25 May 2008

BYU Father/Sons Day 2


Today was a long and fun day. On the way to the morning camp meeting in the Smith Fieldhouse, Zach and I stopped at the RB (Richards Building for you Non-BYU types - building with a bunch of basketball courts, the indoor swimming pool, dance floors, etc.) and found a stray basketball and an empty gymn. We started shooting around and another Dad with his two boys who we met at check-in (from Texas), dropped in. We played Dads against boys for about 30 minutes, which was really fun.


We got to the camp meeting just as it was beginning and Zach rushed out to be with his Team (about 15-20 7 & 8 year olds). They were split in two doing a layup contest. Zach's team won so they all got popsicles. Then, after we had found a couple of seats, they said they wanted all fathers and sons who lived east of the Mississippi down on the court. We are one of four pairs!! That is cool...they then had us in a contest. Sons started first by dribbling the length of the court and back, then handing off to their Dad who had to dribble down shoot and make a layup and then dribble back and make a layup. Zach gave me the ball in good shape, I then proceeded to miss my layup, needing to shoot it again before I could dribble back! Then, missed again on the other end! We finished third, not a bad result for my missed layups. It was fun being one of the four pairs in front of the other 500 plus fathers and sons.


After camp meeting, the morning was filled with 5 on 5 basketball, 3 on 3 basketball, shooting and volleyball. Zach and I were both exhausted and ready for lunch! Oh, the meals are all-u-can eat, with smoothies, ice cream, the works....it's great. After lunch, we came back to our dorm room for a little bit of relaxation (I think I actually fell asleep for about 30 minutes)!


The afternoon was not as physically tiring....we had punt, pass and kick, a trainer talk to us about weightlifting, one on one and frisbee golf. We then hiked up to the campus and took the picture you see here. On campus we played catch with the baseball gear we brought, visited the BYU bookstore and had a barbecue at the Wilkinson Center.


We finished the day with a couple cool events....first a fireside by Zane Gray, a professional magician and speaker. He was very good...lots of good tricks and a good message - he is a returned missionary who gave up his career at 18 so he could serve a mission when he turned 19. He served in Canada and gave an insight into the Victorian Cross (the equivalent of the US Congressional Medal of Honor). Not doing it justice....but the short story is Queen Victoria had them change the bottom of the medal from "For the brave" to "For valor" (or something close to that). Message was everyone who goes and serves is brave, she wanted something more, valor came to mind....while everyone is brave, not everyone is valiant. He also had a great analogy with a card trick and a young man up there who he had asked to tear some pieces of paper up, a $100 bill up and then a picture of the Savior. The young man would not tear the picture of the Savior. Even though the young man thought he knew for sure where his card was in a stack of four Zane Gray had laid out, he would not take Gray's offer for $10,000 to tear the picture of the Savior. Message was what is really of value in this life.


Final event of the night was the movie Hoosiers shown in the Wilkinson Center movie theater.


Another good day....signing off for now!

3 comments:

The Bryan Beat said...

That is so awesome!! What an experience. You should have Zach also write some sort of journal about the camp and his impressions of everything. Maybe on the plane ride home... I love you both and miss you but I'm so glad that you are having such an amazing experience!
xoxo Jennifer/Mom

The Bryan Beat said...

Sounds awesome guys!
-Ashley

The Bryan Beat said...

and i mean TOTALLY awsome!