cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"It is interesting to me how my life as an adult in the church has centered around working with the youth. My first calling when we moved to Dallas was as the Priest Quorum Advisor. One of the few youth in the Dallas 1st Ward was Mike Tousa. I didn't reach Mike, and I remember apologizing to his Dad, and taking all of the blame for his inactivity in the church. The scouts for Priests age boys back in 1974-1975 were called Explorers. We had no Explorer program, and my only work with the boys was in class on Sundays.
When we moved to Houston (Missouri City) in 1980, my first calling in the Maplewood 2nd Ward was as the Young Men's President and Priest Quorum Advisor. Again we had very few youth. In fact, I believe there was one active priest. His name was Boyd Blake. His Dad was our Bishop. I remember teaching Boyd how to change the oil in his car one Saturday morning, and I remember him later getting a job in an auto repair shop so he could learn how to take care of his own cars. We did have some youth activities, and we did not have an active scouting program. Not enough youth, and it was not part of the culture of this old time Houston Ward. One of the more adventurous activities was when the Young Woman's President, Vivian Page (../9821.html), and I took the Laurals and the Priests on an overnight campout and river rafting trip on the Guadalupe River. The boys were up all night teasing and throwing water on the girls, and it was the only joint activity I've ever done like this. As I look back it is sad that this experience was one of the factors which kept me from taking my daughters on camping trips and sharing the great outdoors and one of my true loves with them.
When we moved to Katy in 1984 my first calling was as the Cub Pack Committee Chairman. Over the last 16+ years there have been numerous callings to work with the youth. I have been the Varsity Scout Leader, the Teacher's Quorum Advisor, the Varsity Scout Leader again, the Young Men's President and Priest Quorum Advisor working with the Explorer Post, in the Bishopric over the Young Men and Young Women's programs both as a second and then as a first councilor to Bishop File, and now I am the Venturing Crew Advisor, which is the new name for an Explorer Post. Over this same time period we have made two or three trips to the White River, one to the Buffalo River, three Philmont Treks, Packard High Adventure Camp, camps and canoeing on the Colorado River in Colorado County Texas, numerous campouts at El Rancho Cima, Camp Strake, Stephen F. Austin, Brazos Bend, South Padre Island, Galveston Island, and others which don't come to mind right now.
So as Brent Peterson and I took three of our Venturing Scout Crew on a campout Friday night, my mind could not help but reflect on all of the campouts and all of the fun and all of the joy I have found working with the youth of the church. There has often been pain mixed with the joy. A campout which I `forced' Ben to go with me on to Simonton, Texas comes to mind. He didn't want to go, and so when we got there he stayed in his sleeping bag all day long. I remember Alan Peterson, who was serving with me as the other Counselor in the Bishopric, saying to me `There is something wrong with that boy!' I remember how guilty I felt for `forcing' (expecting) Ben to be with me. On our campout this weekend I sang the song I wrote on that campout, and only a few of those negative feelings and fears were captured in the words. I even mentioned my negative feelings about this 10 August 1991 campout in a prevous Thoughtlet (../9812.html). The words to the song `Simonton Blues' are:
And so it goes each and every day. Monday I took Penola Edwards, Mickey Edward's daughter to lunch. She just dropped out of Rice, and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. She is 27, sharp as a tack, cute, single, and struggling because of her Mom and Dad's divorce, family problems surrounding this, and Mickey's sudden death (../9745.html) a couple of years ago. I hope I helped her a little. The afternoon was spent in a Continuum Resources `planning session.' I left in disgust about 6:30 PM, because the meeting turned into a finger pointing set of negative put downs. I simply said, `I've got better things to do than listen to this unnecessary business friction.' In the evening, thanks to Melanie, we went caroling to several friends houses. It was a good evening and erased the negative feelings from work.
Tuesday I went to the GSH luncheon. I do have a lot of neat friends and acquaintances in the GSH. I have never taken time to attend this kind of event regularly, and yet everytime I do attend I find it to be a very worthwhile experience. We all need to take time to fullfill our social and intellectual needs, as well as physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs. I learned how to work as a child, and I didn't learn how to play. It shows in my life. I do hope you kids learn from my mistakes as well as those things I do well.
Wednesday I wrote an abstract for the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) annual conference in Dallas in the fall of 2000. It is a version of `The Impending Obsolescence of Maps.' In the evening, Rachel and I went and ran some erands. I got the church tour permits signed by Bishop Camp an President Pickerd for our Venturing Crew campout Friday. We also delivered individual releases of liability, and went to the grocery store to get supplies for the campout. It was fun, and Rachel asked me to let her do more things like this with me. My mind started to have regrets about the time I spent, or should I say didn't spend, with Melanie and Sara, then I caught myself and reminded myself I did the best I knew how to.
Thursday I took Don Keller's genealogy from one of the standard genealogy program and reformated it so we can display it in our immersive environment at work. If it works as well as I expect it will, we should be able to provide an exciting service to genealogists. Richard Uden is going to help me prototype a 3-D pedigree chart, where females are red cones (bottom down dresses) and males are blue cones (bottom up shoulders). The cones will be equally spread around a disk representing family units and connected with a small diameter cylinder like a well bore, where the angle will be a function of the number of people in the family. The disks will be located vertically based on marriage date, and the cones based on birth dates. As I reflected on the idea at the Venturing Crew campout, I realized this was a return to my younger days in Dallas, when I got my MBA at SMU and created Computer Genealogical Services, Inc. (../9720.html, ../9728.html, ../9814.html), ../9816.html, ../9846.html, 9902.html, 9904.html, 9933.html, and 9950.html). Melanie took Andrea, Rachel, and Matt to the airport at noon, and so I worked late Thursday evening. I was very tired when I got home, and I turned the TV on Disney and ended up watching a movie about Kanab, Utah and about some Dad's who made mistakes. I encourage you to each watch it and to talk to me about what you felt as you watched the movie. It made me homesick. Then Paul and Andrea called, and this made me more homesick.
Friday was spent working with John Amason on some user interface issues. It turned into a quite exciting discussion, and looks like we will be tieing into the CoReExplorer(tm) framework, the IDEF modeling work I have done (../9803.html, ../9827.html, ../9839.html, ../9844.html, ../9850.html, i../9851.html, and 9945.html, as well as the spread-sheet to map work Terry Smith is still working on prototyping for me. Jeff gave a very good state-of-the-company discussion for the CoRe Exchange Meeting. I got to the house at 5:30, and we left for the Venturing Crew campout at Stephen F. Austin State Park at 6:15 PM. I wrote a song about the campout, and it is a reasonable summary of our activities:
I will get the photos posted at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Scouts sometime this next week. It was a lot of fun. I just wish I could have had all 10 of my kids (and your spouses and sweathearts) there with me. I expect we will have those times. In the meantime, enjoy you challenges and your successes, and remember I love each of you and I always will."