It's been a whole week since the event but I felt like it deserved documenting.
Some days are good and some days are not as good, and some days are just really nice. Last Sunday was one of the really good days. On the same day, I blessed my youngest son and I was able to baptize my oldest son. Both events were very sweet and full of tender emotions and and tears born of deep gratitude and love for my children.
Having extended family present made the day so much nicer. Brian and Beth commented on the blessing. I remember most of the blessing and I'm still considering whether this is a proper forum for sharing the content of that blessing. I'll err on the side of caution and not post it, with the caveat that if anyone would like to know I'll type out what I can remember and email it off.
The blessing was done at 1pm at the beginning of sacrament meeting and the baptism was done after church and a little dinner that my mom coordinated. As a side note, it is really nice to have a mom that will take charge in certain situations to organize special events where I would fall short.
Baptisms are always special but the significance of it didn't hit me until after Hyrum and I were dressed in our white clothing and standing in the hall to get a picture taken. At that point it hit me that I remembered a picture very similar to the one we were posing for but it was of me and my dad. I was baptized in the same font, and my dad and I took a picture next to the same wall.
The service was very impromptu, Ben led the music, I am a child of God, Kate gave a great opening prayer, Aunt Joie gave a talk on baptism and shared her testimony all of which invited the spirit in wonderfully. Then we baptized him.
Without going to into too much detail, I walked into the water which was a little cold, then turned and invited Hyrum to join me. I gave him a little reminder about how it would work then closed my eyes. When I said the baptismal prayer, I choked on the words, being overwhelmed with emotion, laid him under the water and brought him back up again and gave him a great big hug.
We got dressed back into our Sunday best and came out to our seats again where, Sarita gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Both talked were addressed Hyrum. He came up to the front where I invited all of my brothers, the Bishop and a family freind that was there to stand in for the confirmation. For this I can't recount what I said, except the words "you can be a light that reflects the light of Jesus Christ", but the rest is a blur.
The whole time I was just so proud of my little boy and hoped that he would remember this as a day to remember. On a personal note, I was struck by the thought that while I may not consider myself worthy to perform tasks in the name of my Savior, he still sanctified the act so that my son wouldn't be denied the blessing of recieving this ordinance, and I know that the Holy Spirit was there to testify that it was accepted by the Lord.
My mind has just been blown. Last night I caught a piece of a documentary about the 9/11 terrorists. There were 4 planes, and one of the 4 was flown by two men that lived in my home town. Not only were they in the same city, the lived in the same neighborhood.
Let me backup. The documentary was about the amount of information that the "Intelligence" community had before the attack actually happened, and it was detailed. They had phone records of calls to the safe house in Yemen where Bin Laden was living and had setup Headquarters, records of wire transfers from Yemen to the Bank of America where my mother does her banking and literally next-door to the bank that I use. The NSA had records of the guy's Driver's License, Visa, Car Insurance, Car title.... All of them in his name, even though the CIA knew that he was known to be affiliated with Al Queda.
The point of the presentation was to highlight the failings of the CIA, NSA, and FBI in not sharing information. Apparently because of jurisdiction they couldn't, NSA only monitors internally, FBI is after a crime is committed, and CIA isn't allowed to operate in the USA or something like that. Because of that negligence or shortfall, these guys were in the country legally. They were officially indistiguishable from an exchange student, or a migrant worker. They had the same rights and protections of an American resident.
None of that is what stood out to me most though. On a much more personal and less globally significant level I was struck by the idea, that I very likely had seen this guy, or at least been in a proximity of less than 100 yards at some point. I can make this claim and I'll explain why. On the documentary they showed the actual mosque they attended. The map below shows it on google maps. For privacy I don't want to share my parents address, but it's literally 3 or 4 blocks away. Every Friday, this street Ecstrom would be PACKED around 1-2pm and I never understood why. I learned later that Muslims have something called "The prayer of Friday" which either begins or ends their sabbath equivilent. In any case, I can't count the number of times I'd been stuck in that traffic. For all I know, one of the jay walkers was THE guy. Even if it wasn't one of the guys that walked in front of my car, he was in that building at some point when I was driving by.
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=7050+Eckstrom+Ave,+San+Diego,+CA+92111+(Islamic+Center+of+San+Diego:+Mosque)&sll=32.820731,-117.166207&sspn=0,359.990655&ie=UTF8&ll=32.820668,-117.166003&spn=0.005725,0.009345&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=32.820766,-117.166121&panoid=0G0ijW9Ybjz4gjCmzTKV5A&cbp=12,138.01612196192457,,0,4.317912251189721
