Helaman's Camp--Saturday

Saturday,

Saturday was short, but amazing. After waking up we had companionship study then individual study. We had given each of the companions in our zones short lessons to prepare for our zone meeting so they could teach each other before we taught them. After study time we went and had breakfast, the only meal there which wasn’t satisfying, cold, insubstantial, health cereal. It was obvious that adults had purchased the cereal, the only sugary stuff there was Coco Coco puffs and Lucky Charms, and there wasn’t enough for anyone. But that was ok because all the other food was so good. We then broke camp and had our zone meeting.

Richard told us this awesome story about hiking a volcano, Richard is a very good story-teller. Then all the groups taught their lessons, and I closed it up with this parallelism: The BoM testifies of Christ, Christ is the Son of God, We are Son’s of God, The BoM testifies of the Son of God, The BoM testifies of US, and by reading it we can learn how to make our imperfections like Christ’s perfections. I thought it was pretty sweet, but I could tell it went right over the heads of most the zone.

Then after a few brief remarks from the bishop we went to the end of the week testimony meeting. Everyone knows how sometimes during a testimony meeting there are periods where you have to wait for someone to get the courage to stand up and bear? Not at this meeting. There was a line 10 people long the entire 2 ½ hours, we only stopped because we had to get home. Every time I attend a testimony meeting I feel like I should get up and bare my testimony, I want to, but usually my fear of public speaking wins out. Not this time though, somehow I made it into the testimony line. A really strange thing happened when I stood up to bare my testimony. Up until this point in the meeting it had been rather calm, no wind, no extra noise to drown out the speaker. When I started to speak the wind started to blow gusts of wind so loud that I could barely hear myself speak, but I continued to talk and they only got louder. When I sat down, the winds quieted down and for the rest of the meeting were almost non-existent. It was very bizarre, but rather cool at the same time. I take it as god’s little way of saying “thanks for finally bearing your testimony like I’ve been asking you to” After the meeting all the leaders lined up in a line, Bro. Culliard first, the Stake Presidency second, and so on. We hugged every one of the leaders that had sacrificed to make such an amazing experience possible. Then we went home.

Just because the camp was done doesn’t mean I was, The Zone Leaders had to give a talk the next Sunday. I had been pondering what I wanted to say the entire camp, I listened to all the amazing things that were said by the other zone leaders and by Bro. Culliard at our various zone leader meetings during camp. I decided that I was going to merrily share stories from helaman’z camp and call that good enough. Sunday morning I went to  Missionary prep and decided that was’nt what I should speak about so I changed my talk completely and went on a whim and without a written paper to refer to. Instead I shared my favorite scripture and hymn, hymn 29, and Moroni 10:32-33. I gave a very good talk and I know the spirit was there. 

Helaman's Camp--Friday

Friday,

Friday we woke up really early for a morning side in which one of the leaders dressed up like Joseph smith, preached to us as if he were him, and then we sang “praise to the man” and walked back, It was really cool because people were quite and respectful and the spirit, an omni-presence in this camp was there.

Then we had our regular zone meetings, this time after Richard and I were done speaking we heard from my bishop, Bishop Juchae, he spoke for a while and then we moved our meeting a bit to the east and met and talked with the Stake president and the Patriarch. They spoke about learning to recognize the spirit and the process to achieve a patriarchal blessing. It was really cool to have the Stake president and the Patriarch sitting with us in lawn chairs, talking about the gospel. It was the coolest thing the whole camp, every conversation I had at camp concerned 3 main topics, the food, which Latrine is the best, and the gospel, but mostly the gospel, while eating food. Did I mention they had a constant snack bar in which we could delve at any chosen moment?

After another mission meeting and a lunch and choir, all we had left was a service project before our P-Day began. This time, I helped saw some wood for firewood, while Richard and Jared’s district helped with the sprinkler system again.  Once we were done P-Day began, they had activities from Volley Ball to poison stump competitions, it was a blast, except I noticed one missing  thing, Richard hadn’t returned from the service project yet. I looked all over for him trying to find him thinking I just hadn’t run into him yet, after asking various people who just told me to wait and he’d show up, I decided to go and try to find him, smart right? Correct! He was still trying to fix the sprinklers, the problem had turned out bigger than they had first thought and they needed some help. By the time we had given up (notice I said ‘given up’ and not ‘finished’) P-Day was basically over, so after chatting for a bit in the shade we got our shirts and ties back on for the next meeting.

After this meeting we had another zone meeting in which we had prepared a lesson on the restoration to share. Richard drew an abbreviated timeline from Christ’s death to Joseph Smith, and I took it from there. Then after dinner we had a really cool meeting where 4 return missionaries and Helaman’s Camp Alumni’s had come up and had a question/answer about their missions. It was amazing the hear about the different experiences that each had even though they had all served in different parts of the world. I had written down about a dozen questions for them, but they didn’t have time to get to mine. At the end they bore their testimonies in their mission language which was really fun to hear, I only could catch words like “Jesus Christ” and “Joseph Smith”, but even without lingual comprehension I felt I understood what they were saying in part. Then we went to bed after a brief chat with them after the meeting, it was cool to talk to the speakers after they had gotten out of “I’m speaking to an audience mode”.

Helaman's Camp--Thursday

Thursday,

Thursday forwards a little less detail than Wednesday did, most of it was meetings and I can’t recall which meeting happened when. We woke up at 6:10, it really bugged me that they could just round to the much more even number of 6:00, really, ten more minutes wouldn’t make that much of a difference and it looks so much more nicer my way, but hey, whatever. We started the day with companionship study and personal study time. As a companionship we would kneel and pray to be guided in our scripture study for the next two hours. It was awesome. Richard and I found many great scriptures that we shared with one another, it was sweet. I read a bit in Isaiah, and he transferred his markings from an old set of scriptures to a new one.

After study time we went to breakfast, but before every meal we always had a fifteen minute choir practice in which the tenors, baritones, and basses would compete to see who could go to dinner first. Bro. Jones who was leading the choir was a tenor so he was always partial to the tenors, and most of the basses would always cheat and leave for dinner regardless, while the baritones were always honest and only left when excused. I was a baritone. The food was awesome, did I already mention that? Oh, and they somehow managed to perfect the art of powdered juice mixing. Because throughout the camp there was always some kind of juice for us to eat that was perfectly mixed and tasted divine.

After breakfast was our first zone and mission meeting. At the zone meeting Richard and I taught the lesson after our district leaders had given a 5 minute thought. We taught the plan of salvation through a Socratic method of question prompts. It worked well, and after we had gotten through the doctrine involved we both shared our testimonies, the spirit was defiantly there by the end of the lesson, it was just a pity that half of our zone had drifted off to a state of distraction and wasn’t paying much attention to it. Then one of the bishops took a turn to speak, it’s always cool to hear a bishop speak, plus he was a little better at keeping everyone focused on his lesson, but only a little. If the boy’s didn’t want to listen, they weren’t going to listen.

We then had a little object lesson about carrying the weight of sins with us in which a leader lead each zone on a winding path, pausing at key points to hand out papers that gave us instructions based on a predescribed scenario. Some people had to pick up large rocks some small, some meant to pick up a small rock, but then found out it was bigger than they had thought.  Eventually when everyone was carrying at least five pounds of rocks we came to a place where a bishop would speak to us about repentence and what we could learn from carry the rocks along the path. Then we did the same thing, only we picked up smaller rocks and had a similar discussion before we could put them down. Then we went up to the top of a hill, where a ramiumptum had been ram-shakily put together, and talked about all the different ways we could relate this too our lives. It was pretty cool.

Lunch and choir was amazing as it always was with hamburgers and hot dogs by the bucket load. Then we had a service project. Each zone was assigned two projects, Richard took one district and went to fix a sprinkler pipe, and I took the other to mow down the weeds and sage brush that was choking the “parking lot” (a semi-less weedy area of dirt where the leaders had decided to park their cars) needless to say we broke 3 shovels trying to pry up sage brush until someone found a rusty dull hatchet that I was able to successfully use to but a hole in my pinky and chop a few bushes, then we got a chain that we hooked up to a car and made short work of the rest.

After that we put our Sunday cloths back on and went to another zone meeting where the DL’s taught a lesson before another bishop took over, and then another mission meeting before dinner.

Dinner was the best EvEr!! Smoked briquette that had been cooking since Sunday, it was Celestial! Then we had another mission meeting, split into two sections because it was so long, and here is where the trouble starts again. 3 of our zone members decided that they didn’t want to listen to the second half of the mission meeting,

Once Richard and I found out that they were missing we contacted the Area presidents and the other zone leaders to try and find them, we figured that they might be in a different tent just hiding from us, we’d had other delinquent behavior of the sort previously in the day. We spent a good hour of our sleep time looking for them before we found two of them. For some stupid reason they had thought to go “cow tipping”, we had been on top of the highest hill around just 8 hours ago for the repentance object lesson, it had been clear then that there wasn’t anything around us for miles, and yet they decided to go cow tipping, needless to say they got a heavy reprimand of sorts. We finally decided to go to bed; Richard was feeling rather downhearted because he took responsibility for their actions as his own because he was their leader, yet again something I admire him for, and we woke up to find the third young man had somehow entered our tent without waking us up. This ends the 2^nd day at Helaman’s Camp.

Helaman's Camp--Wednesday

Wednesday

Last week I went to Helaman’s Camp, it was awesome. The food was great and the company was even better. We started at 7:00am so that we could be up there in time to get the camp set up for the District Leaders and Companions to arrive. It was about an hour and a half drive past Strawberry Reservoir, and we arrived with plenty of time to spare getting everything ready. The first thing we did was set up our “Chapel”. It was the place where all our mission meetings would be held and it would provide shelter from the sun and wind. Basically, a huge tarp canopy large enough  to squeeze 150 people inside, plus a sound system, podium, and piano. Yes, we did have electricity up in the middle of nowhere somehow, would have hated that installation job…. The next thing we did was name to port-o-potties. I don’t know why we did this, but for some reason we came up for clever names for each of the ten potties. With names ranging from Jackie Chan to Obi-Won, for the rest of camp we always joked about which potty was the smelliest or most user friendly. Obi-Won was by far my favorite, although there was the constant fear of being tipped over because it was at the end of the row. Because the trailer with all the tents in them achieved a flat on the way up, we had to wait for them to arrive before we could start setting up our Zone’s tents and living area. Once the tents did arrive Richard Bruner and I were lucky enough to get the newest tents and the oldest canopy. Needless to say, the canopy was broken. So we got the biggest canopy as well, which ironically enough, we never ended up using because of the freak weather conditions and the pain it was to set it up, we ended up taking it down and not re-setting it back up again until almost the end of the camp. 

After that we had dinner, it was the most amazing dinner on the face of the planet, imagine, 100 steaks, averaging about the size of your dinner plate, to be shared by 16 teenagers, now imagine there not being any left-over’s, that was what our dinner was like, it was divine!  Then Richard and I got personal study time until out zone members arrived. Personally I almost fell asleep multiple times, but Richard had given me a challenge to find all 6 of the times in the Book of Mormon in which it says “remember remember”, it was a hard challenge, and I still have only found  5 of them.  Once the zone members arrived, all chaos broke loose, we were given a list of names and told to find people who we had never seen before in our life, imagine hard. This is probably the only part of camp that could have been done better, the confusion of getting everyone to find the correct zones. Finally, once we had everyone situated in the correct tents it was time for the first mission meeting. The entire day had been overcast with sporadic rain fall and blustery winds, and this caused the walls of the chapel to snap almost making it hard to hear the speaker.

 The most memorable talk was given by President Scoresby he spoke on how to become like Christ, which was the main focus of the whole camp. It set the tone for the rest of the camp and we felt the spirit for the rest of the next 4 days. This meeting is also where the trouble began, a member of our zone wasn’t quite as diligent to listen to the lesson as would be expected at a camp like this one. Richard, being the strong, militaristic leader that he is, noticed him dumping Pringles chips on the ground in our chapel among other atrocities. Our leadership styles sort of clashed a bit on this matter when after the meeting he took the young man aside and proceeded to reprimand him rather heavily for his behavior. I understood his motives for such a strong reprimand, and I felt they were just, but I also understood that the young man probably didn’t get the same picture. For the rest of the week there was tension between the two men, one trying to practice leadership, while the other tried to deny it. And I got to see just how great a leader Richard is because I watched him willingly humble himself and apologize multiple times when he’d rather explode and punch the kid, and that is a quality of a great leader. 

After the meeting it was time for bed, everyone went to bed rather well except for Jared’s tent, he kept them up late showing them the fine art of blue dart’s. Finally, I got out of my tent and politely asked them to “knock it off”, actually, that’s what I wanted to say, what I actually said was: “I know your having a lot of fun, but there are others in the camp trying to sleep and your making a lot of noise, do you think you could be a bit quieter?” I got back in my sleeping bag and within 30 minutes everyone was asleep, even me. The first day was done.

Rain, Rain, go away, come again on a non-working day!

Today was a very fun day. I woke up early to go to the temple with Richard Bruner and Bruce Peck. because the road to the Draper temple led over a huge hill and because of the heavy rain we had gotten the day before, we got to drive through a cloud. It was awesome. after the temple I changed out of my sunday cloths and spent time with my brother until Joe called me to work around 3:00, almost immediately after we started working it started to rain, a lot. undeterred, we decided to work through the storm and hope that it cleared up later. The rain left just as quickly as it had come and the rest of the day was amazing weather. We got most of our fence completed before Joe had to leave to see a play with his family. he sent me and scott to mow two lawns before we were able to go home. Scott ran out of gasoline for the trimmer before we could finish so I was left mowing the lawns by myself. I finished at 9:30, all in all, a good days work. thank you weather for cooperating.

Smile All-Ways!

Work, Work, and more, you guessed it: Work

Hey, guess what this post is about? Work. ever since I got back from SF I have been working my tail off. (my tail-bone if you want to be specific) Friday I spent shoveling the sludge out of my room and into the washing machine. and Saturday I cleaned out my car. You may not think these would be all day events, but they were. as recreation I chose to read The Ranger's Apprentice a series of books about a boy named Will who is apprenticed to a Ranger, their good books, but if you want to know more, read them yourselves. Sunday was another amazing series of Gospel lessons. First was Missionary prep where we talked about obedience and the importance behind obedience and the power we obtain when we are obedient through faith. in church we learned about the great women of the bible in the Gospel doctrine's class and the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood in our Priesthood meeting. and at our Bishops gathering first there was choir practice, then another Gospel doctrines class in which we learned about Nephi's thesis and had ward prayer. It was a very spiritually rewarding sunday. then comes Monday and Tuesday, I worked. working from 8am-7pm with an hour for lunch break I'm working a 9-10 shift most days. This work ethic should continue through the rest of the summer, I shall get very tan. We Mow, Trim, Mulch, Irrigate, Install PVC pipes and fences, we do it all and only for the extremely low price of money and the occasional sip from your culinary water hose. Now I'm going to go take a shower.

Smile All-Ways
~Steven Dawson

My San Francisco Vacation

I'm back from SF, safe and sound and ready to begin my summer. The trip started at 7:30a.m. when me and my Dad left the house. he was driving because he didn't want me to have to drive during the "going to work traffic" :P we switched off drivers about every 2 hours, and listened to Rick Riordan's new book "The Red Pyramid" all 12 of the hours there. we also had many munchies to eat on our way east. my favorite quote from the quote is this: "the five basic elements of mater are this, earth, fire, wind, water, and CHEEESSSEEE!!!!" it was very funny, comparing cheese to ether, a heavenly substance. :) I liked it a lot, it the story they even had magic books on how to harness the powers of "cheese" it was a very funny book and I recommend it to anyone who likes egyptian mythology.

once we got there (around 7:30p.m.)we were feeling to bloated on snacks to have any real food so instead we decided to see a movie. the first theater we walked into was only showing one film, 8 theaters and only one film: Sex and the City 2, we cracked several jokes about "what this world is coming to" and "the end of the world is nigh" and dumb stuff like that, then promptly walked right back out of the theater and found a different cinema. we ended up watching "Prince of Persia" which by my standards was a very clean, decent, movie. with minimal vulgarity, cleaner than shakespeare concerning innuendoes, and full of action and romance. It is a very good movie.

The next day we spent touring the wharf. Pier 39 is where we spent most of our time. There were lots of shops to browse through, and we even bought some stuff. I got a shirt, and 4 key-chains to give my brothers as souvenirs and my dad later bought a conch shell with an air plant to place inside of it. The shirt and key chains I got from a shop called Del Sol. everything they make changes color in the sunlight. it was very cool. the conch and air plant we actually bought wednesday, but we found them the day before in a shop that specialized in exotic shells. Air plants are rather unique, distant relatives of the pineapple, they don't need dirt to grow, just air and occasional water, thus they are perfect accents to be placed in a shell where the original animal would have been. it looks really cool.

next we went to the Aquarium and Wax Museum. the aquarium was rather stupid, they didn't have very many animals and the only cool ones were two nocturnal octopus, hence we didn't see them. The wax museum was somewhat better. we saw wax figures of many famous people, obama, clinton, Einstein, marilyn monroe, the crocodile hunter, king tut, the list was 200+ people long. some of the statues looked real, some didn't. there was also a "hall of horror" which I didn't actually have the courage to walk through, my Dad did though, he didn't seem impressed.

on the way back from the Wax museum we saw the street performers with some rowdy obscene music making spay-paint art. they were selling their art work for 5$ each and it was really cool how they did it. we stopped to watch and eventually ended up asking them for one. we took video of it being made which, after i've changed the music that was being played, I will post up here, it's really cool. you'd never guess it was spray painted unless you had seen it be done.

that night we watched shrek 4 then ate at a diner near the cinema. The next day we were back at the wharf, but not to browse shops, we went on a tour of Alcatraz. it was very cool...sort of. it turns out that a lot of the hype about it is from the media and hollywood playing upon the myth that it was unescapable. the truth was that it was actually more preferable a prison than others, and it was more effective at rehabilitation then others too. plus three men did escape, although no one knows if they survived or not. it was originally a military base, but was too expensive for the government to uphold so it was turned into a prison. eventually the prison was also to expensive so it was sold to the indians. the american indians wanted it because it could be used to show all those going into port at san francisco that the indians were the original inhabitants and remind them of the natives.

after Alcatraz we went down and found a museum arcade. it had lots of arcade games from history, me and my dad played the original "pong" game, among others. then we went down to the Girardeli factory, and had some ice-cream. after that we decided to go back to the hotel and rest so we would be wide awake for the main reason we had come to SF in the first place: Wicked. it was awesome. enough said. It was the best play i've ever seen. (although me and my Dad both agree that the singer of Elfeba was a little off-pitch rather frequently) we decided she was probably just having a bad day and it didn't ruin the performance at all. it cast a new light on the original story we all know so well (I won't reveal anything so that the experience can be new for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.) I had made sure to wear my Marching Band shoes to the play because that is what I had planned to do in New York as we had been on Marching Band tour then. I felt it was almost like taking the Marching Band with me...but not really.

the ride home was was much the same as the ride there, except we stopped at the jelly-belly-bean factory. we took a tour of the factory and got to taste "the jelly-bean" in each stage of production, it was very interesting. after that we waited for the cafe to open, they were serving "jelly-bean shaped Hamburgers" being a hamburger fanatic, It was worth the hour and a half wait after the tour was over. because we chose to wait for the amazing hamburgers as our lunch we arrived home around midnight. It was the best vacation ever!

I congratulate anyone who took the time to read this, GOOD JOB!! it's a lot I know, sorry :)

Thanks Dad for the amazing vacation, it was tons of fun.

Smile All-Ways!
~Steven Dawson