Super Fine

First off....I cannot believe that my sister is going to Bahia, Brazil on her exchange!!! I am so excited for her and so super jealous! You'll love it Cass!!

Mom told me in the email about Cassi and Ty chasing their dreams and asked me what mine were so I've been thinking about this for awhile and this is where I want to go chasing my dreams. I will finish my mission August 24th, 2012 which is a dream all in itself. I will then retake my ACT, hope the Lord blesses me with brains for my service and get better than I did before. Regardless, I will hope to be accepted to Utah State and start in January 2013...if the world does not end the month prior. I will try to major in Biology with a minor in Portuguese. I will wait at least 2 years to get married to my best friend in the temple. I will graduate from USU with a 3.9 GPA or better and rock my MCAT's and then try to apply to every Ivy League school possible and go to medical school for four years. Graduate with my PhD and then do a 4 year residency for surgery, 1 year fellowship for pediatric surgery and possibly 1 more year to specialize in heart surgery. I want to eventually be a Pediatric surgeon with a possibility to do some kind of doctors without borders program and work in Brazil as well as some larger city in the United States. That's the dream folks. Add in a few kids after med school during residency and it would be complete. I would like to retire by age 55 but be stubborn and still work til I'm 70 cause I'd go nuts without the job. So...now mom...that's my dream that I'm chasing! And I'm going for it. No looking back.

This week has been a great week. (I just watched this little girl that's maybe 18 months old just turf it hard core running through the library. Ouch!) On Wednesday, Elder Kimber had his last day in Des Moines so we celebrated a lot. Let me tell you of the stupidest thing I have ever done. It just so happened to be the day that Elder Kimber left. Weird! So we decided that since it was his last day in Des Moines we were going to try to have Elder Purcell attempt the Emmeneker challenge again because that is always fun to watch. Well, he was fund-less. So Elder Kimber said he would do it if Purcell's companion Elder Jackson did it. They agreed and somehow my name got thrown under the bus as well. We went to good old Jethro's BBQ and Grill in Des Moines which is, by the way, the manliest restaurant according to the ESPN poll. Anyway, we ordered 3 Emmeneker's of which none were for Elder Purcell. How that worked, I have no idea. So it's five pounds of meat and 1 pound of waffle fries and 15 minutes to down it all. If you do it, it's free and you get the t-shirt. If not you owe 25 bucks and get your humiliating picture on the wall with about 2500 other men and women who at some point thought this was a good idea. I'm on a diet. What was I thinking?...No idea. Well, the clock started and I tried every tactic I could think of. I dipped the buns and fries in water and that helped a lot. I started in on the 10 oz. of brisket. It was alright. About 7 minutes passed and let me tell you what I have learned of the human body. There is a little switch in your head that is controlled by your ego...well at one point this switch in your mind just gets turned off for a while...it's unfortunate that it controls common sense. Then at some point, after what you decided was a great idea at the time, you realize, "this was really stupid." or "what was I thinking". It’s like when jumping some automotive equipment off a giant jump. You think, "This is a really good idea, I should really do this. Think about all that I would accomplish by doing this. It will be awesome!" Then in mid-air you think, "This was the worst idea ever. My life is in danger. I hope I live through this." Well folks....8 minutes in to this ridiculous challenge is when that switch in the brain clicks back to normal and you think, "this was really dumb." I just quit. I looked at the burger, wanted to hurl and just stopped. I have this image of meat in my head now oozing with fat and grease and I'm pretty positive that I will be vegetarian. I ate 3 pounds of food in 8 minutes. Best part...we had dinner and dessert after that. Diet ruined for the week. I figure I consumed enough to starve for a while. Blah....

The rest of the week was most definitely an upward trend from there. We had Elder Perez with us for a couple days. His bishop came to pick him up after he completed his mission. Good kid. My new companion is Elder Fenn. He’s from Corona, California and I like him a lot. We will do really well together. I'm looking forward to this transfer a lot. We were able to meet with Lindsey...the girl the spirit led us to on Monday. She’s awesome. She came to church and she has a referral for us. So we will be teaching her and her aunt with President Jergensen on Wednesday this week. I'm excited. He’s going on a 3 hour exchange with us. It’ll be great!

We walked a lot this week because our car is still out of miles til Wednesday. It was quite funny on Friday night because we had to run through some yards to get to our dinner. Quite fun looking back at it.

Owen, the kid we live with, is hilarious. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said a cop so I asked why and he said, "Because I wanna punish people". Hilarious. He also came up after seeing Elder Perez on the couch, who is of Mexican descent, and said.."There’s an African on the couch." Ha ha. I told him he was from Mexico and asked if he was asleep and he went and checked...he came back up and said, "the Mexican’s asleep." I love that kid! He makes my day a lot.

Our Ratuki games have gotten quite intense. It’s quite possibly my favorite game ever. I love it so much.

Things I learned this week---

-I get told every day, "you know Iowa is never this warm in the winter...you should feel lucky." Well thanks. I do. Apparently, this is mild. Fine with me.
-I watched a retina surgery with Jared, our member we live with. What I learned...retina surgery is pretty sweet but it makes my eyes water thinking about it.
-Suave dries out your head apparently. The best for your buck, per my haircutting friend, is Tresseme.
-Superman cologne (gift from family for Christmas) smells somewhat feminine...that's a little oxymoron isn't it? It’s my favorite tho.
-I'd like to buy an ipad rather than a computer upon arrival home.

I have started over in the Book of Mormon this week since I had finished it last week. This time I am reading it in Portuguese. I have kind of been going back and forth between the two when I finish with one of them. Well, I picked up on something this week quite cool I wanted to share. It’s one of those things you can only get because of the way the words are translated but it was a very cool story. Well the story is when Nephi and his brothers have returned to Jerusalem to get the plates of brass from Laban. Well they have tried once...they got kicked out of the city nicely compared to future attempts. The second time they attempt to trade Laban for all of the precious things they own. They note that there is gold, silver and brass. Imagine giving up those precious things yourself. Well, they try to trade with Laban and he is not having it. He sends the guards after them to kill them. They flee the city and in the process the scripture in English says, "And it came to pass that we did flee before the servants of Laban, and we were obliged to leave behind our property, and it fell into the hands of Laban." In Portuguese the word for obliged would be obrigado. Obrigado is also the word for thankful or thank you. It would be similar to gracias for those of you who speak Spanish. I thought as I read that scripture of it in a completely different way....they were thankful to leave behind their most precious things into the hands of Laban. Why would they ever be thankful for that? As I pondered for a while, taking everything into account, I realized that they were thankful to leave those things behind. They had reached such a knowledge and such an understanding of their purpose, not only in that mission but in life, to realize that those "precious" worldly things were not that important after all. They were thankful to leave them behind. To leave behind the world. To not be so attached to them that it halted their progress in their journey. I thought that was so neat and it made the characters come to life that much more. I really love the Book of Mormon. That small realization has caused me to step back and think about whether or not I understand things well enough spiritually to leave behind that which may be precious in a worldly sense. I have learned a lot from one verse of scripture. I love it.

I love you all. You are so awesome! All of you! Happy ground hog's day this week. Pray that he doesn't see his shadow so winter is over! =)

Hugs and kisses,
Elder Excell