Conclusion

The one thing that I talk about a few time in my blog is my family and home.  This is the only real pattern that is in my blog.  Throughout the semster I have been excited to go home a see my family.  Christmas break was such a short time to be home and I have really missed my family. My blog has mainly been about my thoughts towards different things I have done or seen throughout the semester.  For the longest time I didn't know either what to blog about or I would forget.  I didn't learn to check my Facebook until I came to college so blogging was a whole new step. It has been fun to figuring out the whole blogging thing. I would have to write myself little notes to remember to write on my blog. I would like to keep up my blog because it is fun going back to see what I write and it is a good way to write down what I am thinking. I want to create a new blog that I talk about agriculture and specifically aimed towards the beef industry. I have been a Beef Ambassdaor for California and when I went to nationals they really hit hard the use of social media.  They told us that we all need to start blogging and getting the real story of agriculture to everyone.  I never really started doing any of that because I wasn't big on social media. I had a Facebook but I checked it maybe once a month and even then I was only on it for 5 minutes.  Overall, I enjoyed learning to blog and plan on continuing to blog on a regular basis.

P.S. I posted comments on BYU Cougars and True Blue Fan.

Favorite Place

Coming to Provo has opened my eyes to so many new and wonderful things.  Coming from a small town we didn't have much of anything.  One of my new favorite places to go is the Cocoa Bean.  They have hot chocolate drinks and the best thing of all, cupcakes.  They have a schedule of the different types of cupcakes and they days they make them.  It is the cutest place that you have ever seen.  They have all sorts of delicious cupcakes with great names.  One of my favorites is called "party in your mouth."  I just love all of them.  If you are ever in the mood for a delicious cupcake then this is the place to go.

Easter Traditions

So this being my first Easter away from home I found myself really missing all of our Easter traditions.  We always go to my grandma and grandpa's house for Easter.  We start out the afternoon with an Easter egg hunt.  When we do our egg hunt we each have a specific color egg that we are allowed to find.  Each kid has a dozen eggs that they have to find.  I usually always chose a pink color because that is my favorite color.  Many years there are one or two plastic eggs that someone can't find.  Occasionall someone will find an old egg from the previous year that we never found.  The boundries for the egg hunt are always the same.  It is always in the barnyard and a few of the buildings next to it.  I love the Easter egg hunt.

The other Easter tradition my family has is called a string hunt.  All the string starts in the garage then some unrolls a ball of string laying it all over the yard.  They put the string around trees, undercars, and even across the street.  Before we begin the string hunt there are strings going everywhere.  Each person has a string that someone else pit out for them.  You then have to roll up all of your string and at the end of the string is a prize.  That is one of my favorite Easter traditions that my family has.  Part of the reason I like it so much is because no one else does it.  It is a tradition that I plan on passing down to my kids.

Easter back home last year

Butt Slaps

So going to the men's BYU volleyball games has become one of my new favorite things to do.  I enjoy watching the players not only while they are actually playing but how they interact. One of the things they do that always makes me laugh is the butt slap and every now and then the butt grab. I know that is many sposts the butt slap is common.  I still find it strange and funny mainly because I never played a sport where a butt slap was a part of the game.  I also find that it is nore common in men's sports than it is in women's sports.  So both my roommate and I came to the conclusion that the most common way guys show approval is through a butt slap.  A guy on there team makes a good play they slap there butt, when they like a girl they slap her butt (even though thats not really appropriate). I guess butt slapping is just a guys way of giving approval no matter who it is.

Soccer

Since I have come to school I really miss playing soccer.  I really wanted to play on an intramural soccer team but the problem was I didn't know anyone.  I made some attemptes but the people I asked I didn't really know so it was kind of awkward.  I learned to love soccer as a kid.  Is started playing when I was 5 years old.  I played every single year all the way through high school.  I was actually captain of my team both my junior and senior year.  I loved playing soccer.  I would do anything to play soccer.  My junior year I would travel up to Medford, Oregon to play on team.  It was an hour drive each way to practice.  I would have to drive uo there atleast 3 to 4 time per a week.  I have really missed playing soccer.  I have made a goal that next year when I come back to BYU in the fall that I am GOING to find people to be on team with.  I am a naturally shy person and I am going to try and oversome those tendencies.  I want to play so I have descided that I need to be more forward and ask people to make a team with me or ask to join a team even if it feels a little uncomfortable.

BYU Men's Fashion

So coming to BYU from a rural town was a quite a shock.  One of the biggest shock was how guys dress at BYU.  Where I went to high school most guys wore Wranglers and Carharts.  Guys did not dress "fashionably."  One thing that I do not understand are manpris.  They capris for guys.  That is just one of the strangest things that guys wear that I do not understand, but it might be because I am a Wrangler and Carhart kid of girl. I don't mean to offend anyone if they wear them or like guys who wear them.  I personally just find them very femine for guys.

Crazy Weather

So Utah has some of the craziest weather.  Where I am from there is strange weather sometimes but nothing quite like the weahter was on Wednesday.  When I woke up and looked out my window everything was white and big flakes were falling.  I was not supecting that at all.  I had checked the weather the night before and I was expecting maybe a little rain but was completly shocked to find it snowing.  Then as the day went on it stopped snowing and the sun came out.  By the time I was walking back from my chemistry class all the snow was gone from campus.  You could not even tell that it had snowed earlier that day.  It was even kind of warm for having snowed earlier.  Then Thursday was such a beautiful day.  It was some of the most drastic weather changes I have ever seen.

***So I if I said the wrong date that it actually snowed it is because all my days have blended togther being the last full week of school.

Candy

Recently my grandma's horse named Candy died.  She was the entire family's favorite horse.  All the grandkids learned to ride on Candy.  She was the most gentle horse anyone could ask for.  My Aunt Cindy was the one who originally bought Candy.  She got Candy when she was in college.  Cindy was the one who actually trained Candy.  Candy was around 37 years old when she died which is really old for a horse. She will be missed by the whole family especially me.

My sister Nicole moving cows on Candy when she was young

Candy in the pasture by my grandma's house

Men's Volleyball

So I have been going to watch the BYU Men's Volleyball games.  I started going because I heard they were good and it is always fun to watch your school play a sport when they are actually good at it.  When I first went to watch them I was so amazed at how graceful they looked when they played.  I saw how hard the other team would hit the ball over the net yet some how the BYU team was able to so gently bump and set the ball for a perfect spike.  There movement was so fluid and natural looking that it really impressed me.  Now one of my favorite sports to watch is vollyeball because I am just so amazed at how controlled they are with the volleyball.

Elder Russell M. Nelson - Sunday Morning

Elder Nelson uses a variety of tools to pull people in and make them believe what he is saying.  One way he creates pathos is by starting of with a joke.  He pulls us in with the joke so we are now engaged and listening to what he has to say.  He also uses a joke in the middle of his talk to create pathos.  The point of his joke in the middle is about the Big Bang Theory.  He then uses logos to prove that the Big Band Theory doesn't make sense.  He also builds his ethos by quoting several scripture passages from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon.  That builds ethos for him with both members and non-members.  Elder Nelson builds ethos when he talks about the human body being a miracle.  He has intensely studied the human body and he uses his experience to tell everyone how amazing the body truely is.  What stood out to me the most was his repetion.  He repeated four times in his talk, "thanks be to God."  That is a very strong statement and he was able to clearly let everyone know that all thanks should be to God.

Final Draft of Personal Narrative

Friends and Food?

It was a hot summer day in Northern California.  My family had only been living on the ranch for about a year now.  We moved to the ranch from the San Francisco Bay Area when I was 11 years old.  I really enjoyed the country life.  It always took forever to get anywhere but I was starting to get used to it.  Besides, I loved having so many animals.  Since we moved to Little Shasta we had been able to get many more pets.  It helped that we went from a house with what would be a good size back yard in the Bay Area to 160 acres of land.  We had horses, dogs, chickens and goats.  The goats were so much fun.  We originally got only two goats.  They were African Pygmy goats so they were about the size of a medium dog.  Their names were Spike and Pepper.  Pepper was a little fat when we got her but it was no big deal.  We didn’t think anything of her being on the fat side until she kept getting fatter and fatter.  It was then that we realized she was pregnant.  Before she had her babies she was about as wide as she was tall.  When we came out one day to our amazement Pepper was not pregnant with one baby, but with two babies.  They were so cute.  We named them Ricky and Lucy.  They were so adorable to watch.  We got to see first-hand how good of balance goats really had.  Ricky and Lucy would jump on everything.  One of their favorite places to jump was on Pepper’s back and stand on her for a minute before jumping off. Their other favorite thing to jump on was this old dog house my dad made that was in their pen. They would jump on and off of it all the time.

They were a lot of fun to have around but at the same time they were quite a nuisance.  We had to blockade the goats from off both our front and back porch.  They loved to sleep on the porch at night.  The problem was the next morning they left hundreds of little piles of evidence that they had slept there.  The worst one was Spike. We called her Spike because she was the only one with horns.  Spike was not the worst not because she left a trail on the porch, but because she was so unfriendly. She was always getting her head stuck in the fence, and then she couldn’t get it back out.  Unlike the other goats, you could not walk up to Spike.  The only one Spike really liked was our dog Lucky. They had the strangest relationship too. Lucky would chase spike around the yard and play with him like he was a dog almost, except Lucky didn’t like other dogs.  We even caught Spike sharing Lucky’s dog bed with him in the garage. But as soon as we would walk into the garage Spike would quickly run out. It was then that my dad decided that four goats were too much.  He decided to give the goat to a neighbor named Elias.  Elias is a nice short, round man of Hispanic ethnicity.  He had been asking if he could have one of the goats for a while when my dad finally told him yes. He lived about 5 miles up the road in an old Victorian styled house. When my dad gave the goat to Elias he knew exactly what he wanted with the goat, a barbeque.  I heard my dad mention to my little brother that Elias was having a barbeque and that Spike was on the menu.

I was standing out in the garden with my mom when Elias pulled up in his little yellow Toyota pick-up truck. We greeted him and asked what was going on.

            “Hey what is that you have there?” my mom said.

            “It’s something Brian wanted to try” said Elias.

            “Really?” asked my mom.

My mom then proceeded to have a short conversation with him in Spanish.  I could not understand a word they were saying but I was smart at putting two-and-two together.  I knew that a barbeque of my former pet goat Spike was being hosted by Elias and now he had some strange dish that my mom didn’t want me to know what it was.  It was settled that he had brought over what was left of Spike.  That was my little pet goat only a month earlier and I wanted nothing to do with what was in that Tupperware dish he brought over.

*** A Few Years Later***

It was in the fall time because we had got back the meat from the animals that my dad’s business bought at the fair, as well as the meat from our back-up pig.  We had several pigs that we raised that year for the fair. When raising a pig it is important to have a back-up pig in case something happens to your pig. My first year raising a pig, it ended up dying on the first day of fair.  Despite my tragic loss I decided to raise a pig one more year.  I wanted the experience of actually showing and selling a pig at fair and I just loved their personalities.

The pigs were super cute and fun to raise. They were like giant oversized puppy dogs. They would run out whenever they heard the sound of the hose.  They loved being squirted down and drinking from the hose.  They also loved when you scratched their back and belly; it would make them lie down and roll over like a dog.  When you were inside the pen with them they would follow you around.  They were always looking for your attention.  Pigs were very personable and were like a pet when you raised them.  They also were a bit of work to take of them.  I had to check them every morning and night to make sure they had food and water.  When the heat of the summer came it became even more crucial to check the pig’s water.  We would often bring a container full of ice cubes to try and keep their water cool because pigs will not drink their water if it is too hot.  We even installed misters in our barn to keep them cool. After selling my pig I missed going outside and checking on her.  The first couple weeks after fair I felt a void in my routine, because I often looked forward to going outside and spending time with my pig.

It was morning time and my mom was cooking up some bacon. 

“Yummm… is that bacon?” I said.

“Yes it is” my mom said.

“Oh look it’s the thick bacon.  Is this from the fair?” I asked.

 “Yes it is Miriam” she said.

 “Is this our back up pig from the fair?”

“No, we traded with another family so we would not have to eat our own pig.”

“Really? Why would we do that? I wanted to try out our pig.  They looked like they would be tasty.”

Advisement Center

The other day I went into the Advisement center to make an appointment.  To my suprise I was able to make an appointment for the next day.  It was super easy and took only a couple minutes.  When I went in to speak with the guy about classes he was super helpful.  He asked what I was thinking about doing and helped lead me down a good route. He gave me a couple different papers to look at as well.  Usually that kind of stuff sucks so you glance at it then throw it away.  All the papers he gave me were super helpful and easy to use.  It was an overall good experience going in and I would recomend going in if you have any questions.

Mirror Mirror

The other day I went and watched the movie Mirror Mirror.  I found it quite funny.  It was a little different take on the classic Snow White.  Julia Roberts played the villian.  She was a very likeable villian because of her sense of humor.  Also the girl Lily Collins who played Snow White seriously needed to pluck her eyebrows.  Overall, I would defintely recomend seeing it.

Wedding

The other weekend I just went to my friend Amy's wedding.  She was the first one of my friends to get married.  We were childhood friends.  I used to go to her house all the time to play.  Before going to her wedding I reflected upon the many memories we had together.  We used to play Barbies and dress up for hours.  Barbies was our favorite.  We would turn her entire room into a Barbie playland.  As I saw her in her wedding dress it was all so sureal to me.  I didn't feel old enough to have friends getting married.  Let alone my best friend from childhood.  I was so weirded out that I have friends getting married.  I don't even feel old enough to be in college.

Home

So the closer it gets to the time that I get to go home, the more I think of home.  I keep relating food I eat to people and memories I have back home.  Everytime I eat ice cream I think of my best friend Emily.  We used to get ice cream almost everyday after cross country practice.  Another example is I ate sushi and yogurt for lunch.  It is a weird combination, I know.  My dad and I would sometimes go to the only place in town that actually sold sushi which was a grocery store.  So we would get sushi and I love yougurt so I would always convince him to buy me yogurt as well.  Little things I would see or do have continually been reminding me of home and how excited I am to go home. 

Personal Narrative

Pets are Friends and Food

It was a hot summer day in Northern California.  My family had only been living on the ranch for about a year now.  We moved to the ranch from the San Francisco Bay Area when I was 11 years old.  I really enjoyed the country life.  It always took forever to get anywhere but I was starting to get used to it.  Besides, I loved having so many animals.  Since we moved to Little Shasta we had been able to get many more pets.  We had horses, dogs, chickens and goats.  The goats were so much fun.  We originally got only two goats.  They were African Pygmy goats so they were about the size of a medium dog.  Their names were Spike and Pepper.  Pepper was a little fat when we got her but it was no big deal.  We didn’t think anything of her being on the fat side until she kept getting fatter and fatter.  It was then that we realized she was pregnant.  Before she had her babies she was about as wide as she was tall.  When we came out one day to our amazement Pepper was not pregnant with one baby, but with two babies.  They were so cute.  We named them Ricky and Lucy.  They were a lot of fun to have around but at the same time they were quite a nuisance.  The worst one was Spike.  We called her Spike because she was the only one with horns.  She was always getting her head stuck in the fence, and then she couldn’t get back out.  The worst part about Spike was she was not very friendly.  Unlike the other goats, you could not walk up to Spike.  It was then that my dad decided that four goats were too much.  He decided to give the goat to a neighbor named Elias.  When my dad gave the goat to Elias he knew exactly what he wanted with the goat, a barbeque.  I heard my dad mention to my little brother that Elias was having a barbeque and that Spike was on the menu.

I was standing out in the garden with my mom when Elias pulled up in his truck. We greeted him and asked what was going on.

            Mom: “Hey what is that you have there?”

            Elias: “It is something that Brian wanted to try.”

            Mom: “Really?”

My mom then proceeded to have a short conversation with him in Spanish.  I could not understand a word they were saying but I was smart at putting two-and-two together.  I knew that a barbeque of my former pet goat Spike was being hosted by Elias and now he had some strange dish that my mom didn’t want me to know what it was.  It was settled that he had brought over what was left of Spike.  That was my little pet goat only a month earlier and I wanted nothing to do with what was in that Tupperware dish he brought over.

A Few Years Later

It was a couple months after the county fair.  We had got back the meat from the animals that my dad’s business bought at the fair, as well as the meat from our back up pig.  We had several pigs that we raised that year.  Both my sister and I had raised a pig for the fair that year.  When raising a fair pig it is important to have a back-up pig in case something happens to your pig.  The pigs were super cute and fun to raise.  They were like giant oversized puppy dogs.  They would run out whenever they heard the sound of the hose.  They loved being squirted down and drinking form the hose.  They also loved when you scratched their back and belly.  They would lie down like a dog when you scratched their belly.  When you were inside the pin with them they would follow you around.  They were always looking for your attention.  Pigs were very personable and were like a pet when you raised them.

It was morning time and my mom was cooking up some bacon. 

Me: “Yummm… is that bacon?”

Mom: “Yes it is”

Me: “Oh look it’s the thick bacon.  Is this from the fair?”

Mom: “Ya it is”

Me: “Is this our back up pig from fair?”

Mom: “No, we traded with another family so we would not have to eat our own pig.”

Me: “Really? Why would we do that? I wanted to try out our pig.  They looked like they would be tasty.”

After living on the ranch for a few years I began to see animals as food.  The purpose we raise animals is for food and even if I get attached I know the ultimate purpose is to eat them and I am perfectly fine with eating animals that I raise.  For Christmas dinner we ate my steer named Copper.  I fed, walked, and groomed Copper for nine months.  When I sold him he was tame and mellow, just like a pet.  I had spent hours working with him and in the end I didn’t think twice about eating him.  He was a mighty tasty steer too.

Family Drama

I got a phone call from my mom the other day telling me her dad was up visiting.  Knowing my grandpa I was shocked.  She told him that there was something he needed to talk to her about in person and it could not be done over the phone.  I was thinking to myself as she was telling me what could this possibly be.  I knew he had some doctors appointments about a week earlier and wondered if maybe he had some health issues.  The only problem was with my grandpa everything was a life or death situation so you never know if it is something serious or just a cold.  My mom continued on to tell me that she had a long lost half sister.  She in 49 years old and live in Austrailia.  Apparently way back before my grandparents moved to the United States my grandpa had an affair.  Apparently the lady was also married so she just raised it with her husband.  She never told my grandpa becasue he had already immigrated to the U.S.  Apparently when the girl was about 15 she had a fight with her mom and her mother told her that her dad wasn't really her dad and threw out my grandpa's name.  I don't know how long she has been searching for my grandpa but she just found him a few weeks ago.  He did a DNA test to find out that the probability she is his daughter is 99.99%.  I guess it's a good thing my grandparents got divorced a long time ago.

The Destruction of my First Car

The first car that was ever really mine was an old 1991 Ford Explorer.  My dad bought it from the guy who rented our trailer from us.  When he bought it the car didn't run.  He had some guys rebuild the transmission and then I was off.  The car was predented so know one really knew if I hit anything.  I never really cared for the car until it was gone.

It was on a Sunday morning following our family Christmas party.  My aunt and uncle from LA had decided to stay an extra day and go to church.  They had never stayed before so no one else even got ready for church.  My little sister, Nicole, decided after my aunt and uncle had already left with their kids that she also wanted to go to church.  She demanded that someone take her home but no one in my family wanted to leave the guest house.  I finally said, "take my car Nicole."  I said this because she was always to afraid to drive being only 14.  This time she decided to take it.  It was a little foggy outside but it was no big deal.  She was driving down the road when she noticed she needed to turn on the lights.  It was when she was looking for the lights that her inexperience got the best of her.


If you would like the rest of the story here it is. I didn't have time to write it in class.

Back at the guest house people were coming and going.  It was the Sunday after our Christmas party which means homemade cinnimon rolls.  Everyone was chatting away and minding their own business.  No one had noticed that Nicole was gone.  It was not until my mom recieved an alarming phone call from Nicole that put everyone in a panic.  Nicole was on the phone screaming, "I am sorry, I didn't mean to, I am sorry!"  She kept saying it over and over again.  Her words almost unreconizable.  We couldn't tell if she was crying or laughing.  When my mom tried to talk to her she would not respond only repeating the same words.  That is when we all started to think.  Where was she?  No one really knowing where she had gone the thought suddenly crossed my mind.  My car.  I ran outside to look and it was gone.  I ran back into the house and told my parents.  In a panic they ran outside.  My other aunt and uncle were pulling in when my mom jumped in their car and told them to drive towards my house.  My dad then got in my aunt Catherines car.  She had a hybrid car with a push start.  My dad panicing over the condition of my sister couldn't figure out how to start the car.  My aunt helped him out then he zoomed off.  I stayed back at the house with the rest of my family.  My sister tended to over react so we figured she was just on the side of the road and needed to get pulled out of the ditch.  About 5 minutes later we recieved a phone call about what happened.  She had rolled my car.  Apparently my mom found my sister walking down the road close to where she had rolled the car.  She had climbed out of the car from the back windshield.  I arrived shortly after to see the state of my car. 

It had been totalled.  The car was tipped up on its side and facing the opposite direction of which it had been moving.  All the widows were either cracked or completly shattered.  All the contents of my car were spilled out the back.  There was no bring back the car but my sister was okay.  She was shaken up and a little bruised but nothing more.  My sister was afraid to talk to me for a while.  She was afraid that I was going to be mad at her for destroying my first car.  But after all it was just a car.

Research Paper draft

Thesis:

Although many farmers and ranchers consistently take care of and treat their livestock with care and concern, the media likes to take the few rare cases of animal abuse and portray the entire cattle industry as being one large factory farm that abuses and mistreats cattle with no remorse.

Abuse Cases in the Media

In 2008, United States largest beef recalls occurred.  When people hear about a recall, especially on food, everyone panics because it typically means the food is unsafe or someone got sick from eating it.  The beef recall was recalling 143 pounds of beef from across the nation.  Most of the beef being recalled was sold for school lunch programs.  The largest U.S. beef recall was not because the beef made anyone sick, but was because the cattle were abused in the harvesting process.  According to the United States Secretary of Agriculture, Ed Schafer, "It is extremely unlikely that these animals were at risk for [mad cow disease] because of multiple safeguards," he said in a statement. "However, this action is necessary because plants violated...USDA regulations"(US News).  The company responsible was Westland/ Hallmark.  They had a large harvesting operation that involved the processing of many old dairy cows.  In the process of harvesting the cattle a worker for the Humane Society caught on tape footage of workers at the facility picking up downer cows with fork lifts and chains to force them through the harvesting plant.  The video of the animal abuse went viral.  Media stations everywhere were playing the footage of a downer cow being forcefully moved.  The media went on to show the acts of cruelty across the nation making it look like every cattle processing facility ran in an inhumane manner.  The media wants America to think that all animals used for human consumption are abused, ”The abuse of non-ambulatory cattle at a California slaughterhouse has renewed calls for a ban on the slaughter of such animals, and newly released government records show such mishandling in past years was more than a rare occurrence”(USA Today).  As the media spreads the words across America that, “mishandling in the past years was more than a rare occurrence,” people start to wonder how their food gets to their dinner plate.  People do not like to hear that their nice, juicy hamburger was once a cow that was beaten and mishandled simply so the processing facility could make more money.  That makes everyone in the beef industry look bad when that is not truly the case. 

How Cattle Effect the Environment

In November of 2006 the United Nations came out with a report called the “Livestock’s Long Shadow.”  This report was about the raising of livestock’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  In this report it states that the raising of animals for consumption contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than all cars; “When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2” (UN News Centre).  This claim states that raising animals for consumption is the most dangerous and harmful things, we as humans do, for our environment.  This report specifically targeted the beef industry as being the main culprit for most of these emissions, “And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain” (UN News Centre).  They don’t specifically say cattle in this statement but cattle and sheep both have ruminant systems. 

Where I Come From

I grew up on cattle ranch in Northern Califonia, that is 20 minutes outside of the town of Yreka.  It is a small town just off I-5 that has much of its industry deep rooted in agriculture.  My parents own a seed and fertilizer business.  There is a lot of cattle ranches in the area and many of the ranchers grow different types of hay for the livestock.  The key element in all of these things is water.  Every year there is a continuous battle over water.  Farmers and ranchers want the water for their livestock and crops.  At the same time different conservation groups want that same water for the fich that live in the river.  A news group from the LA area came up to Siskiyou Country (that's where I'm from) to interview different farmers and ranchers about the struggle over water.  Some of the farmers and ranchers have been in the area for over 6 gernerations.  My family has 3 geberations of family who help on the ranch.  Just over Christmas break my family branded close to 600 calves.  We had three generations helping out with the branding.  My job was to give the calves a vacination.

Here is a link of the news clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpuPMqxvA9A
(My dad was the guy in the red shirt who got interviewed in the second part.  Part of the interview was in our barnyard just outside our house.)

The Rising Generation

In Elder Bednar's talk "Things As They Really Are", the section about the rising generation really caught my attention.  I have heard many times from people how we are are the "chosen" generation.  How we are more valiant and have to be more obediant than any generation before us,  but this section really made me think about what that really means.  I had to think what does it mean to be more obediant and how can I accomplish that.  It is really scary being known as this generation that is supposed to be stronger and better.  I feel a lot more pressure the more I think about it.  He talks a lot about Satan's temptations in abusing our bodies.  When you look at the youth in society today that is the biggest problem.  Drugs, sex, alcohol, tatoos, and other forms of degrading our bodies is everywhere.  It is getting imposssible to escape from those temptations.  They are so common in our society that it makes ense that we have to be stronger than ever before.  It is not easy, but I know that in the end it will all be worth it.

"I am a Child of God" by Henry B. Eyring

My favorite quote for his talk was, "She knew and I knew the greater the test, the greater the compliment from a loving Heveanly Father."  This has proven to be true for so many people.  When you look at some of the most righteous people they have had great trails in their life.  Our trials are a test of faith and the bigger the trial we overcome. the more our faith grows.  I read a quote in my Book of Mormon class by Brigham Young saying Joseph Smith could not have been perfected to how he was, even if he lived a thousand years, without all of his trials.  Trials are a crucial part of our experience here on earth and we are all going to have them, so we might as well make the best of them.