Lessons learned on the mission

I think that today I'll talk a bit more about lessons that I've learned on my mission.  It's been a good two years. (Well, just short of two years, but who's counting?)  I've served in around seven different east coast cities, and I've seen more of and learned more about people than in the rest of my life.  If anything else, it's taught me the people that I don't want to be.  It's also taught me a bit about time.

Time is one of the most valuable resources in the world.  Once spent, it can never be refunded, returned, or exchanged for store credit.  It's gone for good. 

We have the God given gift of choice.  We can choose what to use our time on.  We could use our time to surf the internet, exchanging an hour of our life for a few cheap chuckles.  We could read a good book, and learn more about the world.  Or, we could spend a few minutes talking with God and be enlightened.

I know that if I choose to do what is right, God will bless me with success.  Life is better when we follow the example set by Jesus Christ.

Lessons learned on the mission:

Today, I just thought I'd share some lessons that I've learned on my mission.  As missionaries, we leave everything behind for two years to go teach the Gospel.

The first one, I'd say, was prompted by what I did on Wednesday.  Wednesday morning, at five-thirty in the morning, we got a phone call from one of our members.  We had talked about maybe us running with him in the morning.  I was half hoping that he had forgotten it, since I despise running.  To quote Neal Armstrong, first man on the moon, "I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running up and down a street."  (I'm quite willing to spend a few playing soccer, though.  Interesting.)

But, sure enough, at 5:30 we get a call saying that he'd be in front of our house at 5:45, maybe 45 minutes before we normally get up.  We got dressed, put on our running shoes, and huddled back in the covers in hopes that they would still have some residual warmth.  He arrived all too quickly, and we got into his little Protege.  (Incidentally, this is exactly the same kind of car that I had back at home.)

We drove over to a little park he knew of, Greenbank Park.  It's a nice place, and all the jogging paths were lit by little streetlights.  I'm groaning, still half asleep, and really wishing that I was back in bed.  We got out of the car, and walked over to the path.  I thought it was interesting that there on the pavement, there was a little line that marked "Start / Finish."



Rocky ran too.



We got jogging, and it wasn't all that bad.  Sure, I was tired, and I was just trying to maintain my position a couple dozen yards in front of Francisco and Elder Lindsley.  I think that's the longest I've run for a long while.  The path that we were running on had little markers painted on the concrete, "1/4 mile," "1/2 mile," etc.  I had thought, when I saw that first one, to run up til the 3/4 mark and stop running there.  Somehow I missed it, and for the first time in two years, I ran a full mile non-stop.

 My companion tells me that running is more mental than physical.  (In that case, I'll just get cut by thinking about running.)  I didn't believe it until I saw that marker there. 

In life, we can do whatever we want.  We're able to grow up and be whatever we want.  The choices that we make will determine who we become, and ultimately whether we are happy or not.  In the words of Lehi, a prophet living about 600 BC,

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. ~2 Nephi 2:27

We can be happy, I know, only through Jesus Christ.  He is the source of all that is good, and can help us in more ways that we can imagine. 


Now for lesson two learned in the mission:

It's not a good idea to microwave a hard-boiled egg.

The computer is timing out. I'm talking about time. What luck.

I'm sitting here in the Newark Public library.  Finally, a decent computer.

As I waited for the computer to become available, I was just stunned by how much information we have at our fingertips.  In each bookshelf, we have at least a hundred books, each one hundreds of pages long.  In the bookshelf to my right, we have books of history, the presidency, a seperate book about the president's wives, the civil war, a book about native american tribes, another one listing TV shows from 1995 to 2007, over in the shelves even further to the right, you have two books on D&D. (I checked.  Habit.)  You have Mormonism for Dummies, you have shelf after shelf of paperback romance books, you have Terry Pratchett, and an incredible amount of information.  If you were to live here, and just start reading books, you might finish them all before you die.  Maybe.

There's just too much information here in the world for any one man to process.  That's in books alone.  Then, you have the Internet.  Even if you were to remove all redundant material...Click here for something mindblowing.

As the first little picture there says, if you were to read all of the Internet from one end to the other, it would take 57,000 years reading nonstop.

In all this, it's important to prioritize.  There are things that are downright bad, things that are good, better, and best.  We each have 80 or so years, a gift from God to use as we see fit.  If we choose, we could go to lolcats and read all about certain cats are denied cheezburgers.  We could spend any amount of time reading on forums about webcomics, gaming, books, fantasy, romance.  (I should know, that's how I spent a lot of time three years ago.  Except for the romance part.)

But that wouldn't be best. 

God has commanded us to seek wisdom from the best books.  I know that if we will spend time reading from the best books, something I've interpreted to mean the scriptures, we will have happier lives.

You can find the Scriptures with your local missionaries.  Or, since you're on a computer right now, why don't you check out the scriptures right now?

Migra Migra Migra!

So, I am a Spanish missionary.  I like it.  The people are usually very friendly, and if you make them laugh they'll talk to you for hours.  Plus, they feed you.  Oh, boy, do they feed you.  Empanadas, enchiladas, tacos, tortas, carne asada, mole, sope, and a number of american dishes as well.  Love the people.

I often talk to people about life.  Where are they from, how long have they been here in the United States, what's their favorite food, how's their family.  I often ask them why they're here?  By that, I mean to say, "Why did they come to the United States?"  I mean, why go to all the trouble of traveling to the border, paying over five thousand dollars to a person called a Coyote in order to cross safely, get here in a country that speaks a language radically different from their own, and then go through all the struggles of getting a job, apartment, and raising children with neither social security card, US identification, credit history, or usually a GED?  Life is not easy for a hispanic immigrant.  Why bother?

Usually, the answer is to get a better life.  It's not fun, it's very difficult, and you have to constantly be on the outlook for la Migra.  But, there's work here in the United States, and there's relatively little in Mexico.  (I'm not going to argue about politics.  They're here, that's all I care about.)  They need jobs to take care of their families there, to build themselves a nice house there, to do all manner of good things.  They understood the risks, and decided that the potential gain was much greater.

In the same way, all of us here on this earth have taken a decision.  Though we don't remember it, we all made a choice to come to this earth.  Back before the beginning of time, we lived with God.  He is, and has always been, our loving Heavenly Father.  He wants what's best for us.  Although he has a glorified, perfect, immortal body, back then we didn't; instead, we were spirits.  We had arrived to a point where we could no longer progress.

So, Heavenly Father called us all to a grand council to discuss the issue.  He told us of his plan; we could go to a place he had prepared for us, called Earth.  There, we would take physical bodies, and be able to choose.  A  part of being able to choose is that some of us would probably not make it back; we'd make bad choices, and disqualify ourselves from having all that God wants to give us.

As part of this plan, Jesus Christ was chosen to be the Savior.  He would make it possible for all of us to come back to God.  It would require faith and repentance on our part, and perfect obedience, pain and suffering on His,  but if we were to fulfill the conditions we could become clean through his Atonement.

We were all tremendously excited.  But then, Lucifer stood up and proposed a different plan.  Instead of having free choice, and perhaps falling, he suggested that we would all be escorted through this existence, and be forced to do what was right.  Nobody would fall away, and for all this he suggested that maybe he should get the credit, and be God for a while.

Amazing as it is, a third of heaven followed Satan, as he came to be called.  They will never receive the chances that we have, and never have bodies.  However, we are here because this life is something good.  We can learn.  It's not easy.  We understood the risks, and we decided that the potential gain was much greater than any risk.

(For a child's version of this history, with accompanying scriptures, see The Old Testament Children's Storybook)

Life, Movies, and the Gospel: Pirates of the Carribean

So, raise of hands, who here loves Pirates of the Carribeans?  I mean, you have a coming of age story, an unlikely hero, a romantic love-interest, a cuckoo captain, black magic, aztecs (a long time before the movies anyway), the aztec's gold, and a whole lot of funny moments.  What's not to like?

This is, of course, only about the first movie.  The second movie was a two-and-a-half hour long advertisement for the third movie, and the third movie was a three-hour-long tie-up-the-loose-threads exercise.

So, let's start with Will Turner.  I really think that he's the main character, because he's the one who actually does stuff.  (You know, character progression?  That kind of thing?)

At the start of the first movie, Will is basically a nobody.  He's the under-appreciated apprentice of a drunkard blacksmith.  He knows nothing about who he is, except that he was taught to fight pirates.  Accordingly, he learns to fight pirates, prompting this interchange of dialogue when he meets the pirate Jack Sparrow:
Jack Sparrow: [looking at all the swords] Who makes all these?
Will Turner: I do. And I practice with them three hours a day.
Jack Sparrow: You need to find yourself a girl, mate. Or perhaps the reason you practice three hours a day is that you already found one, and are otherwise incapable of wooing said strumpet. You're not a eunuch are you?
Will Turner: I practice three hours a day, so when I meet a pirate, I can kill it.

Unfortunately, Romantic Interest Elizabeth Swann is kidnapped by pirates, who turn out to be undead, cursed pirates.  With an undead, cursed pirate monkey.
And thus, an unlikely hero in search of his romantic interest accompanies the cuckoo captain to combat the ghastly ghosts.  (Would they be zombies?)  Along the way, Will comes to know who he really is: the son of a pirate.  With that in mind, he really starts to grow.  He returns to combat more pirates, and eventually defeats them.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should compare Piracy with anything in the Gospel.  Maybe I am.  What I'm talking about is growth.  Let's think about what would have happened had Will just been told he was a regular guy?  I mean, no memory loss, no mysterious past, just a loving adoptive family?  Nothing.

In the same way, were we to just be here on this earth, everything hunky-dory, we would never grow.  We can never underestimate the value of this time here on earth.  We can choose to grow, to learn, and to become more like Jesus Christ.  However, we can also choose to do nothing, become less, and eventually lose all that we have.  It's all up to us.

Life, Games, and the Gospel: Rules

I remember wishing I could do this a lot back when I played Dad at chess.  How great would it be to have any piece be able to do whatever it wants?  Just think, you'd be able to have a check-mate from the first move!  Starting move: QxKe8#  Unless of course, the opposing team is able to do the same thing, in which case they just take your queen and you go on until every piece is gone.

Why are rules so important?  In Dungeons and Dragons, apparently they're important enough for someone to have published an entire book just about the rules. (It's called the Rules Compendium, and I understand they've published a new version for D&D4.0)  In chess, each piece has a specific way that they move, in order to achieve a specific end.  It's the same, although in a more limited sense, in Checkers, Life, and even Monopoly.

But why are rules so important?  Why can't we just take all the Monopoly money from the bank, put houses whereever we want?  Why not just move the chess pieces to the other side of the board?  Why put ourselves into these mental straitjackets?

Quite simply, it's because it's the only way life will work.  Let's just stick with Monopoly.  If everyone were to take what they wanted from the bank, charge five thousand dollars rent, build whenever they wanted, not pay rent to anyone, what would be the point?  There would be no progress.  It would be complete anarchy, and noone would have fun.

A bit the same way, God has given us rules called commandments.  We are allowed to follow these rules if we choose, or to disobey and try to find our own way.  He gives us these rules for one purpose, and one purpose only: He wants us to be happy. 

There are many things, such as premarital sex, drugs, pornography, gangs, crimes, cigarettes, that promise us happiness, or that appear to. 

 However, on trying them, we find them nothing but cheap illusions, put there by someone who wishes us nothing but harm.  Satan places them there in order to deceive us.  Embittered by his loss in the war in heaven, he will stop at nothing to destroy us.  There is no depth to which the father of lies will not stoop.

The rules are to protect us, and to make us happy.  Disobedience, while it may bring passing pleasure, will bring no lasting happiness.  I promise that God will help you to be happy if you follow his rules.  Obedience is always the best option.

As James E. Faust (1920-2007) said, "Obedience leads to true freedom. The more we obey revealed truth, the more we become liberated."

Life, Movies, and the Gospel: Sauron

Now, I've read the Hobbit.  I've read the Lord of the Rings.  But I've never read The Silmarillion all the way through.  I've only ever read up to the song of creation, and what happened afterwards.  Here's the basics.

Way back when, Eru decided to create some stuff.  The first things he created were the Ainur, incredibly powerful people.  However, during the creation of the world, one of the Ainur named Melkor decided that he knew better than Eru, and changed a few things.  All through the history of this world, Melkor was working on destroying things.

Fast forward a few thousand years.  Sauron, apprentice of Morgoth, apprentice of Melkor, is now a very powerful man.  He's been taking care of things, even now that both Melkor and Morgoth have been destroyed.  He appears to the elves, appearing as a fair character, and teaches them magic.  He creates the one ring, and invests it with most of his malice, power, and evil.  Now incredibly powerful, but at the same time with a crucial culnerability, he takes on the elves.  Fortunately, he is defeated, despoiled of the one ring, and loses most of his physical form.

Sauron in all his Battle Gear.
I wonder how much the helmet weighs.

Much later, he is now ready to take on the world again.  However, he really can't do much.  His physical body is much to weak now to actually do anything, so he has to depend on others.  The Nazgul, the nine men corrupted by the power of the One Ring, do his bidding.  In addition, he corrupts Saruman, the most powerful wizard in the land, and has him create armies of orcs.  Though he himself can do nothing, his armies can do quite a bit.

At the end, for all of his power and armies, Sauron is defeated.  The One Ring is cast into Mount Doom, any remnant of a physical body is destroyed, and he is left as a powerless spirit, defeated and cast into the Void.

In the same way, Satan himself can do almost nothing.  A mighty and powerful spirit of God, he aspired to be even greater, to become God himself.  He essentially stated that he knew more than God, and that people should worship him.  Thrust out of heaven, he will never have the privilege of having a body.  He can do very little to us.  However, he can tempt us to commit sin, to rebel against God.  He can convince other people to see the world his way, and to act as he would like.  We can withstand his temptations, though.  Only when we are vulnerable and distracted does Satan try to thrust in some tentacles.    He wants us to be miserable, as he is.  I imagine that he knows he'll lose eventually, but he's determined to take as many of us as he can with him.

Let's show him what for.

On Garfield and Homer Simpson

I've tried to avoid letting people know this, but once you meet me, it becomes pretty obvious.  


I am very fit, and keep in good shape.  After all, round is a shape.


Lately, I've been gaining more weight.  When I entered Wilmington about a two months ago, I weighed about 270 pounds.  Yes, I know that that's a lot.  However, when you consider that this is 20 pounds less than when I started my mission, I thought it was pretty good.


Maybe I ought to inform you about a bit of LDS culture.  I am what is called an Elder, which is a title for missionaries.  Every so often, the members of our church invite us over to their houses for a spiritual message.  Most often, this takes the form of an invitation to eat.  I mean, what better way to do it?  Dinner and a show!


Anyway, since I've gotten here, I've realized that everyone, and I mean everyone, gives us something to eat.  It might be small, an apple here, a soda there, a plate full of rice and beans there, tostadas with soda, juice... It's all made so much harder by Hispanic culture, which says, "if you reject my food, you reject my hospitality and my friendship."  Very rock-and-a-hard place deal.

I've tried the "What people give you" diet, which is to just eat breakfast and what people give you.  I've counted the calories, and they all add up to more than 2000 calories per day.


I think the only option that I have left is to stop eating with people, and learn to say no.  There's just some things that aren't good for you.


It's all a matter of choice, really.  I have the option of not eating, which though harder, would help me to lose weight.  Why is it always so hard to eat right?


A king named Benjamin tells us the answer in a sermon to the Nephites.  He said, 

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.  (Mosiah 3:19)

As a natural man, I want what pleases me.  I want to be lazy, not work, and have the world delivered to me on a silver platter.  What a pity that this doesn't seem to work.  It won't get anyone to heaven, either.  We have to work hard, trust in Christ, and allow Him to help us.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to tell the Hernandez family tomorrow.

(Also, this is a link to a post from a blog I stumbled upon.  It has one of the best diets I've ever found.)
The Zombie Diet

Life, Movies, and the Gospel: Star Wars

A while back, I linked Indiana Jones to the Gospel.  Today, I'll touch on another movie.  Rather, I'll touch on a series of movies.

Star Wars, in my opinion, is one of the great movies of our times, along with The Princess Bride and Indiana Jones.  It's got that magic mixture of an unlikely hero, coming of age, and the triumph of good over overwhelming odds.  The original movie, "Star Wars," netted around $775 million dollars world wide when it was released.  It was so good (as in seven Acadamy Awards good) that it inspired two sequels, three prequels, and a host of books, TV shows, and comic books.

What was it that made this movie so excellent?  There was an excellent combination of humor, acting, and story.  Really, I believe that the story is what drew people in.  We take a backwoods man from a backwoods planet, and throw him into a galactic conflict between good and evil.  Fighting to find himself, he actually triumphs over incredible odds.  Never again can he be a normal, backwoods farmer.  Now, he is Luke Skywalker, the hero of the battle of Yavin, destroyer of the Death Star, a novice Jedi.  Things can never be the same.

In a way, we are all Luke Skywalkers in our personal Star Wars.  For the most part, we're unknown people in the universe, just minding our own business.  However,  as we go through life, we're thrust into an epic battle of Good and Evil.  What we choose to do determines where we go.  When we are presented with the choice, do we join the Empire or the Rebellion?

One of the good things about Star Wars, (Some would say this is a problem, but not me.) is that it is very black and white.  Either you are good, or you are bad.  Anakin is good.  Anakin flips out and kills Windu. Anakin immediately flips out and switches to bad.  Vader bad.  Luke is good.  Leia is good. 

A bit the same way, we humans only have two positions.  In any moment, either we are following God, or we are not.  Either we are striving to do our best to follow Jesus Christ, or we are not.  The choices that we make every second of our lives determine how we will live.

May we all choose to live like the Jedi: strong, patient, and wielding a power much greater than themselves.

And now, a music video.

Life, Gaming, and the Gospel: D&D part 2

Really, the wonderful thing about Dungeons and Dragons is that you can be whoever you what, whereever you want.  Let's say you want to be a midget who wields a hammer bigger than he is.  With the right combination of feats and weapon, you could do that.  (Playing a gnome barbarian with the feat Monkey grip, and the Gloves of Powerful build ought to do it.  Match with a Minotaur greathammer for some real fun.)

Let's say you want to be a giant who throws his enemies around.  Play a Goliath barbarian with the Martial Throw feat, and you can pull it off.

How about a ninja?  You'll never be able to be Naruto, but for a regular ninja, a Human Swordsage comes pretty darn close.  Pair it with a pair of short swords and the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for the best results.

How about something difficult?  Let's say you want to be a master of two different types of magic, and be powerful in both.  Start as a human wizard, and take the Precocious Apprentice feat.  Next, take three levels of Druid.  At that point, you can join the prestige class Arcane Heirophant, which will allow you to progress in both classes at the same time.  Finish off with three levels of Mystic Theurge, and you have full spell-casting abilities in both classes.

Like I said in my previous post, you can be whatever you want, except possibly Naruto or Superman.  So long as you work within the rules, there's a way to achieve what you want. 

It's the same way with life.  God has given us the greatest gift possible:  life itself.  With that gift, he's also given us the ability to choose for ourselves what we want to be.  We choose that by what we desire.  If I want to be a good person, I will.  If I remember correctly, Andrew Carnegie said "It's no great trick to be rich, if what you want is to be rich."

So long as we want eternal life, we will eventually bend that way.  It requires much, but if we want it more than anything else, there is nothing that can stop us.

For a really good talk about choise, read The Three R's of Choice.  I love it.

Life, Gaming, and the Gospel: D&D

In case any of you didn't know this, I am an avid gamer geek.  It says so right in my Mormon.org profile.  If you name a game, I've probably seen, heard about, or played it.  I've noticed, once in a while, that random stuff often has parts of the gospel in it.  Today, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite games, Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, don't run away.  Don't worry, I'm not a total geek.  Now, let's see what YouTube pulls up when we type in Dungeons and Dragons. 

No, that little clip to the right is not what Dungeons and Dragons is.  It's the results of people trying to cash in on what it really is.

Nor is the clip to the left a full representation of D&D, though it is somewhat more accurate.  (For one thing, I've never gamed with candles, dressed up, or spoken in funny voices.

Basically, Dungeons and Dragons is a fun game where you play as a character in a fantasy medieval world.  You create a character, and for the length of the game, that is you.  Put it this way; World of Warcraft is a downgraded, online game that was inspired by D&D.

D&D is all about choice.  Let's start with your character.  You have many options, but we're going to start with This will all sound a bit complicated, especially if you've never played the game, but it makes sense after a while.  First, you pick a race, something like Elf, Halfling, Human, Dwarf, or another.  In the basic set of rules, you have a choice of seven races, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

Then, you choose a class, which is something like a profession; you could be a wizard or a rogue, a barbarian or a ranger, a paladin or a sorcerer, and so on.  Depending on which class you choose, you'll be able to do different things.  (For example, rogues are able to deal extra damage when catching people unawares, clerics are able to heal people, and wizards are able to cast a great variety of magic spells.)  There are eleven of these, so you have 77 choices before we even go into other options.  (For example, you could be a dwarf sorcerer, an elf paladin, a half-orc rogue, or whatever combination strikes your fancy.)

Now, let's add in the diversity of feats.  Feats are not those things attached to your legs.  Instead, they are special abilities that you get every once in a while.  Usually, they provide either a new thing that you can do, or provide some numeric bonus.  For example, "Weapon Focus" would allow you to attack better with a certain weapon, and "Forge Ring" would allow you to make magic rings.  There are literally too many feats to count.  If you don't believe me, go to this page.  Those are the feats contained in the basic book.  There are millions of possible combinations.  If you still don't believe me, go here.  It's a consolidated list of all feats in all books.

You see, all of these are options found in three books of options: the Players Handbook, the Monster manual, and the Expanded Psionic handbook.  There are more options, more classes, more feats, and each one adds more options for people.

I googled to see if anyone had figured out the total number of possible combinations in D&D.  Nobody seems to have invested that much time.

Just think:  there are these many combinations in a game.  In life, we all have many more options available to us.  It's all about choice.  We can choose who we want to be, how to get there, and what we will do.  I know that as we go and follow Jesus Christ, we can all come to God again. 

What will you choose?

On Ozy and Millie and Alice in Wonderland

This is a strip taken from one of my favorite webcomics.  My family and some of my friends will probably recognize it as taken from Ozy and Millie.  It's a delightful mix of Calvin and Hobbes atmosphere and style, with a touch of Bloom County adulthood.  Unfortunately, the author and artist decided to end the strip a few years ago. 

In this strip, Millie asks some very important questions: Where am I?  How did I get here?  In a later strip, she asks,  "Where am I going?  What is my purpose here?"

Have you ever asked yourselves these questions?

Wouldn't it be marvelous if everyone knew the answer to these questions?

You see, we really can't get where we want to go if we neither know where we are or where we are going.  It's a bit like part of Alice in Wonderland.  Alice is walking down a path when she comes to a Tee in the road.  There are two paths, both going straight in opposite directions.  The Cheschire Cat appears, and she asks which path she should take.  "That depends on where you want to go," he replies.
"I don't really know," she worries.
"If you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't really matter which path you take," he tells her.

Unlike Alice, we do know where we want to go.  And it matters much which path we take, for the path to heaven is not very wide.  It is a straight and narrow path.  If we do not have faith in Christ, repent of our sins, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end, we cannot expect to arrive at our goal.

I've borrowed heavily from a talk given by Thomas S. Monson about a year ago.  I highly recommend that you read it.  It will change your life.  Click here to read it.