Utah - day 1

There are so many things I need to talk about that I can’t possibly do this all in one posting. I'll spare you the long discourse and break it up into several smaller ones. We went to Utah this week to pick up Alex and bring him home but also to celebrate Trevor’s graduation with him. Let me brag a little bit for him, he was able to graduate magna cum laude. I believe that means that he graduated in the top 2% of his school but what ever it means, Alycia will testify that it means he spent a lot of time studying.

I went into work on Wednesday morning to participate in a conference call with Germany and then we hit the I-15 heading north. Because of a late start we didn’t pull into Sanchez’s until 2:00 AM. We have a pretty good deal going with the Sanchez’s. We both make out but somehow I think we get the better end of the deal. Mahonry spends a lot of time in San Diego where his company’s main office is and any time he is in town he stays with us. Then when ever we are in Utah we stay with the Sanchez’s. The funny thing is that on this trip Mahonry stayed in our empty house with no one there and we were in Utah. We called ahead and let Molly know how late we were going to be and she left a key out for us. I remember one time we all ended up at the Sanchez’s. Kira and Evan were in town, Alycia and Trevor came out to visit Ben happened to be in town and Brandon and Serene were there. I’m sure we kind of overwhelmed them but they are good and made us all feel welcome. The one person I would really like to thank is Laurel. It is her bed we usually end up taking over. Wednesday we headed in and picked up Alex. He was at his girlfriend’s house. This was the first time I got to meet Marie McConkie. She is a very nice girl. She pretty much spent the entire time with us until her and Alex had to say goodbye on Friday night. That is the last time she will see him for at least two years. How sad. We then went up to the University of Utah library and viewed the Frederick Kesler chest. I believe I explained the chest once before but Lisa’s ancestor Frederick Kesler built a chest where he stored a bunch of his memento’s. All of his journals were in it along with his Nauvoo legion sword, a couple of canes, some books including a first edition of the doctrine and covenants and odd little things like pebbles from the Jordan River and dirt from his family farm. Marie’s mother met us there as well because she is interested in some of these things. Perhaps the coolest thing that we saw was a hand written original page from the book of Mormon. I’ve seen photocopies of this before but this time I was able to see the original. It is strange to look at it and to think that Joseph Smith dictated the words that were written on that page. They were quite faded but for the most part, still legible. Interestingly they don’t know who the scribe was for that page. It wasn’t any of the common scribes like Oliver Cowdry or Sidney Rigdon, he is referred to as the unknown scribe.

After checking out the chest we headed up to Alycia's office. She looks quite professional sitting at her desk. By this time Alycia was nearly done work so we waited until she could come and off we headed to Mr. Mac's. That is where we bought most of Alex's mission supplies. After we had everything loaded into the car Alex says, "I've never had so many clothes in my life". He was quite correct too. Two suits, eight pairs of pants, ten shirts, a coat, two pairs of shoes and it goes on and on. By this time we were all ready for some food. One of our favorite places to go to in Provo is the "Brick Oven". They have other stuff too but our favorite is their bottomless root beer and pizza. It was late when we finally got back to our hotel. Lisa checked out all the hotels in the area and was quite surprised to learn that one of the cheapest hotels is right on campus. That is very convenient for a graduation because parking is such a night mare. This way we can just walk from our hotel room. We had a great view of the city too.