Okay. What three events most shaped your life?
Oh, three events that most shaped my life.
One I can think of was my friendship with Mike Smith in Oregon.
I met him in grade school and he and I became best friends and he was active in the church as was I at the time.
We went camping together on weekends and just had a good time.
And then I moved away to California, lost track of him and came back to Oregon and eventually moved back.
I had been, this was later in my life, I was 21 or something or 20s or 19.
Anyway, I wasn't in a good spot mentally. I was thinking, why are we here? What's the point of life?
My friends there, Larry Hunter and Charles Hicks and that, all my friends were married.
And I thought, well, I mean, that's the way to go. And then I got engaged and then I broke it off.
So I was kind of in a position of, didn't know what to do with my life.
Anyway, Mike Smith stops by my house there in Clinton Avenue just one afternoon out of the clear blue sky.
And he'd been on a mission and then he'd gone to BYU for like a semester or two.
And so he came by and just, you know, we just got reacquainted.
And he talked about how great it was dating-wise and everything at BYU. He enjoyed it and that.
Anyway, he left and what impressed me was that he seemed so happy and I wasn't happy.
You know, I had money, I had friends, I had cars, I had whatever. I was single but I wasn't happy.
But he just seemed happy and so I wanted to know why.
And so that's when I started my trip back to church and back to BYU.
To get to BYU, enrolled in it, I had to pass a bishop's interview and that.
And to do that I had to start coming to church and I had to get my hair cut and everything.
And so I started doing this stuff mainly to get into BYU.
But also there's a part of me I want to know, I think the bottom line was I want to know why he was so happy.
You know, he'd been on a mission for two years serving other people. It wasn't for himself, it was just two years.
And yet he seemed just so happy.
You know, part of it could have been because he was back at BYU and he was dating a lot of girls and that.
Which we didn't have the opportunity to do much in Cloud Falls.
So I ended up going back, going back to church, starting to get active, starting to study the Gospel,
studying the Book of Mormon, got accepted to BYU, got a scholarship.
And ended up going back to BYU and rooming in the same apartment complex, same room as Mike Smith.
He and I got together.
And I continued to study the Book of Mormon when I got there.
And that's when I became active, that's when I got a testimony.
And then that's when I asked to have the Melchizedek Priesthood.
Oh, cool.
And so that was, so Mike Smith would have been a turning point.
And there's two other times that he affected my life at pivotal points.
And it was both times I was back at BYU.
And both times, and they were separate years, they weren't the same years or anything.
But both times I was thinking I was really close to quitting school
and moving to California on my own and joining the swinging single scene, so to speak.
Because I worked in California, you know, on the service stations.
I knew I could go back there, I could probably get a job back there,
start rooming in a singles apartment complex and that kind of stuff.
And it would be not associated with the church.
I was thinking of just stopping that.
But on those other two occasions, Mike Smith showed up.
And we were roommates at that point in time.
We, you know, roomed with other people and gone different ways.
But we were both still in school.
And we'd see each other occasionally, but he just happened to show up,
and I know it wasn't a coincidence, on both of those times.
And he and I talked and I changed my mind and I ended up staying at BYU.
So Mike Smith and joining the church was, you know, the pivotal thing.
So my friendship with Mike Smith throughout the years.
And then becoming active in the church again and getting the priesthood.
And that was a big one.
And then, of course, while I was back there, BYU, meeting your mom eventually
and asking her to marry me and getting married.
So those were pivotal points in my life.
And I always remember Mike Smith.
It was kind of like, I just thought, he must have made a promise to me
in the pre-existence that he would watch over me or take care of me.
Because at each of those three points in time, it changed my life.
Do you still talk with him?
When was the last time?
I haven't seen him or talked to him for years.
I don't even know where he is.
Because what happened is he got married, he went to,
his wife went to Alaska, they homesteaded.
Wow.
And everything, and last I had heard, he had become a bishop
or a branch president up there in Alaska.
Then they moved from Alaska and he went into some kind of customizing car business
which was totally not his type of thing.
Mike was more of an outdoorsman and hiker and camper and that type of thing.
Cars were never his, custom cars and that kind of stuff were never his thing.
But his brother, who I became friends with for a while,
and his brother and I went back to BYU too.
Claude Smith kept me in touch with him occasionally.
He'd just let me know what Mike was doing, but I don't know.
Last I heard, he was somewhere here in the United States.
I don't know where or anything.
But yeah, it was always a pivotal thing.
So I've never forgotten that.
And of course, like you say, getting married,
because I never thought I was going to get married.
Initially I didn't want to.
And then as I changed that position, meeting someone,
I just thought that was not going to happen.
And I didn't worry about it happening.
In fact, there were girls that I could have married that wanted to get married,
that wanted to marry me, but I just wasn't in that mode.
I didn't want to at that time, so I didn't.
Then Mom and I met, and that changed things dramatically,
because we got married, and that changed my life.
And then when she got pregnant, it was like having a child,
and Peppa, the first child, that changed my life.
And then there was three of us to take care of.
You know, it was Mom and I, it was just her and I, and we both worked.
It was a partnership.
But then when the baby came, it was like I felt like I had this pressure
to take care of all three of us.
So that was definitely a change.
So those would be changes.
The other thing that was important, I think, was I was really born to goodly parents.
They weren't active all their life.
And in fact, I was able to be an instrument in getting them active.
Once I got active at BYU, then I came back during the summers.
One of my sisters got active, Debbie, and then Dad got active.
Mom got excommunicated as a result of stuff that I instigated.
Anyway, and eventually she became reactivated.
So eventually one of my other sisters, Chris, got activated for a short while.
She and Dean, her husband, got married in the temple after they'd been married,
but they'd gone inactive.
Debbie's still active. Tracy's never been active.
So I would say, you know, goodly parents and then Mike Smith.
That was pivotal as a result of Mike Smith.
The gospel. The gospel would be the biggest thing in my life.
It changed me from who I might have become to who I am now.
Totally different point of view, different perspective.
You know, eternal, long-term perspective.
Versus the perspective where a lot of people here feel like this is all there is on this earth,
and you've got to drive for all you can get.
So that's a total different perspective.
The gospel would be the main one.
Yeah, they could do a lot of stuff.
Cool.