was dating another kid. Not my best moment.

Later, this girl's friend asked me if I was still interested in this girl because she was available. My heart was screaming, "YES! YES! YES!" However, I told her something wishy-washy because I didn't want to sound needy. Wrong choice. She never talked to me again.

One time I was set up with the niece of one of my bosses. The niece kept asking me if I knew how little English majors made in the real world. She told me she was needing more than that.

Another time I got set up with a girl to go on an 11 hour date to see a Shakespearean festival play in Cedar City. I think I am a pretty good conversationalist but I had run out of things to talk about with her before I had opened the car door 20 feet from her apartment. 11 hours later, I felt like I had just run a marathon.

In November I had a date with a girl who told me it looked like I had dried snot in my nose.

One girl who I had a serious crush on spent one Friday evening with me at a water park that was owned by one of my friends. When the water park was closed we got the lights to be turned on and were able to play as we wished. It was totally fun. A week later this girl told me she wasn't interested in me and was starting to get serious with some guy from Institute. The embarrassing part? I actually saw tear marks on the page where I wrote about it.

In February of that year I gave flowers to a girl on Valentine's Day. This girl and I had been out maybe a half dozen times and I liked her. She called me up that night and told me she had given the flowers to her visiting teacher and that she would rather I never called her again.

One bizarre entry from March 25 said that the girl I went out with that night had really soft hands and that "I wish I could hold them someday".

I was a Class A, category 1 dating failure. Nice to know I have gotten SO much better.

ha

Hiding In A Crowd

2012-01-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite parts of the week comes on Sunday before sacrament meeting when 7-800 single people make their way to the chapel, rushing madly for soft seats, trying to find a place to wedge themselves in for the next hour and 15 minutes. I know a guy who is dating a girl now because they almost sat on each others' laps on during their first encounter. After such closeness, he figured he owed her dinner. And now they are talking marriage.

Invariably, some member of the branch presidency stands up to invite the crowd to please remember it isn't a football game they are attending.

I actually adore this time as it gives me an opportunity to try and say hello to as many people as I can possibly meet. I have met so many friends in this way. I guess it is nearly impossible to get to know every one in that room, but I want to try.

Always, there are more than a handful of people, men and women, who are hiding a bit. They sit alone in a crowd of people, with no friends and a desperate heart.

I remember being in just such a circumstance, hiding in a group of people but anxious for someone to smile at me or tell me hello, to feel loved and to be noticed. Strange that we hide so much when we need to feel love from others.

I guess I know how much it heals a heart to have someone say hi and be honestly grateful that I was there. I also know how kindness makes me want to come back and be healed again. I know as well that healing happens by saying hello and loving total strangers for no other reason then that is what I think Christ would do.

This is something that I have a testimony of on both ends, that reaching out softens hard days and hard moments and hard lives.

I have gentle gratitude for the men and women in my life who saw me hiding in a group and let me know they were happy for my being there.

Fidelity

2012-01-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

I just spent an hour trying to write a blog about honesty without evoking the name of Newt Gingrich. I try not to be political anymore in my blog and try to use examples that do not identify people by name.

But I can't help it this time. Please forgive me.

I suppose each of you have politicians who you don't like or appreciate and ones you consider to be dishonest. I cannot buy into the notion that all politicians are dishonest or evil or corrupt. I don't believe it. But I think some are so dishonest that they burden their profession for generations to come.

When I got home from my mission President Clinton was ensnared in a sexual scandal with has become the stuff of late night comedy routines from here to comic eternities. There was something weird that went on in that moment. Women's rights groups defended a man for using his power to get sexual favors from a workplace subordinate in the oval office. We learned that the meaning of "is" was not always "is". We learned that his definition of sexual relations with a woman meant that he could do what he did with Monica Lewinsky without feeling as if he had broken his marriage vows. And I, like many, believe Hillary stayed with him because she was using his power to springboard her political career. Really disgusting stuff.

At the same time, Newt Ginrich was making trips around the country denouncing the President for his sexual misconduct and lack of family values, preaching marriage and fidelity and love and devotion. At the exact same time he was sleeping with a woman who was his subordinate at work, a woman who knew he was married and felt no injustice was being done to his marriage. Of course, his wife at the time was engaged to Newt while he was still married to his first wife, who was undergoing treatment for cancer at the time. The second wife claims that Newt asked her for a sexually open marriage to pursue his lust for other women. He was using his power to satisfy himself sexually.

What is the difference between the two, I ask? I don't see a thing.

Such comprehensive dishonesty in marriage shouldn't be swept aside so easily. These men, in any other walk of life, would at the very least be charged with sexual misconduct for using positions of power in employment to gain sexual favors.

And this is besides their serial marital infedelity.

And both might have the title of President of the United States.

Just my too disgusted thought for the day.

Spilling It Out

2012-01-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

During my sophomore year in high school my parents went to a parent teacher conference and met with an English teacher of mine whom I swear was Attila the Hun's older and meaner sister. She told my parents I was a catastrophe and needed to be in remedial English. She said I would never go to college and to give up whatever hope my folks had of that foolish dream.

I think my mother was going to leave her body black and blue.

When I graduated from BYU in English my mother sent a copy of my diploma to her. When I got accepted into grad school my mother wrote to let her know as well. Moms - gotta love 'em.

I suppose that I always loved to read growing up. I love it still. I read to excess sometimes - every night I try to sink into something for some period of time.

But I guess I have another outlet that I love more. I love to write. I don't have any real delusions about my abilities. I just know we all need some kind of creative outlet where what is in us can have a chance to come out. Anytime that I sit down to write poetry or a blog or the crazy writings that I hope come out as a book someday I only make it as far as I am true and completely honest to myself and my emotions. I can't fake it very far without it.

In a way I guess I am grateful for the viperous old teacher in high school. I bet she found an outlet and is all the better for it as well.

What is your outlet?

Only The Lonely

2012-01-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

I suppose that there is a divide among the married and the unmarried in probably one important area: we don't understand each other completely.

I am 34 years old and was almost married once, a long time ago. This gives me a degree of hope that perhaps it may happen in this life. But I certainly don't understand the world that my friends who married within a few years of returning from missions have lived in.

I had to organize some old junk of mine the other day and noticed an old bag of letters that I had kept from my mission - every letter, in fact, that I had ever received. Some pretty funny memories ensued, including a sweet letter from my then very young brother who had sent me an envelope of snow from Utah because he knew I wouldn't have any in Florida.

Among the letters were a dozen or so from high school girls I used to hang around with. Many of them dear friends. The letters were invariably announcing their engagement to Mr. Right - some true story of love and love and then some love on top of the love. I was very happy for them.

These same girls have kids who aren't far from high school themselves.

And I have lived a life so far removed from this (not by choice) that we don't always speak the same language.

They don't understand my world view either.

Which is fine. The basic idea that getting married is super duper easy becomes a myth somewhere around age 30. I think I will bribe my kids to make it happen before then. :)

In branch council last Sunday we talked about it. We talk about it a lot in the branch. When we are done talking about it, we talk some more about it. Recently, a couple from the branch who have dated for close to ten years got engaged. The collective relief that someone made it that far was palpable.

My thought is this - God loves me. I know He loves you too. I have been involved in giving blessings in this branch to quite a few people. Most of them have had anxiety over something, something that was keeping them up at night from time to time and making them feel lonely. It isn't that they aren't happy because they are! But it doesn't mean there aren't moments (for married and single alike) where being a party of one doesn't get to a person. I know a single girl who hates to go home at night to an empty home so much that she fills it with nieces and nephews as often as she could. And thank heavens for nieces and nephews. They add completely loving company to this occasionally lonely heart. I adore mine.

When I have been asked to help with these blessings it is so hard to convey the very tender love of Heavenly Father - it comes out all in a mess of feeling and emotion and usually tears. It overwhelms me. I am so honored to have been involved in these. They remind me of how gentle God's love is for us. And how gentle His love is for me.

It doesn't mean that loneliness doesn't still exist for anyone in any station of life. Those feelings come and go from time to time, perhaps for us to come searching for God's love. I am grateful that when I have searched I have always found it.

Mette Sorensen Hansen

2012-01-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spent the day with my dad checking out church and family history sites and got the following story about my dad's grandmother, which I thought was sweet and wonderful:

Mette Sorensen emigrated to the United States from Denmark with her family when she was 4. Her family joined the LDS Church and moved to Cache Valley, Utah. When she was older she married Alfred Hansen and moved to Teton Valley, Idaho where she raised 8 children.

Her husband died. Several of her children also died in the tough mountain environments. She came to live with my dad's family as she grew older. My own dad remembers with tenderness as a very young boy bringing her dinner to her every evening, stoking her fire, reading with her and hearing stories of crossing the ocean with her family and coming to Zion.

She had a stroke, which paralyzed the left half of her body and then fell and broke her right elbow, which never healed properly.

Then World War 2 broke out, which devastated her. She was brokenhearted at all the death and suffering and she loved and adored her new country.

She wanted to do something. She saw all the boys from the ward and the town leaving for the service in the military and she decided she could do something. She got permission to send them all a homemade quilt. She took patchwork cloth and began the process of making a quilt with one partially usable arm and her mouth. She made 80 of them, one for each boy in the tiny valley who left, until she ran out of materials. Then she made them other things.

She included a note with each, which she wrote with her mouth. It said: Dear Soldier Boy, you are young and I am now old. But I know we both love our country. And I love you very much. I pray for you every day.

It was a good story for me to be told.

The Book

2012-01-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

Recently while attending the funeral for my mission president I spent some time reworking things that I learned on my mission. Some things I have remembered better than others, for sure.

I remember a long conversation I had with a companion once, as we were traveling back from Mobile, Alabama to Tallahassee, Florida from a zone conference. We were discussing what made President Spencer the kind of man he was and we were discussing things we could follow from him that would move us down the same path. We discussed several things, but the one thing we focused on was a commitment that this man had made more than 30 years before where he had attended a stake conference where President Marion G. Romney spoke. President Romney invited everyone to read their Book of Mormon every day. My mission president went home and thought about that all day - had never considered making this commitment before.

But from that day on, more than 43 years of his life, he daily read the Book of Mormon.

And you could see what it had done to him. He was patient and gentle and kind and generous and attentive to his wife. He never lost his temper, he was thoughtful to everyone around him. He was compassionate to those with heartache. He was made of steel when he needed that.

He had a depth of spiritual knowledge and gospel understanding that tied him to the Savior.

My dad is like this too - more on this soon.

My companion and I decided we would make this commitment too - promised each other that we would hold to it.

I am no great man. I sometimes get into bed at night and regret too many things. I am so many miles away from the man I wish I was, and my failings are always with me. I feel them often.

But I have never forgotten this commitment. It has saved my life. In the darkest and most extreme days of my life I have always opened that book and have always had a window to saving light which got me through from one day to the next - sometimes when the world around me was darker than I could bear. It heals and soothes the cuts that I get from week to week, reminds me when my life isn't on track, calms my worries and opens a pathway to the Savior.

It has given me men to pattern my life after and taught me doctrine which saves.

I started my mission 16 years ago this month and have been saved from untold amounts of grief and unhappiness because I wanted to follow my mission president by reading from this book every day.

I am so glad it is our Gospel Doctrine study for the year. So thankful for Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, Mormon, Moroni and so many others who helped us have this book.

And thankful to President Spencer who inspired me to follow his lead.

Movie Review

2012-01-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

Since Thanksgiving I have seen four movies and only read 2 books, which is kind of sad, actually. I also have watched two different Three Stooges Marathons on television, which is more sad and also a little sick. Being a guy isn't easy, sometimes.

By the way, one of my New Year's resolutions is to read a book a week. I used to do at at least that and while it may cut into my Three Stooges Marathons and I might be reading Curious George, it's a goal I am going to run with.

Anyhow, I thought I would give a quick review of the four movies I have seen so far and I am open to your rebuttals and thoughts.

The Muppets: I saw this movie on Thanksgiving and I have to tell you that I held my breath as it began. I so loved the Muppets growing up and had a little closet romance thing going with Miss Piggy. But when Jim Henson died the movies that followed were a mix between scary and horrible. I was worried this movie was going to bite. Relief! I was so impressed with the sweetness, silliness and fun in the movie. If you haven't been, go. And take someone with you. I talked to someone recently who thought there wasn't a huge plot in the movie. Minor detail. It is one of the best reviewed movies of the last decade.
Mission Impossible: These movies always have a mix of scenes that are at once awesome and make you go, " Oh, give me a break". Which was totally this movie. These movies have almost no sex and almost all adrenalin. There are scenes that so totally freak you out just watching it, but are so fun you can't help but enjoy it. The scenes filmed in Dubai are some of the very best, as long as you don't freak out about climbing 130 stories up the outside of a hotel.
Sherlock Holmes: Ditto for much of what I said about Mission Impossible, but this one was probably better. There was more of a fluid and fun mystery to this one and the adventure is great. My only complaint is that it was a wee bit too long. By the time they said they were going to Switzerland I was wondering if the entire world would be visited country by country. However, this movie scores 100% on the Matt Hansen fun factor-o-meter. And if you can stomach a corpulent naked man (shown about 91% naked) then you will enjoy this movie.
War Horse: Totally the anti-Hollywood movie. A movie where so many of the good and kind and lovable characters die and where people on both sides of World War 1 (British and Germans) are portrayed as good men. This movie makes you love a horse, a boy, a mother, a little French girl, two German brothers, a British officer and so many others. It has a beautiful happy ending, mixed with sadness over so many who died but were touched by this horse. And, it is one of the few movies out your mothers will all love. I plan on taking mine soon.

Late Night Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

I suppose most of you have better things to be doing than to read my blog late on a Christmas Eve night. On the off chance that you catch it I just felt to share something.

It's a very soft, snowless night in Utah. Not sure where it is where you are. I do hope, however, that you are with somebody you love and care about and that you have had a wonderful evening. I think of all the things that make Christmas soft and warm and family and friends have to do be among the warmest and softest.

Last night I delivered some gifts bought by members of my branch for families in need. I pulled into a very rough apartment complex. It was poorly lit and there were rough looking people everywhere - not a place for kids or a single mother.

But this single mother was standing in the doorway of her apartment looking so happy and so excited, genuinely happy. I went into her apartment and she had in her front room a rocking chair and a mess of papers and another ramshackle chair.

And a Christmas tree, with absolutely nothing underneath for her children or herself.

And I handed her a huge bag of presents which were bought and wrapped by so many of you who read this blog, who also bought gifts for hundreds of other children.

Please know she was grateful to tears. As am I for telling this story.

My dad always shares sweet stories on Christmas Eve of people who love and serve others in Christlike ways. He inspires me every day. I don't think I will ever be good enough to half match him. He shares the following story often, which you have probably heard before. But it's worth sharing again.

A Brother Like That

Paul received an automobile from his brother as a Christmas present. On Christmas Eve when Paul came out of his office, a street urchin was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it.

"Is this your car, Mister?" he asked.

Paul nodded. "My brother gave it to me for Christmas." The boy was astounded. "You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you nothing? Boy, I wish..." He hesitated. Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.

"I wish," the boy went on, "that I could be a brother like that."

Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added, "Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"

"Oh yes, I'd love that."

After a short ride, the boy turned and with his eyes aglow, said, "Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?" Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the lad wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. But Paul was wrong again.

"Will you stop where those two steps are?" the boy asked. He ran up the steps. Then in a little while Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast. He was carrying his little crippled brother. He sat him down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up against him and pointed to the car. "There she is, Buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn't cost him a cent. And some day I'm gonna give you one just like it...then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about."

Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.

That Christmas Eve, Paul learned what Jesus meant when he had said: "It is more blessed to give..."

My Walgreen's Christmas

2011-12-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was headed to Costco to do some Christmas shopping and was passing the Walgreen's in Sandy on 7th East and 9400 South and I had an interesting feeling that I needed to go HERE instead of Costco.

I was thinking of driving on anyway. I passed the entrance for Walgreen's and then the feeling came more strongly.

Stop.

I have been trying to get rid of my tin ear for spiritual things and so I pulled into the next road and turned around. I parked my car on the other side of the store and walked around the building, thinking that the only thing on my list that I could get here were some soda.

And then I saw why I was told to stop.

A little old lady had been packing out a few bags to her car. The handicapped places had been full so she had to park much further away from the building.

She must have been exhausted. Her cane was on the ground by the front of the car. She had tried to use the hood of the car as leverage to get down from the slippery curb and had collapsed onto the hood of the car. And she had been there awhile.

I asked her if I could help. She looked so tired but so grateful. I helped her up and put her bags in the car and helped her in. Another sweet lady came to help, for which I was so grateful.

I watched her drive away and felt so grateful that Heavenly Father asked me to help her and so grateful I got to have that opportunity to meet her. She's a beautiful lady.

Thumpety Thump Thump

2011-12-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

Some Christmas songs have really dumb lyrics. Have you ever seen an ox and lamb keeping time? Or what does it mean to do something "the Eskimo way"? What in the world is figgy pudding, and why does it have to be brought RIGHT NOW?

I was gathered with a group of friends at a sing-a-long this evening. We must have sang 700 songs, songs from every possible angle on the Christmas scene. It was totally fun - like the craziest bunch of fun I have had in months - which is probably sad, and probably says a lot about me as a person. But it was great.

As per usual for these events there is right about 3 thousand calories available per person in the form of cookies, cakes, fudge and even some bacon wrapped something which was freaking delicious.

And the pianist basically rocked the songbook for a solid 2 hours or more. And I have decided that people drank a lot of Christmas cheer in those songs and that when the songwriters didn't know what to say they tossed in about 12 lines of "fa la la la la la la la la". Or "thumpety thump thump". Or "pah rum pum pum pum.

There are also some really beautiful songs, amazing and lovely. My two faves of the evening are, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "O, Holy Night". And probably "I'll Have a Blue Christmas". And some others.

Seriously so much fun.

The Prophet

2011-12-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today in church we celebrated the life of the Prophet Joseph in sermon and song during sacrament meeting.

It was very moving.

I think I have felt a connection with Joseph most of my life, an affection for him born of gratitude and an honest love for him. When I was 8, for instance, I was baptized in the Susquehanna River in upstate Pennsylvania at the site where the Joseph was baptized. I was confirmed on a log on the river by my father and the two assistants to the president, as my dad was a mission president at the time.

When I was 10 I went to the Sacred Grove, Kirtland, Independence and Nauvoo for the first time, places that I have visited a dozen times since. I love to read about the the Prophet Joseph. His life makes me love him more. His teachings make me love the Savior more.

When I was living in St. Louis the Nauvoo Temple was being built. I remember going up there in the evenings sometimes in the seasons without as many tourists, walking the streets by myself. I would always imagine Joseph in the town with his light and happy smile and Christlike persona, interacting with people. I would love to have been there.

And I would usually end up by his grave, by myself. Some of the quietest moments in my life came by this grave, all alone.

I love the prophet and have always felt confident in sharing my witness of his prophetic calling, of the Book of Mormon which he translated, of the many many revelations which he received, and of the Church he established. Praise to the Man, indeed.

Happy 206th birthday, Joseph.

First Annual Matt Hansen Christmas Card

2011-12-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

How it has happened that I have I have never put together a Christmas Card before is a blessing to so many people on so many levels. And I am going to spoil your serenity by giving my first and hopefully my last Christmas Card.

This last year I have learned a great number of things.

In February I learned that church basketball is a place for lowered pride and torn ligaments and silent tears so as to not embarrass yourself in front of other manly men, no matter how loud the injury sounded. And how much you yelled like a 4 year old girl when it happened.

In February I also said goodbye to my grandma, who passed after 103 years of being an angel to everyone she met. I included two pictures here, one of my good dad and her and one of my grandma, my dad, myself and my awesome nephew holding hands a few weeks before she passed away.

In March I learned that men blame their wives when they back into your car.

In April I learned that I was sick and tired of snow, even though it was freakishly beautiful.

In June I took my parents on a cross country trip to Nauvoo and St Louis, a trip that will bring sainthood to them for the number of hours they spent in the car listening to me sing Neil Diamond songs.

In August I played in Washington D.C., Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Harrisburg and Hershey, old stomping grounds of mine made more fun by getting to be the tour guide this time. On this trip I encountered a really delightful meal of pigeon legs.

September brought my only BYU in person game of the year where I left early after BYU was wiped of its will to live by Utah. No pictures included. Yuck :)

I am going to stop with the pictures now until I can find some more to update the rest of the year on.

Kinda funny to look back on some of the year and to see all the minor things that were major at the time. Reviewing journal entries and pictures and histories and stuff give a kind of epic nature to the year. In a sad, kind of pathetic way. :)

It has been a great year! I think I am as happy about life as I have ever been.

I hope and pray your Christmas will be as full of love as it can be and that your life will be blessed with hope and joy through the next year.

And perhaps something epic will happen to us all next year :)

I Didn't Always Lose, And I Won't Always Lose Again

2011-12-13T19:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen the movie, "Cinderella Man"? It is a beautiful, human, loving movie about a real life boxer man named James Braddock. James was a good New York City area boxer in the 1920's who was a strong contender in the heavyweight division. When the depression hit he encountered some terrible luck. He was fighting with a broken hand which wouldn't heal. This meant he couldn't win many fights and the little pay for reduced competition he got wasn't keeping their home. He and his wife and three little kids moved to an absolute dive in the ghettos of Newark, New Jersey where they struggled to eat and live. He ended up losing his boxing license and couldn't find any other work sufficient enough to care for his family. His family was nearly starving and freezing to death.

But he always loved his children and he and his wife always loved each other, a love story that is absolutely the main theme in the movie. One of the desperate and terrible scenes of the movie is when he has lost his kids because he can't provide for them and he goes and begs those who he knew who had money but very little compassion to please give him a few pennies so he could get his kids home.

But a miracle happened one day when his old trainer and promoter told him he had secured a provisional fight because a boxer had been unable to fill his billing.

He could still fight. The heart wrenching and true story of a man who overcame complete humiliation and degradation to eventually become the heavy weight champion of the world, topping a man who had killed other boxers in the ring to do it, is one of the great American stories of rising from the dust to achieve a measure fitting his God given abilities.

On the day of that championship fight, the poor of the city flocked to the churches to pray for him and listen to the fight on the radio.

Here is the trailer for this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlbHzcH4VJY

I have seen so many people in my life who have been crushed, to some degree or another. Someone I know ended his life last month because he was under a weight that he felt he couldn't get away from.

So what does it take to remove the heaviness of it all and rise to the man or woman God has in mind for us to become? What does it take for hope to permeate our lives?

I am not sure I have all the answers to this question, but I do know it centers in love. Love and hope in God the Eternal Father and in His way out for us through His Son. And hopefully that entails people around us who believe in us and stand by us as we rise to the joy of reaching our potential.

Thoughts?

Third Week Accountability

2011-12-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

Chains Shall He Break For The Slave Is Our Brother

2011-12-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

I think the first time I remember thinking that I had some small idea of how much the Savior did for me was when I was a teenager and I had started to read King Benjamin's sermon in the Book of Mormon. I had one of those moments where you feel the reality of the Atonement and how personal the love of Christ is for you.

I have never recovered from knowing that Jesus did indeed suffer for me to bring me peace and joy and ultimately back to my Father in Heaven.

But I have forgotten from time to time how much He loves me. Perhaps you have had moments where you have felt adrift? I certainly have.

There is so much in this world that draws us away from Him. So much extra stuff. And there is so much bad in the world. We tangle ourselves up from time to time in bad habits and bad decisions which leave us wanting for peace.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

I was thinking of how weary I am from time to time in my life from lack of hope and bad choices and yet a new and glorious morn always appears if I let it.

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

The older I get the more I realize that love IS God. And love is so important. It has changed me.

So I was thinking of my gift I could give this Christmas. And I was figuring I could do a better job of loving those around me, especially those I have a hard time loving and those who's tattered life so begs for the peace of God.

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!

I know how it feels to leave tatters and to be filled with the love of God.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

A Year

2011-12-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

I think it is amazing how mesmerizing soft Christmas lights on a tree are, no matter how Charlie Brownish the tree is. Yet it's funny, this pine tree in a house thing.

Have you ever been in the room, alone with the Christmas tree on a quiet evening, a good book in hand? It's pretty close to heaven.

In the Christmas moment, it is all about peace.

Christmas is such a great time to gauge growth - I used to do it and see spiritual inches gained over the year and be grateful for the incremental growth.

But somewhere a few years ago I began to realize how truly dedicated Jesus was to you and to me. Then I saw my years differently. This year, I could see how He helped me forgive a person who needed my forgiveness to heal. And how when someone forgave me that it healed a relationship broken beyond what I thought could be fixed. I saw how I realized how to love someone who was hard to love and how I was so blessed by this relationship. I could see how He blessed me to stop a habit which was cutting off the oxygen to my growth.

And most of all I could see how I felt Christ in my mornings and afternoons more consistently this year than I felt last year. I am most proud of this growth in my life. And it makes me realize how much more I would enjoy it if I could see the other millions of loving ways He is teaching me to try to be more obedient and like Him.

And so tonight, as I watch the soft lights of the Christmas tree I see in them the many ways the Savior has lighted my life this year and how much He loves you and me.

God Bless You, Mothers And Future Mothers

2011-12-04T17:01:00.001-08:00

5 years ago I was freshly new to Reno, Nevada and managing the local Deseret Book. I was green and dumb and was making lots of mistakes. In the middle of this learning curve a girl a few years younger than me walked in. I knew her from the single's ward I just joined but not enough to even know her name.

She told me she wanted to know if we had a book about what you should look for in a future husband. She told me she had just been asked to be married but had told the guy to hold on for a bit. She wasn't sure. She had been attending the temple and fasting and praying.

I didn't know then that she had fought and won some serious battles with cancer and knew a few things. For starters, she was at risk of the cancer coming out of remission and second, if the cancer came out of remission when she was pregnant, she would not be able to fight the cancer and keep the child. It would have to be one or the other.

Later, I knew all of these things were going through her mind later, but I did not know it then.

She ended up marrying this great guy in the Reno temple, and quickly became pregnant.

And then she received word that the cancer had returned, virulently.

I remember thinking of the sweetness of this beautiful woman who had already decided that if a baby was to come and if she had cancer that she would give the baby the best possible start on life and she would trust that God had a plan for her.

A baby girl was born to some happy parents. The mother was exhausted. She was also very sick.

The cancer had spread throughout her body.

This young mother died a short time later, baby in arms.

I learned something about women that day. I learned that they have something very Christlike in their very nature, something strong and powerful.

Its love.

God bless you women.

A Naked Story

2011-12-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

I was asked about this story today. I thought I would share again, in case you haven't read it. This was originally posted a few years ago.

What you are about to read is the most embarrassing story ever told. Such extravagant statements usually disappoint. I guarantee that this one will not. It took me 5 years before I could tell this story to anyone.

The story you are about to read is G rated, even though I was naked during the entire episode.

I was 15 years old when the "episode" happened. I was taking a bath. I know that baths are usually reserved for children under the age of 6 and for women with aromatherapy and such, but give me a break. I was taking a bath.

My parent's home was set up where the main bathroom was directly next to the front room and kitchen, all on a single story house with a basement. The only other person who was home was my sister, who was 17. She was watching television in the front room, directly next to my bathing area.

I realized that I had forgotten to bring clean clothes and for some reason the bathroom was without towels. I was loathe to put on my dirty clothes and so I just laid there, naked, wondering what to do. My bedroom was in the basement. I would have to walk out in front of my sister.

A NORMAL person would have just asked their sister to toss them a towel. But clearly, for those of you who know me, I am not all that normal. :)

Now, the matter was about to become a little more complicated. My sister's best friend, a girl who I was very much in love with at that age, knocked on the door. She lived across the street and I saw her pretty much every single day of my life to that point.

I was definitely NOT going to ask my sister for a towel now and expose my stupidity and nakedness to the love of my life.

And then the most brilliant of ideas came to me. I realized that underneath the sink in the bathroom was a laundry chute. It was more like a hole in the floor. If you were in the basement you would simply see this hole in the ceiling. My mom never used this chute since we moved the washer and drier to the main floor.

I used to be able to slip down that hole and go to my bedroom when I was younger without any trouble. And so I thought I could do it this time.

I was doing really well until I got to my chest. I couldn't move my arms down the hole and then the panic set in. I was stuck. I couldn't move up or down. I was hanging naked from the ceiling. My head and neck and shoulders were above board, the rest of me was below. And when I mean the rest of me, I do mean the REST of me.

My sister and my love interest were sitting not all that far away from my head. I could have yelled, "HEY! HELP! I am stuck naked in the ceiling!" But come on, really?

So I dangled there naked for probably an hour. I heard two full episodes of the People's Court on television. Then, the worst moment of my life began to get worse. I heard my sister say, "hey, lets go downstairs to my room".

Now panic was in high gear. I started swinging my legs around to get leverage. I put a hole in the wall behind my legs, which was kept as a memento to the experience. I heard them come down the stairs as my heart raced. All they needed to do was open the door and walk about 2 feet and they would see me.

The door opened at the bottom of the stairs and suddenly there was silence. Somewhere down below were my sister, the love of my life, and my very naked body.

The silence lasted about 30 seconds, but felt like a year. And then all of a sudden, laughter.

And then they turned and ran up the stairs.

I dangled there for another hour until I could push myself back up.

Now you tell me. Did I disappoint?

Hitchhiking Into Love

2011-12-01T21:24:00.001-08:00

Have you read the story about the good man who was mugged? Treat yourself to a real life Hallmark heart warmer by clicking on this sentence.

Which reminds me of a story from my life. One day when I was very little, maybe 5-6, my dad and I were driving on a very cold and very snowy night. It was quiet and warm and my dad was whistling something fun. He stopped whistling and it was quiet for a few seconds when he pulled over to the side of the road.

He told me that a man was needing a ride and he looked cold and wet. It was sometime later when I realized he was hitchhiking and that picking up hitchhikers could be a really bad idea.

But my dad told me he had a feeling about this man and that he had never had the feeling to pick someone up like this before. I trust my dad's feelings.

The man got in the car and he looked shabby and dirty and he smelled funny. I remember being uncomfortable at first. My dad started talking to him lightly and with gentleness. I don't remember almost anything about that conversation, just that I felt warmer and safer the longer it went on.

The thing I do remember is that when we got where the man was going that my dad asked if he wanted to stay in the car for a bit to stay warm. The man said yes.

And after a few minutes he started to cry. He told my dad thanks through some tears and then got out and walked into the dead of night.

I was years later when I learned about despair and sadness and how it can be swallowed up in love.

Did Something Break We Can't Repair?

2011-11-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

I think it is interesting to be a part of a crowd of hundreds of people each Sunday in roughly the same boat: never married, divorced, widowed or some other such reason for singlehood. And we talk about it. Why not? It is easily the 5 million pound gorilla in the room, and everyone knows it.

I bet some serious money that every single person in that branch has had a few dozen (hundreds? thousands?) quiet moments where we ask the questions, "Did I do something that prevents me from being married? Did something break I can't repair?"

This feeling is usually followed by some sadness and introspection, where every misdeed above the parking ticket sin variety receives due remorse and a person can blame life's travails on any sum of those parts.

Tonight at the temple I was thinking of this sickness that we can all pass around, married and unmarried. Even when we repent of our sins we tend to blame life's challenges on our broken past.

I have a testimony, and I have to remind myself of this fact: God doesn't look at it like this at all. There is nothing broken which He cannot repair. I bet God has repaired each one of us many times in our lives.

I love that God loves me enough to remind me of this. And that He loves me enough to repair me.

The Muppets

2011-11-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the Muppets yet? The love I have for Kermit, et al, is marginally unhealthy, placed slightly lower than BYU football and slightly above oxygen.

Kidding. Kind of.

Growing up, my folks kinda hated the fuzzy guys. It just wasn't their thing . We spent almost no time watching the Muppet Show on tv. Yet somehow, I fell in love with the pig and the frog and the whatever.

And I was so disappointed that in the last years of Jim Henson's life and the first couple of years after that the Muppets produced some really stupid movies, kind of crushing the franchise. Muppets from Outer Space? It was alien to anything I remembered about them.

So I was pleased to see that the Muppets had a rebirth from some people who wanted to do it justice. And they did. It was hilarious.

It was soft and sweet, with none of the constant sarcasm from Shrek, a movie which I never related to very much. There was almost no CGI technology, which was a HUGE boon. It was funny and lovably without having to rely on computer tricks. Kind of like how the earlier Star Wars movies were SOOOOO much superior to the three new dumb ones. (and no Jar Jar either).

The music was fantastic and fresh.

If you haven't seen it, spend 9 bucks to support something that is actually hard to come by in the theaters:

Pure fun.

52 Weeks

2011-11-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

I am looking for a little accountability from whomever pities me by reading this blog. My stake president asked our branch about 8-10 times to please go to the temple weekly. This is a revelation to me. I had been going to the temple monthly, more or less, my entire adult life. I have had times where the temple wasn't even that high on the priority list, and I suffered with loneliness from the Spirit because of it.

I remember the first time I went back after a long period of forgetting the temple. I was in Albuquerque. I went in the middle of the afternoon. I remember feeling guilt as I was walking up to the temple - not a guilt from a moral sin but a guilt from not loving the temple enough to make it a centerpiece of my life.

The entire session at the temple I had tears streaming down my face because it felt so good to be home.

I have been to the temple weekly, more or less, for about 6 months. I want to make it more, not less now.

This last week I went to the Jordan River Temple. I tried to go on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, got there late, and went on Friday instead.

And loved it.

Here is my testimony of the temple: attending it healed my broken heart. When I decided that I wanted to come to feel of Jesus' healing my scarred heart I went where I knew I would find Him - the scriptures and the temple.

I make heaps and heaps of mistakes now but attending the temple keeps me more honest. It helps me avoid major mistakes and keeps me constantly repenting of my smaller ones. It teaches me of the doctrine of the gospel, the kind that saves and nourishes and loves. Being at the temple helps me have my prayers answered and guides my life.

And so I need your help. You should see a brief weekly accounting of my temple visit for the next year. And hopefully I can improve as a man because of it. I am counting on it.

Keep me honest.

Black Friday - A Report

2011-11-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

I wanted to join the chorus of people sharing stories about Black Friday, trading elbows and madness with certifiably insane people hunting for bargains at the expense of life, limb, sleep and human decency.

The problem is, as I learned, that there really are certifiably insane people there hunting for bargains at the expense of life, limb, sleep and human decency.

Gazing around at a recent Wal-Mart ad I noticed they were selling some computers super cheap. My own laptop has been limping along on some very mediocre life support for about 6 years now and so I was thinking of getting a new one.

I went down to Wal-Mart on Thanksgiving evening at about 8 pm and walked past people sleeping in the aisles, others sitting in their own lawn chairs surrounding some pallets of 2 dollar dvds like it was a living money tree.

I left because I could never even find the pallet with the computers on even though I came with a map of their supposed location.

Two hours later I was informed that there were fist fight(s) around the 2 dollar dvds. I was told that some lady had a daughter who was stepped on. I was also told that there were a group of people taking advantage of the complete inability of the Wal-Mart employees (all dressed in yellow event jackets) to see everyone and they were ripping 40 dollar Wii games out of packages, slipping them in their dvd containers and getting a 4o dollar Super Mario game for 2 bucks.

In L.A., some lady peppered sprayed the people surrounding the dvds so they would scatter, which they did, and so she could get a bunch of dvds at 2 bucks, which she did. Police are still looking for her.

Now, I have dozens and dozens and dozens of friends and family members who seem to be amazingly rational and practical and are willing to fight through the craziness of this whole thing. Heck, they may even be energized by the whole thing. I salute you for keeping America's economy going and I hope you continue it. Heaven bless.

On a side note, I was at Wal-Mart today and the clerk had two headphones in listening to his i-pod while checking me out. No joke. Home of the worst service ever.

And yet, I clearly still shop there.

Heaven help me.

Creases, Tears And Holes

2011-11-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a little niece who was struggling to find sleep. You could tell she was wandering aimlessly around while the adults talked about hilarious nothings. I picked her up and took her into a nearby room and cuddled with her until she collapsed into sleep and I was nigh unto zombie land myself.

This morning she gave me a big kiss and I melted into mushy mush.

For the last 4 days I have been wondering about how love heals. The older I get the more I realize that life brings so many porcupine quills to our heart and so many pains carried on tender, unhealed wounds.

I know I carry some still. They surprise me from time to time that I have them. Sometimes I don't know that I still have them until love heals them. A broken relationship mended with love turned to tears and more love is one of the greatest moments of healing I know. I had one of those recently.

I will never underestimate again how desperately we all need to love and be loved.

So, at this Thanksgiving I give thanks for those who have loved me when I was unlovable. I give thanks because your loved has healed creases and tears and holes in my life and heart that prevented me from living happily and close to God. I give thanks to those who's compassion blossomed me in dark days.

Life can be cruel. But it is made so beautiful because love is in it. I feel a compelling need to share love with those in dark places too. I need to give it and I know that love that is given is a balm of healing as well.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Thought On My President

2011-11-19T22:49:00.001-08:00

I sat about ten rows behind my mission friends today at the funeral of my mission president, which was probably a good thing. I cried repeatedly.

My mission president was a gentle, guiding influence in my life. But he wasn't weak. Interviews with him meant meeting his soft but very searching eyes which seemed to see the corners of your heart.

He loved the gospel. He absolutely loved it. He served four missions, not including numerous times as a temple square missionary, Washington D.C. Temple worker, and so much more.

I loved him. And I know something about love because he taught me that every day. He spent a lifetime learning about charity and Jesus and conversion. He spent every day trying to live as close to the Lord as he could, and you could actually see heaven in those soft penetrating eyes. He was polite and courteous. He was faithful and kind.

His wife, Joan, was the energy of the world, in my opinion. She was perpetual motion, sometimes impetuous, always frank. But she loved being in love with him and she loved that he adored her. President Spencer's sister told today of the fact that his college grades improved dramatically the moment he married Joan. I can imagine. My life improved dramatically the moment she came into my life - and it wasn't just ironed shirts. She made me want to be my best. And she had a way of winning any battle of wills a person might have with her. Her will was iron, and you weren't going to bend it.

Because President Spencer was soft and gentle and never raised his voice some would think it would be easy to underestimate his sermons. But here is the thing: I think I was invited more than 100 times by him to come to Jesus by reading my Book of Mormon daily, by praying constantly and by being obedient. And slowly and surely his invitations brought me to Jesus Christ.

I have so much love for my dear mission president, who taught me of Christ, invited me to come to Him and lived close enough to Him that I could see the man I wanted to be every time I looked at him.

God bless you, President and Sister Spencer.

Christmas Begins

2011-11-15T17:53:00.000-08:00

I tell the story here from time to time as we approach the Christmas season of a young king who ruled in Czechoslovakia over a thousand years ago. He died a very early death, living until he was only 28.

He loved his people and was brokenhearted for the poor in his country. The story is that he went out, day and night, bringing hope and comfort to the weary and broken in his kingdom, even giving up his shoes in the dead of winter. His people called him "the father of all the wretched".

His page was enlisted to help, but without the commanding strength of the young king, he often faltered. The bitter cold of the night and the heavy snow were very difficult for the page.

The king told him to follow the steps he was leaving in the snow, full of radiating warmth. The page, by following his master's footsteps, was given the strength to continue to love and bless those around him.

You may know this better as the song, "Good King Wenceslas".

Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blow stronger;

Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."

"Mark my footsteps, my good page. Tread thou in them boldly

Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;

Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

Some Feel Goods

2011-11-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

I thought I would pass along a few feel goods for your Sunday.

This is my second year as the service committee co-chair, which is a pretty sweet gig in my branch. We do all kinds of fun things, from helping to make cheese to cleaning the temple. Our big event every year, and I do mean big, is a dinner and auction. The activities committee has to feed several hundred people and we have to keep them entertained and run the auction.

Hundreds and hundreds of donations were accumulated over the last month or so. We had home made jewelry, knitted scarves, baked pies and cookies and cakes by the dozens and dozens and dozens, as well as arts and crafts and paintings. We also had trips to condos, sky diving trips, hot air balloon rides, catered dinners, etc.

We prepared videos and slide shows and got a fantastic auctioneer who was hilarious and full of energy.

And the end result? When we finished counting the money at the end of the night the 300 of us gave 11 thousand dollars. There was a little gasp and then the little group of us left counting the money started cheering.

The money goes to lots of places, but primarily to children in our stake who would not have a Christmas if it wasn't for us.

Which explains so much. Our perceptive and dear branch president said last year and this year that one of the reasons this branch is so giving is we are frustrated moms and frustrated dads. You can look in the faces of 700 people on Sunday and you see people who want to be dads and moms and who are not. And their hearts are full and they would make great moms and great dads. And when they are given the opportunity to do something for children you will bet that they will do it - and be so grateful for it. And their hearts are full of desire, always, to do more. It is love that governs their lives, and they wish for someone to pour that love on. If they have blessings withheld for the moment, they will find blessings by pouring love where they can.

And in a few weeks when we have the opportunity to buy the pants and shoes and pajamas for dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of children and deliver them to the bishop of the ward with so many needs in our stake, you watch and see his face when he is overwhelmed with love again for the children in his ward who so desperately need it.

I cried all evening last year.

One other story:

I learned from our branch president today of a newer member of our branch. Our branch is huge and so even when a person tries like a crazy person to get to know their fellow branch members, it is hard. I have seen this man and said hi to him a half dozen times, but never knew his story.

He is sick and needs our prayers.

When he was 5 years old he was at Sugar House Park sledding with his mother and even younger brother. His mother was taking care of an issue with the brother when he suddenly started sliding down the snowy hill on a sled. The sled took a devastating turn and he ran full on into a pole, splitting his head open from front to back.

His family feared that he would die. After some time passed and he was going to live, it was determined that he was paralyzed from his chest down with the exception of his left arm.

Today you can see him at church wheeling himself in with talent and strength.

Apparently, he has been wheeling himself to church every Sunday.

From South Jordan to Midvale. And home again.

Hour after hour after hour after hour after hour he has moved himself along with his one arm to church.

Of course, now that this is known, that will never happen again.

He once wheeled himself to a temple recommend interview on a Tuesday only to learn that he had the wrong date.

I wonder how many other stories I don't know about the people around me. People who carry heavy burdens and crippling pain and crushed hopes are all around us. Sometimes I am one of those guys and sometimes you are.

Thank heavens there are people so full of love around us.

A Deer Killing And Chasing A Car

2011-10-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I had a bizarre and frightening accident with a huge deer in Nebraska. We both lost, but it died. You can read about it by clicking on this sentence.

The real story, as crazy as that was, was the 24 hours AFTER the accident as I slowly drove another 1300 miles across the country in a Corolla which looked like an elephant had belly flopped on it about a dozen times. I was held together with computer cord and a prayer.

I remember when I got to St. Louis how it started hailing and since I didn't really have a windshield anymore the hail was pelting my face on the freeway.

I remember pulling into a gas station in Columbia, Missouri and some lady who witnessed the catastrophe I was driving pulled her kids immediately back into their van and drove away.

I remember the computer cords I was using to brace the hood of the car down snapped in Nashville and the hood slammed back into what was left of the windshield, caving the remains of the windshield within an inch of my face. I stuck my head out the window and coasted to a stop on the freeway. A dozen or so cars who saw the damage to my car and thought that it had JUST occurred pulled over and people were running after me, trying to pull me out of the car. An army medic unit came running with their bags. No joke. When they realized I was okay and just an idiot and wanted to KEEP driving, the army guy got a winch out and tied my hood down.

I drove another 400 miles.

The next morning at 2 am I pulled into the town I needed to be at and, since it was too early to go to my destination, I stopped in the parking lot of a restaurant I knew had wi-fi. The manager, there early to bake bread I suppose, got freaked out looking at my car. He called the cops who came and had me get out of the car. There was deer blood and fur everywhere and since they weren't sure what it was, they thought I had been involved in some kind of hit and run accident.

We got it all sorted out.

I was thinking about this experience today as I watched a man at a gas station in Bountiful get out of his car to pump gas and, apparently, had forgotten to turn his car off and put the vehicle in the park position.

I knew this because in the next moment I saw that this man was chasing his car down the parking lot and watched as it entered the street perpendicular to the flow of traffic. The car miraculously hit a fence already in disrepair on the other side of the street without ever hitting anyone or anything. The man sheepishly got in his car and drove off, probably figuring he would get gas some place where he hadn't just put on a show.

It is good to know that crazy things happen to other people too :)

A Cult

2011-10-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

The first full day and the first area of my mission in the city of Pensacola, Florida I was knocking doors with my companion when a group of men started spilling out of several nearby homes. They were all wearing white short sleeved shirts and black ties and there were about 30 of them. They were carrying megaphones with them and they made a circle around my companion and myself.

They identified themselves as being from one of the local churches in the area and started shouting tainted questions at us. We tried to answer their questions the best we could and each attempt was shouted down with the help of megaphones. Giving up, we turned to walk away. They followed us down the road shouting expletives about Joseph Smith for the next mile or so.

With the recent hullabaloo about Mormons being a cult I am always brought back to my mission. I remember so many times sharing my witness of Jesus Christ and having a percentage of my audiences smirk or laugh or tell me it was some alien Jesus with whom I professed loving.

There are indeed people in this country, a small but steady percentage, who practice a degree of ignorance or fear and even some bigotry as it involves Mormons. Imagine if a pastor stood up and said that it was incumbent on white people to vote for white people for president and that they should not vote for black people. But it is far more palatable for a pastor to say that everyone, including Mormons, who are not Protestants, is a member of a cult and should be treated like such. This pastor is a very small man.

The slight for Mormons is that you know how much Jesus means to you. You know how it feels to be redeemed of Christ, washed clean of your sins, healed of your emotional heartache and mental anguish. And to have someone tell you that your faith in Christ is false and that you worship some other being is offensive, silly and, to be honest, a little weird.

Small minded people may never change their minds. But our faith in Christ does not need to alter.

The Rescue

2011-10-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

You ever have one of those moments when you realize you aren't as smart as you think you are? It isn't as if those moments are spaced out too far for me, but today, at this moment, I am having one. So I am going to talk this out in blog form.

I have this friend, a man of about 60. He has a mental illness and is very physically sick to boot. As a result of this condition, he thinks God hates him. He is spindly and gaunt and people walk further away from him because subconsciously he makes them feel uncomfortable. He is 30 years removed from his marriage to a woman who hasn't spoken to him in almost that same amount of time. He has three daughters who love him but their kids are scared of grandpa and the littlest ones cry when they see him. He has cancer and it shows.

He asked me to give him a blessing once. Giving a blessing is a unique experience. You try to be good and have your head on straight so you can tap into some of the feelings that God wants conveyed. I have had some very tender moments with these over the years. In this case, I remember asking him for an hour or two before I gave the blessing. I went back in my car and drove around for a bit. I kept asking God to help me have some idea of what I should say because I had no earthly idea.

I returned, still not really certain if I had caught what I was supposed to be doing.

In the blessing I remember catching a feeling that his mother really loved him. I told him that. That she was watching out for him. That she was sad when he was sad, happy when he was happy. That she hoped he would be happy more often. This was what Heavenly Father wanted him to know right then.

I remember taking my hands off his head and he was quietly crying, very emotional. He told me that he had been wanting to know this for years since his mother died - he loved her dearly.

I went home thinking a lot about this. I talk to this man almost daily and see his ups and downs, his neurosis on full display and his anger with his situation come and go - and come again. Today I saw him in his nadir. He couldn't understand why his daughter who was "so good and pure" could be having so many difficulties in her life. He said, "I understand why God hates me - but why does my girl suffer so much?"

Since that question was poisoned in its setup I had no idea how to answer that. When he was done talking and venting I just told him that God did love him and that I was sorry things are so hard.

So here I am thinking, hard, about me. Why is it that when God sweeps in to calm my nerves, heal my spirit, make my anger subside and bring a miracle in my life that as soon as things get rough again I too often wonder if God loves me and why doesn't He intercede immediately, etc.

It is easy to do, no doubt.

How beautiful it is when God heals us and brings us a tender, changed heart. Our relationship with our Heavenly Father is a daily exercise. We really have to work at it - work at being close to Him. Neglecting prayer and scripture study makes dealing with life's challenges so much harder. My mission president used to tell us that there were several non-negotiable things in life - chiefly prayer and daily scripture study.

And the challenges of life come and we still question why we are struggling with this or that and why doesn't God rescue us in that exact moment when we want to. But consistently filling our lives with the refined love of God, won by the effort that comes on our knees and in the scriptures is the way we REMEMBER God's love for us.

Now, this story has a caveat because I am not here to judge my friend. God knows his struggles in his mind better than I do. I wasn't meaning this to be an indictment on him, or his faith, or his life. Only that he got me thinking today and this thinking brought me to examine my own life.

So, there I am done. I feel better now.

Mitt Romney: POTUS?

2011-10-04T11:29:00.001-07:00

I haven't published a political post on this blog since the Prop 8 fun. That was a interesting time. I have dear friends who had a different take on that issue than me and were very polite in their disagreements. I was for it and these friends were against it.

It was the anonymous ones who left nasty comments who really surprised me.

So I have avoided politics for awhile.

Forgive me for going "there" again.

I read this article this morning http://ology.com/politics/ladies-and-gentleman-republican-presidential-nominee-mitt-romney and thought it deserves a little discussion.

Mitt Romney is your likely Republican nominee. I realize it is early, but having watched this political thing intently for a few years now, I think it is pretty clear he will get the nomination, barring some huge mishap on his end.

How do you feel about that?

There are other candidates in the republican side who my friends, even many of my LDS friends, like more. Ron Paul has a vibrant following. Rick Perry was a shooting star, but is on his downward trek, I believe. Michelle Bachman enjoys some conservative support.

But Mitt will win, I believe.

So what happens if he wins the nomination and runs against a very politically wounded Obama and wins? I don't doubt for a minute that President Obama will be a very tough person to beat. He is a great campaigner and will have lots of money.

But he may be running in another recession. And Americans have always voted with their pocket books.

Are you ready for a Mitt Romney presidency? Are you ready for an active Mormon in the White House? I wonder if the Mormons in the Secret Service will get the temple attendance duty.

Are you wary of the increased media attention that will come from this?

I have watched Mitt Romney since I was 12 years old and saw an article in the paper about him. I liked what I had read. I am inclined to vote for him again.

I like him better than the other candidates and I think he is smart as a whip.

What do you think?

Dancing With The Stars, My Perspective

2011-10-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I watched, "Dancing With The Stars", tonight and it wasn't my first time. I have never, however, watched the show by myself, with only other men, or when a football game was on.

Having gotten that out of the way, I wanted to share how I have become a dancing snob. I am an unlikely dancing snob. I have dated someone once who could dance and she taught me a few moves which weren't impressively performed. Our relationship ended shortly afterward. Also, I took a P.E. class in 5th grade from Mr. Bellon where he made us dance with a girl, which was horrifying and took me 15 years to get over. I was awful then and I am awful now.

I have to woo women with other things. Not sure what those are, but it isn't dancing.

None of this has prevented me from being super judgmental about the stars on , "Dancing With The Stars". I was, for instance, super disappointed in Hope Solo's posture tonight. Those arms were just not extended right and her shoulders were hunched. Sloppy Hope.

David Arquette needs to smile more. Oh Child.

I am going to stop now before it is too late.

Thanks

2011-10-03T20:56:00.000-07:00

The one clear thing. I always get it when I watch General Conference. Let me share what I mean with a little lead up.

On Friday of last week I went to a little mission reunion. There weren't a ton of us, but those who came had a good time. Our mission president couldn't make it because he is in a nursing home struggling with Alzheimer Disease. His wife whom we had known had died 8 years ago from cancer.

One of the sisters suggested we all share a memory we had of him. This was interesting. The affect that this man had on our lives was palpable. The weight of his love on all of us changed us - we couldn't help it. We all shared different lines of his that have stuck with us - lines about non-negotiable things in the gospel.

One time when I was an assistant I took an elder one night to the mission office for an interview. I was waiting at the desk by the front door when the phone rang. It was my mother. She was shocked that I answered the phone and tried to play it off like she didn't recognize me. She had called to talk to my mission president to let him know that both of my grandfathers had died within a few days of each other.

After the president was done with his interview I felt the need to tell him that I had just spoke to my mother. I told him what had happened. I remember feeling this man's impressive love for me. It was real, tangible and present in my life. He looked at me with a gaze that seemed to see all of me. It was one of the most impressive moments of my life.

When I was watching General Conference I was feeling this love thing. I always have this one thing that I know I need to do from conference that fixes multiple things. When I do this one thing I am so blessed. When I hedge on it, I regret it.

And while I will keep that one thing to myself, let me be clear when I say that my president's teachings have continued to bless me.

Thanks President Spencer.

Sept 11

2011-09-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, of course, is the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and if you are like me you have seen some of the commemorative shows scattered over the various stations reliving some aspect of that day. I believe I went about 5-6 years where I avoided any such show because the image of the planes hitting those towers was beyond painful and brought me back to that exact moment in St Louis when I was sent home from work and curled up in darkness in my apartment alone and watched the news looking for some assurance that life was ok.

I never found it on that day. Rather, it came gradually.

It took me awhile to see what President Hinckley saw with so much vision on that day 10 years ago when he addressed us all from the tabernacle in Salt Lake.

Dark as is this hour, there is shining through the heavy overcast of fear and anger the solemn and wonderful image of the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace, the exemplar of universal love, and it is to him that we look in these circumstances.

One of the shows that I saw was on the Biography channel where 10 people who survived the day in various places were interviewed. One man in the Pentagon who helped rescue so many told about how he and another man saw the water rising and the diesel fluid from the plane rising and begin to wash the bits of body parts of the victims down a storm drain. He and another man picked up pieces of fingers, faces, etc and set them on shelves and ledges so the victims' families could know for certain who was there. At one point he picked up a child's hand and had nowhere to put it, having exhausted his available space. So he placed the child's hand in his own pocket.

Every person in this country who remembers this day was affected. Every person has a story to share.

I was reminded of what devastation can ultimately mean to all of us, if we let it, by President Monson's blog entry in this week's Washington Post.

Destruction allows us to rebuild our lives in the way He teaches us, and to become something different than we were.

I have had rebuilding moments, as have most of you. May we remember to build good things on this anniversary.

Prone To Wander

2011-09-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

At night when I am climbing into bed, after I have said my prayers, I always spend a minute or two thinking about the day. I only have that minute or two because I tend to fade into sleep mode very quickly. A blessing, I know.

In those few minutes I tend to feel the moments and minutes of the day that I am not who I wish I was. Sometimes those minutes are way more than I wish and are hard to sweep under a rug. I climb back out of bed and talk to Heavenly Father again until I feel a release and I promise to do better.

I wonder why I am so prone to wander, as the beautiful hymn, "Come Thou Fount" says. Why am I so prone to "leave the God I love"?

And I do love Him. With all my heart.

Yet I get frustrated with myself that I hurt people, that I am weak, that I make bad decisions, that don't do what I should.

I remember those moments in my quiet evening prayers.

I also remember that Heavenly Father is a God of love. I feel that too when I pray and He releases my guilt and pain and hurt.

"Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well."

I am sorry for any pain I have caused any of you. I wish I could fix it.

I am so grateful this morning for how much prayer heals - how much Jesus heals.

Pictures With No Context

2011-08-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

The Note

2011-08-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

I found this note at the foot of the Vietnam War Memorial this afternoon in Washington DC.

"Dear Uncle Charles,

Thank you for serving our country. I did not get to know you but my grandmother tells me a lot about you. I wish I could have met you in real life but I see pictures of you all the time. You are brave for fighting and dying in the war to help other people. You are a true hero.

Sincerely, Connes Owen"

My First Kiss (With Ensuing Trauma)

2011-08-09T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have had an inborn shyness around girls most of my life. At various points I have been terrified that they would talk to me. Not that I didn't want to be talked to by a pretty girl, but that the physiological reaction usually made me look incredibly silly. My tongue would swell to twice the normal size, my hands got so clammy it was as if I had just washed them and I would usually say something really stupid.

Not the confident play boy I was trying to be as a teenager.

Which makes the following story rather incongruous.

When I was in second grade my family had just moved to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. I was to attend Sporting Hill Elementary in Mechanicsburg (Go Eagles!). I was nervous, but pretty positive that I would make friends.

On the first day of school my teacher, Mr Potter, asked me to hand out some paper to every kid in the class. As I was making the rounds I noticed the clouds part and angels singing. Why? Cause I was in love. Carrie (time has erased her last name from memory) was sitting, talking to a friend. She was wearing pink Jellies. I still remember that, for some reason. And she was the most beautiful brown haired girl I had ever seen.

I approached her desk. Suddenly, passion overtook me and I couldn't help myself. I reached down and kissed her.

On the arm.

I remember Mr Potter saw it and called me to his desk. He told me, "I don't know how they do things in UTAH, but we just don't kiss girls here anytime we want to".

I went back and sat at my chair, flush with the moment.

About 5 minutes later I got the courage to look at Carrie.

She was smiling.

It is odd to me that I still remember that whole experience all these years later. I guess you never forget your first love.

Sunday Snapshot

2011-07-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't slept much the last week. I think I have had too much Diet Coke. I go in waves on the soda stuff, eschewing it like poison for a year or two and then consuming it like I had a second stomach. Or, it could be that life kinda does that sort of stuff to you on occasion. The joy of stress.

A few nights in the last week I have spent the majority of the night trying to understand what shade of off white my ceiling was painted in what the latest sports news was on ESPN on my blackberry.

But today at church I figured it out. Here is how:

I was watching the man in the wheelchair at the front of the chapel. He can't really communicate at all without his computer and has almost no movement at all, except with his right hand. I sat there watching him for some time and was thinking he probably wishes he could do some things. Date. Walk. Communicate.

I didn't feel sorry for him. I felt love for him. He smiles and comes to church and does his best. I don't subscribe much to the notion that we can feel better about our situation by seeing others who may be struggling more. I think we are given challenges that are unique and hard and personalized for us. We shouldn't forget about our journey's specifics because someone has a more challenging experience than we do. But we can learn from how people handle things (in his case, he handles it well) and also learn to not be so judgmental about maybe how some people don't handle things as well.

Also in sacrament meeting, I sat with the hope that I would learn something about myself. This is what church should always do - build more faith in the Son of God and helping us be better men and women.

I wanted that today. So, I prayed for it.

And I got it. I had the same experience that I had a few months ago - a direction, a clarifying and wonderful and clear direction. I had prayed for it to return this last week. The desire to experience this same communication has kept me up for the past few nights. I wanted to make sure that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

I think I will sleep well tonight.

A Love Letter

2011-07-21T21:27:00.000-07:00

Today is the 150th anniversary of the first Battle of Bull Run, one of the inaugural battles of the Civil War. One of the great love letters, both for our country and from a man to his wife, came from the days leading up to this war. I will quote the love letter here and link to a PBS write up on it.

July 14, 1861
Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more . . .

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt . . .

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness . . .

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again . . .

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/ballou_letter.html

One Reason I Love America Today

2011-07-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, one of the real tragedies in America today is that so many of us are beginning to think less of our country and less of its great future and its inspired past. We begin to think that because of all the many problems that we are facing today that somehow we are on the decline and that opportunities are diminishing and the greatness of America has come and now gone and we are on the retired stage of prosperity.

Perhaps we have all been mired in this to a degree from time to time.

You would think that after all the enormous challenges we have conquered in the past that somehow we would have the courage and hope to know we can overcome the hardships of the future.

As an example, let me share a personal story.

Many years ago I went through a very difficult time in my life. Because of a variety of different reasons, some brought on by my own poor decisions, I found myself living out of my car. I was living in St Louis at the time. When things got much rougher, I lost my car. I had no job, no money, no food. As this process of survival happened for me I was desperate from the early morning hours to find food and a place to stay for that night. This was all consuming. It was incredibly difficult to see past this immediacy to the things that would get me out of that situation, like finding a job, repairing my spiritual and emotional life, etc.

I went to the university library a lot and tried sending out applications to listed jobs. Weeks and months went by without anyone calling back at all.

I started to feel more than a little devastated and worthless, like I was to be tethered to futility in perpetuity.

Then one day I got an email back from a place wanting to hold a phone interview. It is hard to explain how much happiness that brought me UNTIL I realized that my phone had been shut off and I had no way to field a call.

I remember going to a grocery store to buy a roll at the bakery for lunch and feeling an inch tall. All the misery and failure I had experienced for a few months came back to me in full. I wandered around the parking lot looking miserable.

Then, I heard this lady behind me say, "Are you ok?" I had no idea that I had been sobbing in the middle of the parking lot. I was mortified and embarrassed. I was dirty and unkempt and sloppy. I asked her in the meekest possible way if I could use her phone. She told me she had a better plan. She ran a business in the strip mall and invited me into her office and got me a bottle of water and told me where the phone was and then she shut the door and walked out - which amazes me to this day that she let a total stranger into her place.

I called my job and had an interview.

On my way out she told me she felt like I needed an angel but since one wasn't there she was going to do her best. She handed me her lunch and told me if I needed to use her phone again I was free to do it.

And I did. It was her phone that got me a job that got me started on the path to normalcy.

She is an angel and has always been to me.

Now that I am in a position to be that kind of a blessing to others I feel one of the great blessings of being an American is that we help each other with these things. We watch out for each other. We are the most giving country on earth, and the country in second is so far back it isn't even close. We reach out to others of different faiths of different cultures and races and we bless each others' lives.

I know that we will continue to face terrific challenges in the future, but I believe in the future of this country because I believe in the people who make it great.

Traveling With The Wise

2011-06-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

One of the tricks of traveling with the wise (read: slightly slower of foot) is to be happy with whatever energy levels are available at the time. My folks are willing and often able. But not always. So we smile and move along.

Last night there was quite a terrible storm in St. Louis. At some point there was an inch of rain in one hour. My dear mother saw a tornado warning and was positive that it would form somewhere just within feet of where our hotel rooms were located and so she kept calling me into her room for updates on the storm she was tracking on local news all night. Somehow, we made it out alive.

I loved being in St Louis. It is hard to recreate memories for other people and I always struggle with that aspect when I bring people here so I usually don't try. We just play where we can and create our home memories until I can't help but drop a nostalgia bomb on them.

We ended up hitting a Spanish branch for church, which made for some humor as my goodhearted dad was singing the hymns in Spanish (though he doesn't speak the language), my mother was doing them in English and I was enjoying the whole experience.

The temple was great, the parks were great, the amazing cathedral basilica was awesome (largest mosaic collection in the world) and the day was overall a plus.

Another storm is brewing for tonight. Hopefully we live.

The Drive

2011-06-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

I decided to take my parents to St. Louis and Nauvoo for a week and since our trip was decided on in the relative late stages we decided to drive.

1100 miles in one day.

That number got us from our start in Utah to a hotel by the Kansas City International Airport. Day two would take care of the four hours from Kansas City to St. Louis

Things that I hadn't counted on:

Bathroom breaks numbered as the sands of the sea
Lots of questions about what I planned to do with my life

Things were going along relatively swimmingly until we reached an infamous spot where I ran into a deer and killed it and destroyed my Toyota Corolla a little over two years ago. We saw a sign that said, "Entrance to I-29 closed. Take hwy 74 south as detour".

I thought, well ok. This should be just a small diversion. I traded driving spots and took over for my dad again. As we were on the side of the road in the middle of the proverbial nowhere, a police officer pulled up and announced with a smirk that it would be a little longer trip than I thought.

We had to drive from Nebraska into Kansas to get to Missouri.

A detour of over 130 miles.

I followed the police officer for about 15 miles and when he took a left turn I gunned the car. My parents were exhausted from our 15 hours in the car together and my sanity had left long before the trip even began. My caffeine was running low and so I decided to get us there in a hurry.

I broke some traffic laws.

And we pulled into our hotel at close to midnight, after leaving at 6 am.

Otherwise, it has been fun.

We saw some cool things and have some fun things yet to do.

The First Time I Knew My Dad Loved Me

2011-06-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is probably misleading. I am sure that I felt my dad's love for me the first time he held me as a baby. However, I have this memory of my dad that is sweet to me and it is among the earliest memories I have of my life.

My dad and I were walking down a road not far from the house I grew up in. He was holding my hand and he was talking to me about this and that.

I remember across the road a man started screaming and yelling at someone inside of a house. Someone must have intentionally locked him out of the home. The words he was using were angry and, apparently, vulgar and profane. I didn't know the words, but I do remember looking at my dad and noticing this perpetually soft spoken and gentle giant look uncomfortable.

And I distinctly remember my dad taking a breath and stopping and yelling across the road in a commanding voice, "DON'T YOU DARE USE THOSE WORDS AROUND MY SON!"

I remember the man turned around. He looked crestfallen and accused and penitent.

He also looked about ready to cry. He said that he was so sorry and he told me that he was sorry.

I remember on that walk the rest of the way home holding my dad's hand a little tighter. He had loved me enough to stand up for me and protect me.

I love him for it. Happy Father's day, Dad.

First Time Yard Sale Boy

2011-06-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

I had a yard sale today and I wanted to write about it while the trauma was still fresh. I have never had a yard sale before and had no idea what to expect.

The last few days I had gathered together all the things that I thought might sell. I got my family involved in the contribution arena. My brother was great - his items were solid yard sale items. My dad had a few good things. He also had some other stuff that I might define as world class, grade A landfill items.

I kept wondering what people would think when they saw the wall hanging thingy built into the shape of a large bird with a million different colors. Or the items with the shag carpet on them. Or the suitcase straight out of vaudeville act.

At any rate, I posted the ad on KSL and used words like "AMAZING" and "INCREDIBLE", which was clearly false advertising.

We posted signs around the neighborhood.

And then the people came. In droves. And early.

It felt a little like being at a church dance. People would pull up and look your stuff over and see that you weren't what they wanted and they would keep driving away.

A bunch of people stopped. Some thought my 2 dollar items were "way overpriced". Some guy
came and got the vaudeville suitcase because he "collects ugly suitcases".

And most of the stuff my dad had out sold. Orthopedic socks in purple hues, 30 year old ball caps that were imbued with designs of a psychedelic nature. These things all sold.

There is an interesting breed of people who go to yard sales. Its almost like a culture, actually.

I learned a lot and made a little cash and most importantly we got rid of most of the stuff covered with shag carpet.

620

2011-06-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

We have been averaging 620 people in Sacrament meeting attendance the last few weeks in my mid-singles branch. Those currently on the roll as members of the branch are about 335, after they read in 19 new members on Sunday. This makes this branch the second largest branch in the Church and, perhaps, the largest consistent sacrament meeting attendance of any ward not currently in a resort town or Nauvoo in the summer.

And how did this start? The LDS Church leadership decided, for a variety of reasons, that the existing young single's wards weren't being used for what they were intended to be used for. For instance, one nearby singles ward located in the Willow Creek area of Sandy had roughly 7 actual people on the rolls who fit into the restrictions of both geography and age. There were a large number of people attending this ward who were close to 40 when the ward was intended to be 18-30. Of course, the younger crowd who was supposed to come decided NOT to come when they saw people with gray hair in the supposedly YOUNG single adult wards.

This ward in Willow Creek was just one of the wards. The Church reorganized the YOUNG single adult wards into stakes, sent everyone who didn't fit into geography or age limitations back to their home wards. And so in one week we went from an average sacrament meeting attendance of close to 340 (huge to begin with) to our current number of 620.

So, this presents obvious problems.

1. We have no parking. People are showing up hours early, no joke, to find a place to park.

2. Classrooms are in short supply. We have 8 Sunday School classes - the largest meets in the overflow and the gym and the chapel. Attendance at that class can reach close to 150 people alone. We have 2 elder's quorums and 4 relief societies. I taught the lesson in elder's quorum on Sunday and there were over 100 in attendance. A mad stampede always occurs right before Sacrament meeting as the few cushioned seats are in high demand.

3. Integrating: We have had lots of encouragement to greet and meet and make the new kids on the block feel welcome. I have reached out to meet at least 10 new people each week and yet I always feel like I am starting from scratch every new Sunday.

We have a group of people who seem to want to enjoy their group of friends and none else. That integration is harder than it should be. Otherwise, it has been remarkably smooth. Our poor branch president, who's tithing settlement last year was already an exercise in rapid kindness and longevity, has the added burden of getting to know a few hundred extra people who are gradually testing the waters with the big toe only.

There are marriages happening, which is the point of the wards after all.

At any rate, this most unique branch/ward is coming into shape.

Battered

2011-06-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

On my mission to the panhandle of Florida I began to see the world in ways that were shocking and enlightening to me. For instance, I remember a lady who lived with her boyfriend in a townhouse close to where my companion and I lived in Pensacola. We lived on a dirt road with a large wooded area in front of us. I remember writing in my journal at night on the deck of this building and watching raccoons chase around and possum play.

I also remember watching a large blacksmith down the road who beat his girlfriend and their little boy. I remember this blacksmith told me that sometimes he got so mad all he saw was red and all he wanted to do was "kill, kill, kill".

He was the biggest man I have ever seen, before or since.

She told us she was saving a little private money, and had been for about a year. She was trying to earn enough to buy a junker of a car and sneak out in the middle of the night while he was at work. She wanted to drive to California to be with her mother.

On the day she was to leave I remember we had a prayer with her and sent her on her way. That night the drunk monster returned home to see that she was gone, along all of her stuff.

He had a fit.

I remember him trying to smash down our apartment door at 2 in the morning because he thought we might know where she was.

My companion and I had one phone - by the front door. We weren't going to attempt to get there.

All of a sudden he collapsed by the front door and stayed there in a drunken stupor until later in the morning.

2 weeks later she had come back to him. Poor girl.

I just had an interaction of the same variety. A man threatened his wife in my presence and then he hit her. I couldn't help myself as I got right in his face and pushed him back. He ran for his car and I called the police while she begged me to not call.

I know there are reasons why she didn't want me to call but it just made me sad.

Billy

2011-04-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

William Shakespeare was supposedly born on this date in 1564. It is also the anniversary of his death 52 years later.

As a former English major, I feel some degree of obligation to fawn over his writings for a moment. At BYU, English majors were required to take one class in the Big Three English authors of all time: Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. I took Milton, and loved it. I would walk around quoting parts of Areopagitica, making no friends whatsoever. It felt good to be the nerd I always yearned to be.

So I never did much with Shakespeare as an English major. But I have since.

You keep expecting him to be overrated. If everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, thinks something is great it often turns out to be more facade than firm truth. But in Shakespeare's case, he was the real deal. Robert Graves once said, “The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”

So true.

I love to hit the Utah Shakespearean festival when I live in state, and often when I don't. I try to read one of his plays each summer. One time I actually tried writing a couple of pages in iambic pentameter. Again, nerd.

Anyway, the man had skills and if we ever get too fed up with Twilight and Harry Potter, maybe William could spot us a day or two's worth of reading.

I am ending now, since Shakespeare's character, Polonius, said in Hamlet: "brevity is the soul of wit"

In Retrospect, It Was Funny

2011-04-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I came home from work frustrated and angry and embarrassed. Two days later, it seems almost hilarious now.

So, with the annoyance for that day in the rear view mirror, I thought I would share the humor I see now.

I had just started another round of P90X and my ability to do physical things has been fairly limited because of the nasty ankle injury I suffered about 5 weeks ago.

And apparently muscles atrophy when not used. Who knew?

I attempted to do the plyometrics part of the workout, which is basically 5 million squats and jumps in about an hour and I had to put way more pressure on the good ankle than I wanted to so the result was my good leg felt like jello the rest of the day and my bad ankle got super sore. So, I was back to waddling.

I dropped a peanut butter and jam sandwich on my shirt at work. The sandwich had conveniently opened up so the full breadth of the goop was on the front of my shirt for about 6 additional hours. I felt like I was back in kindergarten.

I slipped on a section of floor I had personally mopped for one of my housekeepers at work, smacking my knee pretty good. This increased the limp.

I got extremely nauseous from eating a warm green pepper. Don't ask.

I got yelled at by a couple of teenagers.

I got yelled at by an old lady.

World peace was at risk. The threads of sanity were worn through.

So I was ornery.

Hungry

2011-04-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

Having been hungry in my life at certain times and knowing how it feels to not have the ability to buy food to satisfy that hunger, I understand how desperate and sad it makes you feel. I meet people from time to time who suffer from that same malady, sometimes acutely. There is a look of sadness and a lack of hope in their eyes. I hate that look - hate everything about it.

Cue my most recent experience. This week I ran across a man who came to Utah for work, having been unemployed for quite some time. His profession has been devastated by the recent economy but he was so excited when a company called for his services. He drove across the country and showed up with enough money to get a little lodging but not food. I saw that look of hopelessness. He realized he was so close to getting ahead a little, but had no idea how to live in the meantime.

So I had to ask him gingerly a few questions. I knew he needed help, but I knew he would be reticent to admitting it.

After a few minutes he admitted he had no idea what he would eat until his first paycheck came a week or two later. He showed me a can of soup or two he had left and he looked ashamed.

I told him I understood and that I could help. I have a friend who runs a food bank in the area and I rushed him up there. This woman gave him meat and bread, milk and produce and canned food to live on. And she gave him a hug, and he broke into tears.

I know what it is like to be hungry and I know what it is like to be helped when I am hungry - to have someone pick me up and dust me off and give me enough hope that I could get over the hard times.

Once you have been "there" you will always see that look in people's eyes. You can pick out pain from a mile. Thanks to my helpers who helped me so much.

The Farmer And His Wife

2011-03-21T14:16:00.001-07:00

Not too long ago I met an old lady from a small farming town in Idaho. She checked into my hotel one very windy and cold afternoon. Her gray haired son carried her luggage to her room and told her he would be back to pick her up in an hour.

A few minutes later she came to ask me a question and I asked her casually if the reason for her trip to Utah was to visit family. She hesitated, then told me that she was in town because her husband of 63 years was in the nearby hospital dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. This degenerative disease has no cure.

And then she started to cry.

I have always had this sensitivity to older people, to losing loved ones and to death in general. I think it scares me to some degree. I see in the faces of those who have lived with some one so long and loved someone so much that their lives are together -their past and present so meshed into one.

This little lady, who had relied on her farmer husband for love and companionship for so long was contemplating both life without him and her own death.

We talked for a few minutes and I felt like hugging her, and regretted not being able to do it.

A week or two passed and I saw her on occasion, usually walking arm in arm with an adult granddaughter.

A few days ago she came to the office to check out. Her husband had died the night before. Her daughter was there to help move her into her old Chevy truck to start making their way to Idaho to prepare for the funeral. This time I did hug her - I couldn't help myself.

This job has been unique. I often see the most intimate parts of people's emotional experience. Sometimes I don't like what I see.

Other times, like this one, I feel gratitude for what I observe. The love in the family and the love I felt from a distance between this husband and wife, who so clearly adored each other, was something I have let work in my heart for the last few days.

I am thankful that I saw it.

The Limp

2011-03-16T16:05:00.000-07:00

As I have already discussed on Facebook, I suffered a rather ignominious church basketball injury a few weeks back. I was driving to the basket in a futile attempt to score against the team in the stake full of former NBA players when the injury occurred. I had managed to toss in a three pointer just before, and I don't think the appreciated getting scored on. On this drive, I was fouled pretty hard and came down on the other player's foot. My ankle immediately buckled and I remember vividly yelling like a 4 year old girl.

The ankle turned into a patchwork of black, purple and blue and swelled to the size of Saturn. After a week of hobbling on it, I managed to drag myself to the doctor who told me it "looked gross" and to "please put your sock back on". He told me it wasn't broken but that it would hurt badly for awhile. It might take a few weeks more to heal even from here.

So we are approaching three weeks now and I wanted to update the few people interested (mom, I am talking to you) about the state of the ankle.

It hurts still, but at really weird times. I wake up in the middle of the night a lot because the position the silly ankle is in hurts and needs to be adjusted. It still hurts to some degree to have water run on it in the shower. However, I have decided to keep showering. :)

The color on the ankle is normal now and the swelling is more the size of a small baseball. Stairs are still annoying. Basketball and running is still a week or two away.

I attempted to use a cane for a few days after the mishap but I drew all kinds of attention to myself, like when the kid at Wal-Mart called me an old man.

To tell you the truth, after the pain faded to dullness I admit to feeling pretty good about myself. I haven't had an honest to goodness sports injury in so long I forgot how fulfilling it is to hobble around and tell everyone you hurt it at the war that is church basketball.

Jerry

2011-02-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

So, Jerry Sloan resigned today. This is a meaningless announcement for a large percentage of you, but not for everyone. Some of you feel exactly like I do - sad.

Jerry has fit this community like your favorite pair of jeans. It was just comfortable, which is odd in a way. He used the F-word like a child who learned a fun new word that needs to be repeated constantly. He was a farmer from Illinois who played his pro ball in Chicago.

However, if this community likes to think of themselves as honest, hard working, family oriented winners, then this is why Jerry Sloan fit in so well here.

I was 11 years old when he became coach of the Jazz. I remember that day well. I read in the paper about his becoming coach, replacing a popular man in Frank Layden. He walked around the locker room, deeply emotional, shaking every player's hand and thanking them. And then he went to work. And he worked his butt off.

He won a lot. His teams were almost always good, and often great. He had 18 consecutive seasons of winning records, and the Jazz fans were spoiled. But he could never quite get over the hump. Michael Jordan got in the way of our two best chances.

I think Jerry was very pained by this. He wants to win more than anyone. He is one of the best competitors around. But this is where he taught us a nice lesson: there is value in doing your best, in competing with everything you have, and this value helps a person sleep well at night, knowing they have left nothing behind.

And this is where Jerry gets my respect.

I could see his energy failing him the last couple of years. No longer did he attack refs with emotion. He sat more than he stood. It may have been inevitable that he left.

He is the last of the originals. Larry Miller, Hot Rod, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Frank Layden, etc, all gone. I am still debating how I feel about what is left. And if rumors are true about Deron Williams having a hand at attacking the tired old man in the throes of his coaching career, I will have a hard time forgiving him.

But this post is more about Jerry. Good luck, sir!

A Birthday

2011-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was my birthday - and it basically rocked. In the morning I took my folks down to Provo to go to the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU's Museum of Art. It was my second time.

Here is my history with Carl Bloch's art. My testimony in the divinity of Christ was helped in a small but significant way from seeing and understanding one particular painting of his. I had begun to realize how Christ reaches out to all of us, no matter how broken or hurt we have become. I realized how much I needed Him. I was just a punk teenager when I saw the painting, "Healing at the Waters of Bethesda". It was a perspective altering moment.

All of his paintings are this way for me. If you haven't gone, DO IT.

I had lunch with some family, including my brother. Eating too much yesterday was just a fact of life. I ran with it.

Then I delivered my folks back to their home and went and picked up an amazing group to go rock the BYU game. So I made the trip BACK down to Provo where we had dinner at the Brick Oven (read, overeating. Again).

My brother joined us again, which made my whole day.

Then we went to watch Jimmer and the boys. Superlatives are flying all around right now about this guy. They are pretty much all true. I have been enjoying BYU sports with some degree of normalcy for years now. I am afraid that I am not normal this year. The crowd was freakishly loud, the energy unreal, and the fun off the charts.

And BYU won.

Happy Birthday to me.

Super Bowl?

2011-01-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

I am not exactly certain why, but I really don't care a heap about the NFL. This is an odd statement from someone like me who loves sports, sometimes to the point of distraction. For instance, BYU's very important basketball game on Wednesday has actually invaded a dream and one or two day dreams. I scheduled off work to be there.

I do also love college football, pro basketball, baseball and golf.

My parents, when I was young and growing up, weren't much of a Sunday television watching family, and so my NFL experiences in those formative years were occasional Monday nights and Thanksgiving. I have had a few years where I did Fantasy Football and got caught up in the madness with some friends.

But I have probably seen all of about 2 Super Bowls straight through, and those games were huge blowouts and Super boring.

So while I know the Packers and the Steelers will be playing in the Super Bowl, and while I watch ESPN and follow the sport and know the players, I still don't really care about it.

Now, if I can just stop caring about my Jazz and their four game losing streak. . .

The Meeting With The Ages

2011-01-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

So my trip to Idaho the last few days was pleasant and nice. It did, however, catch me off guard in one way. I do not know why I wasn't, but I was not prepared for the uncles making fun of my single status. I may actually disappoint them at one point and cut the potential conversation material in half by being married. Then we may have to discuss other fun things, like when I will have kids.

Here are some samples of the comments coming my way:

"So, have you figured out why you can't get a wife?"

"Why is it that women are so scared of you? Or is it the other way around?"

"You must be an enigma to women" (this one is probably true)

"You seem like a nice looking kid. I don't know what the holdup is"

Love family. :)

A Brave Boy

2011-01-17T16:59:00.001-08:00

I brought my parents up to see my 103 year old grandmother in Pocatello, Idaho over the last day or so. My beautiful grandmother was born when Joseph Smith's nephew was the President of the LDS Church, before cars had made it to Idaho and before telephones were much in use. This gentle woman wrote me a poem every year for my birthday, sent me a few dollars in the mail on my mission from her very limited reserves so that I could buy my companion and I an ice cream "when the days were hot". All her grandchildren have a special place in their heart for her.

Today, she can hardly hear or see, and her moments of lucidity are sporadic. When the nurse wheeled her out today for us to hold her hand, she told us that everyone at the nursing home loves her. It was said with meaning and emotion.

My sister came from Twin Falls with her children to be with us. Her oldest is a 6 year old boy - my buddy. He and I get along, as Forest Gump once said, "like peas and carrots". We love to be with each other.

But neither he, nor his little sisters know the grandmother that I know. What they know of her is that she lives in a somewhat scary place (at least for a little child), that there are strange smells there and that she is old and that sometimes scares little ones.

So here is the story - and one lesson that I learned today. This boy is thoughtful and earnest and tenderhearted. His mother had prepared him well. When my grandmother tried to hold his hand, he was nervous. My father and I held her hand at the same time so he wouldn't feel quite so nervous. You can see that picture here of all four of us holding hands together. He wasn't quite sure yet and so he and I had a little talk about mommys and how she was grandpa's mommy. You can see a picture of him with his hands in his pockets as he is putting this all together. You can also see how I am distracted by a game of sticking your tongue out with my niece.

A few minutes later I noticed him holding her hand, of his own free will, and for quite some time, which you can see here. I won't take credit for that - it was all him.

But it made me misty eyed.

The Greatest Story Ever Told, Again

2011-01-09T16:27:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I posted this story and had a lot of fun with it. I am reposting it now for those of my friends who have not seen it and those who enjoyed it before.

The Greatest Story

What you are about to read is the most embarrassing story ever told. Such extravagant statements usually disappoint. I guarantee that this one will not. It took me 5 years before I could tell this story to anyone.

The story you are about to read is G rated, even though I was naked during the entire episode.

I was 15 years old when the "episode" happened. I was taking a bath. I know that baths are usually reserved for children under the age of 6 and for women with aromatherapy and such, but give me a break. I was taking a bath.

My parent's home was set up where the main bathroom was directly next to the front room and kitchen, all on a single story house with a basement. The only other person who was home was my sister, who was 17. She was watching television in the front room, directly next to my bathing area.

I realized that I had forgotten to bring clean clothes and for some reason the bathroom was without towels. I was loathe to put on my dirty clothes and so I just laid there, naked, wondering what to do. My bedroom was in the basement. I would have to walk out in front of my sister.

A NORMAL person would have just asked their sister to toss them a towel. But clearly, for those of you who know me, I am not all that normal. :)

Now, the matter was about to become a little more complicated. My sister's best friend, a girl who I was very much in love with at that age, knocked on the door. She lived across the street and I saw her pretty much every single day of my life to that point.

I was definitely NOT going to ask my sister for a towel now and expose my stupidity and nakedness to the love of my life.

And then the most brilliant of ideas came to me. I realized that underneath the sink in the bathroom was a laundry chute. It was more like a hole in the floor. If you were in the basement you would simply see this hole in the ceiling. My mom never used this chute since we moved the washer and drier to the main floor.

I used to be able to slip down that hole and go to my bedroom when I was younger without any trouble. And so I thought I could do it this time.

I was doing really well until I got to my chest. I couldn't move my arms down the hole and then the panic set in. I was stuck. I couldn't move up or down. I was hanging naked from the ceiling. My head and neck and shoulders were above board, the rest of me was below. And when I mean the rest of me, I do mean the REST of me.

My sister and my love interest were sitting not all that far away from my head. I could have yelled, "HEY! HELP! I am stuck naked in the ceiling!" But come on, really?

So I dangled there naked for probably an hour. I heard two full episodes of the People's Court on television. Then, the worst moment of my life began to get worse. I heard my sister say, "hey, lets go downstairs to my room".

Now panic was in high gear. I started swinging my legs around to get leverage. I put a hole in the wall behind my legs, which was kept as a memento to the experience. I heard them come down the stairs as my heart raced. All they needed to do was open the door and walk about 2 feet and they would see me.

The door opened at the bottom of the stairs and suddenly there was silence. Somewhere down below were my sister, the love of my life, and my very naked body.

The silence lasted about 30 seconds, but felt like a year. And then all of a sudden, laughter.

And then they turned and ran up the stairs.

I dangled there for another hour until I could push myself back up.

Now you tell me. Did I disappoint?

My Personal Healing

2010-12-22T20:46:00.000-08:00

I begin this post without much comprehension of where it will take me and with the understanding that it might be worthless to all else but me. And probably too personal.

I felt a little saddened today for some reason, just one of those melancholy feelings that comes at thankfully infrequent times of my life. This evening while I was finishing up some nearly forgotten last minute shopping I was explaining to someone a real blessing that happened to me recently. I was touched to tears at what had occurred. I began to realize what the Lord had done with me this year and I was overwhelmed.

12 months ago the challenges I was facing were overwhelming. Those who know, those FEW who really know, were watching a man who was being really tested to see how he was going to respond to things that, frankly, were way beyond his control to fix on his own.

The great intercessory powers of the Savior have been gradually, but powerfully, evident in my life this year. He took me, crippled and broken, and gave me confidence again in the power of the gospel. He brightened my life and changed my outlook and freshened my hope. My life today is as bright and happy and hopeful as it has ever been, and a clear change from the anguish I was at a year ago.

My heart aches, really aches, now as I see people in pain -those around me who are hungry and sick and hopeless and sad and lonely. I have been there and felt each of those feelings with exactness. I wish I could reach out to each person in those situations and feel constantly my inability to do enough.

I have the hope to accomplish and be as happy as my Savior wants me to be. I feel, as I have felt in the large majority of my life, that Christ is the Master Healer. But today, I feel it with a personal testimony that comes with the pure knowledge of testimony, born of the Spirit and felt through the power of His love. I know He lives. There is no way I could have gotten from A to B without Him.

And to those dear ones close, who helped in the Christlike healing, I bless you. I ask God to bless you. I love you and thank you for your goodness. I have learned to love family and friends in ways that I could never have appreciated before. I love you dearly and deeply.

I decided that this last year was going to be a time where I fought to come to Christ. I feel I know Him better than I ever have known Him.

I also feel my inadequacies closer than ever. Truthfully, I feel it when I err more quickly than ever. And I hope that will always be the case.

Tonight I want to express my gratitude for my Savior, my loving Redeemer, who did indeed redeem me and save me from hurt and pain and hunger and sorrow and loss and gave me a chance to try and bless others in the way so many have blessed me.

I am grateful for another year of growth and chance to see what miracles the Lord has in store for me and encourage anyone who is in pain of any kind to not give up. Let us give the Lord a chance to change our lives.

A Story of Christmas

2010-12-19T08:48:00.001-08:00

A few years ago, I made a post about a familiar Christmas song. Frankly, the song, "Good King Wenceslas", was one that used to strike me with indifference. But one day, after getting the tune stuck in my head, I did a little research on the song itself. It changed my thoughts on the song altogether. This is what I wrote about it a few years ago:

The story is of a Czech king who lived only 28 years and died in 935. The Feast of Stephen, the day of the setting of the song, is December 26, and thus very much part of the Christmas season.

This king, famously, went out night by night, even barefooted, to give to the poor and the needy. He was considered to be the "father of all the wretched". In the song, his page who helped him, is about to succumb to the bitter cold of the night when he finds that by following the radiating heat of the footprints left by his master, he can continue to bless the lives of the people.

The king, then, is resembling the Master and Lord Jesus Christ and His servant is able to finish the Godly task by following the Master's example and lead. I will leave the rest of the obvious interpretation to you all.

Here is a touching verse or two of the song:

"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blow stronger;

Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."

"Mark my footsteps, my good page. Tread thou in them boldly

Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;

Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

Jackknife

2010-12-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

So today, I was heading down to Orem for some Christmas shopping. The traffic on the freeway heading northbound was a disaster. Cars were unloading from the freeway onto side roads in droves around the South Towne Mall in Sandy. And the reason? Some semi had swerved to avoid suddenly slow moving cars and had jackknifed and had hit a car and killed a young woman.

And I headed down to Orem, did my Christmas shopping, saw a friend and headed home. And I was initially worried about the traffic and what route I would take home should it still be a problem my direction.

Then I started feeling very weird about the whole thing. The woman was transported in critical condition to a nearby hospital where she died. Some family is dealing with that death tonight. And that poor woman, killed without even half a chance.

The transitoriness of life hits me from time to time. We wait in traffic for emergency services to clear the bodies off the road in front of us so we can continue to our destinations.

It may be that this is the only way life can continue. We have to simply march through all of it. But sometimes, like tonight, I get to thinking about those who deal with terrible loss, a Christmas without a loved one, a life cut short.

And it makes me a little sad.

Splash Zone

2010-12-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

My proclivity for making a mess is one of the rich blessings that I enjoy in this life. I love cleanliness, but every once in awhile, sometimes more than I wish, I make a healthy mess.

For instance, the other day I was going to Macey's grocery store to pick up a bottle of apple juice. Consequently, I did not take a cart or a basket.

But while I was walking up and down the aisles, I realized I needed a few loaves of bread, some grapefruit, some tortilla chips, salsa, Thera Flu and a gallon of milk. So now I am looking ridiculous, but I still believe I have full control over my items.

That was until I got to the check out counter. The lady in front of me had a large purchase. The conveyor belt, or whatever it is called, was full of $2-300 dollars in groceries. I had no place to rest my food.

It was then that I felt my apple juice start to slide to the floor. I tried to readjust. It was still sliding. At the last second I tried to wedge juice against the side of the wall with my leg.

Futile.

And then the plastic container hit the floor and fairly exploded. I was totally dry. However, the lady in front of me with all the groceries had an apple juice bath for the ages. It was all over her clothes, including her sweater. It was on her face and hair.

She was sweetly nice about the experience.

But I do feel a kind of bad about it.

Maid Matt

2010-11-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to share this story without sounding like I am looking for sympathy or a slap on the back for something. However, it has been a significant part of my life for many months now so I will go ahead and share it and you all can think what you wish. :)

I have been helping to care for my parents for some time now. Mom has had physical problems for the whole of my life, plus some years. She walks all of about 300 steps a day, sometimes more and sometimes less. My dad was the indomitable spirit in my life, working like he was somehow in perpetual motion. He was the literal strength in the family.

But this year, he has been through three massive surgeries on his right foot, and one more on his shoulder. After the fear of losing the foot was over, he now is just dealing with the terribly painful recovery. This means he walks fewer steps in a day than my mother, sleeps on a recliner, sponge bathes, etc.

So I shop and cook many of the meals, get the paper, do the laundry, take out the trash, get the mail, clean the house. I might make a good husband one day.

My dad's situation is temporary. He is the most patient man in the world, yet is frustrated with the length of time it is taking to heal. I go to bed a lot with an uneasiness that I wasn't very helpful that day.

And yet this situation has an end, and I have had to make plans for the future. But I know that when I leave I won't go that many miles away. After being gone for a decade, more or less, it is time to be a little helpful in the ways that I should be.

$5,000

2010-11-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

Last night my branch had a service auction to benefit local families in the stake, helping to provide Christmas to dozens of families that would otherwise be unable to enjoy it.

We took in over 5 grand. I am very thankful.

It was an insane amount of work to organize and put it on. I was the beneficiary of another committee head being the brains and the energy behind the auction and for the others who were involved in the evening, both making the dinner and organizing the details.

I was an auctioneer. Luckily my co-auctioneer had the gift of gab and the personality to go along with the event. He had them in the aisles. I tried to keep up.

Thanks for your generosity, both at my jokes and with your giving so freely. We had items go for double their value. Our boot that we had out for extra change netted hundreds of dollars. People paid about 300 bucks for their desserts.

And we all went home a little happier for it. Amazing how that giving thing works.

To An Old Friend

2010-11-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Nine years ago I was living in St Louis, Missouri going to graduate school. Among the great many wonderful things that happened to me during that time of my life I was assigned to be a home teacher to a young couple. He was attending law school and she was working for Marriott.

We got to be friends. They had my companion and I over for dinner and I used to meet the husband for lunch on campus about every month. They were a touch of normalcy in my life and I enjoyed my visits with them. I grew up a bunch from my association with them.

Near the end of that school year the husband was about to take his final in law school when he collapsed and died, very quickly. I believe he had a brain aneurysm.

I remember being heartbroken for him. I missed my friendship with him and was devastated for his wife.

Everything happened very quickly then. She left immediately for California where the funeral was and my companion and I felt helpless in knowing what to do. Our ward had a memorial service that was opened to the community. Many from the law school came. The church was packed. I remember crying constantly.

But I never saw her after that. That is until I joined a singles branch in Salt Lake 8 years later, where she was attending.

Today was her last day in my branch because she is remarrying. Apparently, he is a very good man.

She bore her testimony today and some of those original feelings were rekindled with me. It was very emotional.

I am grateful beyond expression for my association with her and her late husband. I am so happy for her today and wish her all the best in her next stage of her life.

Don't Be A Twit

2010-10-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

Late tonight I ran to the grocery store to buy bananas. The parking lot was almost entirely empty with just a few late stragglers making their way out.

On my way out I saw a guy and a girl, about 20, on their way to their car. They emptied the few items they had in the cart and the guy turned and decided to see if he could hit the cart bin from about 40 feet away. He flung it pretty hard and watched as it missed the bin and sailed across the parking lot about a hundred yards away, clear to the far end of the grocery store property.

They laughed and got in the car and drove away.

Then, I saw an older man with an orange vest on start walking with a fairly severe limp out in the direction of the wayward cart.

I just couldn't see him walking all that way to pick up the cart and so I ran it down for him. He was grateful and surprised.

Those two kids couldn't have known what their actions could have meant to this older disabled man. And I clearly have my own moments where stupid actions have unknowingly meant that someone else had a little worse day.

So, don't be a twit.

My Two Friends

2010-09-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

I talked to a man this week, in his 80's, who is taking his wife through chemo at the University of Utah Medical Center. This man is decent and kind. He has softening smile on his face most of the time, with a tinge of worry and sadness. I can tell he is losing the love of his life, his wife of more than 60 years, and his companion through all the twists and turns of life.

And I can tell that it hurts him. A lot.

I unexpectedly helped him this week. Rather, I helped him and didn't know that I had. I overheard him telling a friend of mine how much this unintended act of mine had helped him get through his day and brought relief and happiness to him.

It made me cry. I wish that I had intended this kindness.

I talked to another man this week who is racked with a drug addiction that he cannot shake. For more than a decade this man has lived with demons that he cannot seem to get rid of for whatever reason. It has taken his dreams and hope away and betrayed every single relationship he holds dear, including that of a father.

He doesn't process thoughts well anymore. This man who was an engineer at one point and now can hardly handle the strains of everyday life, is in my line of interaction frequently.

Today, as with many days, I go home wondering if he can ever change.

On the days that I am most sensitive about the complexities of life, I feel the deep pain and struggle of so many. In our daily circle are people who walk just inches away from despair, or even sit in the middle of it, wallowing in a loss of dreams.

Some, like the older man, are living with pain that comes naturally to us. Others, like my drug addict friend, are in their position because of their own choices.

And yet, I realize more every day, how much we need to give love to those around us, regardless of the reasons why they are in their struggles. If the curtains came up on the inner pains of those around us, what would we see? What would others see in us?

How much would they need our kind smile, hug or phone call? And how much do we need to be the givers of those kindnesses!

Mas Pics

2010-08-23T20:15:00.001-07:00

So today's journey started in St Louis at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which are flippin rad. You can probably tell which pictures below belong to that locale. I love that place. It is free, I believe, for city residents and I have always enjoyed coming there when in town.

We visited Lafayette Park and the oldest homes in the city, which you can pick out below. I used to have singles' ward family home evening in this house, which was built in the 1700's.

Then we went to the arch and played there. You can see one or two of the pictures from 62 stories up. St. Louis is looking pretty sweet.

I then lost my credit card. Or had it stolen.. Or something. But we worked through that without too many problems. Hooray.

We then ate at Crown Candy Kitchen, which is this blazing amazing place in a dumpy neighborhood on the north side of the city.

Next stop was Hannibal, Missouri, which is a few hours north of the city. This was perfectly idyllic. I love Mark Twain and his hometown is fun. You can see the inspiration for Tom Sawyer here. There was a fun little musical group playing old time music in the street as people gathered to hear in the evening.

Tomorrow, Nauvoo.

2010-08-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

St Louis is humid. By the end of the day I was a sweaty mess. But I got to reacquaint myself with my old home area and do lots of fun things.

We explored the temple grounds today. The St. Louis temple is pretty rock and roll amazing. I spent lots of great time there and have lots of great memories of it. We then explored some wonderful neighborhoods and historic places. Church was sweet and brought back a lot of memories as well.

I have some great shots of the Cathedral Basilica in here. It has the largest collection of mosaics in the world, thanks to the Tiffany Company. We next wandered the campuses of Washington University in St Louis. I attended some grad school classes there. We wondered past the thinking rabbit statue and the amazing grounds.

We played through some other amazing neighborhoods as well.

I added lots of other photos from the weekend in general. Enjoy.

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles

2010-08-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

So I am in St Louis tonight.

Yesterday morning at just before 8, my small party of two began a drive of what should have been 14 hours to Kansas City, Missouri. We dawdled a little, had 531 bathroom breaks and by the time we got to Lincoln, Nebraska and had 3 more hours to go it was almost 11 pm. And we were about to go on the same stretch of road as the infamous "Matthew Murdered Bambi" incident.

By the last 70 miles we were cranking loud tunes, blessed with some happy funk and other classic rock on the radio, and we were guzzling some diet Pepsi, singing at the top of our lungs and we made it in okay.

I took a picture of the Wyoming Cowboy stadium in Laramie and I don't know why. I included it here. For those of you who have not been on that part of I-80, it is a reminder that we are not running out of space in this beautiful country of ours.

This morning we visited Independence, Missouri. We walked in the Temple of Peace of the Community of Christ Church (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We were greeted inside by a man in a Hawaiian-like shirt who let us walk around a bit with some hand held tour devices. We learned later that they used these so they didn't have to answer questions of the members of the LDS Church anymore.

They have a nice organ inside and it was a unique building. They have exactly no resemblance anymore to the LDS faith and honestly the building felt a bit like a government building, void of feeling and very hollow.

The LDS Church has so many wonderful historical spots in that part of Missouri and I wish we would have had time to visit Far West, the Liberty Jail, Adam-Ondi-Ahman and the Haun's Mill Massacre area. As it was, we went to the visitor's center and thoroughly enjoyed that. I have such an affection for what the Saints went through in that area of the country.

We then went through the rest of Missouri to get to St Louis. St Louis is kind of a special place for me in my life and whenever I can I try to get back to it.

We ate dinner at Fitz's which has the best burger on the planet. Half of North America knows that too because they were there too. We drove a bit of the city and then went to the Cardinals' game tonight. The Cards always win when I go to the games. I wonder if I can score more tickets if they knew that. Our seats were unquestionably fabulous. It was a great night to be at a game, as you can see from the pictures.

More tomorrow.

A Few Sundry Vents

2010-08-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

A few points:

1. I have read with a bit of disgust how some groups with small brains and big egos are strong arming McDonalds to try and force them to stop putting toys in their Happy Meals. The idea is that if you make the meals unappealing to kids they will stop wanting hamburgers and stop getting fat. Of course, the best way to get people to do something you want them to do is force them to do it, remove choice, and destroy businesses who don't want to accommodate your beliefs. I may be crazy here but I still think personal choice and accountability should matter. Let people choose whatever they darn well please. Whether you choose to go to McDonalds or not (I go about every 3 years), I encourage you to support the company in their belief that parents be the arbiters of what their kids eat and no one else.

2. A similarly power hungary group is trying to ring the will out of Target for supporting a conservative candidate in Minnesota. This conservative candidate is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage. And so our friends from Moveon.org and other similar bullies are trying to punish Target for their actions. We have seen this approach before in California. If you didn't agree with their views on gay marriage you would be targeted. Their approach is to so fully punish a person that no one else will want to speak out in the same way again. They have been and will continue to be very effective in this regard. Spirited, but cordial conversation, is dead.

3. Which leads to the decision of Judge Vaughn, who overturned a second effort by the people of California to define marriage as involving only one man and one woman. One San Francisco judge will probably change the entire course of marriage in this country. Conservatives will appeal the decision to the 9th Circut Court of Appeals, which is made up of a group of left wing nut jobs and then make its way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will be a toss up as 4 are conservative and 4 are liberal and one is the swing judge in Justice Kennedy. It is a 50/50 chance that gay marriage will be the law of the land depsite the fact that every time this issue was taken to the people in any state traditional marriage was upheld. But what do the people know?

4. I was disappointed that it looks like the BYU and Utah rivalry will continue. This game serves as the outlet for more ugliness than any other issue in the state of Utah and I was hoping that with Utah's new conference's obligations it might fade away. But we get to continue it. Goodie.

Sorry, I had to share somewhere.

Hillcrest High, Class of 1995

2010-07-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to a 15 year high school reunion.

Initial thoughts as I walked through the doors: Dang, everyone looks amazing. I don't think there was a single pound gained, a single hair lost, nor a single wrinkle added.

Everyone looked like a poster child for Shape magazine.

At any rate, the very ambitious girl who organized it grabbed me as I was sitting down to dinner and told me that I was to emcee the program. I didn't do much in the way of emceeing, but I could stand and sound dumb with the best of them.

The crowd was bigger than I thought it would be, and not as big as it should have been.

Without question, some of the best relationships I have had in my life were from that time period.

And nothing was lost.

While some people want to forget about high school and some want to live in it forever, I think the greatest possible blessing is to cherish those friendships and experiences that brought so much happiness, joy and change for us. As we mature, we realize that relationships as fulfilling as this are never to be forgotten.

Tonight was a great night.

I hope we do it again soon. Next year?

Well Meaning Advice From Married People

2010-07-15T21:53:00.001-07:00

Married people do not know how to give advice to single people about relationships. In most cases, they have lost the right to give any advice at all to people my age who are single. For instance, despite how a married person might pretend to understand dating at my age, or how hard they might sympathize with a single person my age, they no longer understand.

The people who married at ages 22, the ones who exchanged letters with missionaries or vice-versa and married within 1 year of their homecoming talk in church, simply don't have the smallest clue, goodhearted as they may be.

Yet, we are blessed to hear from them and they feel obligated to help us when relationships don't work. They try to tell us it is okay, or that the person who broke up with us was just a jerk anyway and that we deserved better. They tell us that it will all work out and not to stress.

Spoken like a married person, I always say. And I understand that they are just trying to help, and what they are saying actually probably is correct. But it is like a guy trying to give advice to a woman on postpartum depression. He may be saying the right things, but she is still going to want to backhand him anyway.

So my advice to married folks: do your best to give us advice when we complain about the ending of yet ANOTHER bad relationship but don't be too mad when the shoe you are wearing becomes lodged in your throat.

My Experience With Eclipse.

2010-07-01T20:22:00.001-07:00

Last night I was invited to see the movie, "Eclipse". As a man, this moment was like wandering in an epic wonderland of estrogen.

We walked into the theater and I became aware of the fact that I was almost the only male in the place. We spent the first few minutes scouring for men. We found just two others. I made eye contact with another guy. He looked scared and I am almost sure I saw him mouth, "Help me!"

Anyway, after just one preview for that wizard Harry's next movie, the real show began. Which leads me to the next thing I experienced. Lots of audience participation. I heard cat calls, screams, applause, whistles, etc.

Let me be more specific. When the 18 year old boy playing Jacob appeared on the screen, and he was almost always without a shirt, women of all ages were screaming like they were men at a burlesque show. And why he was almost always without a shirt was never really explained in the story. But not one woman cared.

The guy playing the character Edward, who needs to be referred to as "Large White Melon" from now on was a better actor, but he remained clothed.

Kristen Stewart, who had the lead of Bella, was trying to decide whether or not she would become a bloodsucking vampire who kills so she can be with her love who isn't really alive and has no flesh and blood OR to marry Mr Hottie Shirtless Teenage Boy who becomes a large wolf, has a heart and hates vampires.

Every woman's dream love scenario.

To top it off, one of the reminders that I was watching the movie in Utah was that when Edward said he wouldn't commit physical recreation with Bella a large contingent of women started cheering.

So when it was over I was told that perhaps it was a disappointment. For me, however, I actually liked it much better than I thought I would.

Blackberry Miracle

2010-06-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

One of my lamer mistakes was spared some obvious repercussions today. I needed some gas this morning and stopped to fill up. For some dumb reason I placed my blackberry on top of my car. It rests in a rubber carrying case. But then I decided to pay with cash and so I ran into the store to pay.

But I left my phone on top of my car, forgetting all about it.

I came back out and filled up, and then drove away. While driving down the on ramp to the freeway I heard something fall off the car and bounce behind.

But I was still too dumb to remember what it was. I had never left my phone so unloved before, so I didn't think of it.

About 10 miles down the road I started to look for my phone, and then I realized with horror what had happened. I wanted to turn around quickly to see if it was salvageable. However, I was in a construction zone on the freeway to California for another 10 or so miles without an exit. When I could turn around I was about 25 minutes from my phone.

I wasn't supplying any positive thoughts on the outcome of the phone. My memory was seeing something bounce behind the car and break into many pieces. My friend in the car was supplying all the happy thoughts I was lacking, however.

I had resolved that I would need to buy another, and I was trying to figure out how to budget that into my life.

We got up to the exit and parked on the side of the road and started scouring for my phone.

And then I saw it about 20 feet away, or what was left of it. The carrying case was in the middle of the road, the phone itself was on the white line of the road, the battery and back of the phone scattered around.

But what I noticed next was my little miracle for the day. The phone looked like it was in great shape. No part of it had been run over in the 45 minutes since it bounce off my car and onto the freeway on ramp at that busy intersection.

Other than a small scuff on the phone itself, it looked good. So I put it back together and turned it on.

It worked.

Someone looked out for this fool today.

A Plea

2010-06-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

I was all set to discuss how I had witnessed the largest horse in the world almost get trampled tonight (no joke). But as tragic and crazy as that almost was, I am having a hard time trying to figure out how to write about that without overdoing it on one hand or trivializing it on the other.

Instead, I wanted to share something that I consider to be a sad commentary on men in this world.

I traveled for 8 hours in a car today and used several public bathrooms along the way. I used one in Winnemucca and one in Battle Mountain.

For some reason many of you men have a hard time hitting your mark. Its like an epidemic. I would think that some of you have a hard time hitting the proverbial broadside of the barn. Your wives/mothers/daughters must be horrified at the minefield that you have leave for them across your own personal commode.

In one particular bathroom it felt as if I was actually the recipient of a splatter gram.

Men, if you need to practice, please do. Use a bulls eye should you need to do so. Get help. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, learn how to aim.

The Drunk

2010-06-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

It is impossible for me to describe adequately what I saw today, and much harder to describe what I felt. What I experienced, however, reinforced my feeling that there are so many around us that suffer and struggle in the deepest ways imaginable.

I know a man, kind of a man's man. He is rough and tumble, masculine, raw and hard. He has a bit of an edge to him. He is a master electrician and nothing short of brilliant.

He was telling me today that he enjoyed watching the college baseball World Series because he once played in it for Clemson. Apparently, he was quite a talented player.

He is also an terrible drunk and alcoholic. It has ruined his life.

When he can work he does well. When he isn't working or, especially, when he has just been laid off, he drinks himself into a near stupor.

Today he was drunk, filthy drunk. He had been laid off about a week and had done nothing but drink.

He had very little money left. I directed him to a local charity that could help him with some food. He had a look of hope in his eyes. But then his eyes turned the unmistakable shade of sadness and humiliation. He mumbled that he couldn't believe that he had to ask for help.

He turned his head from me and this manly man sobbed with the necessary humility it takes to start coming to Him.

I won't ever forget how I felt as I watched him cry.

Here is the thing, I believe God loves us and is willing to help us even when the problems we have are so often brought on by ourselves. Nothing we have done puts us beyond His love, and so many of us have been in hellish holes of our own digging.

Yet, the great miracle of this world is that God is still there, always there. The Atonement covers even the multitude of terrible mistakes we make, as long as we come unto Him.

Remarkable how hope can flourish in the hearts of a man or woman who, even when living in the morass of life, decides to come back to Christ.

Michael Castleberry

2010-06-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

When I was young there was a boy on my street named Michael Castleberry. Michael was a problem. He had a number of emotional and behavioral problems and no one could figure out what to do about him.

He would come to church activities and kick and yell and scream and fight. He would slobber. He would yell out of turn.

I saw the kindest and most patient adults in the neighborhood and ward try to befriend him and love him. Without fail all of them wanted to backhand him at some point.

That was the first time I heard the word, "incorrigible".

I remember a teacher in 5th grade who threw him into a garbage can.

He was hard to be friends with too. Michael would randomly kick you, and he had food and slobber all over his face all the time. But he wasn't mentally disabled. His intelligence was on par with what it should have been.

When I was about 13, his family moved to Las Vegas where I heard his mother died of cancer.

Eventually they moved to Montana.

I just heard yesterday that he committed suicide a few years ago, on Thanksgiving day.

And now I am wondering about him and what could have been done differently for him, and what I could have done differently to have given him a better friend. I am positive that I will have other Michael Castleberrys in my life. The kind of people who are hard to love and hard to like, but probably need it more than anyone else.

Rapt Attention From One Female

2010-06-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

I recently saw the movie, "The Karate Kid". As I was studiously comparing what I liked better between the old movie and the new, I turned my head to the right and two very pretty brown eyes were staring up at me.

This one year old was in her mother's arms, but couldn't possibly have cared less about Kung Fu. For some reason, she just stared at me. For half the movie she was transfixed. I waved at her and she waved back. I stuck my tongue out at her and tried some other silliness to get a reaction from her.

Nothing. She just stared.

I dig the baby thing and the two of us get along really well.

Now, if only I can convince the women my age to give me the same attention. :)

And On The Lighter Side

2010-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Not sure why I think this is so funny, but I do.

College Football Traveshamockery

2010-06-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

What is about to happen in college football is going to be an upheaval for the ages. In three years from now college football will be so dramatically different that the average fan will be left baffled and perhaps, as I see it, let down.

As a quick primer, the large majority of the 120 college football teams are all lumped into conferences. BYU and Utah are in the Mountain West Conference (MWC). Boise State is in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). These conferences are often thought of as lesser conferences, because even while teams like BYU, Utah and Boise State routinely beat teams from the bigger conferences, they are still shut out of the larger piece of the money pie.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conferences include the Pac-10, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, SEC and the ACC. Notre Dame, an independent school, is included in the BCS. While many schools in these conferences wish they could sniff the quality air of football that BYU, Utah and Boise State routinely live in, these BCS schools have control of the money flow in college football.

Consider that the University of Texas' athletic budget for this coming academic year will be $130 million dollars. The University of Wyoming's budget will be $26 million. Wyoming has no prayer of ever competing with the University of Texas in college football. As USC has shown of late, the big schools can easily buy their recruits, by following and even breaking the rules set in place.

Texas, Notre Dame, USC, Florida, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Alabama, LSU, Penn State, and a few other teams literally control the purse strings of all of college football.

And they want more. So they are about to redo all of the conferences of college football and make super conferences. They drop out the weak money producers in their own conferences and align with each other to garner better television deals, more inclusions into the cash cow of the BCS games, and they don't have to share with the losers.

Notre Dame will sit by themselves because their contract with the BCS is the most ridiculous of them all and they have their own television deals.

BYU and/or Utah could be included in the super conferences, which they will have to pursue. But at what cost? There could be 3-4 super conferences in college football when all is said and done and the rest of the country will be at such a financial loss as to make it prohibitive for them to compete in any way, shape or form in college football.

BYU does not report their athletic budget since it is a private school, but rumors have them somewhere around 35 million a year - Utah's is similar, though slightly smaller. (you can read the article on Utah's budget by clicking on this sentence).

And to what end does an extra 20 million a year do for a college athletic program anyway? If Oklahoma and its rival Texas both earn an extra 20 million more a year, they have no conceivable advantage over the other. One school builds an even more obscene and luxurious locker room and the other will follow. One signs a coach for a disgusting amount of money and the next will follow.

And all the while the Wyomings of the world will begin to fall off the face of the map.

The disgusting thing is this is all about amateur athletics and the actual performers aren't paid a penny.

This world is dictated by money and college football's elite are about to flex their financial powers at the detriment of everyone else.

It has already begun.

Night Of Chaos In Atlanta

2010-06-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

The past few days I was in Atlanta for meetings and I was the driver for my group. To be honest, this had its downsides and upsides. For instance, having seen one or two of my group drive on other occasions I was pleased that my life was in my hands and not theirs. However, I was also kind of obligated to be the shuttle driver for all evening activities.

My party wanted to go to the Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta last night, and so we played around and took some pictures of the area. The CNN building is next door, as is the Coke plant and museum and other such novelties. The weather was really moderate and pleasant, which was surprising.

Then the group decided to walk up the road and explore a bit. When we realized that we had kind of exhausted our areas of enjoyment we made for the car so we could head elsewhere.

But we had drifted into a bad part of town. The sky was getting quite dark and the area was filling with the underbelly of humanity. I was the only man in the group and the rest of the party were middle aged women.

As we were crossing a parking lot a man jumped from behind a car and started running towards me.

I have been in some bad spots before and I have to admit that I have rarely felt nervous. But I did last night. I was kind of anticipating something happening and I was wielding my keys as a weapon. As he was headed towards me I showed him my hand and how I was holding my keys and moved right for him, not showing the nervousness I was feeling.

And so he stopped and turned towards the women who were ten feet behind me. I turned towards him and started moving quickly and when he noticed that I was following him he began to walk away from the women.

These poor ladies were freaking out when we got in the car. As I drove off it took considerable effort to lighten the mood.

So we went to midtown Atlanta at Atlantic Station, a considerably more upscale area. They wanted to get a drink and seeing as I was the only non drinker in the group it was a good idea that I was the driver. In the big courtyard in the middle of the area a large screen was set up in front of about a thousand people who were enjoying the season finale of, "Glee", a show that I had seen all of about 30 minutes in my life. The people were dancing and singing.

And drunk.

Hot night in Atlanta for Matthew Dean.

A Word About My Beaches

2010-06-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

I served my mission in the panhandle of Florida from 1996-1998. My mission covered the lower third of Alabama, but I was assigned to Pensacola, Lynn Haven, Chipley and Tallahassee, all Florida cities.

Aside from the noteworthy life changing spiritual experiences I had my eyes opened to a completely different world. Where I was familiar with dry, beautiful mountains, I was entrenched in green, humidity. The people there felt the same about the ocean that I felt about the mountains.

I learned to love it too. I spent a lot of my mission very close to the ocean and while we couldn't go on the beach I have some of the most beautiful memories of watching sunsets fall with the brilliance only humidity can bring over the top of white sand beaches. The water was crystal clear and the purity of it was spiritual to me.

The most beautiful beaches that I have seen are in Fort Walton Beach, Navarre, Pensacola and Panama City.

And so my beaches are getting covered in oil now. The enormity of it is so disgusting and disheartening to me it is very hard to follow it on the news. I feel a sadness about it.

I would like to lay some blame around. Other than the obvious people who made the mistakes in the drilling, from BP to the government regulators, I would like to say that this silliness of having to go so far off the coast to drill that it is incredibly expensive and dangerous and environmentally prohibitive needs to end. Ironically, the environmentalist have partly created this problem by demanding our oil be drilled in places where if there were a problem we might never be able to fix it until it bleeds itself completely dry.

I wish for increased drilling in more shallow waters and to minimize the deep sea drilling. I want Anwar opened up for drilling in the never-visited areas of northern Alaska and I would like the oil shale in Utah developed.

We need oil. Just do it smarter.

Snot

2010-05-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

I have a cold, or the flu, or something. This week my energy level has been sloth-like and my movements about as fast.

And I seem to be breaking records for production of snot.

While the executives at Kleenex will be enjoying quarterly bonuses I am simply astonished at how much snot a single man can produce.

Copious.

One would think that after x amount of times blowing one's nose that the snot would all be gone. Apparently, it reproduces quickly. And what is snot anyway? Someone asked that question on Yahoo answers and got this response:

"Snot" is just another word for mucus. When bits of stuff get stuck in your nose hairs, it’s the mucus or snot that surrounds the stuff and traps it.

Mucus is made by mucus membranes. Your body has mucus membranes in all sorts of places: the stomach, intestines, nose, lungs, eyes, mouth, and the urinary tract all contain mucus membranes that secrete mucus.

When you have a cold, the linings of your nose and / or throat swell. Thick, clear liquid called mucus forms and its purpose is to wash away the germs. The mucus builds up and blocks the air passages. This is what causes a stuffy nose and a cough.

You can read it by clicking on this sentence. And I think that "TY" is pretty authoritative so I will defer to her expertise.

While doing yoga this morning my "warrior 3" was so lethargic I basically collapsed into the fetal position and nurtured thoughts of a happier body.

Ready for it.

And I decided to not post pictures on this blog.

The Dead Duck

2010-05-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

Last night I was traveling down a dark road on the way to a friend's house. On one side of the road was a canal, with no barrier between it and the road. On the other side was a sharp ravine. Additionally, there was construction in the area.

In this completely unlit area I realized just in time that there was a couple who had decided to take a pleasure walk on this potentially deadly road. Thrill seekers, I am sure. Swerving away from them I almost hit a proud mallard duck and his two female duck girlfriends who were wandering across the road just 30-40 feet past the couple.

However, I made it past this obstacle course without sending either fowl or folk to their early grave.

When I was leaving this friend's house a few hours later I realized that another driver wasn't quite so lucky. A dead mallard lay in the road, body torn to pieces.

And that was hard for me to see and gave me a lump in my throat.

Tonight while driving on the freeway I smelled, then saw, the remains of a dead skunk.

And you know what? That kinda made me sad too.

I really don't know why -weird things, but it did.

Meet, Fall In Love and Marry

2010-05-16T17:04:00.001-07:00

Branch conference today was fab. The branch president gave a great talk. He spoke to all 45,000 of us and told the guys to "get off their duffs" and start dating. He wanted us to wade through the many rejections we will more than likely get and stick with it. And girls, he counseled, say yes to those of us guys who don't fit the ideal. (So listen up, sisters!)

I have had singles ward bishops/branch presidents who have never talked about dating and others who did it constantly. I have had one who organized a ward date night where he lined every single person up himself. I had a branch president in Illinois who refused to broach the dating subject with the singles, fearing we had enough pressure otherwise.

Anyway, I was wondering if there was ever a really good study about those LDS who don't get married before they are 30, and why it is.

Some people claim they just didn't want to be married and that explains their thirty-something singlehood. I am not sure that I buy that in whole. Marriage is such a vital part of the doctrine and culture of Latter-day Saints that I think it is impossible to avoid totally the feeling of wanting to marry. The feeling of getting left behind a bit is real and I challenge any 30 plus member who is single to truthfully tell me that they have never felt like that before.

And I do think, as a friend advised the other day, that the married among us just don't seem to understand the issue. They think it is fairly easy. You meet, you fall in love, you marry. That is how they see it. Hence the old couple who couldn't possibly see my aversion to online dating. They see it as a method to meet, fall in love and marry. (certain of my friends have used this method with success - just not for me).

Nor do most of us feel like we are pining our days away in sadness and frustration. Happiness is the continuous element of most of our lives. But this does not mean that the happiness is constant. We have our moments of disquietude as well.

For a few weeks now I have been attending a 31-45 year old singles branch. I see a million reasons why people my age are single and LDS. Everyone is different and everyone has a story. And what I have noticed is that there are tremendous people in that branch. Attractive, interesting, faithful people who would all like to be married.

So I am learning.

Newsflash: Life Will Continue Happily, Coral Snakes Notwithstanding

2010-05-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today I was reading a story about this almost infinitesimal chance of getting bitten by a coral snake and not living because they may discontinue making the anti-venom because it is basically never needed. Got that?

The point of the article was for you to feel scared.

You can click to that article by clicking on any word of this sentence.

Kind of amazing how many news stories would like you think believe the world was coming to an immediate end, your life is in peril, your brain may explode, your liver may turn fuchsia and visibly glow through your skin, etc.

If you don't believe me, try checking any news site tomorrow and run through their headlines about imminent world destruction, personal tragedies to be frightened about, etc.

And yet, life is good.

I have a belief that life in 10 years will still be fun, peaceful, pleasant and not, as Fresh Prince said, "Flipped- turned upside down".

My days are filled with more good people than bad, more honest people than dishonest, more happy people than mad. I think that we will have to work hard to keep our country strong and good and viable. I think we will have plenty of challenges to keep our families the same way.

But, as President Uchtdorf said, "I have seen enough ups and downs throughout my life to know that winter will surely give way to the warmth and hope of a new spring. I am optimistic about the future."

In my own frail existence I have a very dedicated testimony of that fact.

Saint Fisher?

2010-05-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

So my beloved Jazz lost to the Lakers.

Again.

Not that this was unexpected. Even if the Jazz were fully healthy, the Lakers were better and were a tough match up for the Jazz. And the Lakers' fans can rejoice that they stepped on the throats of the small town fans yet again. All of this is fine and good.

But if I have to hear another national announcer (talking to you Reggie Miller) tell us how stupid we are as Jazz fans (he used the word ignorant), if we think that Derrick Fisher may have been slightly duplicitous in how he got out of playing in Utah and went back to playing in Los Angeles, I may not be able to function mentally again.

Perhaps an overstatement? Yes, but consider the facts. Derrick Fisher had a very marginal year as a member of the Jazz a few years ago. When he was traded to the Jazz he took several days to arrive on the scene, making some wonder if he really wanted to play in Utah. But he is a good soldier in some ways, or puts on a good face, and he convinced many in the media that he loved the place.

He played simply average basketball the entire year. When the playoffs came his daughter was struggling with eye cancer and Larry H Miller, the late owner of the Jazz, gave him his blessing to travel with his daughter to New York for treatment. He made it back in time to play in the second half of the game and hit one shot, which happened to be a three pointer. The shot did not win the game, but simply helped ice the game for the Jazz. This shot has been blown out of proportion by the national media.

He asked out of his contract so he could play in a city where his daughter could receive treatment for the rare form of eye cancer she had. (read: he wanted to go to Los Angeles, because, apparently, it was the only place in the world that could be helpful for his daughter, or so we are supposed to believe.)

While I think he is a decent man and had his daughter's best interest at heart, I think it is fair for Jazz fans to think he didn't like the town (which is the most egregious thing to a Jazz fan, really -see Ronny Seikaly) and because of this he wanted back into Lakerville and used his daughter as the excuse.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Every announcer who calls a Jazz-Lakers game uses the same template: Fisher knows all the Jazz tricks since he played in Utah (played poorly, in Utah, too often), Fisher hit one of the most memorable shots in Jazz playoff history (really?), Jazz fans are ignorant (Laker's color commentator called the Jazz the most classless group of fans ever)

An LA Times article was written last year by a prominent columnist claiming the Jazz fans were basically a disgrace to the human race because they have the audacity to boo Fisher.

Fisher seems to hit big threes against the Jazz and I wish he did that when he played for my team. I don't hate the guy, but I think it is fair to wonder and even criticize his decisions. We are fans after all.

Get it in your thick skull, Reggie.

Odd Moment Today

2010-05-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

The following event happened today at church. The single's branch that I attend has about 8 thousand people in it, and I am not sure that is an exaggeration. We have two elder's quorums, 4-5 relief societies, and about a half dozen gospel doctrine classes. I have decided to attend one of the classes that is much smaller on the complete other side of the building from where most of the other classes are being taught.

The sister who was teaching today has a real anxiety disorder and shakes visibly when she teaches. She does a really nice job and we like to congratulate her for her efforts.

In the middle of class a sister, who I did not know very well, walked in and sat right behind me. I gave her the "yo, what's up, welcome to class" head nod. She didn't give me one back.

No big deal.

A few minutes later she raises her hand and, in part, the following things came out of her mouth (with no actual correlation to Deuteronomy 6, I might add):

Women like to complain about not being married, but are they doing what it takes to attract a man? Take for instance this branch, there are so many women who need to lose weight and get counseling before they have a prayer.
People should not drive expensive cars. I think any car over $20,000 means you are sinfully flaunting your money. It is best to live as a pauper, even while wealthy.

The poor teacher was shaking like a palm tree in a hurricane. I was basically the only man in the class of about 10 people and there were chins dropping and hurt feelings around.

I tried to think of what to say and all I could think of was to raise my hand and explain that I didn't agree with any of that.

The Man Who Hates Mormons

2010-05-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

I hesitated on whether to give this man attention for his piddling, heterophopic, religiphobic article, but I really think people ought to know the truth, unvarnished. Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle is hoping for the imminent death of the leaders of the LDS Church. Think I am kidding?

This is the good news: many of the world's most powerful, hurtful, wretched old men will soon be dead.
Does that sound cruel? Unkind? I might be OK with that. In fact, I might very much be in the mood to not really mind at all if a whole slew of these nefarious creatures of sociospiritual corrosion were to, say, spontaneously combust, or be struck by lightning, or perhaps accidentally fall into a giant, roiling vat of Astroglide and turpentine and a million duplicitous prayers. . . But perhaps none of these fine and soulless charlatans appears as noticeably miserable, as lost, as openly insulting to the human spirit as the wretched leaders of the Mormon Church in Utah. There, I said it.

And there you have it folks.

Here are some other quotes that he says:

"frightened and sickly old men of the Mormon Church"

"grand Utah cult whatsoever could possibly follow leaders with such a flagrantly joyless and agonizing sense of modern existence. How can you see those eyes, those depleted and slumped bodies, say yes, oh dear God yes, that is my prophet"

You can read the article in whole by clicking on this sentence.

The man is so incredibly hate filled, so much the bigot that it is impossible for him to be rational.

My advice, don't send him any emails or comment on his page. He will think he has accomplished his goal.

Just know what you are dealing with out there.

Thanks, San Francisco.

Lazy, Lazy, Lazy

2010-05-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

So, while texting a good friend in Nevada this week, she was telling me about how her life is filled with too much texting. Irony aside, she has a point.

Texting, chatting, facebooking, blogging, surfing. Pretty time consuming day, eh?

Irony alert by what I am doing right now, too.

The average American household watches 8 hours of television in a day. The average American texts more than talks. Americans spend more time on the internet than the average person in any country in the world. Americans now spend half their lives in front of the television, internet, radio or newspaper.

Pretty dang pathetic.

I recently checked out my habits and decided to make some changes. I plan to read a lot more - my true love (sad, I know).

So here is my silly challenge: find some way to cut the chord.

10%

2010-05-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

One night this past week, I was at a Chili's restaurant about the time they closed. I was picking up some food for a friend who was working a graveyard shift at a nearby hospital. The restaurant was full, but gradually dispersing. One large group of people, all wearing similar t-shirts, were having a good time in one corner. As they got up to leave, I asked them about their t-shirts. They were all pleased to show me the front, which said "10%", and in much smaller letters, it said, "And Rising!".

We had a good time chatting momentarily. They were from some gay and lesbian group in town. They all seemed like nice folks.

However, perhaps some things ought to be discussed. My entire life I have been told that 10% of the population is homosexual. To clarify, that is fairly bogus. That number came from a book published in 1948 by Alfred Kinsey called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. In it he claimed that 10% of the American population was homosexual and it has been ingrained in the American conscious ever since.

Recent media portrayals have made homosexuality seem far more common than it is. A 2002 Gallup poll found that Americans think roughly 21% of adults are homosexual.

However, the US Census from 2000 had roughly 1% of Americans who self identified as homosexual. In Mormons & Homosexuality: Setting the Record Straight by A. Dean Byrd, he quotes the American Psychiatric Association as saying 2-3% of Americans are homosexual. This is consistent with the Family Research Report's evaluation of 2-3%. In 2002%, the CDC reported very similar numbers. Not surprisingly, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force estimates a slightly higher number at between 3-8%.

For a link to the Gallup article that I am referencing a log, click on this sentence.

Byrd also discusses that many of those who claim to be homosexuals are actually bisexual, or are momentarily experimental.

Now, I do not want to get into the debate about what causes homosexuality, or any Proposition 8 discussion again. At least not now - there will be a time and a place for that again. We have already done that a lot on this blog.

However, I really wanted to refute the 10% claim.

Carry on.

Aunt Carolyn

2010-04-27T21:54:00.001-07:00

My aunt died today. Carolyn, my dad's only sister, passed away in a nursing home after dealing with a life of many physical challenges. She died in the same nursing home where her mother (my grandma) is living.

Grandma was born in 1908 and has outlived her first husband by 60 years, her second husband by 11 years and her only daughter.

How strange it must be to have a child die before you do. The heartbreak is enormous for those with little children who die. Their loss is incalculable.

But even after raising a child who is a grandmother herself, does it ever feel okay to outlive your children?

Death is a hard thing. Carolyn was a dear soul, tender to those who knew her, a talented and published writer, a good mother, and she had a great laugh.

I am not sure that I ever knew her when she was well. I was always aware that she seemed to look so much older than my dad, when they were basically the same age.

In an unexplainable way, I have always been fascinated with the process of death - alive one minute, gone the next. I thought of the morbidity of that. I always felt keenly aware of that next reuniting with those who have gone on before. My aunt has been reunited with her father, dead since 1950. How beautiful that is! In her final moments, she had several experiences where she was clearly communicating with him.

Death is forever with us. It will come close to home to each of us, and more than once. In each of these moments of turmoil, we may feel tremendous pain. This is natural and good - Jesus wept openly. At some point the clarity of the plan does in fact bring hope, happiness and the lightness of life back to us.

Today was a teaching day for me.

What Is For A Man?

2010-04-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Advertisers would like you to think that men are lazy, dumb, fat and always in need of feminine help to handle most any daily task above breathing. Advertisers would also have you believe that women are all sex goddesses waiting to happen. And while a definite need exists for a blog post on the womanly side, I have thought a lot about what we are told men are to be.

We all know that advertisers play with our minds a lot. If a market doesn't exist they create one - which I guess is simply good business.

Take body wash for instance. Body wash used to smell like lilies and sunshine and woman stuff so no men bought it. So they created manly body wash. This morning, for instance, I washed with Dove body wash for men. I felt vigorously manly for doing it.

I recently saw a commercial for one such body wash where the claim was made that women prefer men to use man scented body wash "ten gazillion times" more than feminine scented body wash. All of this was a novel concept to me as I thought beforehand that the primary purpose of showering was to get clean. Now I understand that I use body wash to get women.

When I was younger I remember finding no problem playing tackle football with the guys for hours on end and the next day watching Anne of Green Gables. I never really was told that one was for men and one for women. I just thought they were both fun.

Now, I am as warm blooded, girl attracted as the next American boy. I do wonder, however, what really is manly.

I find no difference in reading most any book under the sun (with some obvious genre omissions). But I read Jane Austen type books every bit as often as I read Mark Twain, Tom Clancy or any other book written by, or for, a man. Good writing is good writing.

And I don't really believe that heterosexual man things can be defined simply as beef, beer and girls.

Somehow men get limited in what they are allowed to like and enjoy.

So mock me all you would like for my Anne of Green Gables enjoyment. :)