Cheer and Loving in Las Vegas!

Better late than never right? I flew south for the winter down I-15 a couple weeks ago with a last-minute companion to visit old mission stomping grounds and search for the warm, bright sun I used to know before I came to Utah. I was greeted by said sun and all 77 of that day's degrees! I definitely soaked it up. Played some baseball, saw some old faces, an old ward mission leader and three convert families, one of which had some especially good news and is well on their way to the temple by December! I was sooo happy for them it was unreal!

I definitely hit up this place. That's all I have to say about that.

A couple of weird things I felt as I re-visited. For one, it felt like I had never left. I didn't need a map to get anywhere in town I wanted, and I felt absolutely at home among the people, but at the same time noticed that no one stared at me ever. It took probably about twenty minutes of sitting in a restaurant before I figured out what the difference was. I found myself in such a happy mood the whole time! It was like my own special little corner of the world that was different to my eyes than to any others.

Of course, you can't visit Vegas without seeing the Strip, which I found less than impressive. It reminded me of Astroworld, the way people walked around and were dressed. Very un-Vegas-like, I thought. Probably because most people there were not actually from Vegas. We hit lots of different free things to do, saw the sights and in the course of many hours walked from the Luxor to the Stratosphere and back, probably about five miles each way. Here's a quick stop in the Coke shop:

Refreshed and thirst quenched, we made our way to the top of the stratosphere for one of the rides, with many stops along the way. The goal of this one is to scare you by "dropping" you off the edge of the tallest thing in the valley. Sorry in advance for the poor picture quality, I was freezing and didn't care much about keeping my hands still or soaking in the view!

In other news, Conference came and went. Convenient to my schedule, I watched Saturday's sessions in the library, and stood to sustain the prophet with one other guy in my computer room; it was pretty cool. I was talking to a girl at a party that night and she had done it by herself in her room too - I wonder how many people in diverse places and company across the world were sustaining President Monson right then? I thought it was really cool.

That night I went to priesthood session at the Marriott Center with a couple of friends and was squeezed in next to a little guy who looked at me wide-eyed and goes, "Are you a missionary?!" He looked younger than twelve but probably wasn't. I was a little caught off-guard, and told him I wasn't anymore, but couldn't stop thinking about his question for the rest of the night, and then realized that I hadn't answered him truthfully. Later on in the session he tapped my shoulder and held up the pen he was taking notes with, and it was identical to my pen, which I had also used throughout my mission.

Anyway, life is grand up here in Provo, except for the fact that Spring didn't want any part of us this year. It is April 10 and it was freezing today. If any of you see her, tell her to come quick!