The Skouch at the FHE We Almost Died In

I decided it's story time, so gather around everybody--I'm going to tell you a tale of joy and pain that is absolutely true (honestly!).

One of the activities that the LDS church advocates is holding regular family home evenings--you know, an evening where the family gets together to have fun, share a spiritual thought, and so forth.  As students at BYU, we are separated from our families and are obviously unable to hold regular family home evenings.  As a solution to this, the BYU student wards put groups of students together into 'families'  with a mom and dad in charge of planning a weekly FHE.

My first FHE group here at BYU was organized in the fall of 2008 when I was a freshman.  We had lots of good times.  We laughed, we cried, we had dinners together, etc.  When we got back from Christmas vacation, it was time to reorganize the Family Home Evening groups, but our Bishop instructed us to have one more FHE with our old groups until they could get all the new groups together.  Obviously, our mom and dad wanted to go out with a bang.  As they were brainstorming, our dad's roommate made a suggestion that will go down in history as being on par with the decision to fill the Hindenburg with Hydrogen.

I think the conversation may have gone something like this:

Dad: "What are we going to do for FHE?"
Dad's Roommate: "Dude, I know what we need to do--we should go skouching!"
Dad: "What's a skouch?"
Dad's Roommate:  "It's an old couch I bought at a thrift store attached to used skies by a wooden frame I constructed."
Dad: "I don't know if that's safe....."
Dad's Roommate:  "It's been sitting out in the snow during the entire Christmas break, so the couch is frozen and the wood is waterlogged."
Dad:  "I'm still not convinced..."
Dad's Roommate: "I've had 17 guys on it at once and I've dragged it behind my truck with people on it."
Dad:  "......Oh alright, we'll do that."

For those of you who still aren't quite sure what a skouch is, I drew up a blueprint:

I did this in MS Paint.  This is difficult to do when using a laptop touchpad.

And so the following Monday we traveled to Rock Canyon Park like a family traveling to America on the Titanic.  We got there just after sundown, and the entire place was full of people.  There were loads of families, youth groups, and thrill seekers all sledding on this hill.  I remember very distinctly when the skouch was dragged off of the back of the pickup truck.  It landed with a loud thud that made everyone turn around and look at us.  There was a collective "whooaa...." heard.

I looked at the skouch, and then I looked at the steep hill, and then I looked at the snow--which had turned smooth and icy from being sledded on so much.  And then I said:

The guy who built the skouch reassured me that he had taken the skouch down several hills on several different occasions, and never once did he have an accident.  Still, I decided to sit this one out and be a spectator (I'm normally the cautious/wussy type).

So about six people loaded onto the skouch for it's first run.  A crowd gathered around us to watch.  There was tension in the air.  Then the skouch took off and started heading down the hill.  It was pretty much like a bullet, or a jet fighter  (it kinda sounded like a jet as it went down the hill).  In fact, I think there might have been a sonic boom heard.  The skouch had so much momentum that it moved about another 50 yards forward after it reached the bottom of the hill.  When it finally came to a stop, the crowd erupted into cheers and applause.  Several seventh graders were heard to say "can I get on the next ride?"  In my mind, I was thinking "that actually looked pretty fun..."

I grabbed a normal sled and went down to bottom of the hill to join my friends.  When I got there, the skouch engineer said "that was nothing.  We're going down that part of the hill this time."  He pointed to the tallest, steepest part of the hill.  We started to push the skouch up the hill.  As our entire group struggled to move the skouch uphill for the next several minutes, I gained an understanding of what it must have been like to be an Egyptian slave building the pyramids.

The difference is that we had a much steeper incline and ice.

Anyway, we finally got the skouch to the top of the hill.  I decided that I would join my friends this time.  The crowd gathered around us.  Bleachers were set up and people held signs.  I got on the skouch.  We pushed off and started heading down the hill.

Once again, the skouch was moving at a break-neck speed down the hill.  Things were going pretty good for the first part of the ride.  Then, about two-thirds of the way down, we hit a slight bump on the hill.

You may have seen this in a Calvin and Hobbes comic before.  Anyway, when we landed, there was a loud CRUNCH heard.  It took a moment to realize that the sound was the wooden framework below us shattering.  We were no longer riding a skouch.  We were riding on a couch balancing atop a pair of skies.  From this point on, everything moved in super-slow motion.  As we got to the bottom of the hill, the couch started leaning forward.  I saw that the ground was slowly getting closer to my face.  I heard someone yell, "We're gonna tip!!"

The following photographs show what happened next:

Once the smoke cleared, I opened my eyes and found myself face-down, staring at the ice.  I heard a guy yell, "oh my gosh!  Jake, I think I landed on your head!"  I had to think for a moment to realize how much my face hurt.  I said, "yeah...<cough> ...I think you did."  I lifted my head to see a disturbing scene of carnage and tangled bodies.  Apparently,  I landed on the icy ground and started to skid on my face when this guy in our group landed on my head.  Miraculously, my glasses not only stayed on my head, but also only suffered from one small scratch.  A spectator who survived the shockwave sledded down the hill to ask us if we were all right.  Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.  Granted, my whole body was sore for a couple of days and I got a gross scab on the side of my face (and I'm sure everyone else in the group had similar maladies).  But I think we were pretty lucky.

One of my roommates (the smart one) decided not to ride on the skouch, but instead decided to take a video with his cell phone.  Sadly, the night made it difficult to see much of anything.  What you can see is our group pushing the skouch over the edge of the hill, and then we disappear with the skouch into the darkness.  About four seconds later, you can hear a large crowd of people say "OOOooooohh!!!" in unison.

After that, none of us felt like sledding anymore.  We decided to go to a Starbucks and get some nice, warm hot chocolate.  I asked for a cup full of ice to nurse the skid burn on the side of my face. 

I actually look back on this with fond memories.  Even though there was a lot of pain involved, I'm grateful for the fun times our FHE group had together, and this is what I consider the culmination of all that.  Besides, if you're going to have a near death experience, you might as well do it with people you love, right?

Thanks guys!

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Enjoy some turkey and pie, spend time with your family, and drive safely y'all.

Thanks

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us.  I'm really excited about it.  I love spending time with the extended family and overeating.  Well....I can and do overeat all the time--Thanksgiving is just the day when it's socially acceptable and I can do it with style.

Last year, my little brother blogged about some of the things he's grateful for.  It was a wonderful list, and I figured I ought to follow his example and jot down some of the things I'm grateful for.

Thank you to:
-The BYU 65th ward
-The Arkansas Little Rock Mission and my wonderful mission president and companions.
-All the opportunities I ever have to testify and share what I believe.
-Anyone that invites me to get out of the apartment and do something with them.  It's greatly appreciated.
-The people in our military who serve our country.
-All the cars that give me the right of way while I'm on my bike.
-All the cars that don't run over me while I'm on my bike.
-That person who paid for my breakfast over two years ago when I forgot my wallet.  I never got the opportunity to repay him or even get his name.
-YouTube.  You make me smile.
-Chalupas
-People who laugh.
-Thanksgiving pies.  Yes!
-Leftover Thanksgiving turkey
- Anyone that comments on my blog, posts on my Facebook, or sends out a text every now and then.
-The free single of the week on iTunes.  That's $52 a year worth of songs that Apple doesn't have to give us.
-Warm sunny days (you'll be missed for the next six months)
-A day that isn't warm or sunny that reminds us how nice other days are (as long as it doesn't overstay its welcome).
-BYU
-Art
-The Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art.  Amazingly inspiring.
-Any teacher or professor that has made me want to go to their class everyday.
-A person that knows what their standards are and won't budge when given the opportunity to lower them.
-Talented people that share their talents.
-Sign shakers on street corners that dance.
-My little brothers who are such good examples to me.
-My parents who still care about how I'm doing.
-Friends that stop and say hi when we pass each other in the hallway or on campus.
-People that give compliments.

On that note, I wanted to share a video that a couple of my friends posted on Facebook.  It's a short film that 15 minutes long, but totally worth every second.  You won't regret taking the time to see it.

Now go out there and make someone elses day!

The Touch of the Master's Hand...

This last weekend, I went to see the new exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art--'Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand.'  It opened this Friday, and has been hyped quite a bit through various church outlets.  I venture a guess that most people don't know who Carl Bloch is.  In a way, Carl Bloch represents the end of an era.  He painted Classical style religious paintings and large altarpieces in the later 1800s.  Bloch didn't get much recognition during his lifetime mainly because his style of painting was eclipsed by the growing modern art movements of the time.

During the mid-1900s, the LDS church started to use his paintings in just about everything from magazines to pamphlets and even movies.  I would venture to guess that every Mormon church house in the world has at least two of his paintings somewhere in the building.

 The Church has been in negotiations with various people for several years to put this exhibit together.  The main focus is five large altarpiece paintings created by Bloch.  One of these paintings is "Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda," which the MOA acquired in 2001.  The other four altarpieces haven't moved from their churches in Europe since they were completed over 120 years ago.  No one has ever been able to see all of these paintings in one place before now.  So it's fair to say that this is a very special collection that BYU has here.

I have never been as impressed at the MOA as I was this last Friday.  I was genuinely moved as I viewed some real masterpieces.  Bloch had a special ability to tell a story through art, and to convey a broad range of emotions through his work.  I wanted to show you some of the highlights from the exhibit that really stuck out to me.

The first painting you view as you enter the exhibit depicts doubting Thomas as he meets the resurrected Christ.  The pictures I'm posting here really don't do this justice.  Each of the altarpiece paintings is more than ten feet tall, with most of the figures being larger than life size.  I love the way Thomas is depicted here--humbly kneeling and penitent.  He's overcome with emotion as he realizes that Christ has overcome death.  The colors and details here are wonderful (I particularly like how Bloch treated the worn and faded red in Thomas' robe).

This altarpiece shows Jesus in Gethsemane.  The Biblical account does not give us details about the angel that came to the Savior to strengthen him as he suffered in the garden.  Because of this, artists often struggle to depict this event.  Oftentimes, the angel is shown hovering over Christ, while the Savior seemingly takes no notice of them.  Other times, a simple beam of light is shown, while the source of the light in not visible.  Carl Bloch shows us a much more personal story in this painting.  You'll notice that Jesus' arms are clasped in prayer, yet they hang limply to the ground.  His expression is one of exhaustion and sadness.  The angel in this painting is just as central to the painting as Christ is.  The two of them are contrasted starkly against the dark background of the night.  I can't help but wonder what it is the angel might have said to Christ that night to strengthen him.  Or maybe there were no words, and the angel just provided a shoulder to cry on.

This painting--"Christ and Boy"--was one of the major highlights of the exhibit.  I love the relationship between Christ and the small boy.  Look at how protective Christ is.  The gesture with Christ's left hand suggests the verses of the scriptures that say we need to become like this Child.  What's barely visible in the painting is the tears in Jesus' eyes. 

This picture shows a crew installing "Christ with Boy" at the Museum of Art. It gives you a sense of scale of how large these paintings are.  Something to note: when looking at this painting in the gallery, who are you eye level with--Jesus, or the boy?

This is the last main altarpiece you see at the museum--"Come Unto Me."  This is probably my favorite painting of the exhibit.  Look at the slice of humanity we see here.  We have a man in chains who appears to be anxious about being this close to Jesus.  Over his shoulder you can see a man who appears to be skeptical of the divinity of Christ.  In front of the Savior there is a lame man, as well as a humble beggar.  There's also a mourning widow in black, and a blind man over her shoulder.  Finally, there's the child on the left side of the canvas.  Aside from Christ, this is the only character here who is looking at you.  A common theme in Bloch's paintings is a child that looks at the viewer; inviting them to be part of the painting.  Here, the girl almost seems to be saying "are you going join us?"  I really can't tell in you in writing how impressive and touching these paintings are.

The exhibit is free, but you either need to register for tickets online, or grab standby tickets at the front desk.  You can register for tickets at carlbloch.byu.edu .  I personally had no problem getting in on standby tickets on opening day.  Also, you can checkout iPads for the exhibit that give you a neat guided tour.  Currently, the iPad checkout is free because only about 20% of the content for the exhibit has been loaded on them, but a museum worker informed me that the iPads should have all the content put on them in about a week.  At that point, iPad rentals will cost $3.

Writer's Block

I'm still dealing with some hardcore writer's block.  Or maybe it's a creativity block.  I really want to start a new painting, but I can't come up with any ideas right now (by the way, any thoughts would be appreciated).  So this post will probably be a bit disjointed.

I'm trying a new thing right now.  It's called "cooking my own food."  When I worked at Taco Bell, I got 50% off everything in the food court.  It made sense to eat there, like, everyday.  When I was on a mission, members of the various congregation usually fed us around 5-7 times a week.  Now, I'm starting to see the financial costs of eating out all the time, so I'm resolving to cook for myself more often.  The nice thing: thanks to the frozen food section, I can eat all the junk that I normally have at fast food places at home.  Hello cheddar peppers and chicken strips.  Also, I got a bunch of Hot Pockets for snacks.  I'm very aware that this means I'm white trash.




Yes, I eat absolute garbage.  But that's the nice thing about having the metabolism of a greased cheetah strapped to a rocket and set on fire while being chased by ninjas.

Thank you, MS Paint.

I also saw Toy Story 3 this last week.  I can't believe how the Pixar guys keep topping themselves.  Surely, they must hit movie nirvana sometime, and then eventually start making lower quality films, but that isn't anywhere in sight right now.  Anyway, it was truly beautiful and the ending was more emotional than any animated film I've ever seen.  If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading and go see it.  Now. 

There are rumors that Toy Story 3 could actually win Oscars outside of the 'Best Animated Picture' category.  That reminds me of this awesome trailer I saw the other day called [the movie's title].  Here, take a look.

What's funny is that the YouTube comment's section for this video reads just like the trailer.  And I quote:

"Incendiary comment demeaning women and ignoring the general theme, while focusing on a body part or function. Rampant misspelling and grammatical errors intertwined with offensive language, ensuring that readers are left with a sense that the general populous and especially modern youth are self-absorbed unscrupulous ignoramuses."

"@someotherattentionseekingpost­er, unproductive name calling based purely on difference in opinion; possibly some reference involving the Third Reich"

"@Jerkposter INCREDIBLY THOUGHTLESS ARGUMENT DESCRIBING THE WAYS YOU ARE WRONG AND THEREFORE HOMOSEXUAL, ALL IN CAPITALS AND MISSPELLED."

Gotta love the Internet.

A Talk I Recently Gave on Baptism

I've actually been meaning to write on here for a while, but have had a bit of a writer's block on what to actually write about.  

...Come to think about it, I've had a writer's block on everything I've been wanting to write about.  I couldn't even think of an appropriate Facebook status to report the other day  (you know things are boring when you can't even write a sentence about what's going on right now).

So I decided to share with you some thoughts that I recently shared at my BYU student ward a couple of weeks ago.  For those who are not members of the LDS faith; we don't have a regular paid clergy at our church, and the weekly sermons come from different members of the congregation week to week.  It helps each of us learn from each others' thoughts on various subjects, and if you don't like the current speaker, you can take comfort that he's only going to be talking to us for the next 15 minutes.  I'm grateful for every opportunity I have to speak to a congregation because I'm pretty sure that I actually learn a lot more from preparing a talk than the congregation does from listening to it.  Plus, I get to practice some public speaking skills that I may need for future world domination plans.

This last time, I was asked to speak about the broad topic of baptism.  As a missionary, I probably gave seven talks on this topic and taught countless lessons on it during my last two years.  But this time, I really struggled with something to say.  Most of the males in the congregation had been on missions as well, and also had lots of experience on the topic of baptism.  So I naturally wanted to say something that was new and a little bit unique.

Well, during my mission and through a couple of other study sessions, I found some interesting little facts here and there.   Most people who are familiar with the Bible know of story of Jesus' baptism:

 "The cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him...And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."--Matt 3: 13, 16-17.

So that's pretty familiar stuff to most of Christianity.  Now, a while ago I was browsing the Bible Dictionary, which is found at the back of the LDS edition of the Bible.  The Bible Dictionary is exactly what its name implies--a dictionary for Biblical terms.  I find reading it fascinating (side note:  the unsaid suffix to any usage of the word 'fascinating' are the two words 'to me').  Anyway, there's a little entry in there titled 'Gospels, Harmony of.'  In this entry, you'll find something that looks like this:

In the left-hand column, you'll find a chronological listing of the events in Jesus' life, followed by their location, and then a scriptural reference where you can find this event in the four main Gospels.  As you can (barely) see from the above photo, some events occur in multiple Gospels, others occur in only one.

Now, at the end of the Gospel of John, we read: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."  So if we take that statement at face value, that means that the stuff we read in the Bible is really only scratching the surface of the ministry of Jesus.  So we're going to assume that because an event has been written by one of the four Gospel writers, it must be an event that was somewhat more important to that writer than some of the other events in the life of Christ.

In the Harmony of the Gospels table, we'll see 315 events in the life of Jesus listed (yeah, I actually did count that number up--like I said earlier; my life is not that exciting).  Of those events, only 29 were deemed important enough to be written of in all four Gospels.  Some of these events include feeding the five thousand, the triumphal entry, and the betrayal of Judas. 

Now, in this table, we'll find one last column that I haven't mentioned yet: Latter-Day Revelation.  This column lists spots that these various events are mentioned in scripture unique to Latter-Day Saints (i.e.: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, etc.).  Of the 29 above events, only three are found in all four Gospels and in Latter-Day Revelation--according to this table.  Those events are: John the Baptist's Prophetic Ministry, The baptism of Jesus, and The crucifixion.  The reason the resurrection of Jesus isn't one of the three is because it is actually listed as a couple dozen individual events, but it is covered in all four Gospels plus Latter-Day Revelation (it's a similar story with all the events leading up to Jesus' death, including his suffering in Gethsemane).

So if we were to go off the Harmony of the Gospels' table, it would be fairly safe to say that the three most written about events in the life of Jesus Christ would be:
1.) His baptism and the ministry of John the Baptist.
2.) His death and the events surrounding it.
3.) His resurrection.
(side note 2: Yes, I did count all these things up myself.  No, I do not have a social life.)

Why is it that Jesus' baptism is important enough that every source we've talked about found time to write about it?  I personally believe (and this is just my musings)  that the key rests in the word 'covenant.'  When any of us is baptized, we make a covenant to God that we will keep His commandments and take the name of Jesus Christ upon us.  Jesus has always been the perfect example to each of us, and his example would not be complete without showing us that we need to follow him and be baptized as well.  By being baptized, Christ is essentially telling each of us that there is a path to follow, and that being baptized if one of the very first steps.

I took this covenant upon myself over thirteen years ago.  And I'm sorry to report that sometimes I kind of trample on it or forget about it.  As I was doing this research, I realized that this was pretty important stuff.  It's almost as if the scriptures are saying "these things are important.  I keep repeating them so you don't forget them!"  May we all continue to remember the promises that we have made, and keep them.

Anyway, that's all an outline of some of the things that I spoke about  a couple of weeks ago.  You know, for someone with writer's block, I sure did ramble for a while there.  My congratulations to you if you're still reading this. I know it's kind of a long post, but I found it fascinating [to me].  Please, feel free to comment and share some of your thoughts, I would love to hear from you!