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An yeong ha se yo!

My internet just crashed, so I lost the paragraph that I had already typed. That's obnoxious.

Anyway, as I was saying, I have this big ol' gash up my right leg. I was messing around on Chris' bike yesterday, trying to do a bunny-hop, and got a two-fer, and smacked my shin against the pedal when I landed one hop. So the nice medal pegs slashed up my leg. It was quite unpleasant I believe. Although apparently I got some pretty good height. Torie bandaged me all up last night. It was really nice to have someone else look to my wounds, rather than just bleeding and groaning on my own as I neglect to care for my horrible disfigurement. It looks better today than it did yesterday. It's still pretty swollen, though. Hopefully I'll remember to bandage it up again today. Hopefully.

And onto the more exciting news from last night, an entire mountain near my house caught fire. It was burning for several hours, so seriously no joke about it being an entire mountain. The mountain is very ugly today as I had expected. Most of it is incredibly charred and blackened. It'll be like this well into the next season I'm sure. Apparently it was started by a downed power-line, so says the news people. Either that or it was started in Spring Lake from an exposed electrical wire in some dry grass. Or some construction workers trying to repair a power line. Or a comet. Or dinosaurs.

Rawr.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3912315
There's some cool pictures on that site, with a little more information.

Everything smells like smoke now. It's really pretty gross. It's going to get hot soon, and it'll be hot in my house, but I can't open any windows or anything! Boo. Plus the valley looks really murky now.

And I can't figure out why my brother insists on not wearing shirts.

Last week I finished my immunizations for most of my stuff. I think there're a few other shots that I've gotta get done. I know of at least one more that I have to get hit with one week before I go into the MTC. Then I'll be able to go hug a panda without getting sick! Excellent! If not a panda then at least a Korean. Close enough. I'll go find a fat Korean. Short and fat. The short part comes standard. I think I'll skip out on the hairy part. That sounds awful. I'll at least get said Korean to hold a stick of bamboo, though. Chewing optional. I'm just a dumb foreigner, so I could probably get them to do what I want. I wonder how different Koreans treat foreigners compared to Japan? Apparently you're like contagious gangrene victim over there. My bishop said that Koreans just don't really know where to place you in their society, because everyone has a very strict title system to follow. Foreigners don't fall under this system.

I'm the normal one. You're the weirdos.

Just grab onto some duck tales.

I've also gone to see The Dark Knight. Three times, actually. As everyone else has said, it is an incredibly movie. Incredibly flawless, although very long. I don't really like how long it was, but I couldn't really see it being any shorter. Just like everyone else has said, it is sad that Heath Ledger has died, but this was an excellent final movie for him. It was hard to believe that that was him. The first time I watched it I got very captived by the characters, as if I was watching a documentary or something. It was amazing watching Batman and The Joker interact, how they were like two opposite sides of the same coin - which is where Two-Face played in! The one thing that they didn't do quite so well, was Harvey Dent wasn't really shown as having a split personality disorder. He just seemed really angry sometimes. Maybe I was expecting The Animated Series where Harvey would actually change voices when his other persona would come in, which is why Two-Face would always have that strange, raspy voice rather than a normal kind of voice.

Anyway, I look forward to the next movie. Hopefully it'll be done by the time I get home. That's my goal anyway. ;D

It is August 2nd today! Which means I have two months and twenty days. And then another three more months from that until I'm actually in Korea! Three or so months anyway. That gives me three months to learn an entire language to use in the real world. Oh so very exciting.

I've also recieved a letter from both Chris and Jessica, as I've been writing them on dearelder.com (something I strongly suggest everyone to use. It's a free service while your beloved missionary is still in the MTC. Remember this while I'm in there!). They both are doing really great. From the little I've heard from them, it is incredibly evident that their testimony has grown leaps and bounds already, including Chris'. Neither of them are timid about sharing how they feel any longer, and Chris has clearly discovered that his testimony is of his own, and it is currently being strengthened using iron shackles and steel braces. This is what I look forward to. I'm already quite sure I have an unshaking faith, considering what I've been through I've never been happier, so I know for a fact that there isn't a true sort of happiness outside of the gospel. Who wants to live their life unhappy? That doesn't sound like much of an existance.

Speaking of which, due to the fire I started thinking about why God would let something like that happen. Nobody was injured, and only one old, pretty much useless house was burned down, but that's still an incredible amount of property damage to several unfortunates. And I just knew there had to be some kind of reason. It occured to me that maybe He allows things like this to happen in order to test the faith of the saints. This is the time when people come together to help each other out, and when you have to know that everything is going to be ok in the long-run, no matter what happens. And think about it - the second coming is supposed to be marked by an incredible amount of destruction. When earthquakes start happening and other sorts of natural disasters, do you think it's going to be everyone's first thought to believe that Christ is coming again? Not really. It'll just be like "Holy crap holy crap holy crap theearthismoving holy crap." When people hear about the disaster, it'll be a true test to figure out who still has the faith, or which of us will cast it off in despair, cursing God's name that something like this could happen. That's when the true colours will show, and they will be cast down. Unforunate, but true.

Remember that when something happens, there's always a reason for it. Even the burning of an entire lush, green mountain. The vegitation will grow back to be even better! It takes time, but what doesn't? Why do you think patience is such an important part to life? Hope is a goal that every person must have. Without hope, faith is of little use to us. Faith is only a belief, while hope is what gives us something to believe in. Don't think of hope as a useless dream or fruitless ponderings. Hope is the stem to everything we need to believe in this life.

But maybe that's just me.

So anyway, 'til next time! :D

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