A Piece of Rye (Bread)

First Email - MTC 1.31.12

2012-02-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

โรำฟสไฟวปใ <-- that means hello...psych! i have no idea what that means, i just changed the language on my computer to Thai and started typing!

But the MTC is sweet. The first few days were horrible. I wanted to die. You know how the Savior was mentally prepared for Gethsemane, but not experientially prepared...well thats how I felt. Mentally I was ready to say goodbye to the world for 2 years but I had no idea how difficult and overwhelming the homesickness would actually be. And to add to the insanity, we had to teach an "investigator" on our third day...in Thai. That was nuts. It was a rough few days. But Sunday it all changed. I think I realized that I am trying to do all this by myself. I realized that I am stressing out for nothing, the Lord will help me learn Thai and help me become the missionary I am to be. So after I realized that, everything got better! It is awesome.

But Thai is crazy hard. The tones are killer. To get them right I have to move my hand and head with the tone. So when I say stuff I look like I belong in the psych ward, moving my head up and down and tracing imaginary mountains and valleys in the air. It is pretty funny. My district has Thai time where we only speak in Thai to each other. Its hilarious. We hardly understand each other and our conversations are limited to bearing our testimonies to each other and asking who this book belongs to. We have a good time though.

My companion is Elder Gibbons. And he is from Draper. He is pretty chill. The thing I admire most about him is his charity, he never misses an opportunity to serve others. He'll take the trays for the senior missionaries and the sisters in our district every time. He truly cares about people, its cool. He obeys too, which makes it easier for me to obey.

There are 8 elders in my district and we are all going to Thailand. There is another district of Thai missionaries that arrived on the same day as us with 8 more. And then there are about 8 more Thai missionaries that have been here for a little over a month. There are a ton of us, we all sit together at meals, its pretty cool.

The coolest word i learned in Thai is klabcay (pronounced glabjai). It means to repent, but the cool thing is klab means to return and cay means heart. So repent literally means to return your heart. How sweet is that?! Yeah Thai pretty much rocks.

Phom rag phii thug (that is supposed to be i love you all)

Elder M. Riley Creer

The only

hashtags:

#ThatAkwardMomentWhenAnElderInYourDistrictHasTheExactSameShoesAsYouAndAnAlmostIdentitcalSuit

#Whenyougetaskedtochangeyourtiebecauseitistoobright

#Whenyouareteachingalessonandlookdownandrealizeyouarewearinganotherelderssuitjacket

#firstweek

A Picture is worth a thousand words....

2012-01-31T05:40:00.000-08:00

Riley is off...

2012-01-25T17:17:00.000-08:00

Riley was all smiles...

Last photo with family

Off he goes for two years
First twelve weeks in the MTC to learn Thai.
Then off to Thailand!

Riley's Farewell...

2012-01-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

Hello Brothers and Sisters.

I was asked me to speak on a part of the Sermon on the Mount: verses 13 through 16 in Matthew chapter 5. To start out, I thought I would read the verses…

Matt 5:13-16

The first thought I had after I read that was “what does it mean to be the salt of the earth?”

My wise sister told me to just skip that verse and talk about the others…I decided it wasn’t a good idea.

So what does salt do? What is it used for? My inner chemistry nerd thought of how we used salt to change the color of flames in chemistry class. When salt is burned the resulting flames can be bright, vibrant colors, making the fire more attractive. Perhaps the Savior meant that we should help bring about change in people’s lives. Perhaps he meant us to be the reactant that beautifies a person’s inner fire, their soul…but I don’t think the Lord had this in mind when he gave the Sermon on the Mount. Then I thought of how we use salt today to flavor and preserve our food. I think this application makes more sense. But does that mean we are to be the flavor of the earth? That didn’t help at all, now the scripture is more confusing. But if you think about it in a different light it clicks. We use salt to make food better. If we are the salt in this scenario, then Christ is using us to make the world better. The same holds true for the preserve part too. We use salt to preserve our food, so we can save it. So too does Christ use us to save our fellow man. In Mormon Doctrine we read that to be the salt of the earth means “to be the seasoning, savoring, preserving influence in the world, the influence which would bring peace and blessings to all others.”

So how do we do that? This is when verses 14, 15, and 16 come in. I’ll read them again, just in case you forgot them already.

Matt 5:14-16

Verse 16 sort of sums it up for us. We are to be an example to bring people to our Father in heaven. In Doctrinal New Testament Commentary (quite a title if you ask me), Elder Bruce R. McConkie said, “Even as Jesus himself is the light of the world , so he expects his saints to set perfect examples of righteousness so that they too shall shine forth as lights to their fellow men. ‘Behold I am the light; I have set an example for you,’ he says [in 3 Nephi Chapter 18], and then commands: ‘Hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do.’” I found a good example of this in a seminary manual. Imagine one of your friends is lost in a cave. You are the flashlight that can guide your friend out of the dark and into the light of Jesus Christ. The question that remains is what kind of flashlight are you? Are you the type of flashlight that will guide your friend to safety with a strong, brilliant beam of light? Or are you the flashlight that starts out strong but slowly dims to nothing as your batteries die out?

That takes us to my next topic. What does it mean to lose our savor? Not knowing what savor meant, I googled it. I found two definitions. The first is an archaic one, meaning reputation, or how others perceive you. We cannot lose our good name or the respect of those around us and still expect to be a guide unto them. How can we be an example when our name is with pigs in the mud? The second definition I found is more current. It says savor is the quality in a substance that affects the sense of taste or smell. So if we lose our savor we lose that quality of substance. In his general conference address in 1980, Carlos E. Asay said, “A world-renowned chemist told me that salt will not lose its savor with age. Savor is lost through mixture and contamination. Similarly, priesthood power does not dissipate with age; it, too, is lost through mixture and contamination. When a young man or older man mixes his thoughts with pornographic literature, he suffers a loss of savor. When a priesthood bearer mixes his speech with lies or profanity, he suffers a loss of savor. When one of us follows the crowd and becomes involved in immoral acts and the use of drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and other injurious substances, he loses savor. Flavor and quality flee a man when he contaminates his mind with unclean thoughts, desecrates his mouth by speaking less than the truth, and misapplies his strength in performing evil acts.” So we lose our savor when we dirty ourselves with unclean behavior. Savor is akin to purity.

When read, the words Savor and Savior are almost identical. If you substitute the word savior in for savor, then verse 13 of Matthew 5 tells us that when we have lost our Savior we are good for nothing. We must keep our Savior, Jesus Christ, at the center of our lives in order to keep our savor. When we lose sight of Christ, we lose sight of everything and find ourselves in our own cave, lost in the darkness. President David O. McKay quoted James L. Gordon about the atonement: “A cathedral without windows, a face without eyes, a field without flowers, an alphabet without vowels, a continent without rivers, a night without stars, and a sky without a sun—these would not be so sad as a…soul without Christ.” Christ is the center of it all. As it says in Doctrine and Covenants 88:13, Christ is “the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things.” As we go forth to be a light unto the world, we must have His light in our countenance. Our light is really a reflection of his light.

My grandpa shared a story with me that illustrates the need for Christ. It also shows the guiding power that Christ can have in our lives if we let Him.

There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about religion and religious holidays, like Christmas. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging comments. One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife was taking their children to a Christmas Eve service in the farm community in which they lived. She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home. A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something had hit the window. Then another thump. He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet. When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and could not go on. They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of them had flown into his window, it seemed.

The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It is warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm. So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly and did not seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them. The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them and they moved further away. He went into the house and came back out with some bread, broke it up, and made a breadcrumbs trail leading to the barn. They still didn't catch on. Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go into the barn where they would be warm and safe.

"Why don't they follow me?!" he exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm?" He thought for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he said out loud. Then he had an idea. He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the flock and straight into the barn -- and one by one the other geese followed it to safety.

He stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed in his mind: "If only I were a goose, then I could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to his wife earlier. "Why would God want to be like us? That's ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense. That is what God had done. We were like the geese -- blind, lost, perishing. God had His Son become like us so He could show us the way and save us. That was the meaning of Christmas, he realized. As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood what Christmas was all about, why Christ had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished like the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank You Jesus for coming in human form to show me the way out of the storm!"

We must follow Jesus’ example and be a light “unto all that are in the house.” We must be their light in the dark to help guide them out of the storm of life. So saying we must be a light to those around us is one thing, but actually being a light is another. How do we be that guiding influence in each other’s lives? The answer, I think, is to always build people up. Do our actions ever cut other people down? Can we honestly say that everything we do strengthens our friends? We need to be less selfish and more selfless. The key to being a light to those around you is forgetting yourself, and putting the needs of others above your own. Serving those around us is how we can help guide them. Little things such as a simple testimony shared with a friend, a sincere conversation with someone who is alone, even a quick smile given to stranger, can go a long way. In essence, the answer to how we can be a shining example to the world is charity.

As a missionary I know that I can be that light of Truth that brings the people of Thailand to Jesus Christ. I will be proclaiming the good news of the Atonement. The news that Christ atoned for our sins; that he descended below all things so that he might know how best to elevate all things. As a missionary I will be the Lord’s hands, carrying forth his work in Thailand. To close I would like to share my favorite quote from Elder Bruce R. McConkie:

I am called of God. My authority is above that of the kings of the earth. By revelation, I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my Master and he has chosen me to represent Him. To stand in His place, to say and do what He himself would say and do if He were personally ministering to the very people to whom He has sent me. My voice is His voice. My acts are His acts. My words are His words and my doctrine is His doctrine. My commission is to do what He wants done. To say what He wants said. To be a living, modern witness in word and deed of the divinity of this great and marvelous latter-day work. How great is my call.

And he's going to....

2011-09-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Riley was called to the
THAILAND BANGKOK Mission!

He reports to the Provo MTC January 25, 2012.

Sam suggested we go for Thai food but Riley opted for Pizza...

The Papers are in...

2011-09-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

My Mission Papers are in... I should get my call in the next week or two.

We are speculating where I will go.

My patriarchal blessing says I will go to a "Strange Culture" so my mom is sure I am going to serve in the south...Georgia or Louisiana

Your guess?

and Katie is on her way to Utah... It will be a great weekend!!

2009-04-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago was the Battle of the Sexes at my high school. Each day was a different dress up day and on Friday we had an assembly to decide the winner. The cheerleaders performed in the assembly so naturally the guys had to throw a cheer routine together so we wouldn't lose. I was lucky enough to get chosen to be a "flyer" for the stunting part of the routine. Just the name scared me, I kept thinking about being thrown across the gym and landing on my head. My fears were faced and i survived. Here's the video link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE2yVnKJIgY

Heaven in a Cup

2009-04-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today while I was contemplating the meaning of life I started thinking about my favorite things. One of which is a slurpee. Slurpees are a panacea. They solve all of life's problems, or at least make them seem not so big. Whenever I'm having a bad day I just go get a slurpee and my problems just seem to melt away. Maybe it has something to do with the enormous brain freeze you can get from a slurpee or maybe slurpees have hidden anti depressants in them. Whatever it is, slurpees are simply amazing.

I'm legal!

2009-04-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

I passed! I passed the motorcycle license test with a hundred percent. Turns out that the motorcylce test is wayyy easier than the normal driving test. But that's probably because i took it on a scooter. Pretty soon I'll be looking like the picture above...

Muchos Thanks

2008-11-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

A Big, HUGE, gigantic thank you to everyone who has sewn school bags for my eagle project!

An especially big thanks to my aunts and cousins who helped my mom finish them up at the retreat... they sewed so many bags!

Soccer is better...

2008-06-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Which do you think looks cooler?

Yesterday, I was at a friend's house (yes, i have friends) for an end of school party and we started talking about sports and how dance and cheer aren't sports. Since most of the females that were there were dancers or on cheer the discussion was getting pretty heated. Then this bloke has the audacity to say that soccer is lame. That is false. He obviously doesn't understand the true game of soccer and therefore made a false conclusion. Soccer is WAY better than taekwondo (his "sport" of choice). I've done both, I acheived black belt status (it's overrated), and i will testify to you that soccer is the superior sport in everyway. Trying to say taekwondo is better than soccer is like saying a typewriter is better than a laptop.

I got Tagged!

2008-05-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

1. Post the rules
2. Answer all the questions about yourself
3. After you are done posting, tag 5 people.... GO!

1. What were you doing 10 years ago? I was building Legos with my friend Canon and taking taekwondo to become a kung fu master. Yeah i'm a lethal weapon.
2. Five things on your to do list today: finish this blog, do my homework, practice piano, brush my teeth, go to bed.
3. Snacks I enjoy: Nature Valley Vanilla Nut granola bars (taste like a fiesta in my mouth) and M&M's
4. What would I do if I was suddenly a billionaire. Donate mucho to charities and then buy my own ski resort and some sweet skis and a small shack for my parents on some remote beach :)
5. Three bad habits: I procrastinate...a lot. I hate going above and beyond. I tend to not listen and zone out (a blessing and a curse)
6. Five places I've lived: Salt Lake City, Casper, Las Vegas
7. Five jobs I've had- butler for my mom, housekeeper for my mom, Geneology project manager for my mom, landscape engineering for my mom, Resident genius for my mom.
8. Five things that people don't know about me: I can sort of breakdance, I hate salad...it's like eating a leaf, Riley is my middle name, I frequently wish I had a pirate ship, I can solve a rubik's cube.
TAG, You're it!: I don't have enough blogger buddies to tag 5 (I know...I'm a loser)

My Three-Sixty!

2008-03-31T17:00:00.001-07:00

Over Spring Break my family went to Park City, Utah to go skiing. It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! The snow was sweet! While i was there i decided to set a goal for the week. I'd been trying to pluck up the courage to try a three sixty off a jump all season long, and I was determined to do one by the end of the week. Day one passed...no three sixty. Day two, three, and four...(see Day one). On the last day of our skiing trip I found the PERFECT jump to try the 360 on, it wasn't enormously huge like most of the others but was still big enough to be considered a jump. It was now or never. I went up to the jump and got ready to spin like my dad at a disco but I kinda forgot to actually spin. I wimped out. Plain and Simple. I hiked back up to the top of the jump approach and tried a second time...again I couldn't muster the courage to do. My hopes hit rock bottom as my skis hit the snow. I felt like a failure. It was horrible, I decided I couldn't live with myself until I had at least tried to do a 360. So I rode the lift back up and got ready to try again. Mentally I decided that it didn't matter if I broke my back trying as long as I at least tried. I approached the jump and got ready to spin. I was nearing the lip and started rotating my shoulders and head. Before I knew it I was in the air...spinning. I swear I heard a chorus of angels singing Hallujah! It was so beautiful I almost cried :)

We Won!!!

2008-03-03T19:12:00.000-08:00

My soccer team won a game! It was amazing! And I didn't get any yellow cards! You might be thinking big whoop, it's just one game, but for my team it's a pretty darn good acomplishment. Last season our record was Zero wins and TONS of losses. So you can see why we were all pretty excited, and the best part is that we beat the club that merged with our club. Since our club was sorta struggling a very elite club that is known for winning at all costs pretty much took over. The team I am on is considered like the entry level team for competitive soccer and the team we beat is the next level. Must be pretty embarrassing to lose to a team that is considered to be not on the same level as you, but i wouldn't know it's never happened to me :)

I Got My Permit!

2008-02-15T20:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got my permit! Exciting huh?! Look at that face, it doesn't get much more happy than that. I also went driving for the first time yesterday. It wasn't so good :( First of all I thought my dad would drive to the church parking lot and then let me take over from there but nooo way jose!! My dad has another idea, he wants me to back out of the driveway and drive the whole way there! He is loco!!! I've never driven before! How am I supposed to back out of the driveway??? Did I mention it's night too? Despite all this i successfully got the car out of the garage and onto the road. Getting to the church was even more intense, as we approach the turn in to the parking lot my dad says "don't turn keep going straight." At this point I'm shaking in my boots, all I want to do is practice driving in the nice, quiet, EMPTY church parking lot but nooooo my dad wants me to drive around the block. At first it wasn't so bad, there weren't too many cars so I wasn't freaking out yet, but then we come up to a busy intersection and my dad tells me to turn right. I get in the right lane and turn on my blinker and then remember i'm still going forty, I try to slow down before turning but don't slow down enough. I take the corner going way too fast and veer into the other lane. Luckily there wasn't a car in the lane or else I'd be in mucho trouble. To top off the night I also mistaked the gas for the break and ran over a curb in the church parking lot taking out a small shrubbery in the process. When we get home my dad asks me if he could pull it in the garage, I'm thinking oh thanks Dad that's a nice confidence booster, you think I'll forget to stop or something! After that very hairy first driving adventure I have come to the conclusion that driving is SCARY and not for the faint of heart!

Velcro is Back!

2008-01-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

The other day while my mom and I were at Walmart I stumbled upon these beauties. Yes they're velcro. I saw them and told my mom I HAD to have them. After she saw the price (ten bucks) she agreed to let me buy them. They are sooooo comfortable but soooooo hideous too! I think it's a fair trade off.

The Yellow Card

2008-01-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

Today i had a soccer game. The first of the season for my club team. It was terrible...we lost...we lost bad...we lost real bad. Despite losing by i don't know how many, we played a pretty good first half and i got a chance to knock some people around (see i play defense so that's basically what i am supposed to do). Well i guess knock around is not the best term...I think nock down pretty much sums it up though. At one point of the game i got a yellow card. Before you freak out let me just tell you that a yellow card is not that serious...it's only semi-serious. I didn't really deserve it either. A player from the other team had the ball and he was getting close to goal scoring range so I figured I should probably slide tackle him and get the ball. The only problem is I missed the ball...completely. I hit the kid's foot instead and sent him sprawling onto the ground. While i was making sure he was ok the ref rushes over and gives me a yellow card. It wasn't even that hard of a tackle! So now i have to go easy for the rest of the game so i don't get a red card and get ejected from the game. As the game goes on I'm doing pretty well at taking it easy and then my teammate almost gets me ejected! He and kid from the other team are fighting for the ball and as I run by to get the ball my teammate trips the other player so it looks like i tripped him. The ref blows his little whistle and comes running up to me...I'm thinking oh crap here comes a red card. But no the ref has compassion on me and instead mumbles something in spanglish (most of the refs can't speak english which doesn't make sense because most of the players don't speak spanish) about a yellow card. I just sort of nodded and said ok but really had NO idea what he was even saying, all I got out of it was that i need to calm down because I already have a yellow card but i'll never know for sure. At halftime my teammate was bragging to everyone how he almost got me a red card! What nerve!!! If he wasn't on my team I would knock his block off...well not really but it's fun to pretend i would. So that was my only blog worthy moment of the past week. It's kinda sad when you can't think of anything and have to resort to blogging about a soccer game.

Story of the week

2008-01-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

I was thinking how long it's been since i have posted on my blog and i realized that i have only posted one thing that really wasn't even written by me. So while having this epiphany I decided to institute a new weekly post. Drum roll please...It's called...Story of the week!!! Every week i will post a new story that i just randomly created in my jumble of a mind. Considering i am extremely lazy and always forget about my blog these may in fact be the only thing i ever post :)

Welcome...

2007-12-23T17:45:00.001-08:00

to my blog... I have entered the blogging world (gasp!). I'm stoked! Katie's been having so much fun and I just had to get in on the action. Enjoy!