Zions 2009 Has Been Approved!!

Looking forward to planning and raising money to make this the best trip EVER!!!!!!

Duty To God

6 Miles - 60 minutes ...or less

Today we did our Duty to God by excercising. The 14-15 year old boys needed to run 3 miles in 30 minutes or less and the 16-18 year old boys needed to run 6 miles in 60 minutes or less. We knew it was going to be tough, but we tried to prepare our minds for what we were about to do. Below is a list of the boys who attempted:

14-15 year olds

• Russell Gray
• Brian

16-18 year olds

• Alex Williams
• Mikey Williams (19 years old)

Leaders

• Ben Hoy
• James LaLanne

Junior and Eric Bravo were there to cheer us on and mark our arms and we ran by so that we could keep count. We ran on the Mission Hills track which meant that 16-18 year olds had to run around the track 24 times and the 14-15 year olds had to run around the track 12 times. There were only 3 who were able to finish what they started.

1. Alex Williams ran 6 miles in about 48 minutes. I think he could have done it in less, but he hung back with me for the first 18-20 laps and then decided to pick up the pace.
2. Brian finished the 3 mile run
3. Ben Hoy (me) finished the fun in about 58 minutes!

It was hard, but it felt good to finish it! Good job to those who completed the task. To those who did not good effort, but we will have to do it another time!

Sorry, but no pictures.

We Love To See The Temple

We went to the San Diego Temple to do Baptisms for the dead. It was a really nice experience. The youth always look forward to providing these saving ordinances for those who have passed away with out a knowledge of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a picture of the group that attended right outside the doors of the Temple.

What are Temples for?

Then of course after working in the Temple we took our traditional trip to In-N-Out Burger. That is what a hamburger is all about!

Gary Allen found a hat that he could ware. He looks like the manager. I bet he could have gone behind the counter and started barking orders and everyone would have listened.

Gary and Bliss Allen. They moved into the ward about 6 months ago I think. Bliss works with the Young Women. Gary is a Sunday School Teacher to the 12-13 year olds, however he has helped us quite a bit being an additional leader on YM events when needed. Thanks Gary!

Amy (MiMi) Knox at In-N-Out. One of our favorites!

I figure if I keep posting enough of these pictures on the www he will stop posing like this:)

Some of our lovely young women!

Erin and a couple of her favorites. She has a lot of favorites!

Shooting Pool Instead of Shotguns

We have been working on our Shotgun Shooting Merit Badge for some time now and we thought we would give the kids a break from the classroom lecture setting, and go to the local billiard and shoot some pool instead.

Shaver Lake 2008

Just in case you missed the video that Brett put together - here it is. Picture quality is less than perfect, but that is not Brett's fault it is YouTubes fault. Still fun to watch though...

Create

The video posted a little weird. I think it was produced for widescreen and our blog is not able to support it. If you would like you can go to URL and watch it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLlnq5yY7k

Shotgun Cleaning Training By: JP & Jimmy James

We are working on our shotgun shooting merit badge. James and Jared prepared a presentation on cleaning a shotgun and keeping you gun clean and safe.

James brought some clay pigeons and took the boys out front and through them so the boys could see how they fly.

James and Jared did a good job. Thanks guys!

Air Bands 2009

The Woodland Park Young Men have invited the youth from our ward, the Felecita Ward and the San Marcos Ward to participate in Air Bands 2009. The first Wednesday of the 2009 the Teachers and the Priests planned and practiced what they would be doing for their Air Bands. From the looks of it - it looks like we are going to have some pretty good gigs. We were planning for the night of the event to land on March 20, 2009, but it did not work out due to a Wedding reception that was planned for the same night. We moved it to April 17, 2009. Below are some pictures that were taken while the kids were practicing... It is going to be a ton of fun both for the kids and the parents.

YES on PROP 8

This evening we went to The Rock Church in Point Loma to visit with former San Diego Charger now Pastor Miles McPherson with the YM to attend a Youth Rally in support of Proposition 8. It was a neat experience to go down and see how many people, young and old, are interested in protecting the sacred institution of Marriage. Sometimes the news and media will try to make you feel like you are the only one that cares anymore. Sometimes when you feel like you are alone on something it is easy for society, or the media to make you think that you are being unreasonable or even discriminatory, but to be with the good people of The Rock Church and many others we were able to see that we do not stand alone, that in fact there are a lot of people out there that are trying to uphold and protect Gods Laws.

Unfortunately though just as we arrived The Rock had to close their doors because they were filled to capacity (4,000 seats!). We were a little disappointed along with thousands of others. But the boys seemed to make the best of it. As we were wandering back to our cars to go home, they found a field of grass that you could run around on. Then they found a soccer ball. So they started playing soccer. There was a small group of girls their age that was eye balling them the whole time. Finally one of the girls got the nerve to ask the boys if they could play too. So at first we thought that our night was going to be bust, but instead it turned out being a pretty fun night.

Service With a Smile | At the Simper's

Sister Simper has a cozy home with fairly decent size backyard. The weeds seemed to have taken over even though Brett, bless his heart, has done all that he can to fight them off!The Boy Scouts and their Dads met at the Simpers on Saturday morning (9/27/08) at 8am. I had got up a little early and went and picked up some doughnuts and water for the hard work that lay ahead. Eleven people came to participate; Ben Hoy, George Hoy, Brett Simper, Forrest Packard, Steven Packard, Kyle Packard, Todd Gray, Tyler Gray, James LaLanne, Austin LaLanne, and our full time missionaries in the ward Elder Bernard and Elder Parker.

We started by raking... and we raked some more, and as we raked we started finding things under all the debris - baseballs, tools, bowls and plates, and old cars:) just kidding no old cars, but it does remind me of a joke by Jeff Foxworthy that goes: "You know you're a Redneck if you mow your lawn and you find a car:)"

Todd Gray had a pair of loppers and he started pruning this huge bush in the middle of the back yard. While he was working an ant crawled in his eye and was creating some pretty significant irritation. So we had to flush his eye out with a hose to get the ant out of there. Then he returned to the bush and started pruning it again. After he was done we discovered that what we though was a bush was actually a TREE! It just had not been shaped in a while so the branches were growing every where.

Elder Bernard and his Companion Elder Parker worked on the back part of yard most of the day. Elder Bernard said, "This yard needs some work, but I have seen a lot worse." Elder Bernard is from Arkansas. He said that there are yards just like this one, but all of the weeds come with thorns that will stick really good as you try to pull them out.

Forrest Packard arrived with his boys Steven and Kyle. I saw that Brother Packard had a pretty decent pile of weeds raked up within a short period of time. We decided that we would turn it into a competition and see who could get the bigger pile. I do not even know if we told Forrest or not that we were competing against him - doesn't matter anyway because he beat us pretty good whether he knew or not. I blame our defeat on Kyle:)

Deb Simper came out with huge bowl of Watermelon. It was probably the best watermelon that I had ever had. It was crisp, tasty and fresh! We all devoured it within a couple of minutes.

Forrest had Steven go and get their chipper shredder from home. Forrest and Steven spent a couple of hours chipping and shredding the bush-tree that Todd Gray had cut down. They reduced at least 4 truck loads of debris in to what would probably be only one trash bag of mulch.

At about 11:30am we started realizing that we were doing more standing around and talking than we were working and decided that it was time to call it quits for the day. So we packed up and left. Clearly there is still a lot of work to do, and whether it looks like it or not we really did get a good start on it.

The next day in Church Forrest Packard said that this is going to be a large project and that we need to get more Scouts and Dads involved. He said, "Usually service projects are fairly easy, but this one wore me out yesterday." Needless to say we have some follow visits in the works and we hope to get more people out there and get this thing knocked out.