Over the River and Through the Woods

It's time to finally record the events of my trip home for Thanksgiving.  I was very much looking forward to going back to Virginia for the first time in over a year and seeing Mom and Dad and Marinda, who had just gotten back from her mission to the Philippines the week before.  I had been worried for months that I would have trouble with snow cancelling or delaying flights on my way there or back, but fortunately everything went smoothly.

The Book of Mormon Bonanza

It's been a pretty intense and busy recently.  A lot has happened and it's certain that I won't be able to do it all justice, but I want to make some kind of record at least.  On Wed, the 19th, Marinda returned from her mission to the Philippines.  She went home to Virginia, or course, not here, so I didn't see her right way, but it was nice to get to talk to her at least.  I was definitely looking forward to seeing her as well as my parents over Thanksgiving.

Halloween Hoopla

I'm fond of Halloween, just because I think it's a fun holiday.  I don't like the horror, evil, or gross elements of it, but a little spookiness is fun in the fall.  This year, Halloween was quite low-key, but I still had a lot of fun.

The Canyon and the Conference

Last weekend was filled with some interesting events.  On Saturday, I got to enjoy some adventures up American Fork Canyon and on Sunday I attended a regional conference at the Marriot Center.

Temple Trip Mini-Reunion

In my last post, I mentioned that Palu, Godfrey, and I had arranged while at our mission reunion to go to the Salt Lake Temple together.  Last weekend, we went.  Palu, who I really should get used to calling Enna, is an early riser and Godfrey, aka Hayley, has little kids, so the latest I was able to push the session back to was 10:00 AM.  This may not seem really early, but I'm a little jealous of my Saturday mornings since I don't get to sleep in very often and I knew that we'd need at least an hour to actually get to the temple with extra time to get ready for the session, meaning I'd have to get up to shower and all about the same time I do for work.  This wasn't my version of the ideal, but I went along with it for the sake of the others.

Mission Reunion Joys and Woes

While Gerrit, Elisabeth, and Mom attended a concert on the Friday before Conference, I went up to Salt Lake for a mission reunion.  I went to a reunion about a year after I returned home, but this is the first one that has been held for my President since then, so I was very excited about seeing everyone.

Conference with Mom

Mom came to visit over Conference weekend recently.  She was here for about a week and we managed to get some different things in during that time.  A lot of the time was taken up by Conference, of course, and some of the other time was taken up sitting in the blasted traffic that always seems to exist around the point of the mountain.

Passport to Provo

Taking a selfie in the Google Fiber store was our first task

Still playing some catch-up.  A couple weeks ago, I had a great time participating with Gerrit and Elisabeth's family in Passport to Provo, which was an effort to break the world record for largest scavenger hunt.  The event was sponsored by a number of partners, most notably Google Fiber, Cotopaxi, and some downtown Provo association.  I hadn't heard anything about it until Elisabeth mentioned it when I went to babysit the kids the Fri before.  They were already all signed up thanks to her diligence, so when they invited me to join them, it was a pretty simple matter for me to register on their team last minute.  I'm really glad they told me about it, because I had a great time!

Soldier Hollow Sheepdog Classic: Labor Day Weekend Part III

It's been awhile since this actually happened, so hopefully I'll be able to remember most of the interesting stuff.  Last year, I heard about the Solider Hollow Classic sheepdog competition on the radio and was very interested in going.  I didn't end up making it in the end, largely because I was still using my grandma's van for transportation and didn't want to put any unnecessary strain on it.  This year, I was determined that I would get to the event.

Stake Dance: Labor Day Week Part II

Friday began the Labor Day weekend in earnest for me.  When you work full-time year round, three-day weekends truly are an event worth noticing; especially when you are new and don’t get a whole lot of PTO yet!  In this situation, there’s nothing quite like getting off of work Friday afternoon with the whole weekend stretching out before you.

Timpanogos Storytelling Festival: Labor Day Week Part I

The week leading up to Labor Day was really pretty fun.  I got to do a number of interesting things in a short space of time.  It was refreshing to have some real plans as opposed to my normal free time go-to of taking a long walk/run.   Since each of these events is worthy of a post, I’ll probably break this report down to each event and try to post them as I can.

From the Canyon to the Garden

Nothing super exciting has been happening this week, but I've been enjoying a few of my more normal weekly activities.  On Monday for FHE, I got to learn some Krav Maga, which was interesting.  We got to practice some kicks and learned how to disarm someone with a gun.  While I kind of got a handle on how to do that, I pretty much would never feel confident enough to actually do it myself in a real-life scenario.  I'm pretty sure trying it would just get me shot!  Still, it was fun to try some of these things out, and we did learn some great self-defense pointers, like to always keep your chin down and only present the top of your head to an attacker, as the lower portion of your face and neck are by far the most vulnerable.

Playing a Bit of Catch-up

I haven't yet pulled the trigger on a new computer, but today I'm taking the opportunity to use one in the family history center to get my blog updated.  This seems especially opportune since I taught a lesson about the importance of journal-keeping for family history class today!  The last few weeks I've been precluded from this approach since I've been giving people rides from church, but today I'm on my own.

Steel Days and River Rambles

So this will probably be a shorter one.  I haven't posted for awhile and will probably continue to be spotty because my laptop appears to be at least partially dead now.  I figure I better wait until back-to-school sales come up before getting a new one.  This would have been much more of a hardship for me in the past, but will decent internet access available to me on my phone still, I'm mostly surviving at this point.  Still, it has annoyingly made it much more difficult for me to blog.  Right now, I'm taking advantage of a church Family History Library computer while I wait to see if anyone shows up to learn about indexing (though it's looking kind of unlikely anyone will show on that score!).

Temple Reflections

I had an interesting thought when I went to the temple last week.  To explain, I'd better backtrack to the Oregon family reunion a bit.  As I mentioned before, one of the biggest highlights of the trip was going on the 10 waterfalls hike.  While there were many gorgeous waterfa cflls to see there, the most impressive and unique were a few that you could actually hike behind.

Rounding Up the Rodeo

Last Friday, I went to my very first rodeo.  This wasn't entirely by choice, and I almost didn't go at all, but I'm really glad that I did.  I had a very good time.  It all materialized because someone in the stake, probably a cowboy, decided to make the Lehi Round-up Rodeo the stake activity for June.  This meant that the stake provided tickets for free.  My personal policy is to participate in all ward and stake activities that I can, and though I'm not always perfect at following that guideline, I didn't see a good reason to make an exception for the rodeo, so I signed up to go.  When they later passed out the tickets after Relief Society, I was talking to a few people and almost forgot to collect mine, but one of the presidency members called me back to get it.  The day of the rodeo itself, I ended up working a little later and was already feeling fairly stressed and tired.  I wasn't eager to go at all at that point, but I put on my western booties and got in the car.  Even on the drive there, I almost turned back, but going home seemed foolish and the fact that I had a ticket that had already been paid for sealed the deal.

Oregon Family Reunion Funny Ha-ha Good Times!

Last weekend was the much anticipated Oregon family reunion.  I always look forward to the yearly reunions and consider them one of the definite highlights of each year.  I've only missed four in my life, two while I was on my mission, one a couple years ago when we went to visit Gerrit and Elisabeth instead of the reunion, and one more when I had just started a State Farm.  Missing them is always a big downer, so I was very pleased that I was able to go this year even though I haven't been at my current job very long.  Still, two days was all I could manage to get off, so a quick flight was needed after work on Wed. to get me to Oregon in time for the reunion.  I would have liked to have a bit more time, but it didn't work out that way.

The Surprise Day of Varying Service

I'm still behind, but hopefully this will get me pretty well caught up. On June 7, I participated in a service project at Mutual Dell campground. It was all kind of a mystery from the beginning. The Sunday before, a sign up had been passed around for "service project at Mutual Dell". That was the description, no time or info on what we were going to be doing. I assumed more info would be forthcoming, and as I had no plans for that day, I signed up. I waited for more info to be disseminated, but on Fri evening when I'd still heard nothing, I got nervous about it and texted the RS president. She didn't really know what was going on either, but apparently texted the EQ president, who told her the time and that more info was coming in the morning. Not wanting to bother her any more, I accepted that bit of info and went to bed, planning to get up relatively early the next day to wait for the promised info.

The John Moyle Experience Becomes My Own

I've kept putting off this post because I'm kind of intimidated by the magnitude of it a bit.  It's one of those times that a little hard to sum everything up in words.  I hope I can do the experience justice at least somewhat.  On May 31st I participated in an activity with my ward that was officially known as The John Moyle Experience, but was unofficially dubbed the Death March by someone in the ward.  As it turned out, both descriptions had a bit of truth to them, though for me, I think neither described my day perfectly.

The Gladness of Glorious Gardens

My adventure this weekend was going to Thanksgiving Point on Sat.  I really had a wonderful time.  I've been saving up my first Thanksgiving Point visit since I've been here because I know that it is a big local attraction and I wanted to keep it as something to look forward to. When I learned about the tulip festival, it seemed like a perfect time to go.  One Saturday at the end of April was the big Dutch Days celebration featuring Dutch music and dancing, so I had planned to go then, but the weather was miserably cold and rainy, so I decided to put off the experience for a better day.

Hieing Here, There, and Everywhere!

View from the one of the docks of the American Fork Boat Harbor on Utah Lake

Today I'll touch on my recent walking adventures.  As has probably become apparent, one of the most thrilling things I do in any given week is walk around somewhere new.  Exciting, I know. :)  Really though, it is much more fun than at might sound, at least it is for me.  When I was job searching, I would walk a pretty good distance basically every day.  I'm much more limited now, but I still try to get out a few times a week.  In fact, a few recent studies indicate that moderate exercise a few times a week is quite a bit better for your cardiovascular health than frequent intense exercise.

I've missed all the patriotic, god-fearing farm folk!

I'm focusing more on getting in extra walking right now in preparation for a ward activity at the end of the month that has been dubbed "the death march".  We are going to walk 23 miles from the Draper temple to the Salt Lake temple in honor of a pioneer who did that walk every week to help build the temple.  The crazy part is that he did so with a prosthetic leg too!  I may need a prosthetic leg by the end of it, but I'm excited to push myself and see what I can do.  I'm often thinking how much more fun it would be to just walk as far as I can in one direction rather than having to turn around and recover the same ground.  This will give me a great opportunity to do that while also testing my physical strength.  The main part I'm worried about is getting blisters, as that is an area I already have problems with fairly often on my walks.  Weirdly, I get them most often on the outside of my heels.  I've read this could be a problem with the shoe insole, but I think it maybe has more to do with my supination due to Morton's foot.

Anyway, last Saturday, I decided that I would walk to the American Fork Boat Harbor to help get me more trained up for this major hike.  The harbor is about 3 miles from my house, so the whole trip ended up being 6 miles.  I knew that it would take me off the beaten path, I just didn't realize quite how much.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that after I crossed under the interstate, I was basically in the country rather than the city.  There were fields, sheep, horses, goats, and farmland all around there.  It was great.  I almost felt like I was back in Virginia again!  I thoroughly enjoyed wandering across the countryside, but I didn't have so much fun with the fact that it was a pretty sunny and warm day which left me feeling dehydrated about halfway there.  Once I got to the boat harbor, I was very dismayed to discover there was no drinkable water available there, so I was really quite unpleasantly thirsty by the time I got home.

Still, I was cool to see the boat harbor.  I had tried to go there on Friday, but I had gone the wrong way really, which would have been a lot longer.  I turned around before I actually got too lost though, because it was raining spottily and also because as I was getting into the more deserted area, I ran across a hobo sleeping on the lawn of a warehouse facility.  On my mission, I found that most hobos were quite nice, but you just never know, and I didn't relish the idea of being alone in a dilapidated area where a potentially desperate person could get it into his head to attack me or something!  Still, it was decent little adventure, and I got to get a picture with fake Stonehenge that I have long wanted.

American Fork River

Really, at the boat harbor, there wasn't too much too see that was all that exciting.  It wasn't the most thrilling destination, but I still had a good time learning a bit about it and getting to see a bit of the lake.  An attendant there also said in the summer someone is planning to do kayak rentals and that sort of thing there, which would be awesome!  It's also kind of fun how the American Fork River (at least I'm guessing that's what it was) flows into the lake.  A good portion of my journey lay along this river's course, which was pretty despite some of the old couches and whatnot that had been thrown into it in a few places.

There were some interesting sights along the way and overall I had a fun trip despite the thirst and getting a bit of a heel blister.  I also managed to get my nose fairly sun burnt, unfortunately.  It's still peeling.  I guess it's time to be pulling out the good sunscreen now!

This past Tues I decided to go explore the Provo River Trail again after work.  I'd already been up a large portion of it up the canyon as I've talked about before, so I decided to go the other direction which heads through Provo this time.  It was definitely a lot less pretty than the canyon part, especially because it didn't seem to run near the river at all from what I could see.  Instead, it just goes along University Parkway, which is alright, but it isn't especially lovely or anything!  Maybe I went the wrong way or something, but I was underwhelmed.  Still, it was kind of nice to see where it went.  I'm not super familiar with that area, so I did enjoy getting a feel for what was around there.

Here's the tiny part of the Provo River you
actually see right at the beginning when you
go south on the trail rather than through the
canyon from the 800 N trailhead.

The trail also ran right by The Riverwoods, which is an interesting place.  I didn't really do much there that day because I was kind of sweaty and nasty, but I did walk through the thoroughfare, and that's quite pretty.  There was also a guy there fixing one of the mall's big display screens.  He had it all taken apart and was putting something together for it using a big crane.  It seemed like a pretty large job for just this one guy, so I felt kind of sorry for him.  Still, it was interesting to see him doing some of the work on it.

I also had fun with a couple of quail that were quite close to me.  I have an irrational delight in quail for some reason, so I always really like getting to see them.  I tried to get pictures, but they didn't turn out all that well thanks to the sun in the background!  The area was full of quite nice houses and all.  I went past a lovely private school and turned back near a pretty fancy looking Arabian horse farm.

The Tues trip was only around 5 miles but my heel was getting pretty uncomfortable by the end of it.  Basically, my blister from Sat wasn't really healed yet, and a new trip on top of that didn't help matters much.  It's things like this that make me have some doubt that I will be able to actually do the full 23 miles at the end of the month, but I will certainly give it my best.  I'm planning on rounding up some decent runner's tape that is supposed to help with the blisters, so I'm hopeful at any rate!  It's been good for me to have a goal that I'm working toward over these past few weeks, at any rate.

View from the Provo River trail up toward Mount Timapanogos.  You can see the trail and University Parkway right next to each other here.  It wasn't always this close, but not far off for the most part.

The Gift of Temple Work for Your Kindred Dead

I'm a bit behind on a few things I should have covered earlier.  I'm going to go back and try to hit a few of them over this week.  I'll start with the goings on of May 3rd and go from there.  A few months ago, I was trying to think of what to do for Marinda's birthday and wasn't too excited about the idea of sending another small package for over $20 bucks in postage like I did at Christmas.  Packages are nice as a missionary, but with postage being so high and the actual delivery at least somewhat uncertain, I wanted to see if there was something else I could do without costing an arm and a leg.  After thinking about it for awhile, I decided it would be perfect to prepare a few family names that she could do the endowments for, as this would be spiritually uplifting and could also be sent over email.

Getting Smarter About My Smartphone

First picture with the new phone

About a week and a half ago I got a new smartphone.  This has been quite an adjustment for me, considering I've been using my first cellphone for about 6 years now.  That one was a flip phone that was the most basic available back at the time.  In fact, I got it at Alltel a few months before Verizon completed their acquisition, just to show what an ancient brick I'm talking about!  Still, even though it's ancient, my LG has been pretty good to me.  It's always worked reliably and the battery life on it is great.  Back in the day, I could go two weeks or more without charging it, though it's been dropping down to more like 4 days now.  While having ancient technology that didn't even text well has been a drawback in some ways, overall I've been quite satisfied to live in the past.

Let's just say that I'm a late adapter.  But now, with my new job as a Social Media Manager, a smartphone has become a necessity rather than a luxury.  I've long put off getting a smartphone because of the expense involved.  Not only can they be pricey up-front, they pretty much require an expensive monthly data plan to be worthwhile.  When I started looking into the options available to me, I remembered that Gerrit had recently gotten a phone plan with Republic that was pretty cheap.  In looking into it and talking with him, this seemed like the best option.  There were some affordable plans that provided the services I need as well as big competitors for a lot less.  Plus, there's also the option to upgrade and downgrade plans twice a month if desired.  I also liked how the main phone option, the Moto x, was more reasonably priced while doing the functions I need than other competitors I looked at.

I was pleased that it didn't take too long for the phone to arrive after I ordered.  Also, there weren't a bunch of complicated procedures to follow for set-up.  Everything from Republic was preloaded.  Then it was just a matter of finding the apps that I wanted.  The social networking apps were priority, of course.  Because the Moto x was developed while Google owned Motorola, everything is seamlessly synced with Google accounts up front.  This has been nice since I use a lot of Google's services regularly.  Now I'm starting to use new services, like Google Calendar, from what I did before from convenience.  This plays into Google's plans nicely, I expect, but I don't mind supporting them because I like their services a lot.

There's also a ton of other fun and useful apps.  I'm just starting to experiment with some different stuff.  I got the LDS apps, which are both very handy, of course.  I recently got Out of Milk, which is a shopping list app.  It has some cool features, like allowing you to make a list of what's in your pantry so you can remember what ingredients you already have if making shopping decisions on the fly.  What I like even more is that there is a section that gives you a break-down of sales being run by the various stores in your area.  This had been a great feature even on my first shopping trip with it this week.  I was able to do ad matches at Walmart with stores that don't typically send us their printed circulars.  It was also  nice to just stick the deals I wanted on the list with the price match all listed digitally, instead of flipping through a bunch of printed ads to find the items I wanted to match.  I'm excited to learn more about this app as well as some of the others I've found, like scientific camera, in the future.

The app I've been enjoying purely for fun has been Quiz Up.  It's basically just a trivia app, but there are a few things that make it really fun.  First off, there are a TON of categories you can choose to do on just about everything.  Plus they are frequently adding new categories to try.  I also like the set up they offer of going head to head with a competitor in a timed show-down.  The quicker you answer, the more points you get.  You get to play people from around the world in whatever interests you.  I've played people from every continent, including Antarctica, at this point!  It's pretty fun to see what country each person comes from.

You can also make friends with new people through chat or simply challenge your own friends with the app.  I found Gerrit the other day and had fun challenging him on various topics.  I was also the most advanced in Utah in the Ender Saga category for awhile, but someone barely beat me on that today.  It helped that it was a new category when I started, now that it's been out for a bit, there's always going to be some hardcore players to beat me out just by playing a lot more often.

Getting used to being at least somewhat up-to-date with technology has taken a bit of time for me.  I still have a lot to learn, but it's pretty clear that having a smart phone is going to be incredibly useful in many ways.  I feel a little sad to say goodbye to a simpler existence, but I'm excited to learn more about the many new benefits I can enjoy now!

Mother's Day Musings and Memories

It's Mother's Day!  Sadly, it hasn't felt much like it for me today.  There are two major reasons for that.  The first is that my ward was pretty lame about Mother's Day in my opinion.  It was barely even mentioned in church, which is a major faux pas in my book!  They did say something briefly about telling your mom you love her during the announcements section, but that was about it.  The speakers had inexplicably all been given some other topic for unknown reasons.  I was miffed, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to what they were talking about instead.  To me, even if you have been given some other topic for unknown reasons, if you speak on Mother's Day, you should put in some mention about how your wonderful mother helped you.  It's also the first ward I've ever been in that didn't give some sort of small gift to all the women in honor of the day.  My only guess is that they either completely forgot the holiday when planning talks, or decided it was too touchy or something to address with a YSA audience.

In my opinion, it's all the more important to talk about mothers, fathers, and marriage in a YSA ward!  Just neglecting these topics risks letting people get comfortable with being in a singles ward such that they forget one of the major points of the gospel, which is eternal families.  Reinforcing frequently the joys of family life in all it's facets should be hit on more, not less, in my opinion.  Yeah, it can be a painful reminder of what you don't have at times, but it done in the right way, it can also be an important tool for rekindling hope and faith for single members.  As I said, I was a bit put out by the whole business of neglecting the day, so since I was asked to give the closing prayer, I gave one that was somewhat longer than your typical closing prayer and focused almost entirely on mother's, parenthood, and preparing for family life.  I was glad that I had at least a small opportunity to correct what seemed like quite an oversight to me! :)

The second reason Mother's Day feels a bit off for me this year is that I'm not actually with my mom at all.  It's been a long time since that's been the case, not since my mission, in fact.  And even there, Mother's Day was still special because you got to call home.  So in reality, this has been my first Mother's Day completely away from my mom.  That's made it a kind of weird and sad.

This was at Virginia Garden Week last year.  It was always really fun to go to with Mom.

Of all the things I miss about Virginia, I miss my mom the most.  Strangely, I miss her even more now than I did when I was on my own at school, probably because there I at least had friends that would act as a sort of surrogate family to some extent or another.  That hasn't been so much the case here.  Having a built-in friend who is willing to do things with you without it feeling like you're inconveniencing them is a blessing I took for granted for a long time.  Now, I mostly end up doing things on my own.  Even beyond doing thing together, I miss simply being around my mom.  It didn't matter if we were even talking, just knowing she was nearby and loving me unconditionally was reassuring that life couldn't get too bad.

I also miss my mom because she understands me better than others.  She knows how to make me happy and how to comfort me when I'm sad.  Distance leads to fewer points of connection, which lessens the positive influence my mom can have on me now.  We talk pretty regularly still, but it's pretty much impossible to have the same connection and understanding of someone's life when you hardly ever see them face-to-face and share fewer moments in common.

This was from our last Virginia hike together last year on the White Oak Canyon trail.

I've always worried to some extent or another about my parents, mom especially.  Distance makes that more acute because I have less opportunity to observe that they are doing well now.  No doubt they experience the same sort of thing for me!  Mostly, I just have to let it go and realize that me worrying about mom's health or other things will mostly not make anything better.  You can never completely eliminate worry about those you love, but I think distance exacerbates the problem, because it weakens your ability to have any impact.  There are very good reasons the envy those families that all live in the same town or vicinity as each other.  Unfortunately, that's becoming less and less common in the world today.

My mother is a wonderful and talented person.  She isn't perfect, but she has helped me learn and grow in so many ways.  I can trace most of my abilities and even my interests back to a mother who always worked hard to show us kids the beauties of the world and the gospel.  Pretty much all of my fondest childhood memories involve something that I did with my mother.  She loved us well enough to spend her time and many talents on us.  I know I often don't give her as good a return on that investment as I should, but I hope that I can continue to improve in that area.

Mom, I love you, and I'm grateful for the innumerable blessings you have brought into my life.  I wouldn't be the person I am today without your tireless dedication and love.  Happy Mother's Day!

I Don't Want to Pass Over the Passover!

I've been quite busy lately, so I haven't updated this as promptly as I intended.  I'm going to go back a bit and talk about the Passover activity my ward hosted on the 15th.  It was a very interesting and unique experience.  I learned a number of good things that I don't want to forget, so I figured I better get them posted on the blog so I can refer back more easily.

The speaker for the event was a man named Daniel Rona, who is a Jewish convert to Mormonism.  His parents were Jews who fled to Israel from the Holocaust.  Both of his paternal grandparents were killed at Auschwitz.  When Daniel was 5, his parents divorced and he moved to New York with his father.  While there, he went to a former synagogue that had become a LDS chapel and was impressed by the message of living prophets.  He was converted and moved to Salt Lake and was involved in broadcasting before eventually moving with his family to Israel.  He was not provided the usual financial assistance given to new Jewish immigrants and became a painter to provide for his family.  Eventually, he was granted citizenship.

While living as a painter, he noticed that many Mormons came to the Holy Land, but were disappointed by the tours, as most of the guides are not at all religious.  To meet this need, Daniel became the only licensed LDS tour guide for the Holy Land.  His son has also become licensed now, which has given Daniel and his wife the opportunity to become missionaries working with the Church History Department now.  Our Bishop's mom is Liz Lemon Swindle, and he met Daniel through her.  Their connection allowed him to arrange for this Passover feast for our ward.

I've heard of various groups celebrating Passover in college and such before, but have never had the opportunity to go myself, though I've always been interested in it.  Our experience wasn't super authentic in a lot of ways to what the Jews actually do, considering even the simple fact that the Passover is apparently a 6 hour affair, but it was still very enlightening.  Elder Rona basically treated it as an educational presentation, taking time to make observations and explanations of different elements of the tradition that wouldn't have been required for Jews, of course.  I won't recount everything, but will instead focus on elements that I found particularly interesting.

The Jews use a lunar calendar, and Passover falls on the first full moon after the first day of Spring.A lot of preparation goes into the Passover for Jews.  There are steps like cleaning out all the leavened items in the household that take place ritually in the days leading up to the feast.  For the Passover, many make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where they are housed for the feast free of charge by the locals.  The visitors will then give the gift of the skin of the animal they offer as a sacrifice to their host, who then will use the skin to make scriptures.

He explained the significance of the seating arrangement to us.  The arrangement places the youngest son of the family on the right hand of the master of the feast, which is typically the eldest male of the house.  Part of the ceremony has the youngest son open the door to permit Elijah to return for the feast.  Elijah's chair is situated directly opposite where the master and youngest son sit, a reminder of his mission to return to turn the heart's of the fathers and children to each other.  Elder Rona also talked about how Elijah did actually return on the Passover, but he returned to give the keys to Joseph Smith at Kirtland.  The table at the Passover is meant to represent the altar upon which the family is to place their offering their sacrifice to God.  The Seder represents a feast at the altar of the Lord.

The early parts of the Passover feast refer to Joseph of Egypt, the bondage, and first Passover in Egypt.  One of the points Elder Rona brought up was that in the Torah, there are only about 9,000 separate Hebrew words, so many words do at least double-duty.  One such word is "obed", which means both slave and servant.  Elder Rona made the observation that the main difference between slavery and serving is mental attitude.  In keeping God's commandments, we can either choose to think of doing His will as a sort of miserable slavery or a faithful service.  Our attitude will determine our ultimate success or failure in the end.

During the Seder, parts of the accounts of Moses are read, and various actions are associated with the account.  For instance, matza(unleavened bread) is eaten with the bitter herb in reminder of the bitterness of captivity.  We had horseradish for our bitter herb, and that truly was quite disgusting!  As the account of the plagues was read, we would dip our finger in our "wine" (grape juice) after each plague in token of the refreshment and protection that the Children of Israel received from the scourges.

When the account of the final plague is read, the lamb and egg (representing death and life) are removed from the table in token of the sacrifice of the Lamb that was made.  A full cup of wine is drunk, which Elder Rona related to Christ drinking the dregs of the bitter cup.  The lamb is then brought back and the family feasts on the lamb, matza, etc. together.  During the eating, the elders of the family traditionally tell stories of their own family.  I thought it interesting how cultural heritage and family heritage are connected in this celebration.

The last part we covered was the exodus.  According to Elder Rona, there were about 2 million Israelites who left Egypt.  That really is a pretty impressive amount of people.  It makes you wonder how the Egyptians were able to prevent a major uprising from such a large group!  To commemorate the exodus, we were supposed to eat a piece of matza dipped in fruit, representing the sweetness of freedom and deliverance.  Our fruit was a kind of cobblery mixture.  They had set it up such that there three people sharing the traditional food and then they gave us all our own chicken soup and salad for the feasting.  Well, during the "feast" which was rather lacking overall for getting full on, the guy I was sitting next to had evidently eaten everything left from the Seder, so we had no fruit left to dip into.  The people on the other side of me had fortunately not already eaten everything, so I got some fruit from them.

There were a few other points of interest that were mentioned.  Elder Rona discussed that Christ cleansed the temple of the moneychangers on the day that the Jews traditionally clean the temple in preparation for the Passover.  He also talked about the fact that we know Christ was born on the Passover from Joseph's statement naming His birth date as April 6 which was also the Jewish Passover in 1830 when Joseph made the statement.

The last point Elder Rona concluded with was that Christ was most likely crucified on Thurs to give three days in the tomb.  The next day was Passover, which was a special Sabbath and the next day was the regular Sabbath.  Jews were forbidden to mourn on the Sabbath, so on Sun, the first day Christ's disciples were actually permitted to mourn for Him, through His tender mercy, they no longer had to.  Elder Rona put it more powerfully than I have done, and it was pretty affecting for all of us.  The Spirit was quite palpable.

I really enjoyed the whole experience.  It was two hours very well spent gaining appreciation for others as well as a renewed appreciation for our own knowledge of truth.  I felt an increased gratitude for the Savior's divine mission and eternal love.  I would highly recommend attending such an event for anyone!

Health, History, and Hiking

I've found that it is human nature to internalize, at least to some extent, the things you are exposed to over long periods.  This of course, has implications for media choices and other moral considerations, but today I'm going to focus more on the health implications.  When I was in high school, I worked at Dairy Queen for 3 years.  This meant that I ate a lot more ice cream than usual, because I was around it, working with it, and thinking about it very often.  That wasn't particularly great for my overall health.  I recently started working for a health food company as social media manager, which means I spend all day looking through various health-related info to share.  The byproduct of this is that I spend a lot of time thinking about how I should eat more quinoa and chia seeds and exercising.  I also do a lot with outdoor activities for one of our brands, which means thinking about camping, hiking, and being in nature.  The result of these combined areas of focus is that I've been spending more time exercising in nature recently.

Here's my office

Fortunately, I haven't had to go much out of my way to accomplish this.  My office now is ideally located right across from the Murdock Canal Trail and very near the Provo River Trail.  I decided to check out this new portion of the Murdock Canal Trail first on Friday before Conference.  I described in an earlier post how I have done a decent portion of this trail up in Pleasant Grove and Lindon.  It's really quite a nice trail that's well-paved and passes some interesting areas.  I was excited to see what the Orem section looked like.  Overall, I think I liked the southern end better.  It goes through some more countryish areas that are pretty along the shelf.  It passes right by the Orem City Cemetary and goes through an interesting technology park that hosts companies like Oracle.  The daylight permitted me to walk/jog around 6 miles for the round trip.  Unfortunately, I didn't get far enough north to meet up with the farthest south portion I'd formerly done.  The trail goes all the way up into Lehi, but at sometime I would like to do all of it.

For my next trip, I planned to walk from my office to Bridal Veil Falls on Tues.  This was a very enjoyable walk. The Provo River Trail is very beautiful.  The only slight drawback was that it was quite crowded.  There were a ton of bicyclists and longboarders there as well as a number of other pedestrians and some roller bladers.  Fortunately, it is safer to have plenty of other people around and the wheeled folks have different lanes to use than the pedestrians, so I wasn't all that put out by it in the end.

I've driven through Provo Canyon a few times in the past, but you really do get a different sense for it when walking.  It's quite amazing what one little river can accomplish in wearing down these huge stone mountains!  The trail stays largely in the vicinity of the river, which is pretty, and has several other features throughout to keep it interesting.

Here's one of the aquaduct features.  It used to all be open timber and earthworks, but is now enclosed.

One of the things that I liked was a series of plaques along the trail describing various features associated with the Olmstead Power Plant as well as water conveyance from the canyon.  Most of the plaques had cool historical photos corresponding with the info.  It made me reflect on how impressive the ingenuity and efforts of mankind can be.  Much of the early work in the canyon was all done by hand.  Later, additional work was done by very early steam shovels and similar equipment.  It's pretty incredible what these people were able to accomplish high up in the mountains with very limited resources.

Today, most of the aquaducts and such have been buried to protect from falling rocks and other damage, which definitely happens in the canyon.  There's sections where you can still see the scree left over from past rockslides, one that took out an entire farm that was once there.  You can see it's still a problem even now in that there is a whole section of the Provo River Trail that's been blocked off and a detour built around after a bunch of huge rocks fell on the path. It just goes to show that even with all the incredible things we humans can do with the landscape around us, nature still has power that we cannot control.  In those cases, we just have to work around it!

Here's the section of trail blocked off due to these big falling boulders!

On my first trip up the canyon, I was really hoping to get to Bridal Veil Falls, as I said.  As the sun was setting in the canyon, though, I realized from one of the trail maps that I still had about a mile to go to get there, and still had to go all the way back.  So with some disappointment, I decided to turn around at Canyon Glen Park, one of the many lovely parks along the trail.  I managed to get back to my car just as the sun was going down on the valley itself, so I'm glad I turned back when I did.  In the end, I'd done seven miles and was getting to feel pretty sore in the bargain!

It was interesting on Tues. to discover this section of the river where there were about 6 vintage cars buried.

However, I was not deterred in my goal of walking to Bridal Veil Falls.  On Fri. I decided to pick up where I left off.  I drove up the canyon and parked at Canyon Glen Park to resume my trip.  It didn't take me too long to get to the falls from there.  I did get to pass through Nunn's Park on the way and was enchanted by the camping facilities there right next to the river.  Next spring after Marinda gets back, we will have to go camping there.

I ran into this little guy at Canyon Glen Park.

I've been to Bridal Veil Falls a few times before, but I like it quite well and always appreciate the chance to see it again.  The main drawback is that it is often pretty crowded, which detracts somewhat, but it was a little less busy on Fri that I've seen it in the past.  The thing that surprised me was that the bottom section of it is still entirely covered with a thick layer of snow!  There really isn't much snow to be seen in the canyon now, except up in a few of the very high mountain sections where the sun probably doesn't hit for long, so I was surprised by how much snow was on the waterfall.  I can only guess that the fall itself has contributed to the thick layer.  It was such that the entire path over where the the fall descends to the river was entirely covered, so you had to very carefully pick your way across a pretty large section of snow to cross.

Here's the falls with the snow cover all on the bottom section.  Usually, that's just water.

You can still see a lot of the wreckage from the skyline that used to go to the top of Bridal Veil Falls.  It always makes me kind of sad to see it.  It seems a shame that it's all fallen to ruin, but I guess at some point it was deemed unsafe, partially because of the very steep grade it was pitched at.  I was thinking about how cool it would have been back in the day to go up and visit the Eagle's Nest restaurant and dance hall that used to be there in my parents day.  Unfortunately, a massive avalanche and then an arson's fire put an end to plans to revitalize the resort.

I continued up the trail from the falls.  It was relatively deserted, which surprised me.  Since it was a Fri., I expected to see a lot more people than I did on Tues., but there were in reality not nearly as many overall.  I expect that once I passed the falls, this might be because it was pretty far up the canyon, after many people have turned back, but there surprisingly weren't even that many before I got to the falls.  I guess everyone was busy going on dates elsewhere or something?

I didn't mind having much of the trail largely to myself though.  I saw some more remnants from the old power operations in addition to the current dam.  After the dam, the river obviously widens into a more peaceful lake area, though I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a larger reservoir further up the river toward Midway/Heber.  I guess I'll have to figure all that out at some point.  I also got to see what was left of some of the original banks for the train line through the canyon.  That was pretty cool too.  There is clearly a lot of history through the area, and I'm glad that efforts have been made to preserve some of it.

Here's some ducks and a few of the intermittent bikers enjoying the lake section of the trail.

I again turned back when the sun started to disappear from the canyon.  I hadn't made it as far on this trip, only doing a total of about 5.5 miles.  This was in part due to the fact that I'd forgotten to pack some decent socks and was stuck wearing the no-show footies I'd worn to work.  I expect that's why I ended up with a few blisters after this shorter trip, but maybe my feet were also just sick of walking for the week!

On each of my trips, I had a great time.  I love the way walking gives me a chance to relish in the feeling of covering distance with nothing but my own power.  It also gives me a great opportunity to clear my mind and reflect on things.  I find it very refreshing, even when it leaves my body pretty thrashed by the end.  I'm looking forward to having more opportunities for healthy adventures in the future!

A Generally Amazing Conference Weekend

Meeting Will Marshall with the family

This weekend was one of the best two weekends of the year--General Conference.  I absolutely love Conference.  It's amazing to get to hear the words of living prophets received through inspiration.  Conference has long been one of the times that I am most able to feel direction for what I should do in my life.  In fact, my favorite Conference feeling is a good rebuke by the Spirit by which I learn things I need to change, but also leave with a resolution that I can indeed do better.  I actually didn't get too much of that feeling this time; mostly it was just a reaffirmations of things I'm already have a decent understanding of, though I am still working on.  That is a useful thing too, however, and I'm still coming out of Conference with my normal sense of a spiritually full gas tank ready for the continuing trip ahead.

On Saturday, I was able to see the first session on my own at my apartment.  This was pretty nice, because my preference is very little or no conversation or movement during the sessions as this helps me to concentrate and feel the Spirit most profoundly.  Even when I watch on TV, I feel like I should more or less treat the experience as though I were personally in the Conference Center to get the most out of it.  Most people, I've found, don't share my preference for silence and stillness.  I enjoy the feeling of watching with a group, even if they don't share my peculiar views, but sometimes it's nice to be on my own where I can better control external distractions.  I watched the second session with one of my roommates.  That was fun too, and she told me about how she was almost in the Orem Institute Choir that sang for the session, but it didn't work out with her schedule.

I was pretty struck by the running theme in the general Saturday sessions that the world is essentially getting worse and we are going to become more and more unpopular, yet it will become increasingly important that we compassionately and kindly stand for God's standards despite what is accepted by the world.  It seemed like practically every apostle touched on this principle along with several of the others.  It has made me pretty sick at heart over the years to see how many of the good LDS young people I know have expressed support and acceptance for causes, like gay marriage especially, that are not in line with God's commandments.   I know that they do so out of good intentions, but in many ways this just makes me more sad because I feel like that could make it even more likely that the road will end in disbelief or outright apostasy before they even realize what has happened.

My feeling is that marriage is not a right that has been to mankind, but rather a gift.  God has blessed us with this gift for a very specific purpose, for the creation and eternal sustaining of families patterned after His own.  While marriage can and most often does provide personal satisfaction to spouses, that is not the primary purpose.  In fact, every marriage will almost certainly go through times when it provides little or no personal satisfaction to either spouse, but the eternal purpose remains.  In the vast majority of cases, I think that it is those difficult times that will eventually render the marriage stronger when weathered righteously.  If we can only have the eternal perspective in those times to see beyond the difficulties of the moment, we can qualify to receive an eternal well of happiness in the eternities.

Molly wanted to take pictures

The sad truth is, many of us will not enjoy the blessing of marriage in this life.  I myself haven't received that gift from God so far.  I can honestly say that I know how heart-breaking and lonely that can be.  It isn't something I would ever wish on anyone.  Yet at the same time, I also know that it is possible to still be happy and still find fulfillment in mortal life even without that supernal gift.  I hope the Lord will bless me with it soon, but if in His wisdom, He chooses not to, it will not change my knowledge of eternal standards or my resolution to live in accordance to them.  I know that the Lord will bless all those from whom that gift is withheld and make them able to bear it if they rely upon Christ.

With this conviction of God's eternal truth, for me it becomes clear that I cannot in any way condone or support other philosophies espoused by the world on the subject.  I will always do what I can to teach and represent what I know to be true, even if it becomes very unpopular to do so.  This in no way means that I don't respect and love those with differing opinions and hope that they will experience kindness and happiness in their life.  I will do all that I can to help them as children of a loving God to find those things in their lives, but only insofar as it is consistent with the Lord's commandments.  I hope the same courtesy will be extended to me.  I also hope that many of the rising generation in the church will take the messages delivered in Conference to heart and reconsider if necessary their position.

On Saturday night, I watched the Priesthood session streamed live on my computer in my room.  I'm glad they are now making them available in real time to everyone who is interested, as the Priesthood session has long been a standard favorite of mine.  I guess that's partially because they tend to crack down and call the Priesthood to repentance more forcefully, and as I've already said, I always like that because it helps me repent and be better.  I loved Elder Oaks talk and plan to review it carefully to better understand the principles he discussed.

Gerrit dragging the kids...

...and dumping them off afterward

On Sunday, I was able to watch the last two sessions of Conference with Gerrit and Elisabeth's family.  It is a different, but wonderful experience to watch Conference with little children.  Both Miles and Molly were quite good throughout.  I think Conference can be pretty trying for kids.  I remember how interminable each session seemed to be when I was growing up!  Fortunately, watching at home means that they kids can still hear the sessions while also being easily able to do other things as necessary to keep them occupied.  This is a win-win scenario for both the adults and the kids!

There were many good talks, but I think I appreciated Elder Uchtdorf's the most.  I have been impressed with the high-quality thoughts he consistently delivers and I thought his discussion of gratitude was very insightful and uplifting.  I've certainly learned in recent years how gratitude is essential in affliction.  In fact, if anything I think my afflictions make me feel even MORE grateful to the Lord for all I have been given.  The moments when I feel closest to God almost entirely consist of overpowering gratitude to the exclusion of all else.

In between the sessions, I got to play with Miles and Molly.  This mostly involved activities with the big blanket, including "sliding" on it off the ottoman, rolling them into giant burritos or cocoons, giving them "rides" by dragging them around the room on it, and swinging them in it as a giant hammock.  Most of these activities required some pretty exhausting effort on my part, but fortunately Gerrit was able to take over for some of it.  However, both of us were required for the hammock, which left my hands aching when I curled or uncurled them for awhile afterwards simply from gripping so tightly to avoid dropping them!  Despite this, it was still very fun.  I always love seeing the kids.  They are very good children and have almost never given me reason to feel frustrated with their behavior.

I've probably engendered hate by wrapping this present...

...in this paper.  Hope Emily, Joel, and Will will forgive me

After Conference, we had dinner and talked to Mom and Dad before going to see Joel and Emily at the hospital.  Emily went in to have a c-section delivery of their first child, Will, on Saturday.  Although I'm really not technically connected to them, it was nice to be invited to see the baby with the rest of the family.  I do know Elisabeth's family much better than most people know their sibling's in-laws as I've seen them pretty often since Gerrit and Elisabeth got married, especially recently.  Will is a very cute little baby and I was honored to get to hold him after everyone more important had had a chance.  I'm glad that Gerrit and Elisabeth's family will now not be the only one's with children on both sides.  It is better for kids to have some cousins of more similar age.

Overall, it was a great weekend.  I felt the Spirit, learned some good things, and had many uplifting experiences.  I'm grateful that this wonderful opportunity comes not only once, but twice a year.  It is another evidence to me of the Lord's tender mercies!