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Monday, November 30, 2009

Silver Lining My Eye!


The water main broke just outside of my house last week. I got home from work to find a gaping hole in my yard where the water had pushed it's way up through the yard and the remains of a bush that had gotten in the way. My wife ran to a neighbor's house and got them to shut off the main valve, but I already could imagine how much water had already ran through that pipe before it was shut off.

Now, my first reaction is usually me throwing my hands in the air and screaming, very dramatically, "Why me?" But, I've been working on that. So, despite my stress I did my very best to just let the situation flow. My wife is so very good at it, honestly, she is, people should pay her to give them classes. She says it's because she has a bad memory that everything just flows past her, but I think she just has everything in the correct perspective.

Anyway, so first thing was first. Assess the damage. I dug a hole, following the hole the water had created. After about an hour, maybe two I found the pipe. I guess at this point calling it a pipe is using the word loosely. At this point the "pipe" was more an example of rust collection. The neighbor (a Non-member by-the-way) that rushed over to shut the water off when my wife needed him told me that he could patch it, but, by the way it looked I would be lucky if it didn't just break in a couple of days someplace else. So we started calling plumbers and excavators to get bids. Thankfully the kids were in school still and we have a limited supply of bottled water in our food storage. Bids ranged from $1,500 to $2,400. I really wasn't surprised, I went with the guy that gave us the bid for $1,500, more because he used words like "That's my cost" and "I won't make a dime on labor" and so forth. He was the local ward member the people in the ward went to for things like this so I did the same. My neighbor came over a little later and asked how it was going and what the bids were. When I told him, he said that I was being taken for a ride, and that he could recommend a guy that could do it for $700, and he did.

The new guy isn't even in the yellow pages but as promised he gave me a bid of $700 and I took it. The next day he showed up as promised and began his work. Along the way he discovered that some of the pipe had already been replaced with copper and that he thought that we should just replace the bad pipe. He also discovered the old septic tank and an old sess pit, but he said that we could just continue to ignore those. Suffice it to say at the end of the day we only paid $500 for the whole job. I was very pleased.

Now for the moral of the story. First, I am a pessimist, I still don't like the idea that at the end of the day we had to pay $500. But, it certainly was a lot better then what the other guys told me and I would bet that any of the others would have had me pull out or fill the old septic tank and sess pit. This simple excavator was straight forward and didn't want to have me pay any more than I wanted to, no pressure, no fluff, just get the water back on. It's times like this that makes it hard to even see the black cloud past the silver lining.

Oh yeah, just because the guy is in your ward doesn't mean he's giving you the best price. He is first and foremost a business man.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Random Missionary Memories

More Random Missionary Moments. I am going to warn you ahead of time, they aren't funny or uplifting. Unless of course human suffering uplifts you, under which of course, you should probably see a doctor.

Within the first couple of months in the mission, my trainer and I went to see a family. Now if you know anything about the Latin culture you know that they will almost always offer you some kind of food or drink. Sure the mission rules were that we shouldn't eat or drink anything down there that we weren't sure of, but I honestly believe that the church makes those rules just to pacify parents that we aren't going to get sick. In other words, we would eat or drink almost anything put in front of us and prayed that Lord would bless us not to get sick. Most of the time he did bless us, I often wished he would turn the cow stomach into something I could stomach, but alas, those prayers remained unanswered.

When we went to see this family they served us a drink. A slightly orange hot water. I drank it and thanked the mother, she was a single mother of four kids. She replied to me, but since my Spanish could only be described as pre-pre-preschool level I didn't understand. My companion was a Peruvian and didn't speak English so he couldn't explain it to me right then. After we left I asked him what it was we drank, being the green missionary I was I was slightly afraid that it was tea. He explained to me that it was sugar water. Just water with a bit of sugar? Yep. That was all they could offer, but they offered it anyway. The mother had a small loom that she would make rugs with and that's how she would pay for food, but that was all she could do. I didn't realize it at first, but the room we sat in when we talked with her was the only room in what can only be described as a hovel.

Some months in the mission field, and with considerable improvement to my Spanish. I was stuck with a companion that was nearing the end of his mission and was already thinking of home, we call that Trunky. One day we were out looking for contacts, in my mind we were, in his mind we were strolling through the park. There were a group of kids playing soccer, for whatever reason one of the kids tripped and ran straight into my leg, then fell to the ground. He didn't really make an effort to get up. My companion knelt beside the kid and picked him up. I was just a dumb kid and my mind was conjuring up lessons of CPR. My companion sat the kid down on a bench and told the kid to sit there while we looked for his mother. No sooner did my companion release the child did he fall straight forward, flat on his face without making any movement to stop his fall, to the concrete. My companion was quick and picked the kid up immediately. I looked at the kid's face, it had the expected scratches, but what I didn't expect was a non-mucus white liquid coming out of his nose. Within seconds did his mother and a neighbor run up to us. The mother was freaking out, cursing at us she ripped her child from my companion's arms. My companion told her that she needed take him to a doctor, she cried and muttered that she couldn't afford it and that she'd take him home. The neighbor stepped in and said that it wasn't like it used to be, and that she could take her son to the doctor and that they didn't charge for children. I will always remember her face, the hopelessness disappearing and hope peaking through. She didn't believe it at first, but the neighbor insisted and flagged down a taxi. I never did hear what happened.

I feel ill when people say that they "understand" poverty. Or when they say that poor people just need to get a job. There are times I can't sleep at night thinking about some of the people I've seen. I sit here with a computer in front of me with high-speed internet, while I know that there is a family that has had their livelihood taken away from them and there is no one that will plead their case. I get to decide what I eat, while some have to wonder if they are going to be able to. The worst part is, I have seen their faces, I know their voices and they are my friends.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Smaller Moments that change you.

Growing up in Utah was great and at the same time bad. Great because I never felt threatened, except for that time a car pulled up next to me and a guy asked me to come over and give him directions to some place; of course I told him to buzz off, thanks McGruff! Bad because I never really got to see a world that I didn't even know existed. Okay, I am probably generalizing, and it happens to every kid, but I like to think I am special and it only happened to me.

Anywho, my mission was a big wake up call on a lot of things. Most of which I won't talk about right now, but in the future. Even then I didn't really get it. It wasn't until a few months after I got home off my mission did I realize some things.

For some reason I didn't like the idea of donating blood. Upon reflection I think to myself that I didn't really want a person sticking needles in me and so I searched for rationalizations to not donate. My rationalization was that we donate blood for free and the Red Cross and others turn around and sell it for buko bucks. No way am I going to contribute to a system where they sell something that they get for free. Not once during my whole life did I find anyone that would say I was wrong. Sure there was a person or to that said they would do it anyway, but on the whole I was never challenged. One day while I was working a friend of mine and I got onto that discussion. I spewed out my very well practiced speech of being a moral human being and not supporting a greedy system. After which he responded, "well, I think it's a karma thing. I did my part, what they do has nothing to do with me."

That stuck with me. For some reason it had never occurred to me that I should do the right thing no matter what others did about it. Salvation is personal after all. I don't think God will throw me down to hell because I gave money to a charity that was corrupt, but we will be very disappointed if I didn't give money to charity at all. I gave blood at the very next opportunity, although it lead to a lot of laughs and incriminating pictures. I now look for more opportunities to give blood, I don't go as out of my way as I should, but then again there are a lot of things I don't do as well as I should. At least the intention is there, let's see if I can do anything with it.

Monday, November 9, 2009

More Moments that Change you

Like many Utah born Mormons. I've have very little exposure to widespread sin. Or what we consider sin. Alcohol, Porn (although Utah is the biggest subscriber to online porn), Coffee and the like. It's easy to grow up with an idea that people that do these things are depraved, or like I thought some time ago, were just plain evil.

When I was courting my wife I went down to Peru for a time so we could actually spend some real time together. She is related to half of the town were she lives. It's a small town. One night her "Brother-in-law" came to meet her new boyfriend. (I put 'brother-in-law' in quotes because he's old enough to be her father, did I mention that my mother-in-law and my father-in-law are separated by almost 40 years?) Anyway, he had a beer bottle in his hand and had just started drinking. So, he had a buzz but wasn't drunk. I didn't want to talk to him, I just looked at him as if he offended me. My soon-to-be wife pulled me aside and told me, "Why aren't you talking to him?" I responded, "He's drinking" as if that was all that needed to be said. "Yea, and?" was her rebuttal. I was dumbfounded, I didn't understand. Shouldn't she try and hold people up to her standards, shouldn't she let people know that it's no okay to drink?

Being the intuitive person she is she explained, "Look, he's not Mormon. Drinking doesn't make him a bad person. He is very nice and has never hurt anyone. People drink, it's part of the culture, it's something they do. I could isolate them or myself from them, or I could accept them for who they are, just like they accept me for who I am. Please, just talk to him." and I did.

As I look back, I can't even realize why it never occurred to me before. People are people. Just because you don't hold the same ideals, principles, religion or anything else, doesn't make you a bad person. I can have fun with a person who drinks, just like a person that drinks can have fun with someone who doesn't.

I really don't know how to put it into words properly, but I will try. Jesus went among the poor and downtrodden inviting them to repentance and offering solace. He chided those that should have known better. He made people feel at home, he made them want to be like him. He didn't go around calling people sinners.

Well, I really don't know if I got my point across, but there you go.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Moments that change you.

Throughout my life I have had only a couple of moments that have really changed me. All of the ones I can remember are the ones that have changed me for the good. Just for simplicity I will leave it to be understood that Marriage/Kids and similar experiences go without saying. I'm talking about the ones that change your view of the world.

While I was in the MTC and trying to become the best missionary I could be despite my groups efforts to the contrary. One night all the missionaries when to the auditorium for some talk of some kind, (come on, it's been ten years, you can't expect me to remember). It's understood as a rule that all the missionaries wear their suit jackets. It was winter at the time and overall there really wasn't a problem. Well, this particular day I sat next to a guy who didn't have is jacket on and was wiping his head every little once and a while with a handkerchief. I asked his if he was sick, because it looked like he was hot. He said that he wasn't hot, and in fact he couldn't tell. 'Why?' was the question that came out of my mouth uninvited. He then explained to me that he was recovering from brain cancer, and that when they operated they took out the part of your brain that controls your body temperature, in other words, he was cold-blooded. I asked him if they got it all and if he was going to be okay, he didn't know.

"Then why come out on a mission if you don't even know how long you are going to live?" I asked.

"Because there are more important things..."

Those words must have turned to fire and burned themselves in my brain, because to this day I can hear him say it. I never learned his name, because his words effected me so much I just sat there dumbfounded.

My whole life I have tried to make sense of those words and apply them. What are things that are more important then living? And as I pondered that question I never seem to run out of answers.