Home

10/01/06
Here we are in October and for all active LDS  members that means it is time for General Conference.  General Conference is the chance for all members world wide to hear from the leaders of our church all at the same time.  Imagine 8 million people hearing the council from their leaders all at the same time.  I don't know much about the Catholic church but I don't know of any other organization in the world that can have a meeting of all its members across the world and believe the same message.  I hope that I said that right and I hope you understand what I meant.   In addition it is a chance that all that are listening to feel of the Spirit of God at the same time.  Can you imagine the power in that.  What else is nice about this is that all, member or not are invited to listen that same message.  What we believe can be summed up in 13 articles of faith...
 1 We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
  2 We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.
  3 We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
  4 We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
  5 We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.
  6 We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, cpastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
  7 We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.
  8 We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
  9 We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
  10 We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.
  11 We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
  12 We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
  13 We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

If what you have read thus far has any place in you I would encourage you to email me or go to www.lds.org  and read more and find out for yourself if what is presented can grow in your heart.  
I know from my own studies and most importantly from the witness of the Spirit of God that the gospel of Christ is true and that his authority to administer His Priesthood on this Earth was given to Joseph Smith Jr. and past down from one worthy man to another.  I know that Gods church has been restored to the Earth and is to be found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I give you this witness in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Now where did I leave off when last we spoke.  Oh yes, I was in California with a dying alternator.  It was replaced and thankfully the warranty covered the replacement.  I was then dispatched to northern California to pick up a load of Shrimp to be delivered to Safeway in Denver.  There is something that I haven't figured out is this, another driver with a container was also loaded with shrimp and his container was fully loaded and his load weighed some 32000 lbs and yet may container was also fully loaded with supposedly the same product and yet my load was only 20000 lbs.  Neither of us can figure that one out.  I will tell you this much, I didn't mind having the lighter load.
After delivering that load I was then dispatched to Kodak in Windsor, CO to get a container that went to S. Holland, IL.  I think the Lord wanted me to make it to Lansing, MI because all went well.  I wanted to be there by Saturday by 6:00pm MDT so I could go to the Priesthood session  of Conference with my son.  I say that things went well for two reasons.  First in order to make it on time I had to drive as fast as I could legally, that wasn't to be of a deal except that the tires that are found on the chassis of these containers aren't always the best quality and don't like going that fast, ie 75mph for extended periods of time.  Well I didn't have a blowout and the tires made it all 1000 miles.  Second, it was a heavy load, 37000 lbs, but yet I was able to come out of it with a fuel economy over 6 mpg.  I know that sounds bad but but under normal circumstances I would be luck to get 5.25 mpg.  I usually drive 65 mpg to get better than 6 mpg.  It is those two reasons that I believe that the Lord wanted me there with my son.  Needless to say, I made it with a half hour to spare.

I think I'll stop for now and leave some for later.  Have a good day.

10/02/06
Today wasn't all that exciting.  I got my load this morning but unfortunately it wasn't in the Detroit area.  Where I was sent was back to the Chicago area to pick up.  I have three places to pick up from.  When I started out this morning I didn't have any appointment times for my pickups.  Well my DM  (driver manager) was able to set appointments for the second and third pick ups but he wasn't able to get a hold of the first one.  So I just arrived and they loaded me up but because of the distance that I needed to cover before I got here the other two appointments had to change and as a result the delivery time will also have to change.
In addition to that I have been running in and out of rain.  There was one point in which I couldn't see a block away because it was raining so hard.  That sure slowed everyone down a lot.  I'm now sitting at my second pickup listening to the rain dump on my truck.  It must be coming down in buckets.  One bad thing about it raining so hard is that the satellite signal is blocked.  Oh well, that's the way it goes.

10/05/06
Well today I will have completed two trips.  When I got up this morning I was at my destination and had my trailer plugged into the dock I got a message from Steve, my DM, asking if I could deliver another load for another driver that was uncomfortable getting into a dock in downtown Denver.  I said sure and that the other driver would meet me were I was.  For starters it took her forever it seemed to get there.  Then after she disconnected from the trailer that see was connected to it took her 3 mins to get to the dock that I walked to in 30 sec.  Once I was connected to that trailer I headed to the first stop only to find that it was a breeze to back into.  I have a video on my Video page showing what I had to do to get into the dock.  I just wish that this docking job is the worst one that I have to deal with.  It's my opinion that she shouldn't even be behind the wheel of a truck.  I suggested to Steve that we throw her back to NAD (North American Division) and let them work out the bugs.  I'm now at my second drop and waiting for them to unload the container.

10/12/06
As you can see a few days have past since my last entry and a lot has happened.  Lets see if we can catch up.  Well my next load was easy, a simple trip to Long Beach, CA,  but then one of those, to put it nicely, a pain in the butt loads.  I was to pick up a loaded trailer in Tracy, CA.  This load was a Precut load, they make the salad kits that you buy at the grocery store.  Well when I got there I looked for a can that would be running, but what I found was that none of the cans that were in the dock were running so I figured that they just didn't load it yet and the facility was closed up for the night.  I then settled down for the night.  The next morning when I went in to find out what dock to plug into I found out that a can had indeed been loaded.  It turns out that whoever closed down for the night had shut down the reefer part of the container leaving the product to get warm.  That was NOT good, which now meant that they had to throw away what was on the can and redo the load.  Unfortunately that took about 7 hours to do and the load was do in Denver the next morning @ 6AM. Needless to say as a solo, I can't cover 1200 miles in that short of time.  I got a hold of my DM and let him know that we would have to swap out, give it to another driver, in SLC, UT and let him take it the rest of the way.  Even at that I had to average 70 MPH in order to get to SLC so the other driver would then have enough time to get it to Denver.  Despite all that, it worked out for me better because I needed to do some work on my truck and the load did make it on time.  While I was in SLC I had a PM, preventative maintenance, done on my truck and had the tie rod ends replaced.  I found out that they were bad when I last replaced my steer tires about 3 weeks ago.  
Once that was all done I got another load, a kind of rescue.  I was to bobtail, go without a trailer from SLC to Rock Springs, WY and pickup a load of wine that had been left there and take it on to Denver.  It turns out that the guy that had the load was a trainer and his student sideswiped a flatbed trailer with his tractor.  Oh I wish I could have gotten copies of the pictures, that truck did not look good.  Well I got to Rock Springs and picked up the trailer and headed out after getting a tire replaced.  One of the tire had half the tread missing and as heavy as that load was I wasn't going to drive until the rest came off.  Once I was on the road I encountered SNOW and had to deal with the snow all the way to Cheyenne, WY were it finally just turned to wet roads.  It was pretty much smooth sailing from then on.
I know sit in South Holland, IL after delivering yet another successful load.  This one was a Kodak load heading for Canada via rail.  We drop the loaded cans here in S. Holland and they in turn delver them to the rail when the time comes.  Unfortunately they don't have an empty can to take out of here so I sit and wait.
The other day while talking to my son on the phone he asked me a interesting question.  In his Social Studies class they are studying WWI and WWII, and he asked why people are willing to die in a war.  I thought that was significant being how we are, what I consider WWIII with the radical Muslims right now.  What I told him was that people are willing to die for what they believe in and in the case of our country one of the things we were defending in WWII was freedom.  Freedom that Hitler and Japan wanted to take away from us and now the radical Muslim do today.  There are individuals that are willing to join the military to defend our right to be free and make our own choices.  There is of coarse a lot more to it but in short that is why we are fighting today.