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!

Life Can Be a Dream

I had a weird dream last night.  Most of the time, I can't remember my dreams.  In the past 6 years,  the large majority of the ones I CAN remember involve somehow returning to my mission and/or being a missionary again. This dream didn't stray from that common theme, but it was an strange variation upon it.

One of the unusual elements of this dream was that I had a companion I knew.  In fact, it was my sister Marinda.  She is currently serving a mission in the Philippines.  I guess that's probably why she showed up in my recurring dream.  When I realized that Marinda was my companion, I had a number of thoughts run through my mind, among them "why did they call us both to the same mission?  Moreover, after having done so, why did our president make us companions?  This must be the first time such a thing ever happened!"  I was in the process of wondering how this strange arrangement was going to work out when the dream moved forward.

I next found myself sitting in a temple foyer desperately trying to get a member to tell me a story about his investigator friend that I somehow knew was vital for our success.  The problem was that this member was both emotional and somewhat reticent with this story, and so it was taking forever for me to coax it out of him, and I was getting quite frustrated.  I was definitely struggling to maintain my missionary calm, despite my impatience.  The situation was all the more maddening because I was aware that we urgently needed this info to make a good decision on how to help our investigator.  Marinda wanted to forget hearing the story and simply go meet our investigator right away.  I felt like we really needed to hear it and was pretty insistent that we stay, so she got mad and left.  Knowing that I'd later have to smooth things over with her made me even more agitated to quickly learn what I needed to know.


It seemed like this scenario dragged on forever with me trying to wheedle the information out any way I could.  I can't even remember if I ever learned what I needed to know as the dream ended.  The funny part was that the member I was talking to was B.J. Novak, as in the guy who played Ryan on The Office, or rather he looked exactly like B.J. Novak though he was definitely a different personality.  I've heard that everyone you see in your dream, even the nameless extras, if you will, have the face of someone you have at least seen before because supposedly your brain can't make up faces.  I guess my brain was just pulling a face from the file, but the weird thing was that I recognized whose face it was, though I also understood he was also a different person. That whole thing added a strange surreal effect.  I think the dream was so vivid because my rational mind was still working and identifying the ridiculous elements of the situation presented though I was still immersed in the dream.


Dreams have always been fascinating to me.  I think there is potentially a lot that can be learned from them, though I also think we don't understand what they mean particularly well for the most part.  Dreaming is an interesting phenomenon that I hope we will continue to learn more about.  I'm not all that sure what this wacky dream meant, though I am fairly sure that my frequent mission dreams indicate how much I miss being a missionary.  I gather it's not a common enough dream to have any "official" interpretation.

Some of my recurring dreams are much more common though.  In fact, there are dreams that I used to have that I don't really have anymore and some that have developed more recently.  When I was a child, my nightmares pretty much always ended up with me getting eaten by something.  I specifically remember a bear and the Hound of Baskervilles from Ghostbusters eating me, but it was always some sort of animal or monster.  Apparently, this isn't a very common dream, but it's thought that maybe it represents parts of your character that you are not happy with.  The other dream I remember having often as a child was alternately flying and sinking while being chased, as if I could fly, just not very well.  Both dreams are common, but not really together, it seems.

It's been quite a while since I had either of those dreams.  Now, a new set of dreams has replaced the childhood ones.   One that I've had more commonly in recent years is that I'm back in high school and the bell rings, but I have no idea where my classes are, leading to panic, naturally.  This is supposed to indicate career stress or uncertainty.  This seems like a plausible explanation to me, as I've certainly experienced both stress and uncertainty about my career.  I also get the teeth falling out dream fairly often, which is supposed to indicate various types of anxiety.  Sometimes in dreams I look down and discover that I'm not wearing any pants, but typically no one else seems to pay attention, so I just continue on my business to play it off like normal.  This basically is interpreted as feeling vulnerable, exposed, or afraid of judgment, though no one else noticing indicates that those fears are unfounded.  Not only have I tried to pass off pantslessness in a dream, I've also often been performing with a dance group without knowing the steps and tried to make the dance up as I go too.  I guess my subconscious is good at making the best of a bad situation!

My recurring dreams have evolved since I was a kid, but at least my most common recurring dream has gone from my nightmares to something more positive.  It's still sad for me, when I wake up from my most frequent dream of being a missionary, to realize that it isn't real, but it's much better than waking up terrified.  This morning, I woke mostly feeling bemused!