In late Spring/Early Summer 1994, I was serving an LDS Mission in the town of Mt. Joy, Pennsylvania.  It was my last area and I would be going home soon.  I was a Saturday Morning and my companion and I were walking down Main street.  There was a Street Fair of sorts going on and we were somewhat looking around at the different booths and seeing what was going on, along with contacting people and heading off in the general direction of where we were going to be working for the day.

When all of the sudden we heard a voice say “Elders!”.  Of course, hearing that we stopped and spoke to the young man.  As it turned out, he was also LDS and had somewhat recently returned from a mission (Arizona, I think).  He was from Maryland and was there selling the paintings of an artist, Eric Mohn, who (if I remember correctly) was was his step-father and a quadriplegic.

Eric painted with the brush in his mouth.  He had been injured in an accident many years ago and I remembered thinking how remarkable it was that he was able to paint such beautiful paintings.  Many of them were of scenes that I had grown to love during my time in Pennsylvania.  He had painted Amish scenes and of countrysides and many others.

After a few minutes of speaking with this young man, he insisted that he give us each a painting.  So we each picked one out.  I brought mine home with me and for years, I kept it stored away until I could get it framed and hung.

It now hangs in my bedroom, but I’m getting ready to move it to my new completed office in my basement.  I’ve occasionally kept track of Eric’s work on his website www.ericmohn.com and a couple of years ago, my wife purchased another of his paintings for me.

Now that my office is completed, I’m getting ready to have it framed and will hang it near the one that I was given all those years ago.

There’s another couple of them on Eric’s site that I’ve recently found that I’d like to have and to hang in my home, and I hope to purchase them soon.  Sadly, while browsing his site recently I found this small addition to the About the Artist section:

“Sadly, Eric passed away suddenly Nov. 25th, 2008 of complications stemming from his longtime paralysis.”

If you get a chance, check out his site.  I think that my next purchase will be “Father’s Farewell”.

It will be officially Autumn, soon.  Which means like it or not, the Holiday Season is fast approaching.

This is a great time to start some family traditions, or to continue some that you may already have.  We have some in our family that we very much enjoy.

There were also some that we had started at old employers, that hopefully are continued on.

One of the things that we can all do is donate a few hours or our own time to something.  I’m sure that there is something that we’re interested in that we can donate time to somewhere.

No matter your current situation in life, you can always give a little of yourself and I promise that you’ll feel a little better and whether you call if Karma, Blessings, or whatever you will find that you will benefit from it in someway.

Whether you do it yourself, with your family, a Scout Pack/Troop/Team/Crew, for a Wood Badge Ticket, whatever it is volunteering especially this year at this time of year is something that we can all do.

Check out the Volunteer section of 211ut.org for opportunities in your area.

Then again did they really have much else that they could say about this.

I realize that this sounds like I don’t appreciate all that UHP does.  That couldn’t be further from the true.

I’m actually just happy that someone is taking responsibility for their actions and apologizing.  To refresh your memory see this post.

So maybe that movie wasn’t fiction after all.  Maybe everything in that movie was true and it’s a huge government cover up.

Ok, so I’m just being a bit facetious.  I do think that it’s pretty cool when Hollywood and the Government can work together to produce things like this.  Mostly just because it capitalizes on something that helps to gain the attention of the general public and educate them, rather than it being some boring video, and if I find out that Einstein really was a bunch of dancing/singing bobble heads, it’s all that much better.

I’m not much of a column reader.  I don’t usually like the way that the writer throws in all kinds of jabs and opinions.  Some are worse than others and even some columns are worse than others from the same writer, but I really liked todays columnby Doug Robinson in the Deseret News.

I’m always impressed by the people who no matter what their situation, they are thinking of others first.  Whether it’s $5.00 or $5,000,000 to me it’s the same if it’s given in a spirit of truly trying to help people and make life better for them.

I don’t mean opening your wallet to every homeless person with a sign that you pass, but really trying to find ways that you can help make peoples lives better.  Not only for those to whom you serve by giving, but by also helping to inspire others to step up and give also.

The movie Pay It Foward really kind of hit the nail on the head.  Do something proactive for someone, then hopefully they are inspired to do something proactively for someone else, and so on.