Thanks!!!

This blog is a couple weeks late but I am finally sitting down to get it done.  For the months of June, July, and August I lived in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota.  I have to say that I really enjoyed it and I met some amazing people that I am very grateful for.  First off I have to say thanks to this family;

The is Brother and Sister Skie.  These two are the ones that made my stay in Minnesota work out the way it did.  When my original housing plan fell through my dad knew someone who had lived in Minnesota before and this is the family he put me in contact with.  I am so grateful for them and their kindness.  I was able to spend a couple of afternoons talking with them and I think they are great.  They are so fun and kind and so willing to help.  Thank you two so much!!

Now the Skies put me in contact with some guys that they knew from church.  Their names are Kevin, Eric, Mark, Nuvong, Jason and David.  These guys are awesome as well.  These are the guys I spent my summer with and I had such a great time with them.  They were great examples to me and we had lots of great conversations.
This is Kevin;

 He is the one that I originally talked to and allowed me to come and stay with them.  He was probably wondering what kind of trouble he was getting himself and the house into saying yes, but I am glad that he said yes.  Kevin just started his second year of medical school at the University of Minnesota.  I actually didn't see much of Kevin this summer because he went to Washington D.C. to do some research for 2 months.  He got back the day I was leaving to see my family and it seemed like he had a great time.  Kevin is a great guy and thanks for your help.

This is Eric,

Eric is the most prepared person for anything that I have ever met in my entire life.  He has definitely followed the council of the prophet to prepare ourselves.  I slept in an area next to his food storage and whenever I would get hungry at night I would just reach over and grab a little snack off of one of the shelves.  Just kidding Eric!  I was bummed when Eric was getting ready to go to what's called the boundary waters and he was showing me the map and all the lakes they would canoe through.  It would have been so much fun to go with him.  He also bought a pretty awesome gun this summer.  Probably one of the highlights of the summer was watching the youtube of this thing, a Saiga 12, and what it could do.  Eric is currently working doing computer support, sorry Eric if I got that wrong, for a company in town and seemed to be doing well with it.  Oh yeah and he is pretty good at aikido.  He is actually good enough that he is one of the instructors; that's pretty cool!

Now for Mark,

Mark and Nu wanted to pose together so I have them in the same picture.  Mark is on the right and is your guy that is good at pretty much everything!  And I mean everything.  He was working on his green thumb skills this summer and seemed to be doing well.  I think that Kevin was also involved with it as well, but they had a little garden growing out front in the golf ball infested yard and then there was some squash growing along the side of one of the fences.  I don't know if I've ever seen anyone make so much bread either except for bakers.  He was always experimenting with something in the kitchen.  I thought it was funny because a few times I asked him what he was making and he would say, "I don't know. I just put a little of this and some of that together and hopefully it turns out."  Sometimes it did and sometimes not so much, but I thought it was pretty cool.  Mark also kind of adopted a dog for a little while.  A friend of his was going home to visit family in China and so he brought the dog to the house so that his friend didn't have to pay $25 a day to have a place watch Gracie, the dog.  What I saw with this is that Mark is an animal lover.  He would take Gracie running almost every day.  Along with Gracie he would take the neighbors dog too, Cosmos.  I think those two dogs loved Mark too.  Mark is currently working on his PhD degree in engineering at the university of Minnesota.  He hopes to be done here shortly so he can start looking for a job.  Good luck with that Mark and I hope it all works out well for you.  Thank you very much for all you did!

Nuvong, or Nu, he is the left one in the picture above.  Nu is one busy guy.  Not only did we not see him very often because he was busy working two jobs, Chipotle and Office Depot, but he just recently started some on-line classes on top of the two jobs.  I'm impressed with the way that Nu organizes his time and life.  He is the master of using a planner.  There was a few times when we would plan on doing something and he would whip out his planner and go through his available times.  He is also amazing with computer repair.  I don't think I remember how many computers came into the house from someone he knew that were broken, not working, whatever and he would totally tear them apart, get some new parts and put them back together again and they would work like new.  I was amazed at his skills!  Nu was also very handy in the kitchen and always willing and wanting to share his food.  Sometimes I wondered if he was trying to plump me up so that he could eat me.  He makes some yummy pasta and I would just get done with my dinner and he would get home make some food and then ask how much I wanted, or he would offer a banana, waffle, pizza, or anything else he had.  One of the nicest things happened when I came back to Minnesota to get my stuff and head to Ohio.  I got in late Friday night, talked with everyone a little bit and then slept on one of the couches upstairs.  In the morning Nu wakes me up at about 7:00am and has a huge breakfast made for me.  It was so nice and good, but I could only eat about half of it.  Again thank you Nu for everything. 

I wasn't able to get a picture of the last two.  Jason is a dental student who is getting married in October.  His fiance got back from Africa the day that I left to go home for a week and when I got back he not seen.  Jason congrats on the upcoming marriage and good luck with everything.

David was the house english guy.  He is doing his PhD at the University of Minnesota and actually spent two months this summer in Morocco learning Arabic.  That's pretty incredible to me!  So needless to say I didn't really get to see much of him since he was gone.  David good luck with all your schooling as well.

Now I am in Columbus, Ohio for the month of September and have been enjoying it.  I do miss these guys though.  The hospital has put me up in a hotel room with a little kitchen by myself.  In ways it is nice, but I do miss have good fun people around to talk to.  I have to say that I know I was definitely blessed to meet and get to know those guys and I am very grateful for how things all turned out.  Thanks again to the Skies, Kevin, Eric, Mark, Nu, Jason and David.  Take care!