Throughout the past few years of my life I have slowly but surely been coming to a realization - when all is said and done, it is what we do that is most important.  Or put in religious light, it is great to believe (in Christ and His Teachings), but it is a completely independent event to actually do something about it.  When I was a missionary, I was told many times that all of my effort in this life was pointless - that if I just "believed" that nothing else mattered.  Well, I'm sorry to say, but that is bull crap.  This concept of being "saved by grace" is completely twisted around in people's heads - The truth is this - because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, all mankind will be resurrected and receive a degree of glory, but that says nothing about our efforts being trivial and wasted.  On the contrary, I think that it is what we go through as we "do" things that actually makes us stronger - it gives us experience, knowledge, and compassion.  Obviously it is an INCREDIBLY important first step for us to "believe" in something (whether it is Gospel related or not) - otherwise we would have no cause or reason for further action.

Let me give a school example - Say I'm a smart guy (which I may or may not be) - I have been blessed with a brain that works pretty well.  Now, put me in a college calculus class.  If I am consistent in NOT doing my homework whenever it is inconvenient, if I do not get help when I don't quite understand a concept, when I consistently DON'T use my available resources such as my Professor, my TA, TA's in the math lab, or do my work with groups, should I be in utter shock and dismay when it is time for the final exam and I don't achieve my best?       I don't think so.  Well, I guess I must have thought so, because that is what happened to me the first time I took calculus at BYU.  You know, I got to the final, said a prayer that I would do good - what the heck is that?  How does that prayer make any sense or have any compelling, justifying reason to go along with it, when I never took advantage (I never "did" my part) of all the resources that I had at my disposal for 4 long months.  So, I ended up re-taking the class this past spring term, and I actually "did" something about it this time - I did my homework with a group of friends, I talked with my professor, TA, and the math lab TA's, I did my homework, and then when I got to the final exam, I prayed again for help (but with a lot more power behind my words this time) and you can probably guess what happened - I did very well.
So, naively in the past, I have often thought about situations similar to this and came to the "conclusion" that maybe God just doesn't want to help me out this time...ARE YOU KIDDING ME? - could you possibly come up with a worse answer than that?  How about this for help ...(let's use my situation for an example) - Let's see, He (God) gave you a well-tuned brain, so that you could use it on your own - what a gift, He gave you good parents who raised you and taught you many good things, you have been able to attend school for most every year of your life - continuing your education and increasing your knowledge, you are lucky enough to be getting a solid-undergraduate education at a well-known university, you are surrounded with loads of people that can and will help you master your understanding of the material, and you expect that if you give up He will just give you all of the answers on a final - ... once again... ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So, let me clarify what I meant when I said earlier, "...when all is said and done, it is what we do that is most important."  So, when I was in Wisconsin on my mission, and my companion and I were driving back from a teaching appointment with an older man (who took us and taught with us), he said something that has never left me.  We were talking about where we will be after this life, and what things will "hold the most water" when judgement day comes, and he said something along these lines - "The thing that will be more important than just about anything that we do in our lives will be how we have treated other people" - This "treating" can be seen as the "doing" in our lives - yeah, we could have thought about doing something nice for somebody (and we will get credit for that good thought), but what really reflects our thoughts and desires is how we physically "treat" others through our kind acts of service.

My mission is the exemplar when it comes to teaching me this principle.  As me and my friend Adam have talked about our missions we both have came to the realization that our missions have taught us all of the fundamentals that we need for the rest of our lives, and have given us ample tools to use throughout our lives (like the Professors, TA's, and fellow students), but now is the real test - now is the time to see if we will actually use the things that we have learned.

-Spencer

So, I was listening to Pres. Uchtdorf's talk, "Of Things That Matter Most", and I really liked a line from it - "Strength comes not from frantic activity but from being settled on a firm foundation of truth and light." - Oct 2010.  Lately that has been applicable to me, because I have been expending so much time and energy on trying to figure out what to do with my life (as far as selecting a major goes) that I have lost some perspective of what life is all about.  I have frequently felt that I will be a failure if I pick the wrong thing, but I am slowly starting to realize that it doesn't matter what I do for a career as much as it matters how I live my life, in regard to my future happiness. (Obviously it would be helpful to pick something that will easily support a family though - and that's what I am doing). He goes on to say that it is helpful for us to take time to refocus our lives on the simple things that ALWAYS lead us to true happiness.  If we keep our lives centered around these principles of the Gospel, we will continually lead happy lives, even though we may have struggles along the way.  

So, today I got back from Farmington, Utah, where Raul and I spent the first part of my Thanksgiving break with one of my old roommates Jordan Barton.  So, on Tuesday of this week, there was supposed to be a "killer" arctic blizzard coming in to the state, and it was supposed to be "the worst storm we've seen in years".  So, after receiving 2 or 3 texts from BYU warning about the travel conditions, I decided it would be best to stay and hang out with Raul in Provo for the rest of the day.  So, I baked my apple pie that I made in my cooking class, packed up the car, and then headed over to Raul's place.  I have to admit, the pie was pretty dang good - Raul, Brian, Macey (Brian's girlfriend), and I consumed it pretty quickly, it was awesome.  So, after Raul and I played some NFL Blitz on N64, we took a nap while the storm was doing its thing.  We woke up probably about an hour later, and to our dismay there was hardly any snow in sight.  So, to make a long story short, when it was about 10:30 (pm) I asked Raul if he wanted to go to Farmington right then.  (We had been advised not to travel that night, but I let my adventurous side get the best of me - I couldn't let all of my crazy winter driving experience from Wisconsin go unused - that would be a shame).    Anyways, off we went, and everything was pretty clear until we got to Thanksgiving Point, where the road changed to being slightly snow-covered.  After we had went about 10-12 miles past the "point of the mountain" it got a little more interesting.  At this point, there were no lanes on the highway - it was pretty entertaining to see people make their own lanes.

 I chose to stay left, and had fun sliding around as we tried to keep it in 5th gear.  (Don't worry mom and dad, that's a good thing).  So, the last thing that Jordan heard from us was that we would see him Wednesday afternoon (after Raul's dentist appointment), but we had a surprise for him.  So, as we are sneakily approaching the house, the light by the front door comes on, and Jordan's mom is staring at us - it was pretty funny.  So, she lets us in, and gives us the go-ahead to surprise him.  We get down to his room, and knock on his bedroom door, to which he responds, "come in" - we wait, and knock again, and he says, "come in!" As we ran in he looked so happy/confused, it was great.  He thought it was his mom knocking, and had no idea it was us - it was pretty funny.  Given this recipe for success (Jordan, his friend, me and Raul on Thanksgiving break) we end up staying up for another few hours until about 3.

The next day, Wednesday, I took Raul to Jordan's dad's office in Salt Lake, where he got some dental work done for preparing for his mission.  I dropped him off at 9am, and I started to leave, but then thought to myself, "Well, I've been thinking about dentistry for a while, so why don't I ask if I can shadow Dr. Pope?"  So, I pulled over into a side street and gave the office a call.  They said that it was fine if I came and watched, so after grabbing some dollar-menu breakfast items at Mickey D's, I ended up watching Raul get some interesting stuff done to his mouth.  I learned a lot, but was not greatly intrigued by it, although I did think that some of the procedures and technology was kind of neat.

We went to a hot tub, where Raul ended up leaving his IPhone and wallet, and this time, like a few other times during the trip, Jordan hid it, and told Raul that he did not know where it was (Raul was not amused) - Jordan is a funny guy, but sometimes so funny that you have no clue if you should trust him or not.  Sometimes he can be telling the truth, and think it is a blatant lie...sounds like somebody else I know.....

We saw Harry Potter 7 (Part 1) on Wednesday night, and there was hardly anybody in the theater.  The movie was only $6, and they had really nice leather seats, so I couldn't complain......well, there was one thing that was unfortunate.  Many of you can probably relate to what it's like to sit in the front of a theater, and have a headache from the screen being so close that you have to turn your head back and forth about a hundred times, and have trouble focusing on the movie....well, we sat in the very middle middle of the theater, and I still felt the same way, because the screen was SO MASSIVE.  I was thinking to myself, "my gosh I feel sorry for the poor people that have to sit in the front"  - fortunately there wasn't anyone in the front in this showing, but still, I think to myself "What kind of engineers design these places?".  I liked the movie, but haven't read past half way through the fifth book, so I decided I will try my best to read the whole series before the last movie comes out.  I got through 104 pages in about a day, but I'm not sure how much time/motivation I will have to keep up the pace - I obviously won't once school comes back into motion.

Thanksgiving day has got to be one of my laziest days in history!!! I slept in a nice bed, woke up and ate a very tasty potato-based breakfast meal, went back downstairs and got under the covers in the bed (because the basement was so cold), and began reading harry potter.  Yep, you guessed it, the comfort was too much - I ended up waking up a few hours later to Jordan saying, "Spencer, wake up, we have to go to eat Thanksgiving Dinner  (lunch)).  "My goodness, could I possibly have been any lazier?" - but maybe I deserved it....

So, the general pattern for the trip was this; eat food, play nfl blitz on n64, play blitz on Xbox 360, play ping-pong or guitar, chill with family, stay up late, sleep, repeat.

I could write much more, like the story of me locking my keys in my car while it was running, and calling the police to come and unlock it, or the story of Jordan making 6 dozen of his grandma's (excellent) chocolate-chip cookies and us forgetting to take the leftovers (4 dozen) with us back to provo, or the epic games of connect-4 we played with his family, or the backgammon frustration that Raul had with his IPhone, but I think I will have to leave that for another day.

When I got home, I went to the mall with Beth, and after visiting Raul at Tai-Pan Trading (where he works in the Orem Mall), I finally found some tennis-shoes that fit and feel really good for a decent price. (That should make you happy if you read this mom)

-Spencer-