To Tattoo Or Not To Tattoo

I’m pretty intolerant to many things in life and tattoos are no exception, especially on women (Gross!). I’ll admit that I’m somewhat less bigoted toward tattoos than say cigarette smoking or taking the Lord’s name in vain. For instance, I don’t mind so much a tattoo that is very subtle and inconspicuous (and small). But since I absolutely love humor these two tattoos make me LOL a bit. The first is big, distasteful, gross and I would never!

The other one is small, subtle and portrays my sense of humor to a tee (apparently it does to my brother Webb too). Should I go for it?

Blast From The Past (And Looking Forward)

We are getting excited for a particular wedding down in GA involving two very dear families, in just 10 days time. The exciting thing for us is that we lived in the Allatoona ward with the bride's family (Megan Ensign) for several years (Tracy Ensign was Cathleen's visiting teacher and Jonathan Ensign was my home teacher), and then moved into the Sandy Plains ward with the groom's family (Aaron Young) and became very close to them over the several years that we were there. We feel like we are family members to both sides of this matrimony. We knew both these people and their families before they knew each other, and in fact, my wife may have even meddled a bit (as only Mormons know how to do) in causing these two young people to become acquainted (shhh, I didn't say a word about that).

The Ensigns: Conner, Ansley, Megan, Tracy, Jonathan

So it is appropriate that we make the trek there to be with them and to see all of these many wonderful people that we've not seen in 5+ years. We are so excited about that.

The Youngs: Kevin, Adam, Kristen, Daniel, Phil, Jodie, Aaron (still not 100% sure on who is who with the twins, sorry - stop looking so similar!)

We got reconnected with the Youngs through blogging thanks to announcements about this big day. Cathleen has been regularly monitoring the Young blogs and 2 days ago someone - Sarah (Nagel) Wade found Kristen Young and that was like a big score because Sarah had blog links to many other young people that we knew. I taught a Sunday School class that I absolutely loved and I have now touched base with all but one of the kids in this picture below or at least their families (I haven't found Josh Markham - middle back row, where are you Josh?)

Tory (Bishop) Nichols, Kevin Young, Sarah (Jett) ?, Josh Markham, Ben Nagel, Seth Mcleod, Scott Larsen and the old guy

So I've learned about marriages, spouses and babies with these young people and it's all good stuff. This new info discovery is all so timely too since we will be down there next week and will be reminiscing with old friends and family (yes my wife's sister Irene now lives there, married to my best friend Barron from my early Ricks college days - that union is a whole different blog story, but again one of those Baker meddling efforts gone well).

We are sooooo excited to see everyone!


Irene and Barron Smith

Home Teaching

My sister-in-law Theresa's blog prompted me to post this.

Due to Gregory's new atheistic beliefs and desires to become inactive in the church, I found myself without a home teaching companion. I home teach the Bishop so he told me to go ahead and start bringing Christopher, who is a Deacon (normally Teachers - ages 14-16 and Priests 17+ home teach with their dads). Christopher has gone with me a few times now and he's starting to understand what home teaching is all about. Gregory was OK with home teaching at first but he soon got tired of the repetition of sharing the same message with all 3 families (we always do it all in one night which is good). I've been trying to vary the message with Christopher so it isn't as boring but that just puts more burden on me, but that's OK. Gregory was always pushing me to leave after the first 5 minutes. So, I'm expecting similar from Christopher, I just don't know when it will get to that.



So we're at the Bishop's last Sunday and Christopher kicks my foot and tells me we need to leave now (this is after about 25 minutes so he was pretty much on target). That was perfect because the Bishop got the cue and cut us loose. The message was given and we were just rambling at that point.

At our next appointment, I gave a short message (different than the one at the Bishop's) and then we did the small talk thing. Christopher kicked my foot again and I looked at him, he said, "were getting off topic". I'm cracking up looking at him because this is exactly what his mother would be saying to me if she were my companion. I said that we were finished with the message and just doing small talk now. He said, "oh".

We left soon thereafter and arrived at our final visit, the Hazelgrens. Christopher goes to school with the younger boy Ryan (who is also a Deacon) and Ryan always tries to make Christopher laugh (successfully). Usually during the prayer or the entire message, Christopher and Ryan are cracking up. The rest of the Hazelgrens are very patient and understanding. Now I understand why we typically wait for these young priesthood holders to become Teacher's age before they go home teaching. Christopher likes to go to the Hazelgren's, he thinks brother Hazelgren is a crack up.



As we were departing, brother Hazelgren walks us out to the porch and stops and says, "over the past few days we've had a wood pecker pecking on our glass storm door." He said, "I'd go to answer the front door and just as I'd open the door the wood pecker would fly off". Then he would return and do the same thing again and again. Brother Hazelgren thought maybe some pranksters had trained the bird to do that. Their door handle is one of those horizontal lever handles and so the bird just perches there and knocks. He then pointed down at about 6-7 bird poops and said, not only did they train him to ding dong (knock) ditch, they also trained him to poop all over our porch. Of course brother Hazelgren said this with a complete serious look on his face and we beheld the piles of bird poop confirming his story and Christopher burst into laughter and ran to the car because he couldn't contain his laughter. It was pretty funny!

The moral of this story, cats do have a purpose in life, sometimes! Where's my FMZ9?

This Monkey Gone To Heaven

This is a great song

Monkey Gone To Heaven - The Pixies


Read more about this "monkey gone to heaven" Here (Para. 2 Charlie)

April Fool's!

In the spirit of April Fool's Day, I thought I'd share a prank that I was involved in on my mission in Argentina. Before I explain, I should share a few facts that will help appreciate the prank:

-Argentina is predominately Catholic and it is not uncommon to see shrines with hundreds and maybe even thousands of candles surrounding a statue or picture of the virgin Mary. It is their custom to pray to the virgin Mary in this fashion to intercede to the Father in their behalf.

-Mormons believe that there should not be any engraven images before the Lord God and that we are only to pray to our Father in Heaven in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. To do otherwise would be to worship false idols.

-Joseph Smith was a latter day prophet called of God in the early 1800's to restore Christ's true church to the inhabitants of the earth after it had been lost with the death of the Apostles who held the authoritative priesthood. He is a prophet like Abraham or Moses, he is a man and not a God or a Savior.

-Mormon missionaries going to a foreign country attend a culture class once per week for 8 weeks as part of their (MTC) missionary training center experience to learn about the culture of the country that they will serve in. For instance, I learned that it is not strange to see Argentine men kiss each other on the cheek in greeting, and likewise that an abrazo (hug) between men is perfectly acceptable when greeting and bidding farewell.

-The MTC is pretty grueling and sleep deprived missionaries nodding off is quite common. You want to see major head bobbing, attend an MTC Sunday devotional!

The prank: I was part of a small 6 missionary district where we had a few Argies (Argentines that didn't speak any English) and a few North Americans. We got a newbie "greenie" from the States, Elder Sudweeks and he was assigned to an argie to make up one of the companionships in our district, and this was his first time to one of our district meetings. The other North American, Elder Stan Neilson was from San Diego, a bit of a prankster and our fearless district leader. He set up a picture of Joseph Smith with a dozen or two candles at the base surrounding it. Elder Neilson called us in and proceeded to ask Elder Sudweeks to offer an opening prayer to Joseph Smith to invite the spirit to our meeting. Elder Sudweeks did not understand, he became very uncomfortable with this request and he looked at the rest of us for enlightenment. It probably didn't help that I was blowing snot bubbles out my nose trying to retain my hysteria but I was able to conceal it enough to carry on the charade. As much as Elder Neilson and I (the only two North Americans that spoke his native tongue) tried to convince him that we learned this in the MTC as part of our culture class to behave more like the Argentines and "hadn't he been paying attention or did fall asleep during that part???" We did have him questioning himself, but in the end he said, "one of you guys can do it but I'm not going to do it". By then, we were all laughing uncontrollably.

I don't expect non-LDS folks to find much humor in this, there is a certain LDS culture and older members tend to understand things like seasoned missionaries being known to play pranks on newbies. I just thought it was worth sharing in light of April 1st.

This is a picture of my MTC District taken Halloween day 1982. The wild ties were our costume for our Halloween day district photo. They conveniently set the mood well too for an April Fool's day silly blog picture, especially Elder Anderson in the front with his pocket protector and pants hiked up around his chest. To know them is to love them.



Mitch Palmer, Kelly Larson, Tom Ford, Greg Anderson, me, Steve Fowler

Can You Laugh Without Smiling?

My son Gregory shared this with me. People that can do it don't look like they're genuinely laughing... You be the judge.



After watching this video clip, it's probably better that we smile when we laugh, else we look like laughing zombies that need to be institutionalized. Most people on youtube couldn't even fake it.



So,what do you think, is it possible to have a genuine laugh without smiling? Me thinks no! And thank goodness for that!