Cops

I don't know how any of you feel about cops, but I personally feel like they have a real authority complex going on.  If any of you have been pulled over for speeding, maybe your experience will help support my theory when it comes to cops.  It seems to me that they want to show off how much power they have, be able to abuse their authority, yet still have you like them in the end.

I have limited experience, but it goes something like this.  I get pulled over for going 10 mph over the speed limit.  The cop then tells me that he clocked me going 14 mph over, but that he'll only report me for going 9 mph over.  I guess his thinking goes something like this: "If I tell him that he was going faster than he really was, but that I will let him off for less, then he'll like me because I'm being a nice guy."  Really?!?  If you wanted to be a nice guy, you would let me off, the way you do when you pull over a girl that you think is cute.  And if you wanted to be an honest cop, you would write me a ticket for going 10 mph over.  That's what they do in Hungary (I may or may not know from personal experience).  They say "Hey, you were going 17 kph over and here's your ticket.  You need to pay it by this date."  None of the "I could write you up for this and that, and this, etc." that the cops here try to pull to show off their authority.  They simply do their job, enforcing the law.

As another examples, take Bill, who ran the Red Rock Relay with us.  Bill likes to hunt, and a few years ago, he decided to go hunting on Y Mountain in Provo (which is legal, by the way) and he even had the tag necessary to put on his deer.  He was hunting with a muzzle loader (for those of you who don't know, this is one of those pioneer type guns, where you put the black power down the barrel, then stuff the ball down in, and it fires when the little hammer strikes the cap and ignites the black power) and ended up shooting a deer, which he then carried all the way down the mountain to his car, which happened to have a camo paint job.  There was a note on the car from the Provo City police saying that it was illegal to be hunting there (which it wasn't).  He put the deer into his car and was going to put the tag on the deer, but he didn't have any scissors to cut the hard plastic of the tag.  He decided that he would just until he got home, since he was already covered with blood from the deer.

As he was driving home, he got pulled over (since the cops knew he was up there and were waiting for him to come down).  Since he was in his hunting gear, the cop asked him if he had any weapons in the car, to which he responded, "Yeah, I have a muzzle loader in the front seat, and it's loaded."  Apparently, that statement wasn't taken the way Bill intended it (he was just trying to inform the officer, while the officer took it as a threat).  The cop then started yelling at him to get out of the car, at which point his partner got out of the car to give some back up.  He said that the muzzle loader was loaded because he couldn't get the cap off, so he took off the hammer, so it wouldn't be able to fire.  Then his partner noticed that there was a deer in the back that wasn't tagged.  Bill tried to explain his situation, to which he was yelled at and told that they didn't want to hear any more of his excuses.

They told him that anything he said can and would be used against him in a court of law and told him that he was being arrested on site.  They put him in the back of the cop car and then proceeded to go through his car.  They ended up taking his deer because it wasn't tagged.  Someone from the fish and wildlife service came out and Bill tried to explain about the muzzle loader.  They didn't believe him and they too tried to get the cap off, to no avail, which eventually led to the cops firing the muzzle loader into someone's front lawn.  They called in to dispatch to let them know, in case anyone reported the gun fire in the neighborhood.

In the end, Bill was let go without his deer (which he had the cop measure, having a 22" rack).  It didn't really occur to him that he had been arrested since it was an "on-site arrest" and they let him go after, but it still comes up occasionally that he has a criminal record.

All of this reminds me of D&C 121:39:  "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."

Now, I'm not saying all cops are this way, but it does concern me the amount of unrighteous dominion taken by many cops.  Just a thought that I had after hearing Bill's experience during the race.

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Red Rock Relay

On September 9th and 10th, we participated in the Red Rock Relay.  For those of you who have heard of the Ragnar Relay, this is very similar.  It is essentially a twelve person relay race that went 187 miles from Brian Head to Zions.  Each person runs three legs that vary in length from 2 miles to over 8 miles.  You are split up into two vans, with six people in each van.  Everyone in one van will run a leg then you hand off to the other van and try to get some rest while they run before it's your turn again.

It was quite an adventure trying to get enough people for our team, and the connection between some of us was being the spouse of a friend of a friend.  Or the old boss of a friend who was once arrested and may or may not at one time have gotten a camo paint job on his car.  (I was tempted to add details that weren't true claiming artistic liberty in story telling, but believe it or not, all those details are true.)  Needless to say, we had a pretty interesting group.

Since we were in two separate vans, we didn't get to interact very much with Van 2, but in Van 1 we had a blast.  Our characters included the following people: me, Sarah, Sarah's friend from high school named Meghan and her friend Kate that she plays hockey with, Rita, a chemical engineering student from Taiwan, who started running on her mission because her mission president made it a rule to run every day, and Bill, who just happens to be that old boss mentioned in the previous paragraph.  If you haven't figured it out, Bill was the most entertaining team member to have.  

I'm sure our parents are now very worried that we spent almost two days in a van with a criminal, so if anyone is interested in reading more, check out my post about cops.  As long as we're giving disclaimers, this next story may be too graphic for those with young children, so feel free to skip the next two paragraphs.

The race started with Bill riding a ski lift to the top of Brian Head, then running down the mountain, where he handed off to Sarah, who had a killer run that gained over a thousand feet of elevation in little over two miles.  She then handed off to me, where I began my 8.4 mile run (I believe this was the longest leg of the race, but I don't know for sure).  It was a little bit chilly, and for a while I was actually running in the snow.

(Warning, this is the graphic part I was referring to.  Consider yourself duly warned to skip this paragraph if you don't like graphic running stories.)  As I was a little more than halfway through my run, I was started to get some pretty bad gas pains in my stomach.  At one point I farted every stride for at least twenty strides in a row.  As a side note, I had already pooped that morning before we left and once again in a porta-potty when we got to Brian Head.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it until the end of my leg, like I had initially hoped.  I made a dash for the woods and took care of business there.  One guy that I had passed earlier, passed me while I was taking my break.  He said to me "I was wondering why your pace was slowing down a little bit, but now I know."  Needless to say, I passed him again.  After our van finished, we headed to Walmart, where I just so happened to poop again.  So, for those of you keeping track at home, that is four bowel movements in four different places in less than a twelve hour span of time.  Since we're still in the graphic paragraph, I'll mention here that Kate also threw up on her first leg, and then ran awesome from there on out.

Welcome back, those of you who skipped the graphic paragraph (although I'm sure it was enticing to read given it's great length.  Our next set of legs was running from SUU to Whitecastle, some of which was on dirt roads, pretty late at night.  For our final legs, we ran from Veyo to Washington City, where we handed off to Van 2 and then met them at the finish line - the entrance to Zions.  We may or may not have forgotten to take pictures during the first two legs, so here are the pictures from our last legs, and then at the finish line.

Me before my run at 5am

Bill at the end of his last leg.

(Yes, those are glasses without lenses that have lights on the side.)

Me at the end of my 5am run.

(If I look tired, that's just because I didn't want others to feel bad.)

Rita at the end of her run.

(Isn't she grateful to her mission president now?)

Van 1 having some fun during Kate's run.

Giving Kate a drink during her run.

(This is the least blurry picture Bill took of her whole run.)

Things weren't too hard for Meghan, giving the thumbs up while she ran.

(Not to mention the great scenery she got to enjoy.)

Sarah enjoying her run and the scenery.
(But failing to acknowledge her fans with a thumbs up.)

The two coolest people on our team at the finish line.

(That background isn't photo-shopped in there.)

Van 1 at the finish line, sporting a line on their calves for each leg they ran.

Bill, Rita, Kate, Sarah, Me, and Meghan

Van 2 - Susan, Brian, Jeramy, Brenda, Brandon, & Jordan

(Brenda showing why our team name was "The Seducers.")

We all had a blast, despite being sore the next few days.

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Neice

Yeah, that's right.  I'm an uncle.  Sarah's brother Tyler and his wife Amy had a little baby girl on July 27th, making Sarah an aunt and me an uncle for the first time.  Over Labor Day weekend we went down to Vegas for her baby blessing and got to hold Abby for the first time.

She's your typical baby - favorite things to do include eating, sleeping, pooping and crying.  Oh, and she's pretty cute.  As for the funniest story involving her from the weekend, it's actually more about her dad than her.  He was filling out the form for her blessing and there was a place where it said "Born in Covenant" with a box for "Yes" and a box for "No."  He claims that he was too busy worrying about getting the wording right for the blessing, but we think it is because he thought "Covenant" is an actual place, but he marked the box that said "No."  Needless to say, he had to fill out another form.  (As a side note, my quick search on Google maps didn't reveal any place called "Covenant.")

Without further ado, here is Abby with Uncle Bryan and Aunt Sarah.

That's not a yawn, that's a yell of excitement.

("I can't believe I actually get to be held by Uncle Bryan.")

Even with her eyes closed, she knows there is ketchup and mustard on the table.

If only her little arms were long enough to reach one of them.

Oh, by the way, she is apparently content with Aunt Sarah.

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Bear Lake

Our last weekend before school started, we went up to Bear Lake.  There were two reasons for the trip: (1) So Sarah could participate in the Bear Lake Brawl Triathlon with some family and friends and (2) so we could spend some time with Papa (her grandpa who lives at Bear Lake).

We had a blast, but I'm not sure what my favorite part was.  It could have been cheering my wife on as she completed her second triathlon.  It could have been my accomplishment of riding around Bear Lake (50 miles)on my bike before they started.  It could have been all the jokes I made about doing things with your "bear" hands since we were at Bear Lake or referring to anything else as "bear" that is really "bare."  It could have been the wicked farmer's tan that I got for forgetting to put sunscreen on my arms for my bike ride (I put in on my face, neck and legs).  It could have been riding the wave runners on the lake.  It could have been spending time with Papa or going to church with him.  Since there are so many options to choose from and I'm having a hard time, I let you decide your favorite, with a little help from some pictures.

Sarah in the back of Brenda's truck, getting ready to drive over to the triathlon start.

The Triathlon Crew - Brenda, Sarah, Matt (Sarah's cousin wearing the helmet) & Joe (Sarah's lab buddy)

Sarah finishing the bike portion of the triathlon.

Re-hydrating before the run.

(I don't have any pictures of her running because she was too fast.)

Nothing better than a Fat Boy to help you recover from your race.

The Happy Couple after triathlon or ride around Bear Lake.

Farmer's tan after bike ride.

(I'm not sure whether the wall paper or the farmer's tan is better.)

Everyone showing off what's left of their triathlon numbers or their new farmer's tan.

Me and Sarah with Papa.

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DMV

So this is actually about going to the Drivers License Division, but to everyone outside the people who work there, it's pretty much the same thing as the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) to everyone else - ridiculously long lines and extreme wait times.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, we had to make a trip to the DMV, i.e., the Drivers License Division.  I needed to renew my drivers license and Sarah needed to get a Utah drivers license with her new name on it.  I'm sure most of you have been to the DMV before, and my guess is that it's only worse now that Utah passed the law that you have to show up in person to renew your license rather than doing it by mail.

The thing that surprised me was the attitude of people who work there.  They must have just accepted the fact that lines are always long there and people wait for a long time.  So, here's how it went:

We walked in, got in the first line and filled out our paperwork.  Then we got to the "information desk" where they took our pictures, checked our documents, and got our signatures.  Then the guy handed us the papers and nonchalantly said "It'll be just an hour wait."  Just an hour?!?!  How long do things around here normally take?

Then after our wait that was just an hour, I got called up to the desk and the lady asks me, "Did you have to wait long?"  I thought to myself 'yeah, I had to wait long'  but then thinking that their perception of time is different there, I responded with "No, only an hour."  She looked at me funny as if she was thinking 'Only an hour?!?!'  to herself, then apologized.  I guess not everyone there has a strange perception of time.  Lucky for me, I don't have to go back for another five years.

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Camping in the Uintas

With our second to last weekend before school started, Sarah and I decided to go camping in the Uinta Mountains with Brenda (partly because we wanted to make it up to her for bailing on our trip to Havasupai and partly because we felt like going camping).  I had gone to Jenő and Edit's sealing in the Bountiful Temple that evening and I was planning on meeting Sarah and Brenda in Kamas.  The original plan was to go to Mirror Lake, but when does anything in life go according to plan?

Edit, Sarah, Me and Jenő

(Jenő was the Branch Mission Leader in one of the cities on my mission and Edit has been living in Utah for the past fifteen years, working int he Humanitarian Aid Department of the Church.  She had be married but was recently divorced and she and Jenő decided to get married, so he moved here from Hungary.  My mission president performed the sealing and it was translated into Hungarian for Jenő because he doesn't speak English.)

So, one of my headlights had burned out and I didn't think it would be a good idea to drive up in the mountains without a headlight (despite my mother telling me that plenty of people drive with a burned out headlight).  After the sealing, I drove to Murray to fix my car there, only to run into a lot of frustration, tools dropped into the engine that didn't fall through and tight spaces that weren't too kind to my knuckles.  Long story short, it was dark before I left Murray, so Sarah and Brenda decided to leave Kamas and find the first area to camp that they could.  We later met up in Kamas and went to the camp together.  The next morning, we went for a nice bike ride up the canyon (if any bike ride up a canyon can be considered nice).

Me and Brenda with our tent.

(Leave it to my wife to take a picture of me camping with another woman.)

The Provo River, right next to our campsite.

Landscape picture taken from our campsite.

(I couldn't really think of a good description for this one.)

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Beard

Since someone decided to mock the beard I grew during our trip to Europe on their blog, I decided to devote a post to it on mine.  

My mother may or may not have been right that it was a pretty wimpy beard, but that doesn't mean I can't try.  Any man who tries to grow a beard knows that it must be shaved a little bit at a time with pictures taken at each stage, so here are are the different stages of my beard shaving, for your viewing pleasure:

It's a shame that it had to come all the way off and we couldn't stop somewhere in the middle of that.

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People

After all the incredible sights we saw, I think that our favorite part of the trip was visiting with all of the different people, many of whom are very dear friends to me and I believe became good friends to Sarah (despite the language barrier and having a spotty translator at best - since he would get so into conversation that he would forget to translate).

Budapest

Weston & Katie Baxter with Me and Sarah

Weston and I served at the same time and we randomly ran into each other in the House of Terror (headquarters to the Nazis and then later to the communists).  They may or may not have been the cause of our transportation fine.  We met back up with them for dinner later that night after we took a tour of Parliament.

Békéscsaba

   

Us with the Belkó Family (left to right: Edina, Brigi, Tibike, Balázska, Tibor)

Edina was the first person that I ever baptized.  She is an incredibly strong member with rock-solid faith that she had long before we found her.  Her daughter Brigi got baptized right before I came home from Hungary and I got to attend.  Her husband Tibor has been gaining interest in the Church ever since we started teaching her, but has been slow in his investigation.  (He joked while we were there that he would get baptized after five years - Edina got baptized the summer of 2007.)  He's been going to church with his whole family since January.

Sarah, Mária, and Me

Mária was one of the first investigators in Békéscsaba when we opened it in December of 2006.  If you can't tell from the picture, she is kind of a cat lady, and she also has most of the walls in the room we're standing in covered in plates, floor to ceiling.  I taught her the whole time I served in Békéscsaba (almost five months) and it wasn't until a couple months after I left that she got baptized.  She's kind of a stubborn old lady, and she goes to church when she wants (like the day we visited her, she said she wasn't going because it was "too hot.")

Me, Bea, Noémi and Sarah

Bea and her daughters Noémi and Anita were taught and baptized by the other elders while I was serving in Békéscsaba.  We interacted with them a lot with all of our branch activities (family nights, branch parties, etc.) and she loved cooking for all four of us.  Anita has been off and on about going to church ever since her baptism.  Unfortunately, she didn't come to church the day we were there.  Bea did make lunch for us and all the missionaries though.

Tatabánya

The Tatabánya Branch

We got to know the members of the branch who went with us up to Freiberg a lot better than the rest of them.  I met a few of them when I went back last summer (2010) but there were still quite a few new faces since then.  Last I heard, there were 29 members, of which 27 are active.  When we met with the mission president our first day there, he informed us that Tatabánya was a week or two away from becoming an official branch within the stake, becoming independent from the mission.  As President Baughman put it, although Lali was called as the Branch President, Feri will always be the "Godfather of Tatabánya."

    

Us with the members we were escorts for at the temple - Lala Vankó on the left and Edina Heiser with her daughter Zsofi on the right.

My Seventh Day Adventists Friends - Vera Néni and Laci Bácsi

Our first morning in Tatabánya when we opened it, my companion and I went for a run.  While we were on the run, I said a prayer in my heart, asking Heavenly Father to let me know if there was anywhere we should come back to to track later in the day after we had searched for real estate for a branch house.  As we ran down Jokai Mór street, I felt the impression that we should come back and track there.  When I felt that impression, we were by house #4 (the house numbering on a street in Hungary is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. down one side of the street and 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. down the other).  That night we came back and rang the bell at #4.  No answer.  So, we rang and #2 and then started down the odd side of the street.  When we got to #17, this older couple came out.  We told them who we were and the responding by saying that they are Seventh Day Adventists and they invited us to their worship service that Saturday.  I asked them where they held it, and they said right there in the front room of their house.  We decided to go, and they invited us to stay for the potluck lunch in their yard that followed (there were only about ten people at church).  We ended up going to their church a handful of times while we were there and became good friends with a mutual respect for each other's beliefs. 

When Sarah and I visited them, Vera Néni went and found a couple photo albums (she really likes to take pictures) of me and my companion when we served there.  It was fun to see those pictures and reminisce on the good times I had while serving there in Tatabánya.  As it turns out, Feri and Róz live at #16 on the same street (essentially across the street).  Who knows what would have happened if we would have headed the other direction that first night tracting?

   

Our last dinner at their house and then the four of us at four AM before we left for the airport.

   

The four of us at the airport (yes, even Anna came when we left at 4AM, she just didn't want us to take her picture).

   

The Válóczi Family at the Freiberg Temple - Róz, Feri and Anna

Feri and Róz Válóczi were the reason for this trip.  (Yeah, I guess it was for our honeymoon, too.)  Whenever I think about my mission, they are the first people to come to mind.  I'm not sure who has had a greater influence on the other in our relationship - me on them or them on me.  Their faith and courage is such an example to me as well as their love.  

It's hard to pick a favorite memory with them from our trip, because the humorous side of me wants to say the time that we asked Feri about "baby water" or when they taught Sarah to say "Bryan fingolt" ("Bryan farted" - which is the only Hungarian she has kept, by the way) or when we got the huge ice cream cone the first night there or when Feri and I would say to Sarah "A Feri Bácsinak nem lehet nemet mondani." ("You can't tell old man Feri no" - usually in relation to getting her to eat more food, but then it started getting used for everything.)  

Then the spiritual side of me wants to say seeing them get sealed in the Temple, or just watching them kneel and pray at the steps of the Temple when we got there, or sitting in their room the night we got back from Prague as Róz told us about her incredible experiences at the Temple throughout the week or when Anna told us she was starting to gain interest in the Church.

The memories just flood in when I think about them, whether they are from when I served there as a missionary, when I went back last summer or from our honeymoon.  In short, what I want to say is that I love them and I'm grateful to count them not only as my friends, but as my Hungarian family.

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