Yes that wonderful time of the year has come at last, that time when you realize "I wish I didn't live in Cheyenne WYO". I know what your thinking "but why?" you say "Wyoming is so beautiful" well to let you know; remember all those pictures you’ve seen of those Dying pioneers as they froze crossing the icy rocky mountain Dessert, yah that’s the real Wyoming. Only 20% or so of the state is that gorgeous pictograph in your head and I live the farthest that anyone can get from it.

Oh don't get me wrong its great from the end if spring until fall hits with lows around 75˚ and highs that never break 100, but as for the rest of the year...you guest it, frozen Pioneers… I remember thinking as a kid that it couldn’t have been so bad, but having spent just one day out on that frozen flat expanse of land with the cold hard wind relentlessly pounding every ounce of warmth out of you in the mater of seconds, I have come to a all new appreciation of what a trial it must have been for our forefathers. There has been in my mind a great sense of self-effacing continuity in the faith of many LDS.  From the members I see with all this apparent buildup of Faith in god but being completely unfocused and in-deliberate. To overly focused saints who in their smugness make themselves out to be more holy then the next person, they seem so fake to me, I like to call it "the contest of convictions."

Too often, I think, within this community of devotion people feel the need to be as or more spiritual then the sister so-humble or Brother so-righteous, they try so hard to put their faith out on display for all to see that after all the pushing nothing has goten in. I can’t imagine one of our pioneer ancestors looking over the dead body of their fallen friend...brother...sister...son..daughter...mother...or father (you pick it) and thinking “I must be so more faithful then them,” any more then I can imagine it in the grief and pain of the climate they stood in

Well I don’t want to vent so much that is offends any one, just food for thought.

Happy Holidays

-Rich