To Washington and Back Again

As soon as the spring term ended I found myself on a road-trip, alone. I had planned on driving to Tacoma to do two weeks of EFY, but I hadn't found anyone that needed a ride when I was headed up there. So it was approximately 14 hours of just me and my camera from Provo to Tacoma. By the time I hit Oregon I decided I better actually use one of the rest stops and take a nap if I wanted to finish the trip alive. By the end of the trip, however, I found that pulling off the interstate to snap some photos was more rejuvenating then the nap in Oregon was.

Well, I showed up alive to the University of Puget Sound (aka UPS; an acronym that seems vaguely familiar) in Tacoma and quickly made some awesome friends with the other counselors. We tried going to a Mariners game but all the cheap seats were sold out by the time we got there, so we took a ferry ride instead.

EFY was fun, and exhausting. The kids were cool and made it easy to have a lot of fun. I wish I had the time to do more weeks of EFY, but alas, there is a movie that needs to be finished...

I spent the fourth of July with my Uncle Dale and family before leaving Seattle. It was a blast! We jumped off a yacht in Lake Union, and saw a firework show in Bellevue.

The trip back to Utah included a lovely visit to Emma's house in Spokane, and then a beautiful drive through Montana (it was actually the first time I've ever been to Spokane and Montana). The drive back wasn't nearly as hard because my friend Mitch came along.

Overall, Washington was great! I had some good times, made new friends, saw new places, and now it's good to be back.

Heriberto

About 2 weeks ago I met a woman named Blanca while I was working in the Chicago area. When she found out that I was from Utah she started telling me all about how she was living there and wanted to go back as soon as she sold her house in Illinois. She fell in love with the mountains it seems. She mentioned to me that her 17 year-old son was going to head back to Utah to go to school in Salt Lake since his dad was still living there. I almost blurted out that I'd give him a ride if he needed, but cut myself short because I thought it might be weird since I had only met her a couple of minutes before and I had never met her son. Anyway, I left and continued to knock doors in the neighborhood giving it no more thought.
The next day I found myself back on the same street, when I noticed that a little girl was following me around. She finally built up the courage, I guess, and came up to me to ask if I would come back to her house because her mom (Blanca) wanted to talk to me. When I got there Blanca came out and asked if I could give her son a ride to Utah on my way back to school. I said "yes" and realized that it had been a spiritual prompting the day before that I hadn't quite followed through with. I wasn't going to hesitate on this second opportunity. She told me her son's name was Heriberto, but that he went by Eddy.
Well, the day came to hop in my car and drive back to Utah and I still hadn't met Heriberto. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous (I had a dream one night that I pick him up, but then when we got onto the freeway he pulled a gun on me because he didn't want to go back to Utah and I had to drive him somewhere else instead). By the time I got to his house and helped put his luggage in my car my fears had been dispelled. He was just a nice little Mexican boy that was grateful to be getting a ride.
He wasn't very talkative, but I eventually discovered he spoke good English. I told him he was in charge of finding music to listen to on the ipod. He did a good job as the DJ and despite the lack of conversation for most of the trip he was good company and helped the drive go by faster. We had a good time getting 50 cent hot dogs in Des Moines, listening to Brian Reagan in Nebraska, and even going to church Sunday morning in Cheyenne. By the end of our journey he had really opened up and started telling me all about his family, things he had been through, and stuff he worried about. When I dropped him off at his dad's place, his dad's expression of gratitude in his face made me thankful I hadn't passed up the opportunity. I gave them my Book of Mormon I had in my backpack as something to remember me by and then went on my way. I walked away from my roadtrip with Eddy feeling like I had benifited the most from the experience. It definitely wasn't any kind of inposition to have him along, if anything it was an unanticipated blessing.

Nauvoo

I send out my apologies to the select few of you who actually read my blog. I've been out of the blogging loop for more than a month now. Doing door to door sales can be quite tedious and it's about that point in the summer that the thought runs through the back of my mind whether it's really worth it. The pain in my lower back is screaming, "It's not worth it!" But I remind my back that it's really not that bad of a job and that the solution to lower back pain is exercising my core muscles and stretching more often. Anyway, with this summer job weighing down on me, like I knew it would, my roommates and I agreed that it would be a good idea to take off a couple of days and get away. So on Sunday morning (July 13th) we hopped in the car and drove to Nauvoo where we planned to stay through Tuesday night so we could see the Nauvoo pageant. I mean, seriously, can you live in Illinois all summer and not take advantage of the opportunity to see Nauvoo? Well, about 30 miles from Nauvoo we ran into a detour which we hoped wouldn't be too long (after all we wanted to make it to the 2 o'clock sacrament meeting in Nauvoo). Well the detour ended up adding an extra 100 miles to the trip, which is not fun if you forgot to take a bathroom break before you started the trip... In the end, we made it safe and sound but we were about a half an hour late for church.
The only hotel room we could find available in Nauvoo was a room with bunk beds that could sleep nine. We took advantage of the extra beds and made the room into one big bunk bed fort! Now that's something you'd never get to do on vacation with mom and dad around. Room service I'm sure was shocked when they went in to give us fresh towels.
Nauvoo was spectacular and the pageant was amazing! I'm glad we went, it really was the perfect break. The spirit of those early saints is there in that city they built and loved. It is inspiring to see and think about what they left behind to follow the prophet of God across the continent. My life has definitely been blessed by their sacrifice. Here are some pictures from my trip, so enjoy!