An Important Life Lesson: When Faith Isn't Enough!

When I was about ten, during a Sunday night church service at the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado, I asked a simple question that started me down a road to spiritual discovery.

We had missionaries from Africa as guests that night. For my many Mormon friends, being an LDS missionary is different than being a missionary in just about any other church. In other churches, missionaries are adults – oftentimes, completely established with families. For them, serving a mission is a lifetime task. But they have to have funding. So, every so often, they fly back home and do a tour of churches. Usually during a Sunday Night service, they relate experiences from their mission, show pictures, and ask for donations.

It was on one such night that I had my question. While showing pictures of some of the people they had come across in Africa, these missionaries mentioned that many of the people there had never even heard of Jesus Christ. I don’t think I heard much else of what was said that night. My mind was troubled. It was a warm summer night, and our church was less than a mile from our house – so we had walked. On the walk home, I posed my question:

“Dad, how is it that those people in Africa haven’t heard about Jesus?”

“It’s just different there,” he responded. “They don’t have churches like we do. That’s why it’s important that we support missionaries.”

That led to a new question: “But what about the people who never hear about Jesus – what happens to them?”

My dad was quiet for a moment. “Well, they go to hell.”

The Lady Pooper

Lucy comes into my office this morning: "Daddy, Mom needs you to get some Tylenol. It's on the Lady Pooper in the bathroom!'

I give her a blank look. "The what, Goose?"

"The Lady Pooper!" She gives me an exasperated sigh. "Come on! I'll show you!"

I follow her down into the bathroom. She opens the bathroom cabinet door, and points to the round double-shelf that turns on a swivel. "It's on there!"

"Lucy, tell me what that is, again?" I ask.

She giggles a little, in response: "I don't want to!"

"Come on, Goosey," I say, smiling, "Tell me what it's called!"

"Um, I think it's the 'Lady Pooper?'" She mumbles the second half of the sentence, as her face turns bright red.

I can't contain my laughter. "Oh sweet Lucy! That's called a 'Lazy Susan!'"

"Whatever, Dad! Mom wants the Tylenol!"

A few minutes later, she comes back into my office, gives me a big, unsolicited hug, and says sweetly: "Daddy, you won't tell anyone about what I called that, will you?"

"Of course not, sweetie."

Chalk one up for the Anderson family lore!

Lucy and the Family's Butts

So, the other day, I needed to edit a video on my iPad. This isn’t a task I perform regularly, so I had to get some instruction from an Apple-obsessed nephew (thanks, Alex) on the process. When I start importing my video, I notice that my Camera Roll – the folder the iPad uses to store pictures and videos – is full of pictures. This is strange. I don’t remember having ever used my iPad to snap pictures.

So, I start going through the pictures, and I see a trend. They seem to have been taken from a perspective of about three-and-a-half feet off the ground. There are pictures of the dogs. There are pictures of Barbies, going about their daily Barbie business (eating, lounging, looking fabulous, etc). There are pictures of various household items. There are lots of pictures of my lovely Lucy, like this one.

Some of these have been edited, like this one (I have no idea where she learned to do this – my then four-year-old little girl said she just figured it out herself).

And then, there are pictures of butts: Paxton’s butt; Sue’s butt; my butt; the dogs’ butts (including one particularly-nauseating close-up of Boris the angry Bulldog’s butt) – just butts! The only person whose butt is missing from the collage is Lucy’s.

Drugged-Up Dinosaurs – Road Trip to Colorado!

So, we just got back from our annual New Year’s trip to Colorado. Since we’ve been married, I think we’ve only missed this trip one year. The drive is a little over 500 miles – about 8 ½ hours, if you stay reasonably close to the speed limit. I estimated this to be my 75^th round trip, Salt Lake City to Denver. I love the drive! Susan and Lucy usually drive one way, and then fly back. I would much rather drive – even at 11,000 feet, in the middle of winter. We’ll typically stay in a hotel on the way out – it breaks the monotony; and the kids love staying in hotels. Then, Pax and I will drive straight through on the way back.

This year’s highlights:

·       Arriving at the hotel, and watching Pax and Lucy act punch-drunk with the energy they’d accumulated, being in the car for four hours. One minute, they loved each other. The next, they – um – didn’t. At one point, Lucy said they were running around like “drugged-up dinosaurs.” (No idea where she got that!)

·       Listening to the cacophony of Lucy singing along loudly with fairly horrible pop tunes (e.g. Party in the USA), while Pax loudly expresses his dissatisfaction with Lucy’s choice of music. (“AND THE JAY-Z SONG WAS ON!” “This song SUCKS! Dad, tell her to turn it off!” “AND THE BRITNEY SONG WAS ON!” “OH MY GOSH! THIS SONG SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS WRITTEN ON THE SHORT BUS!” “MOVIN’ MY HIPS LIKE ‘YEAH!’” “DAD! I hope you know that this is making us all DUMBER!”)

Good times! Not bad times!