Prop. 8, Water Polo, and the last Fall Magic Concert; what else can a guy ask for?

http://www.narth.com/docs/PrivilegeofSpeechClausen090.pdf

Check this out. Seriously it has some great information in it. As you can tell Prop. 8 has been a big issue for me even more now that Election Day is Tuesday. I got to do a fake vote in my Government class on Tuesday, and out of the two AP classes that voted John McCain barely won. I just hope that our nation yields the same results. I voted Yes on Prop. 8, although there was no mention on whether any of the propositions passed or failed. Yesterday I got to go pass out Prop. 8 fliers with Ryan and a man in my ward who was born in Nigeria and was once a prince. No I am not making this up the former Nigerian prince's name is Victor Ukorebi. He has a thick African accent, but he's a great guy and he has a powerful testimony too. Anyway I passed out fliers with both Ryan and Brother Ukorebi, and it was very fun, and since there were three of us we made great time! While I am still on the subject of Prop. 8 I went onto Facebook and I argued with the liberals on this sort of thing and on the divinity of marriage etc. At first I thought that I was doing pretty well, when I only had to deal with one of them, pretty soon I had to argue against three liberals and I eventually said forget it because nobody's mind would be changed and the argument would only get more heated. Looking on the bright side though, I did manage to prove to Ryan that I'm not an extremist, and that I can argue with less emotion than I normally show at home. I got Ryan to look at the arguments made by both me and the liberals and I also asked him for some pointers, which he gave rather generously. Before I leave this subject I have two things to say: One, I am proud of the fact that both Mom and I fasted so that Prop. 8 can pass, and two, for those who can vote and are reading this, PLEASE VOTE YES! Seriously, the fate of America, or should I say marriage in America, rests in your hands!

Speaking of fasting and church I bore my testimony! It had been a super long while since I had done this so I was, and am, quite proud of myself for doing so. At the beginning I shared a story that happened during Water Polo practice that I had relayed only to Mom and Dad before, and it's something that I'll be able to treasure, probably for the rest of my life. The story goes as follows:

So there I was at Water Polo practice, having finished my warm-up laps rather early, and there were two of my teammates who had also finished their laps early; (Their names are Anthony and Chris). Somehow, in some way, Chris started up a discussion of Prop. 8 and I being myself only jumped at the chance for a discussion of Prop. 8. Now Chris had already known that I was a member of the church so he wasn't really surprised when I started mentioning my support for Prop. 8. He literally told me,

"Grant, of course you'd say Yes on Prop. 8. You're a Mormon, you're like bound by the law to say that."

Now my other teammate, Anthony, piped up when he heard Chris saying the word Mormon and he thought that Chris was talking about himself and not me so Anthony asked if Chris was a Mormon and Chris naturally said no, and that I (I meaning Grant Boothe) was a Mormon. Anthony seemed to be somewhat surprised by this and I guess I must have mentioned something else because Chris turned towards me and said,

"Grant you're like the Mormoniest Mormon ever. You're like Joseph Smith".

This was, and is, the unforgettable line that I am writing in this electronic journal for all to read. I was so tempted to say thanks to him, but our coach was telling us something important so we stopped and listened and basically the subject was immediately dropped. Now keep in mind, this was the start of my testimony and I mentioned that I wasn't retelling this so that I could brag about myself, although that got a considerable amount of laughs out of people. As Mom put it, my testimony started light, but turned around and ended both powerfully, and spiritually. People liked my testimony too, which is always nice.

Now to Water Polo. Since my last post the second half of the Water Polo season has basically ended so now I'm once again writing about our Enochs game. By the way that got cancelled due to the lightning storm that occurred that day. Our current record is 8-4. We have lost to Oakdale twice, Modesto once (at the beginning of the season) and Johansen once, which was a terrible game, and they only won by one goal too. So we are currentlt tied with both Modesto and Johansen for second place in the league and I've heard that the tie will be settled with a coin toss, which baffles me because there's three times and whatever is going to be flipped in the coin toss has only two sides, so how does that work out? Don't ask me because I don't know. Anyway our game will probably be rescheduled for Monday, which means one more week of Water Polo, which is bad news to my ears simply because I really want Water Polo to end so that I can work on my Eagle.

Also, on October 17th and 18th, I was coerced into attending a Water Polo tournament. Despite the fact that I got out of school early I did not want to go, and I did not enojoy it at all. We won our first game against Merced. The score was 7-5 and it was a rather competitive game. Our next game was against St. Mary's, which I have heard has one of the best Water Polo programs ever, and that became evident when we lost by seven points, I think. So the next day came along, I had to get up early for the next game, and we had to play against Del Oro. We got our clocks cleaned by them, which was rather demoralizing, and then we proceeded to play Sonora, and got whomped by them too. We finally played against Tokay, and won, but by then everybody on the team was basically sick of this stupid tournament and all wanted to go home.

So that leaves me with the Fall Magic Concert. Overall it was a pretty good concert. I got to jump off of the stage, do a somersault which Dad pointed out practically nobody saw, I jumped off of a chair, and then I spun around in the air towards the end of the song. That was basically my most favorite part of the concert. I never get to watch all that much simply because I am usually backstage preparing for the next number that I have to do. Everybody kept talking about how good we were, which they usually do, and I got to say goodbye to my last Fall Magic Concert at Downey.

Well those are the major events of my life. I love you all. Please vote Yes on Prop. 8.
Love,
Grant