I thought I should post something today, September 11th, about what I remember from 2001.

I was taking a load of clothes and items to our local Deseret Industries store. I was signing the little yellow form that they give you and I was pondering on the value of all of the “junk” I had dropped off. On my way out the huge garage door they had in the warehouse, I started to listen to a small radio that they had sitting in the corner. There was a news flash that was announced and the reported stated that the New York Twin Towers had just been hit by a Jet Airliner. I was shocked and in disbelief. I got in my car and immediately called my wife. I told her to turn on the TV and let me know if there was any breaking news. She turned it on and saw the video and explained that one of the towers was falling. I couldn’t understand how one of those towers could be falling. I remember asking her, “What do you mean by ‘falling’? Was it falling sideways or just parts of the building falling?”. She told me that it was falling straight down. I just didn’t understand so I hurried to my office and got on the internet to see if I could get any news feeds. The internet was grinding to a halt and all of the news sites were not working. I’m sure that many people all over the world were doing the same thing so that the bandwidth and the server processors could not keep up with the requests for information. Throughout the day we listened to radios as the events unfolded.

After I got home, I watched all of the news programs that I could and all of the reports and video. It was a very sickening day, very sad, very disturbing. These events effected me a lot over the next few weeks and months. I was depressed, angry, anxious. I just could not imagine the horror of each different chain of the events that happened.

My prayers go out to any of the families that were effected by the tragedy of September 11th, 2001.

Tags: family, prayer

Last night our Council, the Snake River Council, had a Venturing Training meeting. All of the Venturing leaders and those associated with Venturing were invited to attend. We had people travel from all over the valley for this event. From Burley/Rupert area and from the Woodriver valley.

The key note speaker for the evening was Brad Harris. He was one of the main authors of the Venturing program so he really knows his stuff. He has also authored a book called, Trails to Testimony: Bringing Young Men to Christ Through Scouting .

He was an excellent speaker and really brought Venturing down to a level that everyone could understand. What is very interesting is that after he was released from the LDS Church’s Young Mens General Board last April, he was called to be the Young Mens President in his LDS home ward. Therefore, he was now tasked with the challenge of practicing what he has been preaching for so many years. It was very satisfying to hear that he was having the same issues and challenges at getting Venturing going in his Priest’s Quorum that I had when I was in that position. He has only had that calling for about 4 weeks now so I would be very interested to hear from him again in about a year so see how his little local program is doing.

I’ll be writing up my notes from this meeting this Sunday. I’ll take some of the highlights and share them with you on my blog. One of the best comments of the night was that Venturing was built and molded to help young men to prepare for LDS missions. If the program is run correctly, these young men will know how to plan, delegate and teach. All of which are key to a successful mission.

Tags: crew, lds, mission, mormon, priests, quorum, Scouts, venture, venturing