Weber County Fair

Wendy, Colby, and I went to the Weber County Fair yesterday. If you brought a can of food for the Utah food bank, you got in for $1.

This is a picture of a capuchin monkey. In the lower left hand of a cage is a ring tailed lemur. The lemur looked just like King Julian from the Penguins of Madagascar cartoons.

Here's Colby trying to ride the bull. I think that his left hand is supposed to be waving in the air and not desperately trying to hold onto the back of the bull. He actually does really well on mechanical bulls.

The sand castles I made at the beach never looked this good.

Here's the rest of the sand art creation. It's still a work in progress.

One-year-old white tiger. they also had a Bengal tiger, a mountain lion, and several other cool animals.

Pioneer Day

The significance of Pioneer Days in Utah.
The first company of Mormon pioneers, led by Brigham Young, officially entered the Valley of the Great Salt Lake on 24 July 1847. For Latter-day Saints, this event has come to signal the founding of a new homeland for the purpose of establishing their earthly Zion.

In all of United States history, few people have suffered for their religious convictions as did the early Latter-day Saints. Because of the rapid growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and what many contemporary religionists viewed as the heretical doctrine of living prophets and modern revelation, many outsiders viewed Latter-day Saints with suspicion and contempt. During the first two decades of the Church's existence, Latter-day Saints repeatedly experienced the cycle of migration, settlement (including purchasing the lands they settled in), and expulsion. Within the span of 17 years, the fast-growing body of Latter-day Saints moved en masse from the Finger Lakes region of western New York State (1830-1831), to Kirtland, Ohio (1831-1838), Jackson County, Missouri (1831-1839) and Commerce/Nauvoo, Illinois (1839-1848), where their prophet, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob. In the dead of winter 1846, the Latter-day Saints once again abandoned their homes and began the long, hard trek to the Rocky Mountains, where they would at last find welcome refuge.

Extermination Order
Following eight years of convergence and settlement by thousands of Latter-day Saint converts in northern Missouri, tensions with neighboring communities reached a climax. On 27 October 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs signed one of the most heinous documents in American history, his Mormon "extermination order," declaring, "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated, or driven from the State, if necessary for the public peace" (quoted in History of the Church, 3:175). This military directive called for the forced mid-winter exodus from Missouri of approximately 10,000 men, women and children from their own farms, homes, and lands. On 25 June 1976, Missouri Governor Christopher S. Bond issued an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order, noting its legal invalidity and formally apologizing in behalf of the state of Missouri for the suffering it had caused the Latter-day Saints. By the fall of 1845, preparations for the exodus were well under way; the proposed departure date would be, in the words of Brigham Young, "as soon as the grass grows" (quoted in Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail, [1964], 38) in the following spring. But the mobs wouldn't rest. On 4 February 1846, in the heart of a Midwestern winter so cold and bitter the Mississippi River froze over; the Latter-day Saints were driven from their homes and lands down a street which came to be known as the "Street of Tears" and into the unknown mystery of the western frontier. Arrival in the Salt Lake Valley had a special meaning to each emigrant. For many it signified the end of their arduous journey. They had endured to the end of the Mormon Trail, and their participation in that memorable trek gave metaphor and meaning to life itself. Even for those who were not Latter-day Saints, the first glimpse of this broad, open valley after such hardship provided a deeply emotional moment. The trek from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley was 1,297 miles. Many of the pioneers made the trek on foot while pushing handcarts that held their few meager belongings.
1 in 6 perished along the route. Despite the trials and hardships of the forced trek, the Latter Day Saints remained upbeat. In the evenings they would gather together and frequently sang hymns. Come, Come, Ye Saints became their anthem on their journey to the Salt Lake Valley.

Come, come, ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
Tis better far for us to strive our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell -
All is well! All is well!

Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?
'Tis not so; all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we'll have this tale to tell-
All is well! All is well!

We'll find the place which God for us prepared,
Far away, in the West,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid;
There the saints, will be blessed.
We'll make the air, with music ring, Shout praises to our God and King;
Above the rest these words we'll tell -
All is well! All is well!

And should we die before our journey's through,
Happy day! All is well!
We then are free from toil and sorrow, too;
With the just we shall dwell!
But if our lives are spared again to see the Saints their rest obtain,
Oh, how we'll make this chorus swell-
All is well! All is well!

Colin and Becca wedding pics

On Friday, May 14th, 2010 Colin and Becca sealed their love for each other eternally by getting married in the Bountiful Temple. It was a beautiful ceremony. Here are some pictures from the reception, which was held at Becca's parents' home.

Colin and Becca

Colin's siblings, Colby, Rhys, Becca and Colin, and Aubrey

Becca, Natalia (Rhys' wife), and Rhys having fun

Colin and Becca cutting the cake. Wendy made the cake.

Immigration issues

The socialist...er, liberal agenda

I received this via e-mail this morning:

"This clip is about as blatant as a Liberal can get. What she said was The Truth, accidentally, and notice that when she realized what she revealed to the public and the news media, it stopped her dead in her own tracks for a long moment. BUT -- it was too late.

Just hope the country wakes up in the 2010 elections!!!... She leaked out: Obama's Scary Agenda."

Want to live longer?

I found this article on-line this morning and thought I'd share.

SALT LAKE CITY -- It's been known that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a longer life expectancy, but even researchers are surprised at how much longer Church members live than the general population.

Researchers at UCLA are constantly reviewing data from a 25-year-long survey that followed actively-practicing LDS Church members in California starting in late 1979.

Professors James Enstrom and Lester Breslow found that members who don't smoke, attend church weekly, have 12 years of education and are married had the lowest total death rates and the longest life expectancies ever documented.

"The life expectancy for the males was 84 years, and for the females it was 86 years," Enstrom said.

That's more than five years longer for women and nearly 10 years longer for man than the national average.

Enstrom says Church members have been hearing this for a long time, but the rest of the world hasn't as much.

"None of this had ever been done in a scientific journal until I started working on it in the ‘70s," he said.

Enstrom says he expected a lack of cigarette smoking to be the biggest reason for the longer life expectancy, but he says that would only add a few years to someone's life.

Both authors believe the findings suggest a model for substantial disease prevention in the general population.

Transform Your Loss

I was recently asked if I would read and then write a review of Ligia B. Houben's new book, Transform Your Loss - Your Guide to Strength and Hope.

As the title suggests the book deals with how to cope with loss in any of its many forms. She has degrees in Psychology and Religious Studies from the University of Miami. She did graduate studies in Gerontology and Loss and Healing. As a certified thanatologist and a certified grief counselor, she is very qualified to discuss the issues of loss and how to overcome.

The book starts off with Ligia explaining the various types of losses that people suffer: loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of health, divorce, etc. A large portion of the book retells the stories of those that have suffered a loss and how they learned to cope and overcome.

Ligia includes practical exercises for the reader to complete.

There is much to like about Transform Your Loss. I enjoyed reading real experiences from real people. It gives the feeling of being in a large group therapy meeting and could encourage those struggling to actually go and find a group meeting for strength and support.

The book was originally written in Spanish. Additionally, it is self published. If I have any areas to cite that I didn't like, it was the utter lack of editing. typos, and misplaced words that can be found every few pages. If I was reading the book to help me I might overlook the frequent misuses of the English language. However, reading it as a critique the frequent errors were a challenge.

If you would like more information about the author or the book please go here.