... II. The Framework ...

values paradoxes

When we got back to the dorm I slipped off by myself by some nearby pine trees and offered the first sincere prayer I remember offering. I left the grove of trees knowing there is a God and He does answer prayers. I did not see an angel, nor hear a voice. I did have a religious experience, and I’m convinced my heart was touched by something outside of myself.

I found the two guys, and we went to the library after dinner. I checked out a Book of Mormon, they checked out a Bible, and we didn't study meteorology during the evenings that week. The discussions were intense, and as a seminary dropout and inactive Priest I didn't know the answers too many of their questions. However, I knew we would find the answers to their questions.

On Friday night there was a band playing, and since my band, ‘The MydKnight Hour’ (formerly ‘The Keynotes’), had just broke up at the end of our senior year, I was interested in going to check them out. Four of the group who had been studying the scriptures all week with me were also interested in going, specifically to see if there were any good looking girls there. So we walked downtown, went into an empty dance floor, listened to a rendition of ‘Inna Gotta Da Vita,’ and decided to walk back to the dorm. As we were crossing a street, Rich held out his hands, stopped a passing car, a little red Mazda, walked around to the driver's side of the car, and asked if he would take the five of us to get a `root beer.' The driver was receptive, so we all gathered around the car to try and talk him into this. As we were talking a big yellow Chevrolet pulled up and started honking at us. The passenger, obviously drunk and later we found out a star of the OSU National Championship football team, jumped out and started yelling at us. We scattered like fall leaves in a wind storm. The driver of the Mazda listened to a few obscenities, and then peeled out.

However, he drove around the block, found us as we were gathering back together, and invited us to all get in his little red car. As the root beer was being ordered he asked us to each tell him our names, where we were from, and what we were doing in Corvallis. I was last. I was sitting in the middle in the back, looking in his eyes in the rear view mirror when I said `I am Roice Nelson from Cedar City, Utah, and what is your name and where are you from?' He looked at me and said, `I am from a small town outside of Corvallis, but I just came back from two years in Australia.' I said, `What were you doing in Australia?' He said, `Yes, you're right.' Mike had just returned from a mission, and I am absolutely convinced it was not a coincidence he accidentally met us. It was part of the same spiritual hologram.





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