Family history roadtrips, school, and stuff like that.

Mamma mia, it’s been a long time since I’ve written! Sorry about that! I’ll try my best to give a brief recounting of what I’ve been up to since last I wrote.

In the springtime I went back to BYU-I to do another semester. Spring is the best time to be in Rexburg! Especially the month of May. Anyways, I went to college expecting to have a pretty fun semester overall, while still allowing for some uncontrollable factors, such as crappy roommates or hard classes. But I wasn’t expecting what I found there. I had the best semester of my whole college career up to this point! I had ALL awesome roommates, which is incredible in and of itself. I also had a really tight FHE family, I loved all my classes, I had a great ward, a huge social life (because lots of my friends are finally home from their missions), and great weather. I had more fun than any full-time college student has the right to expect. I practically lived all day every day in the park under the sunshine, only coming home to prepare food, sleep, or refill my mate thermos. Almost every day after classes I’d have some kind of adventure with my friends. We’d either go caving, have a bonfire in the desert, go swimming in the rivers, or some other crazy adventure. I made so many new friends and made so many great memories. My favorite part of the whole semester by far is that finally, after 3 years, I was able to spend time with Brady again. I missed that kid so much! He’s more of a brother than a friend to me. I really love BYU-I because of the environment. It’s SO easy to make friends! People are so friendly, we all have the same religion and therefore automatically have the same values in common (in general). I loved the feeling of being around thousands of kids my age who are all driven in life and are trying to attain progression and make a good life for their future families, hence why they’re in college. It was a great semester in every way.

After the semester ended I came back here to my mom’s house. I’m still taking classes online over the summer, so it’s not really a vacation from school, but it’s still been relaxing and nice to be home. I’ve been focusing on writing music like crazy, and I’ve been pumping out a song every week more or less. I’ve also started writing a book about my mission. I’m going through all of my mission journals (captain’s logs, really, because diaries are for girls and journals are for boys. Captain’s logs are for men) and writing out all of the most memorable events of my mission in story format. I’m writing the book in Italian because when I think of spiritual things or things from the mission, it comes to me most naturally in Italian. But when I’m done, I’ll translate it into Spanish and English so that my family and friends can have copies.

I’m currently getting to know someone in Argentina. She’s an incredibly sweet and spiritual girl, she’s a relatively recent convert to the Church, and she got back from her mission a year ago. I really hope things work out with her, because I like her a lot. My favorite part about her is that she’s driven and motivated, and isn’t content with plateauing in life, but wants to always progress. That’s exactly the kind of attitude I look for in friends in general, and in people I date in particular.

Recently I took a family history trip with my dad to northern California. We drove to various villages and towns that were founded by the Hendricks and the Embrees, and saw sights that we had only read about. Besides the fact that it was beautiful driving along the coast looking out across the seaside cliffs, it was so fantastic just having time to drive and talk to my dad. I cherish every opportunity I get to have deep conversations with him, because I always leave edified afterwards. Sometimes with his health problems, I worry that he won’t live to see my kids reach adulthood. I’ve been devising a plan to have him prepare a message that he’d like my kids to hear in case he can’t deliver it himself, and to record him talking to them so that I can show it to them when they’re old enough to appreciate it.

We went to the museum and civic center of Lakeport, the town where my great grandpa Glen was raised. A nice lady at the museum helped us track down the civil records, and we read stories and found newspaper clippings about various ancestors, from Great Grandpa Glen way back to the first inhabitants of the area, Green Berry Hendricks and his family. We also went to the Lakeport cemetery and searched every single grave until we found the tombstone of Green Berry himself and his entire family, all buried around him. The pictures of those gravestones will make great additions to Family Search.

Well, I think I’ve covered all the important parts of life. School, family, girls, music. Not in that particular order, of course. Thanks for reading.