Worst then death is to lose one's humanity

Inspirational quote by me! I think, perhaps, I picked it up from someone else but I did just pen it and I didn't look it up so I'm taking credit for it. I'll explain it in a bit.

Currently, I find myself sitting in my apartment watching out over the parking lot taking in the last few hours of the first month of 2010.  Time sure does fly by and at this rate it will be May in no time. Life has been going quite well this month and I see no reason for it not to continue. Sadly, I do understand that complications occur and difficulties emerge but hopefully I will be able to maintain the positive feelings I have now in the future. The last few days have gone well and since I last posted on Thursday a few things have occurred.

Friday morning I awoke and started the normal routine. First I pursued the news of the day from my six favorite papers (SLTrib, Utah Chrony, OU Daily, Vernal Excuse, NYTimes and the Oklahoman). Newspaper reading is a habit I picked up my Junior (1st year) at the University of Utah. I would frequently find myself bored with nothing to do while I waited for classes and so I would picked up the free copies of the Chrony, SLTrib, and NYTimes and read them throughout the day. I've carried on this habit and as a matter of principle decided to include the OU paper and a state wide paper to the my reading. The Vernal Excuse allows me maintain a watchful eye over my friends in Vernal and I generally just use it to see who is coming and going both from missions and in death. After the papers, I played around and thinking it was Saturday went to watch the Oklahoma State basketball game. I was wrong as it was only Friday and so I instead watched the winter X-games on ESPN. Other than that Friday was vanilla with not much occurring.

Saturday was fairly vanilla in the morning and mid-afternoon besides one notable exception. That exception was the loss by Oklahoma State to Missouri. Oh well! Saturday night I traveled up campus braving the cold, snow, and ice and had dinner with Lena Tenney and Co. The cafeteria the OU students eat at makes me quite jealous. It is definitely better than the HC. After eating, we went up to the lounge in Lena's tower and played Naked, a combination of charades and catch phrase, and UNO. My UNO skills let me down and my Naked skills did about the same. Either way the company was good and I think everyone had a good time.

This morning, I woke up at a brisk 9 am and went about getting things done. After eating, showering, and dressing, I, once again, braved the cold, ice, and snow and walked up to and met up with Lena and we walked to church together. I have a great story of getting mud on my suit pants and ask me about it later when we talk. As a side note it is important to know that Stanley, my car, is currently iced over and not going anywhere. Perhaps this borders on Car Abuse but there is nothing I can do about it now. Either way, it was not feasible to de-ice him and take him to church so walking was the smarter option. I hope Stanley is okay and when he de-ices I will definitely take him for a ride. Either way, back to the story.

Church was good. I once again got the opportunity to pass the sacrament and truly that is one of my favorite things to do in church. The speakers in Sacrament spoke about the church mission focusing on perfecting the saints. All three speakers emphasized the importance of home teaching and visiting teaching, a remainder for me to do better. In Sunday School we discussed and learned about Cain and Able, and if time permitted, we were going to discuss the contrast between Cain and Enoch. Elder's Quorum and Relief Society were combined and Bishop taught about budgeting and money management. A good remainder to everyone that failure to control one's fiances will allow one's fiances to control them. A great quote from that class was, "Marriage is grand, but divorce is 100 grand!"

After class, Lena and I were required to stick around to be set apart for our new callings. Which by the way, I was called to be a ward missionary. Brother Hack set us apart and both of us received great promises of blessing if we were to fulfill our callings. I'm excited for this opportunity as I just recently sent my mission papers in and all the preparation I can do now will undoubtedly help lead to success in the future. I really don't know what a ward missionary does and from my experiences in Utah it didn't seem like they did a lot. This of course might be due to the fact that I didn't know where to look to see their efforts. Either way, pray for me and I will try my best to be the best ward missionary I can be before I move onto being a full time Missionary. I know we are not supposed to have favorites, but Brother Hack has to be my favorite of the Bishopric. Truly there are not too many better men then him.

As a mission papers update it should be noted that Bishop Drayton and Bishop Rueckerd have been in contact and they should be able to knock out whatever requirement was there hopefully before this post. With that, the papers will be electronically submitted to President Keyes, who already has the physical copies, and he should be able to shortly communicate them electronically to Salt Lake City. Using a general time frame of two weeks then I would think I'd get my calling by the end of the week starting on the 14th. Once again, pray for me.

This afternoon has been one of general non-work. I really have had a hard time focusing on anything and so not much was truly accomplished beside feeding myself and knocking out the last of the Legal Writing and Research assignment. Which brings me to the quote above.

Typically, in a law school education the capstone to the Legal Research and Writing class is the oral arguments competition that takes place in the spring time. We recently received our questions for the memos leading up to the arguments and they involve guardianship issues for the elderly, and infirm. I have never read of such sad cases before and knowing they are just a fraction of what is out there scares and saddens me. For example in one case a court guardian was required because an elderly lady was being taken advantage of by individuals whom she trusted. The entire time I read that case I was reminded of an elderly lady I took the sacrament to as a 16 year old priest. Sister Martinsen was in her 80's and was generally house bound. Although she was occasionally able to leave the house when the time came. Every time we brought her the sacrament she beamed at us and was so excited to have us come visit her. She even gave us ice-cream bars as treats afterwards. She loved us, and it would have been impossible to not love her. I remember the day I was with another priest and he had to tell her he was leaving for school and wouldn't be back next week or the following weeks. She was so sadden by that and frequently asked me about him until I assume she must have forgotten him. Next time I'm in Vernal or anywhere close I will have to stop by and visit her. I wish her the best and I hope all is well.

I guess, these cases are a good reminder to all of us big shot lawyers that each case is not an independent event occurring outside the bounds of emotion or society. As such we should as a profession treat each case with the upmost care and attention and strive to do what is best for our clients and not ourselves. To think someone could take advantage of Sister Martinsen and feel like they did no wrong would have to mean they lacked any sort of humanity and a soul. That would be worse then death.

I like to believe that I could never represent such individuals and that is why I want to go into criminal prosecution. I guess I want to be the knight in shiny armor that comes to the rescue of the victims of society. Overall moralistic? Maybe, but I'll take it.

One Love

ps. If you'd like feel free to comment on anything I say here or elsewhere. Those who don't want to comment publicly, I welcome your comments through facebook, cellphones, or in person communication. Let me give you what the people want! So tell me, what the people want!