Having a Destination AND the Drive to get there

In preparation of running for National Office, I've been doing a little bit of soul searching to really find out what makes me happy, why I want to serve the FFA for another year, and what skills I can develop to help me do so. At one of our conferences this past year our trainer, Andrew McCrea, was a past national officer who is now a well known public speaker and radio show host for "American Countryside". He gave each of us a book that he wrote, entitled, "Making Molehills out of Mountains". I've had it since December but came upon it a week ago and began reading it. I had been missing out! This book has a lot of really neat insights on how to learn leadership strategies that reduce your work without reducing your goal, how to inspire individuals to personal and team success, and getting more out of life by making "quality investments" in family, faith, work, and friends.

I came across a section that really struck me for some reason, so I thought I'd share it. He started out with a story about accidentally taking the wrong road and heading miles and miles in the wrong direction in his upgraded rental Mustang. When he realized he was going the wrong way, he knew he had to turn around. It didn't matter how pretty the day was or how fast he could go in the convertible, the only thing he would accomplish would be heading farther in the wrong direction if he didn't stop and get his bearings.

He says, "Yet, in real life, we sometimes don't give as much thought to our destination. We might fail to turn around.

The destination and the drive must go together. If you have a destination without the drive, you will have goals to achieve, but you will never see those dreams fulfilled. If life were about just the drive, you would develop skills that would make you an effective and efficient leader, but you would never be headed toward achieving any specific goal.

Think about it: If life were about just the drive, you would have been given the tools to move as fast as possible in the exact opposite direction you needed to go!"

I think this is so true. So many times we have goals that we want to achieve, and have so much drive inside of us to do it, but if we don't sit down and think about how we are going to achieve them, we could very well be headed in the wrong direction.

Moral of the story: Set high goals AND give them direction!

Here we go!

Well here goes keeping my blog updated! I haven't been lately, mostly because I just put things on the family blog, however, I want to get better at blogging, so I'm going to keep this better updated. The next several posts are probably going to be boring for anyone who reads them because they are mostly for my benefit. I'm posting memories of each chapter visit I did as a state officer so I can have a better recollection of them. Feel free to read the posts and comment if you'd like.

Tabiona and Manila=Crazy Road Trip!!! Part 2

Part 2-Manila and Who Knows Where Wyoming!

Manila is a really fun town and chapter. It's a super small community-only just over 300 residents, but has a ton to offer. You may have heard of Flaming Gorge Reservoir before, well that's where Manila is. I had been there once before for our State Officer team retreat. It's Blake's hometown and since he has a boat and a place to stay, we went there. It was a lot of fun! However, this trip to Manila panned out a little differently than my first one did. All was well when I got to Blake's parents log cabin. Only his mom was home so we settled in and watched a movie. I was pretty tired from the long day so I headed to bed. When I woke up in the morning, Sue, Blake's mom was already gone to work as the Manila School secretary. I gathered all my things up and headed for the school. I got out to my car after locking the house up and realized that my keys were nowhere to be found. I had left hem on my bed. Thankfully, I had my cell phone with me and I Cha-Cha'd the school's phone number so I could call her. There was a spare key in the garage and I was only 15 minutes late to the visit. Luckily, Manila is pretty laid back and Sue went in and told Mr. Schell, the ag teacher, what had happened. When I walked in the room I was pummeled with a million jokes about where my keys were etc. Those kids are hillarious! I already knew many of them from COLT in the summertime so it was fun. BUT...the classes seemed even more empty than they would normally with a graduating class of 12. Why? The Deer Hunt. Everyone goes out for the deer hunt. It was still fun though and it was good to see some old friends.
This is where the story gets interesting. To get back home to Logan, you have two options. A) You can go on I-80 West to Evanston, and from there get on I-84 to Ogden and head home from there. and B) You can go to Kemmerrer and head to Bear Lake from there. The Kemmerrer way is about 50 miles shorter and I had been on the road with my dad once or twice before. I asked Mr. Schell which way he thought I should go and he told me to definitely go the Evanston way, seeing as how it was the deer hunt and a weekend, so more people would be heading to the Bear Lake area. So, I went on my way heading out of Manila. Rain started to come down a little bit, but it wasn't bad..yet. I got on I-80 and headed toward Evanston. I've always been taught that if I feel something strongly, and it tells me something, it's the Spirit. So when I saw a sign for the Kemmerrer exit, and felt very prompted to go that way, I decided I had better. When the exit came, I knew that I had to go that way. I hadn't felt this strongly about something in a long time. So I exited and headed that way. I got to Kemmerrer and decided I should fill up my car before I started the hour and a half trip to Logan.

I asked the gas station attendant specifically, "What's the best way to get to Bear Lake?" He asked a fellow co-worker just to be safe and confidently said, "Take a left here, and follow the road until you see a sign that says 'Big Piney'. Go to Big Piney and follow the highway until you see signs that say Bear Lake." It sounded simple enough so I followed his directions and sure enough saw the sign that directed me toward Big Piney. I got to Big Piney and hadn't seen any signs yet, but since he was son confident about it, I kept going. Now, what I should have done was stop in Big Piney and make sure I was in the right place, but I just wanted to get home and me, being a trusting person, knew I would see a sign that directed me to Bear Lake somewhere up there. Mile after mile I drove. And drove. And drove. Cell phone dying. Gas tank still quite full luckily. What should have been ugly Wyoming scenery had turned into some really pretty scenery. This is when I knew I was on the wrong road. Below are pictures of my road. The one with the North 189 sign is what Wyoming should look like where I wanted to be. The other ones are what I began to see on my little excursion. The one with the river is Big Piney, the other, with the big mountains, is Daniel, 20 miles before I turned around.
I was able to get a little service at the top of a mountain and called Dad and asked him to look at a map and tell me where in the heck I was. As soon as he saw Daniel on the map he said, "Oh my word you need to turn around" Well, I was only 150 miles in the wrong direction. I was paralell with Idaho Falls and only about 50 miles from Jackson Hole. The man at the gas station had failed to mention that at the Big Piney sign I needed to go the OTHER WAY. Needless to say, I was a little upset. Rain was pouring for part of the way and at the moment, I hated Wyoming. 2 and a half hours later, I was back in Kemmerer and I had never been so happy to see the ugly sagebrush and weeds. I so wanted to go into that Maverick and chew the guy out-but you all know me, and I would never have the guts to do it. So instead I went to a grocery store and asked the old service desk lady. She gave me very clear directions and I was in Garden City in less than an hour. What should have been a 3 hour drive home from Manila turned into an almost 7. Isn't it funny how one person can tell you something and it ends up making you on the road for 4 hours more than you should have?

I was pretty upset about it but I did get to see a lot of Wyoming that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. The next day was General Conference. One of the apostles gave a talk and part of it was about having a good attitude. He told a story about his family getting lost on family vacations regularly and one time they had even driven almost 3 hours in the wrong direction. Sound familiar? He said that all they could do was laugh about it. Wow, apparently I needed to hear that! To this day I don't know why I felt so prompted to go the Kemmerer way, nor do I think I ever will. But, all I know is that I'm glad I listened to the Holy Ghost, even if I made a mistake and went a few hundred miles out of my way. Maybe it was just a test for me. Looking back on it, it really was a beautiful drive once I got out of the yuckiness of southwestern Wyoming :) At least I could come home and tell a good story.

Tabiona and Manila=Crazy Road Trip!!! Part 1

Part 1-Wolf Creek Pass and Tabiona School

Two of my chapters were pretty far out of the way and both in the Uinta Basin area, so I decided to make a road trip out of it and hit both in one trip. I headed down to Chase's parents house in Coalville so I'd be a little further ahead when I got up in the morning. From Coalville, I headed out past Kamas and over a mountain pass called Wolf Creek Pass.





It was absolutely beautiful! It's only open from about April-October, so I was lucky enough to get to go over it. The fall colors were amazing and I couldn't help but have a smile on my face the entire time. The smell of pine trees and fresh mountain air got me so excited to start my day. My destination: Tabiona. Population: 149. As I neared the end of the pass, I entered into a valley that is home to Hanna and Tabiona, Utah.
You can't really see the town but it's litteral just at the end of the rainbow in this picture :) Around the corner. It was a very quaint little ranching valley surrounded by mountains. A little peice of heaven on earth. Tabiona School reminds me a lot of Stilring School, but is half the size. It's K-12 and has about 8-10 kids in each class. Mr. Jenkins is the ag teacher out there and he and his students were very welcoming. They aren't a very active chapter but great kids nonetheless. Their officer team took me out to lunch at the famous Hanna Cafe where we ate the greasy regular cafe food. They even took me off-roading a little bit! On his prep hour, Mr. Jenkins took me up to an elk ranch with the CTE director who was visiting. Mr. Jenkins is doing a lot of work at the lodge and so he wanted to show it to us. BEAUTIFUL. It's a 4,000 acre elk ranch up on the mountain and the lodge looks straight from what you'd see at a fancy ski resort in Vail, Colorado. When my visit in Tabiona was done, I sadly headed on the road towards Roosevelt and Vernal. (I met up with a friend from EFY in Vernal and chatted a while before I headed to Manila)

Beautiful Morgan

The Morgan FFA Chapter is amazing. The end. Their advisor, Ms. Megan Haslam was a lot of fun to work with as well. Each class was so willing to have fun and participate and I switched my workshop up a bit to make it more personal. I felt very, very happy about this visit. We had pizza with whatever members wanted to at lunch and I was able to chat with some of them one on one. Chase, Blake and I spent the night before at Chase's parents house in Coalville. Chase had a visit in Heber, Blake at North Summit in Coalville, and I was at Morgan so we carpooled down. (Well, Blake met Chase and I there) I drove Chase's grandma's little green car to Morgan and I had to be a little careful because the spedometer didn't work. :) Great visit!

Lehi

Lehi seemed like a pretty quick visit. Blake and I were supposed to split this chapter because there are so many classes, so I only went to half. I think I only taught 3 class periods, then went over to Orem High School and helped Brittney finish up her day there. The Lehi group was a lot of fun though, and they were very participative and willing to have fun. The night before, Brittney, Chase and I stayed the night and Mr. Deimler's home which was fairly close to all of our chapters. All in all, Lehi was great!

Fremont

Fremont High School= HUGE. They have 5 ag teachers and lots and lots of long hallways...Chase and I would have been very lost had we not had our trusty guide, chapter president Aubrey to take us where we needed to go. Mrs. Egelund, or "Joe" as she prefers was so much fun to be with that day. Mr. Demorest, Mrs. Selman and Mr. Ellertson were the other teachers we taught with. This visit was a little rough to be honest. Not because of the kids-they were great. But this visit was 2 days after we got home exhausted from National Convention. Not to mention I was sick with an aweful caugh and who knows what else. All I know is that I didn't feel good at all and during the workshops I would have to step out every now and then to get water. Not fun at all. Chase and I did a total of 23 workshops that day. It was a little tiring to say the least. But, it turned out ok and no one died of tiredness :)

Delta!

Delta was a chapter that I had a lot of fun with! It was kind of thrown on me in the middle of the year because Amberlie was never able to coordinate schedules with them, so we switched a couple chapters around. I had never been to the Delta area before so this was an adventure! I left the Cabella's Co-op quiz in Lehi and headed down to Delta to stay at Brittney's aunt and uncles home. The dark and unfamiliar roads made me a little nervous, and the no cell phone service factor didn't help much, but I got there safely. Brittney's aunt and uncle were such nice people! They opened up there home to me as if it were my own. I was able to participate in family scripture study and prayer with them in the morning and that seemed to set the day off right. Mr. Warnick and his chapter had tons of energy and were an awesome chapter to visit!

Box Elder Visit

Oh the Box Elder kids! Most definitely some of my favorite! I was able to really get close to a lot of the members from this chapter and I will love these kids forever. The visit went as well as it could being one of my first. I'm sure I wasn't as confident and exciting as I was in later visits, but this was only my second visit to a chapter ever so I felt pretty good about it. Mr. Bingham and Mr. Burrell are two of the most down-to-earth, decent men I have ever met and it shows through the way their students talk about them and act around them. I spent most of the day at the high school and then for the last period of the day went with Mr. Burrell to the Junior High to teach his freshman. They were so much fun!!
Over the course of this year I have been able to become friends with some of the members, not just to be nice, but truly friends. John, Becky, Chet, Aneese, Joe, and many more. Chet was an amazing kid and ran for state office, but didn't make it to many people's dissapointment. Aneese is an incoming sophomore who really has her head on her shoulders and is going to make an incredible chapter officer next year! Hanging out with the Box Elder chapter was definitely one of the biggest highlights of my year!

Bear River Visit

Bear River High School and Junior High Schools were a lot of fun! Chase and I teamed up for this visit and visited mostly freshman classes. It was fun for me because the teacher who takes care of all the 9th graders at BR was my old ag teacher at Sky View, Mr. Rhodes. He was really the one who got me involved in the FFA and I really attribute much of my success to him. It was fun to see how excited the freshman aged kids are about new and exciting things such as the FFA. We went to the high school to finish up the day and the kids were a little less enthusiastic about what we had to say. Many of them were already FFA members so they seemed bored with anything we told them. But, we tried to do some fun activities and I think it was an overall success. Since the visit, we've been to a lot of fun activities with the Bear River chapter. Parades, donkey basketball, chapter contests and late nights at Denny's with leg wrestling on the floor to name a few. Go Bears!