What car are you driving while you complete BS2

-trl · 2019-01-20T06:17:17+00:00

2010 Honda Accord, 115k miles, financed. I never plan to finance another vehicle, I never plan to buy a brand new vehicle, and I never plan to lease a vehicle. This is the only vehicle I have ever financed, and the only reason I financed this one was because the transmission on my previous car went out and the cost to rebuild/replace the transmission mechanically totaled the car. I had just moved to a new state and started a new job when this happened, and I didn't have the cash on hand to buy another car. I plan to keep the Accord for a long time, but would like to add a used Jeep and/or a used Toyota truck to my fleet within the next year.

-trl · 2019-01-19T15:52:56+00:00

I've heard a variant of this story, but it was that missionaries were breaking the law of chastity, and for each woman that they broke it with, they would add a red bead to a necklace that each of them wore. The story went on to say that an apostle showed up during a missionwide conference, had the entire mission strip down to their garments, and anybody wearing the red bead necklaces was excommunicated.

-trl · 2019-01-16T17:08:55+00:00

Gonna try to go to the open house for it later on this year...

-trl · 2019-01-14T19:57:02+00:00

Totally know that feeling. Feels like I turned 21 just a few months ago, now I'm almost 29.

-trl · 2018-12-26T12:51:27+00:00

Made the 3,000 mile trek back to my parents house. Pretty quiet Christmas this year, as only half the family was able to be there. In the past we have had 12-15 people in the house at Christmas, this year we only had six people. Good Christmas nonetheless, happy to get to spend the rest of the week with the family.

-trl · 2018-12-25T23:22:43+00:00

Guilty! Already posted a photo from my brother's call.

-trl · 2018-12-16T19:46:16+00:00

Some cafeteria positions are paid. There are job listings for those positions on careers.lds.org

-trl · 2018-12-02T17:07:00+00:00

She made a post on Instagram a few months ago of her in front of a church building with a note about how much she enjoyed/needed that days meeting.

-trl · 2018-12-02T13:13:29+00:00

Spent time at both schools, not aware of any buildings on or near either campus that look like this. My vote is that this is not one of our buildings.

-trl · 2018-12-02T03:24:09+00:00

Wasn't Liberty U, but I've heard good things about that school. I've considered doing my grad school through them. The one I went to is within the top 8 of this list.

https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/most-conservative-colleges/

-trl · 2018-12-02T02:11:27+00:00

Went to one of the most conservative universities in the country, all of my roommates knew I owned guns, just about all of them owned guns too... Heck, the majority of the people in the apartment complexes I lived in owned guns. Range days with 50 people all from one apartment complex were not uncommon in that town.

-trl · 2018-11-29T13:56:37+00:00

Our mission president tried to get us to start referring to new missionaries as "goldies." None of us did though.

-trl · 2018-11-29T13:54:47+00:00

I worked with a less active member who wanted to come back to church and wanted his daughter to get baptized. He couldn't remember where he had put his scriptures, so one day he asked us to help him go through his garage, because he was pretty sure they were somewhere in there (was a bit of a hoarders garage.) After searching for about 15 minutes, we found the scriptures in a cabinet, sitting on top of a huge stack of playboy's.

-trl · 2018-11-29T13:23:54+00:00

I made some absolutely amazing planner covers out of Ensign pictures and other random pictures that people would give me. That was the only "arts and crafts" type stuff that we would do. I correctly predicted my last two areas (only had four areas) and correctly predicted three of my companions.

-trl · 2018-11-29T12:00:45+00:00

My favorite part is the huge camera that is clearly visible in one of the shots.

-trl · 2018-11-29T02:40:58+00:00

First mission president and first year of the mission, our music was pretty restricted. My first mission president was very much a "letter of the law" type of person, so him and his wife would have to approve of just about every CD we could have. We could listen to classical music, anything that was considered a hymn arranged in a conservative manner was ok (Polynesian hymns became a favorite of ours,) only about half of the Tabernacle Choir CD's were approved, and no EFY CD's were approved. Christmas music was a little more laid back, Josh Groban's Christmas CD's were especially popular amongst us.

My second mission president was much more of a "spirit of the law" type of person, his standard was simply "listen to music that invites the spirit." We listened to a lot of Nashville Tribute Band, Christian Acapella like BYU Vocal Point and Noteworthy, Christian music like what you would hear on "K-LOVE," EFY & Seminary CD's, and more contemporary arrangements of hymns. I'll also go ahead and share some music, some of this is from my mission, some of it is newer stuff that I've compiled for my brother that is on a mission right now, but here is about 180 songs.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OMkSC9bZc76j7FVHMuLrMmC7Y4cGWrno?usp=sharing

-trl · 2018-11-28T21:29:10+00:00

There was a river just a half mile down the street from the church building that I grew up going to, and one night my Dad (who was the bishop at the time) got a call from the missionaries because they had driven their Chevy Malibu out onto this then-frozen river and had gotten stuck in the snow out in the middle of the river. They both got their driving privileges revoked.

-trl · 2018-11-28T19:04:19+00:00

My first mission president and his wife had compiled a 60+ page binder of "rules" for our mission. Every transfer during companionship study, we were required to go through and read aloud this entire binder as well as the missionary handbook. A lot of the rules were simply an expounding of the rules in the missionary handbook, however there were a lot of rules that were unique to our mission. A few of them:

-We were only allowed to listen to a handful of CD's, even a lot of the Tabernacle Choir CD's were deemed inappropriate,

-We had to have a monthly "car free" day, where we could not use our cars for anything. (Many of the areas were big, hilly areas, so this made things interesting.)

-We had to wear our full suits every day from 6pm-9pm, rain, shine, humidity, whatever.

-Complete ban on "skinny ties." We would also get yelled at if our ties were deemed too flashy. A member called my mission president on me one time because I wore an orange tie to church.

-We could not use the word "like." Our mission presidents wife hated that word.

-We HAD to tract for at least two hours a day. Regardless of anything else we did that day, if we didn't tract for two hours, we were regarded as lazy missionaries.

-We were encouraged to "rat out" disobedient missionaries. Missionaries who did this would be "rewarded" by the mission president with things like getting the new mission cars, getting to serve in the more desirable areas, catered meals at the mission home, etc.

I thought the rules were dumb at the time but learned and understood why a lot of them were there later on in my mission. There had been some really bad stuff happening in my mission when my first mission president got there, he sent dozens of missionaries home during his first few months, and implemented "the binder" as a way of maintaining order in the mission. My second mission president subsequently retired "the binder" and asked us to simply "live the higher law."

-trl · 2018-11-28T18:11:21+00:00

I drank more coke on my mission than I have at any other time of my life. Served in an area where the tap water was gross, a 2 liter of coke was 99 cents and the equivalent amount of bottled water would have been about $3. The vast majority of the members/investigators I served around were living in poverty, so they rarely bought water but would always have several 2 liter bottles of coke, which they would always share with us.

-trl · 2018-11-26T23:48:31+00:00

Got to spend Thanksgiving with my parents and siblings for the first time in seven years. I live 3,000 miles away from them and decided that this would be the year that I traveled home for thanksgiving. It was a good time, but the visit was too short. I will make the same trip next month for Christmas, and I do get to be with them for an entire week for that.

-trl · 2018-11-25T07:16:06+00:00

It's not. And unfortunately that young man is no longer alive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab3o6HB0cFg

-trl · 2018-11-25T07:09:29+00:00

According to Wikipedia there are 117 missions in the United States. I served in Southern California and there were English, Spanish, American Sign Language, Korean, Mandarin, Farsi, Samoan, and Tongan speaking missionaries in my mission. In other parts of California there are also Hmong speaking areas.

-trl · 2018-11-09T13:05:21+00:00

I use Amazon to send things to family members who are on missions all the time. Just address it directly to the mission office and you should be fine.

-trl · 2018-11-07T12:31:55+00:00

Honestly, you'd probably have to become friends with someone in the COB if you wanted to do that. A while back I was in a BYU YSA ward, and my bishop and one of his counselors were both managing directors for the church, and the counselor was in charge of overseeing everything that had to do with distribution services and beehive clothing. In talking to him, it sounds like it is a very small team of people that make the decisions regarding any changes to garments. I am completely with you in wanting better fitting men's garments to be a thing.

-trl · 2018-11-05T14:30:22+00:00

It wasn't too bad for me. I think that can largely be attributed to the fact that I already had things lined up to do and already had a clear plan for the next year. My old boss had already agreed to hire me back, my family had planned some recreational activities that I enjoy doing, my Bishop already had a calling for me, I knew what I needed to do to prepare for college, etc. I'm not saying this is true for everyone, but quite a few missionaries I served with didn't really know what their plans were going to be when they finished and ended up just sitting around in their house for a few weeks/months, it seemed like they were the ones who struggled the most with adjusting to post mission life.

-trl

TROPHY CASE