The Blog Is Back!

So I've wanted to bring my blog back for the longest time, but I've been dragging my feet so Ta-DA! Alright so here's an update on my life:

1) I'VE BEEN HOME FOR A YEAR NOW! Oh my gosh what happened to that year? That time flew faster than the two years on my mission. That's not supposed to happen. Is that what happens as you get older? Time goes faster? I sure hope not.

2) Yesterday I got to act as a witness for my Dad's sealing to my step-mom Penny. It was a beautiful and very spiritual event and I'm glad that I got to be a part of it.

Man what an awesome picture! Cuteness factor surging out of control! Our family is just too awesome!

I'm glad that I got to see Grandma and Grandpa Boothe again. I haven't seen them since last Thanksgiving right after I came home. It was refreshing to be sure. After witnessing the sealing we ate at a place called Caraba's (is that how it's spelled?). I had lasagna.

              After that we went on a nature hike. After eating lots of bread with olive oil and lasagna I was a sleepy Grant. What can you expect from me eating all those carbs? In short, Saturday was a beautiful and awesome day and I am so very, very happy for Dad and Penny.

            3) My next business is General Conference. Is it just me or was this last General Conference amazing? I gained a new-found appreciation for it on my mission and since then Conference has never been the same. My favorite talks were by President Uchtdorf (I loved both of his talks), and Elder Christofferson and by Elder Cook.  


       I noticed that the General Authorities were pretty bold in this General Conference. They frequently spoke out against feminism, against the trends of the world and made reference to standing up against the gay community several times.

         I also give Elder Holland props for talking about mental disease and giving it an apostolic face. I'm fairly confident that this is a landmark talk that will be discussed quite a bit in the future. I could tell just by the Facebook comments that his talk already struck a chord with a lot of people.

          What also made this Conference special for me is that I got to go to the Conference Center with Ryan and the Spanish Branch. It was a wonderful time and we got good seats as well. I could see all the General Authorities down there which was even better. Lorena texted us both after Conference and said that she saw us both. Yay! I'm on T.V! It was even better when Ryan posted a link to the Priesthood Session in Conference.

 http://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2013/10?lang=eng&vid=2722492794001

Go to 52:51 and you'll see an orange tie and a beard. That's how you'll know it was us.

Well my blog's getting long so I'll close for now. It'll be great getting this back up.

Love,
Grant

The mission lies ahead

So it's near the end of May and I haven't posted anything yet. I still haven't asked for an interview with the Stake President yet. On Monday I got my crown done, for free. Yeah Bishop Wilson, the guy who put my crown on, is a really nice guy. That took a really long time too! They made a crown for me and tried to get it in but it didn't fit so they had to get it out and then replace it with another. That took two hours. I'm not even kidding. That's what Bishop Wilson's assistant said. Fortunately I brought my iPod (they said I could do that) and bringing it with me made all the difference. It really helped make the time go by faster. I can only tell which one it is by feeling it with my tongue. Aunt Carrie was asking me if it felt bad and I said no.

Last Tuesday I got my wisdom teeth removed. No it was not fun in the slightest. I was really scared of being put out but everyone was right, the next thing I knew I was awake with a numb tongue and lower chin. Becca and Ryan took really good care of me, thanks a lot guys. It was really annoying and I'm glad it ended fast. On the day before that I had my first root canal appointment with Bishop Wilson. That lasted about one hour.

So now with both those things out of the way I think I might be done with all my paperwork. Except for immunizations. I'm not looking forward to that. I still wonder if I don't have to get them, but chances are that I probably do.

So in case anyone hasn't heard yet Garit and I are taking a vacation from petitioning right now. Next week involves Garit selling his truck and the two of us sprucing up the house so that we can sell it. After that we plan to go to Washington. Since we've told almost everybody that shouldn't come as a surprise. The reason why is because the guy we work for said that there's some high paying petitions over there. Our expenses will be paid for while we're there (both traveling and living). Everything hinges on when I turn my paper work in.

Yesterday Garit, his girlfriend Lorena, and I attended the AMGEN tour in downtown Modesto. We were there for three hours and I enjoyed myself. We got free food and drinks along with fliers and a map of all the things to do in Modesto. There was a flier about Fuzio's that looked pretty appealing to me. Fuzio's is a pizza and pasta place somewhere by Brenden theaters. I've seen it a few times but I've never actually gone there before.

Another part of the trip that really impressed me was the kiosk about the Nissan Leaf. Basically the Nissan Leaf is an all-electric car with a small AC/DC motor. You can charge the Leaf at a power station (they already have a thousand in Seattle and about 23 in San Jose) and the guy there said that the Leaf can go 100 miles per hour in about 9 seconds without it hurting the engine. Plus the Leaf comes with a touch screen similar to the one that Dad had on his old car. The car itself also tells you what updates it needs. The guy there also said that it costs about $2 for every 100 miles I think. Since it literally requires no gas the maintenance costs would be waaaaaaaaaaay lower.

So anyone convinced yet? Anyway thanks for reading my post I hope you've all enjoyed it.
Love, Grant

The last week of April

Wow! I'm about to finish off my mission papers, which by now everybody has asked me about at least three trillion times. I called Bill Wilson and scheduled a check-up on Thursday at 8:30. I forgot to give him a call and follow through as Garit instructed. The importance of the call is that I believed that Bishop Wilson would do my check-up for free if I was going on a mission. I make sure that happens because otherwise I have to pay $214! That's flat-out ridiculous! I already had to pay $109 for a stupid blood test! So I pray that I will be able to make that call.

As of late work has been frustrating. People say no way too much for my liking and they are way too impatient. Many of them have trouble signing 4 or 3 petitions, which is something I find laughable considering that I once used to get people to sign seven, eight, or even nine petitions. Garit confirmed what I have grown to suspect: The cause of my frustration isn't in getting a bad spot, it's me that's the problem. On the bright side I did make my biggest paycheck last week, $636. Garit got us all up today and helped us become re-energized about working again.

Last Tuesday the young men and I took a little field trip to my home teaching companion's workplace: IT Currie. In there we all learned how to rob a bank from a computer. No I'm not kidding one little bit. We literally learned how to do it. Fortunately you can all relax for I have no intention of ever robbing a bank. We learned how to do it so that we can protect our own computers. According to my home teaching companion's boss, who gave us this presentation, there are three steps to robbing a bank:

1) Acquire malware: As it's name suggests malware is malicious software that's designed to infiltrate your computer. This is what hackers use to rob banks, give people spam, steal their identities, and put spyware on your computer.

2) Conceal Malware and make a malware website: Usually hackers like to conceal malware in long wacko e-mails that get forwarded to people. The scary thing about this is that malware can be concealed as a program that's designed to help you get rid of malware so you're never really safe. Adware is the usual ways that malware is disguised as but malware disguises aren't limited to just adware.

3) Get someone to unknowingly click on a link that will get you on a website where the malware will get onto your computer: Like I mentioned before, the long forwarded e-mails that get you to click on whacky websites will most likely give your computer malware.

I'm trying to find the link but if my memory is correct my home teacher's boss said that cyber crime is responsible for robbing trillions of dollars from businesses. It's considered the most profitable crime ever. Even more profitable than drugs and the part that's even scarier is that you're more likely to get away with it.

Now that I've left you all on a scary note I'll just say that I love you all and hope to see you all again soon. Oh before I end this post I will say that Garit and I had family night with Ryan and Becca and I found family night quite enjoyable. It was definitely fun to see old pictures of a younger Dad and Grandma Barbara.

Anyways love always from,

Grant

Relaxing after Novato

One of the benefits of working for Carl is that you hear about extremely profitable petitions. Apparently there was a three dollar petition in Novato which for those who don't know is a small bay area city located north of San Fransisco. Three dollars is a lot of money in terms of petitions. We decided to work in Novato on Monday. That's when I met a wacko lady who worshiped Michael Moore. She wanted to be registered and she signed a decent amount of petitions so there's not too many complaints coming from me.

We woke up at about 6:00 in the morning on Friday so that we'd be able to get to Novato early. We worked from 8:30 a.m - 7:00 p.m. I made about $300 from about 259 signatures! That was very cool! Isaac, Garit, Nate and I celebrated by going out to buy pizza at Round Tables. We spent the night in a motel and worked again on Saturday from about 8:30 - 6:30. I didn't feel like I did so well on Saturday as I did on Friday but apparently I made about $300 on Saturday too so I did well.

So in two days time I've made about $600! That was cool! We all left Novato with a very satisfying feeling. When we got home I received the bill for my blood test. $109! What the heck?! I'm kind of ticked off because that's such a rip off but I've got money and I suppose that's what I get for not having medical insurance. Speaking of that I haven't made any progress on my mission papers yet. I don't know what to do about the whole immunizations thing so I'm just going to skip it for now and I'm going to go ahead and get my dental exam.

Anyway I hope you all get ready for General Conference. May God bless you all.

Love, Grant

Inching towards my mission

Just got back from the last Mission prep class. I missed last week because I was in Atwater visiting Grandma and Grandpa Boothe. Nate and Kevin Escobar (the guys living with me and Garit right now) went with us.

For those who've never met either of them they're active members of the Church who've been living with me and Garit since January. Nate is 21 and Kevin is my age, which is 18. Nate is 6'7 and a goofy guy. Despite his goofiness he's actually quite normal in comparison to his family (whom I've never been in contact with for very long except his brother Kevin). By the way this is something that Nate himself has said many times before. Nate sometimes works with Garit and me but after he and his brother brought an XBox 360 into the house Garit and I have been helping him recover from his addiction to the darned thing. He's sociable though and he pull off some funny jokes.

Kevin basically doesn't work at all. If you want a good picture of Kevin think of me, except a thousand times more random and hyper. He's also waaaaay more into video games than I am. He loves orange chicken almost as much as I like pizza and he enthusiastically washes our dishes, which is great because nobody wants to do it. He's fun to play video games with and he's a very nice guy.

As I've already told Ryan, Becca, and Dad I turned in a lot of petitions! I'm expecting my biggest paycheck on Wednesday. Last week I turned in about 912 signatures.

3/21/10

Okay so I received the check for that and instead of receiving five to six hundred dollars like I was expecting I received only THREE-HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN DOLLARS! Yeah I'm not too happy about it as you can see. My validity was 42%! That's abysmal! That's really, really bad for those of you who aren't familiar with petitioning. The thing is though I'm not the only one who got a low validity. We all did, we meaning me, Garit, Isaac, and Nate. We have no way of telling whether or not Derek's telling us the truth. Derek's the guy who pays us and gives us our petitions.

So, like I said before, we have no way of telling whether Derek's being honest with us or not. So we're going to be conducting an experiment. Garit contacted the Modesto distributor (his name is Carl Towe) and we are going to turn our petitions in to him and we're going to see how that works out. Actually we'll do one turn-in to Derek and one turn-in to Carl. If we have a higher validity with Carl than we're probably going to go work for him. If not, then we'll stay with Derek.

Working for Carl sounds like it would be a better deal than working for Derek since Carl doesn't hold 10% of our paycheck back and he mails our checks in instead of Garit having to drive up to Stockton every week. We'd have to sign independent contractor forms though, but I don't know what that entails and I felt uneasy the first time I heard Garit bring that up.

So on Friday evening I attended an overnight camping trip to Monterey. It was with the Scout troop and most of the people that came were the 11/12 year olds. They actually weren't that bad and they made pretty good food too. For dinner they made burritos and for breakfast we had breakfast-in-a-bag. Breakfast-in-a-bag is when you crack two eggs and put them into a Zip lock bag and you put cheese, bacon, whatever you want to go into your omelet and you put it over a pot of boiling water. It's that simple and it's that good too. We didn't do anything on Friday evening except set-up our tents and eat since we arrived at like 10:00 at night due to the fact that our leaders got lost a couple of times. On Saturday we took an historic hike of Monterrey which was kind of boring since I really don't care about California history. We were going to hike on Cannery Row but we decided not to since everyone was so tired by the end.

One last thing. I've done almost all of my physical exam. The only thing left to do is get the immunizations. I'll have to talk to Dad about that. If I get them then they're probably going to be really expensive!

Well that's it for me. Hope to see you all soon,

Grant

I Hope They Call Me On A Mission (when I have grown a foot or two)

Today is a glorious day! I now have the Melchiezedek Priesthood! Ryan ordained me to be an Elder at about 8:30 as of this morning. I just got back from a meeting with my bishop about paperwork and I'm excited to begin the process. Dad was there too. Wow! Being a missionary definitely feels real now! Everybody at church today congradulated me for becoming an Elder, which felt nice.

Unfortunately I haven't gone on any recent team-ups with the missionaries. I assume that this is because of a communication error since the missionaries have not called me and I haven't taken the initiative to call them. I did sign myself up though to go with them on Friday so I'll definitely be taking some initiative to call them.

Now is the time to really start focusing. I've attended every Mission Prep class so far and I've heard that after this one there'll be another Mission Prep starting in April three days after I turn 19. I've made some good money petitioning, considering the fact that I haven't been working too hard. I'm expecting my biggest pay check to come in this week, which makes me happy. With seven petitions, and an eighth one on the way from what Garit tells me, I can average about $200 a week, maybe more if I really put the time in.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to all those who came to my ordination. It was wonderful having all of you be there to support me. I feel your love and it feels great! I look forward to seeing my Lee cousins this weekend and my Boothe relatives in Atwater as well. I love you all and I appreciate your love and support. I know that I am doing the right thing for the right reason. In case any of you are wondering I plan on leaving sometime in June. I'll keep you posted on when I receive my Endowments and when my Farewell is. Oh, and speaking of posted, this blog is where I'll be writing my mission letters, so I advise you all to check it when I'm gone.

Love from,
Grant

Free at last!

Garit just got internet yesterday! It even came with free T.V. Anyway since I can now do it consistently I thought that it would be cool if I could restart my blog. I'm supposed to go out with our ward missionaries today but I haven't received any calls yet so I don't know what's going to happen. I helped the missionaries teach a potential investigator yesterday. We talked about the Plan of Salvation. The missionaries were really good about covering the basics. I was nervous that I'd mess up and confuse the potential investigator even further but I actually helped (what do you know?). I'm actually attending mission prep right now at the Stake President's home. Last week was the first session and it went well. Becoming a missionary actually feels more real now that I'm way closer to becoming one! I'm supposed to be receiving my interview to becoming an elder this Sunday!

Time can fly when you have a job. It's been four weeks since Mom passed away (or has it been five? It's hard to tell) and I still think about her and miss her. About two Thursdays ago I balled my eyes out missing her. Bishop Brooks mentioned that her death will help to strengthen my testimony of the Plan of Salvation. Well it has and I'm glad that something good can come from my mother's passing.

I wanted to take the last portion of my post to share my testimony that I know the Gospel's true and that it's principles can truly lead a person back to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I know that death is not the end of life, it's only a passing from one existence to another. That is a lesson that my mother continued to teach and re-emphasize time and time again to me. I know that I'll be able to see her again and that it will be one joyous occasion when we do meet. I know that families are eternal. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God who translated the Book of Mormon through the power of God. I know that Jesus Christ suffered and died for our sins. I know that His Atonement is the only way that we can return to live with God again and that Jesus is my Savior, Lord, and Redeemer and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.