Our Utah Trip

Hey everyone,

I just spoke with Grandma on the phone and she reminded me that we owed you all a report about our excusion.

For once it wasn't just me headed off to do a race. I had company. Yay! Lewis came along and so did Caitlin. We left on Thursday and headed to St George. We had an opportunity to see Patrice (my running friend) and then headed to our hotel, the Budget Inn. We do NOT recommend them. I took a cold shower in order to even have hopes of sleeping. We finally cooled off about 4am almost in time to get out of bed. NOT GOOD. We then headed to Provo. We arrived in Provo a bit early and drove through the canyon where I would be running the next day. I couldnt' believe all the changes in the canyon since my days in Provo. It used to have two lanes and there sure wasn't any tunnel. We then headed to the McPhersons. This was the best part of the trip. David is the chair for the Department of Hearing and Audiology at BYU. He used to be the chair at UCI. For unknown reasons to him, he was invited by the First Lady of Syria to visit and to discuss the opportunity to build a hearing/research institute in Damascus. He went. He has spent quite abit of time over there recently with their last trip occuring when the war broke out. It was absolutely fascinating to hear about all of his travels and discussions he has had with individuals over there. Did you know that there were missionaries graves over there?? Yep two missionares were serving there about 50 years ago and died and are buried there. Also, he learned that the church has humanitarian missionaries in Syria too.

I also made sure to pick his brain about Nathan and passed all the counsel along to her. It was good to talk to him and I think he said some important things to Rebecca.

Joyce's house is incredibly beautiful (Shelley has stayed there she can back me up on this) and big. They mainly stay on the upstairs part though. It was hot at their house too so another night of not so good sleep. Joyce emailed me after the trip to tell me they forgot to turn on the thermostat for the downstairs while we were there. Oops. hehe.

Race day was Saturday. I love Provo Canyon and enjoyed running it even more. I improved my half time by 1:10 and was happy with that but still struggle with altitude at these Utah races. UGH! Not good or fun. I want to do this one again sometime.

We headed back to St George where upon we found a motel that had a good a/c and collapsed. We were supposed to see Shelley and Patrice and we didn't see anyone but the pillows in our room. We got up early and headed back to Fontana to find all was well and that Jonathan had given a talk in Sacrament (we knew nothing about it). We were told by numerous people how impressed they were with him as he got up and spoke for 7 minutes without NOTES. He quoted scriptures, referenced "Especially for Youth" as well as the Priesthood manual. .......And we missed it. ARGH!!! We are very proud of him.

Sorry Shelley, I really did want to see you.