Last week was spring break for me at the U and so Heather took the week off of work and we went down to St. George for a couple days. We had an awesome time playing and relaxing. We got new tennis raquets for Christmas so we got our first use out of those and had a blast. We swam and sat by the pool so Heather could get some sun, we did some shopping, and we ate some good food at the Pizza Factory. We came home on Thursday and then on Friday went up to Midway Utah to our friends cabin. We played games, ate food, watched movies and had an awesome time. With all the nice warm weather we had last week we started to get the itch that comes every year at this time. This time of year is always hard because it is is sad to say goodbye to the ski season, but exciting anticipating the coming summer. I started thinking about biking and how I sold my bike last fall, in order to get new skis that are awesome, and I was going to miss it this summer. Heather then suggested I use a bit of our tax return and get a bike, honestly it was her idea. So I started lookin and I it, the one! I bought it off of ksl from a guy who is a bike mechanic at Outdoors Unlimited in Provo, so this bike is awesome condition. I am stoked!
Looking for a place to live is the most frustrating and annoying thing ever! Our contract at the Foothill Apartments us up on March 31st and we are going to move because we don't want to spend as much as we are, and the rent is going up. So we started looking for a place, we found a basement in Sandy and we set up a time to go look at it the next day. The morning of our appointment the owner texted Heather and informed her that someone had just rented it. That was the start to our long search. We have gone and looked at a handful of places and they are all old and crappy. Everything we find is either way over priced or old and ugly. If anybody knows anybody who knows anybody that has a decent looking basement apartment or something let us know.
Throughout history, the Lord has commanded His people to build temples. Temples are literally houses of the Lord. They are holy places of worship where individuals make sacred promises with God.
In response to HBO’s recent decision the Church has again shared this video along with the following request: “Please consider posting this video to your Facebook profile, blog, or personal website and/or sharing it directly with family and friends”.
I have seen a lot of people hopping on bandwagons, spreading emails about boycotting HBO, and other similar things. The Church has taken an official stand on the matter, and that simply, is do nothing. From LDS.org
Certainly Church members are offended when their most sacred practices are misrepresented or presented without context or understanding. Last week some Church members began e-mail chains calling for cancellations of subscriptions to AOL, which, like HBO, is owned by Time Warner. Certainly such a boycott by hundreds of thousands of computer-savvy Latter-day Saints could have an economic impact on the company. Individual Latter-day Saints have the right to take such actions if they choose.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution does not call for boycotts. Such a step would simply generate the kind of controversy that the media loves and in the end would increase audiences for the series. As Elder M. Russell Ballard and Elder Robert D. Hales of the Council of the Twelve Apostles have both said recently, when expressing themselves in the public arena, Latter-day Saints should conduct themselves with dignity and thoughtfulness.
Not only is this the model that Jesus Christ taught and demonstrated in his own life, but it also reflects the reality of the strength and maturity of Church members today. As someone recently said, “This isn’t 1830, and there aren’t just six of us anymore.” In other words, with a global membership of thirteen and a half million there is no need to feel defensive when the Church is moving forward so rapidly. The Church’s strength is in its faithful members in 170-plus countries, and there is no evidence that extreme misrepresentations in the media that appeal only to a narrow audience have any long-term negative effect on the Church.
(I like that last part, the church is big enough and strong enough that no matter what the world does, it will continue growing. Joseph Smith said,
“The Standard of Truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing. Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame. But the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and dependent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, until the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the Great Jehovah will say, ‘The work is done.")
Last night, Friday night, we had a great opportunity to go and listen to the founder of OGIO. He was just released from being a bishop in the same stake that Heather's dad is a bishop of a singles ward and the singles ward had a small dinner and invited him to come and talk. Any event which includes food is usually worth it to me so we decided to go. We had enchiladas, which I love, and then Mike Pratt, the founder of OGIO, spent an hour and a half sharing how the company of OGIO and his life. He talked about how it got started and how it has been a part of his life and how the gospel has made everything worth it. It was really neat to hear a millionaire talk about how he felt all he has is really nothing and he loves the gospel. He shared how he has always been an inventor and designer and how he knew early on that was his niche, and his strength. Out of high school he had a really good insurance job but he new it wasn't for him and he would make it in that kind of career. As a 19 year old he designed a pop open cup holder for cars, since they didn'thave them in cars in the 80's, and how he flew to Hong Kong by himself and found sources to build it and everything, then how Coke and Mcdonalds both talked to him about using his new pop out cup holder. Then after a mission and getting married he was at the gym one day and wondered why duffle bags didn't fit in the gym lockers, you always had to stuff them in and stand them up funny, so he designed a rectangle taller bag to fit in a locker, got a loan from someone in his ward to start manufacturing them and within 2 years they were selling 8 million dollars worth of locker bags, and that was the start of OGIO. Since then as we all know, OGIO has grown to a huge company with lots of different bags and packs and golf bags all with different little features like the magnitized duffle bag handles and things like that that have been creating by Mike and have patents. After talking about his business and his start he talked about how as a young man he wasn't a member of the church and how he found it, went on a mission and it has made life worth it. He talked about people he knows who are owners of huge million dollar companies and they have lost everything, but for him the church has been a solid platform and all the inventions and patents he has really arent what life is all about.
I am now a big OGIO fan!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
I love to travel, and love to see the world. I have always loved to go on spontaneous trips to southern Utah and other places like that. Starting with my mission to the Dominican Republic I got the urge to travel more than a little bit further south and to see the world. If I had the money to travel here are the top 5 places I would want to go:
New Zealand
PERU
Belize
Africa
and of course, it wouldn't be me without a ski trip to
