My New Friend

Last night I took the Salt Lake Express shuttle from Bountiful up to Rexburg to visit Cindy Lynn and Mahon.

(While the ride was comfortable, it was not the party the exterior might suggest!)

For the first 2 hours of the trip I enjoyed the quiet drive, listening to fabulous music on my mp3 player and enjoying the beauty of the snow-capped mountains. 

After the shuttle stopped in Pocatello to let several passengers off, the young man sitting in front of me made a comment.  I took the earbud out of my ear and asked him what he had said…and that was the end of my music listening for the night.

 

My new friend, a 24 year old convert of two years from West Virginia, was on his way to visit his newly engaged sister in Rexburg, prior to entering the MTC next week.  He is looking forward to serving in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana mission, but is concerned that the flooding is going to crest in southern Louisiana in the next week and that he will arrive in the mission field just in time to help with a lot of cleanup.  After his mission he wants to complete his pre-med classes and go to med school, at West Virginia U or perhaps Ohio State.  He’d really like to be a neurological surgeon and do consults two days a week and surgeries one day a week.  He would never want to be a gyn, although he can see the attraction because their insurance is relatively low and their office hours predictable.  Apparently there aren’t a lot of gyn emergencies.

My friend’s family all got baptized four years ago, but he was working on Sundays at the time and the missionaries never asked him if he wanted to take the discussions.  Then the family moved and he started going to church with his parents, but it still took a while for someone to ask him if he was interested in learning more about the church.  Although he was the last person baptized, he was the first to go through the temple.  His parents are hoping to be temple ready sometime next month.

His sister is getting married on September 22nd in the Logan temple.  September 22nd is significant to their family because their parents and grandparents were both married on September 22nd, and it is her birthday and their grandmother’s birthday.  Additionally, her husband will be the 4th generation in his family to marry in the Logan temple.  His sister is studying to be a physical therapist.

His 22 year old brother is working right now as a horse trainer in Colorado.  Unfortunately he was kicked in the chest by a calf, which has pre-disposed him to pneumonia.  His brother has never been to college because of his dyslexia, but is having his first interview next week to go on a mission.  When he and his brother work together at home they don’t get along, but oddly enough when they’re working for someone else and getting paid they work together just fine.  His brother is thinking of going into nursing, which would make three medical professions in their family.  That would be interesting for their parents who both have MBAs.

My new friend lived in Germany for 8 years as a child, while his dad was in charge of all of the military schools in most of Europe.  He’s travelled to many European countries and is pretty sure he could still find his way around Rome.  Now he and his family live on a small farm in West Virginia where they have lots of animals just for the fun of it.  They have milk goats and make goat milk soap, goat cheese, and even drink the goats milk when they run out of regular milk.  His mom has drunk so much goat’s milk that she no longer reacts to poison ivy because the goats have eaten so much of it.  One of the missionaries in their ward did not believe her, and so they had a poison ivy challenge.  His mom rubbed it all over her arms and face and was unbothered.  The missionary rubbed it in one small spot on his leg and it reacted almost immediately.  Fortunately his mom had a good salve to put on the missionary’s leg to stop the itching.

They have hundreds of chickens, both laying chickens and meat chickens, which are apparently very different animals.  They have several different breeds of turkeys, only one of which reproduces independently.  Most of the turkeys fluff up their tail feathers to get attention, but they also have a turkey that does a kind of rain dance.  Their family is convinced that the indians learned their tribal dances from watching the wild turkeys.

When I told my new friend that I’d spent the last two weeks eating my sisters yummy home-grown eggs for breakfast, and that I really wanted chickens of my own, he suggested that I get the book Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.  I should be able to get the book at any Cal Ranch store, or also on Amazon.  He said that what we really need is a chicken tractor, which will help fertilize our lawn and also keep our chickens safe from the local critters.  When I told him about my friend Katie’s chicken eggs and how hard the shells were compared to my flimsy costco eggs, he said that that is from eating a lot of bugs.  If chickens eat a lot of bugs they’re getting more calcium and the egg shells will be harder.  When you want to hatch the eggs, you have to pen the chickens so they can’t eat as many bugs.  His family had a batch of eggs that they were trying to hatch (they own their own incubator) but the shells were so tough that the chicks couldn’t do more than make a tiny hole.  They helped the chicks break out of the shells, even though that’s not a good thing for the chicks.  He also told me that if I want chicks and don’t have an incubator to hatch them myself I can order them online and get day-old chicks delivered to my post office, though it might freak out the postal workers…

 

Then the shuttle arrived at my stop in Rexburg. I said goodbye to my new (nameless) friend and got off to hug Cindy Lynn and Mahon.  Today I have enjoyed remembering bits and pieces of my shuttle conversation, and tonight I am thinking---

now that’s an extrovert!!!!!