In the interim

Updates are not too far away ........ in the meantime enjoy some recently discovered internet goodness.....

HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST

Quotes by Steve Jobs

The Propaganda Posters of the 1%

Stuff You Missed in History Class

Online Rhyming Dictionary

Shootin' Guns

The night before I left to England, Amanda and her friend Matt and his friend Kevin took me Shootin’. 


If you know anything about me you would know what a great big hippie pacifist I am, and in fact this  whole idea of taking me shooting guns began in the MTC with the following story…

So about the 3^rd week in to a 12-week stay at the Provo Missionary Training Centre I was talking amongst the missionaries in my district, who I thought were pretty cool. Somehow the topic of people’s perceptions of Americans came up and I laughingly exclaimed "haha! yeah I heard every American household owned a gun! Isn’t that funny?!"
 A moment of contemplation came over the lunch table..’well  I own a gun’ one 19 year old boy piped up, ‘me too’ another exclaimed, both my companions said ‘yeah we have guns’ another elder said ‘we have a whole room full of guns at my house. ‘

I was shocked! These people were no longer who I thought they were! Dangerous criminals!, gun toting weirdoes! – What was going on?  To make matters worse they all thought it was Hi-larious how shocked I was. They even got our teacher in on the joke (who claimed to own several big guns).

these people became.....

this person

And so it went down in mission folklore and eventually the entire American division of the Hong Kong mission were in on the hilarity of taking great delight in telling me all about their gun’s and gun adventures at home.  

To explain: I wont get into anything overly political (right now anyway) Ill just say in a multitude of ways I’m morally opposed to America's incredibly liberal gun laws : ) (if you can call them ‘laws’ )

So when we were thinking about a real American way to spend my last night in Utah - both Amanda and I had the same brainwave. Shooting dangerous weaponry. Of course, very sensible.

just one of the many targets you can buy.....

Im actually way good it turns out

The night was so funny in and of itself but an amazing thing happened - I found out I was actually good at shooting and wasted my target.

So have my beliefs about guns changed? Well, I know some relatively sane people who own guns and it was a rush to be good at shooting stuff, but, regardless I am still a hippie at heart and am glad to live in a country where I dont have to worry if the creepy guy next to me is legally 'packing'. I have one last blog I want to write about the states but Ill save it for next time, heres a sneak peak...

General Conference, Pumpkin Cookies and The Canyon.

On my way over to England I have made a sneaky little stopover through the US, or more specifically Utah 'crossroads of the west' . There never has been an more well-timed stopover in the history of stopovers. First of all I got to go to my mission reunion where I spent so much time chatting and catching up  I only took one photo as follows;

prior to the reunion I first went to the Salt Lake temple with Amanda and then went with Amanda and Lindsey to the BYU- Utah State football game where there was some kind of amazing last minute comeback by BYU.

Then of course there was General Conference, which was A-Mazing. Being a dirty foreigner I snagged tickets to all 4 sessions inside the conference centre.

This is my second time coming to Utah for conference, the first was straight after my mission in 2008, that conference was really special that time and I wondered if it was just because I was super righteous as I'd just come back from being a missionary. So it was with curiosity I attended this time, and this time too, it was equally special. Having spent most of my life watching General Conference in meeting houses across the world, nothing quite compares to listening and watching the messages from inside of the building where they are being delivered. There is a real spirit there and Im so grateful for it. All of the talks were crazy good but I have a few favorites I wanted to share;

SATURDAY MORNING

This session started out a tad bizarrely - President Monson wasn't there until halfway through the session, and then as soon as he got there he had to get up to speak! Apparently his convoy was waylaid on the way there...?

But anyway, to things I loved. 

I loved Richard G Scott's talk about the scriptures. I felt really motivated to memorize scriptures as he promised great power is found in doing this. I remember back in the day Carly and Dean were already up on this - memorizing passages from the new testament and I was straight-up pretty impressed - I wonder if they still remember what they memorized...... 

He also said when you ponder a passage of scripture this can become a key to unlocking revelation

Jose Alonso also said some things I found interesting, especially about how you dont need to have a planning meeting every-time you want to get something done. He said if we delay doing what we need to do we could lose opportunities forever.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

This session of course, was pretty special in and of itself because of course Crystal's dad Elder Ardern spoke and he did us proud. Facebook was buzzing about it for hours after the event, in particular his stylish tie. Crystal goaded me into illegally taking photos during the session, which of course, I did . See below.

He said in his talk " The greatest happiness comes by tuning into the Lord, He promised that

what the Lord reveals is important will bring greater rewards than mindlessly tuning into

 countless hours of status updates, Internet farming and catapulting angry birds at concrete

 walls."


 thats some pretty hip lingo for a G.A if I do say so myself.

The whole of Saturday afternoon was actually incredibly uplifting, from Carl. B. Cook's 

look up, step up and cheer up talk to L.Tom. Perry's talk about declaring our belief in Jesus 

Christ and adding our voices to faith conversations. 

The talk that most prompted me to think about changing however, was David A Bednar's talk on family history, I felt a little tiny small, very small ok massive prompting I need to focus more on this work.

SUNDAY MORNING

Amanda and Tyrell came with me to this session of conference and It was nice to sit next to people I knew. Favourite talks from this session definitely include Henry. B. Eyring's emotional and compelling lesson on the Book of Mormon and standing as a witness of Christ - he said the Book of Mormon will uplift, guide and embolden you.

President Monson's talk was a highlight for me as I reckon it was for a lot of people, he was  on his game and had amazing comedic timing (the Peter Maurich(?) story !) and valuable insights into how the world is changing. He said we are spending our moral capital with the same abandon we spend our financial capital but our code of conduct is infact, definitive and determined. Commandments are not suggestions.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

I L.O.V.E.D how Dallin H Oaks quoted the 13th Apostle C.S. Lewis saying "a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Also on my list to re-read at a later date was Matthew. O. Richardson's talk on teaching by the spirit and Randell K Bennet's talk about how the longer you wait on corrective action the more you will need to correct.


So amazing.


Also for your viewing pleasure a shot I took of some misguided protesters outside the conference centre who enjoy shouting obscenities as the conference go-ers enter the building.

So yes, General Conference rocked my spiritual world - with all the righteousness


 going on you would be amazed I still had time to check some other fun things off my to-do


 list such as make pumpkin cookies on saturday night with amanda - ( Pumpkin? in a 


cookie?  theres something not right about that)

After Sunday Conference Amanda and I went up to the canyon and went for a walk. It was  so beautiful up there and was the perfect end to a perfect weekend. We talked over our favourite parts of conference and how taking photos of nature is never good as the real thing (didn't stop me taking photos though ), which reminded me of a quote I like


 'few are those who see with their own eyes, and feel with their own hearts'