Friday, July 29, 2016

ELDER KEARL'S TRIBUTE TO DAN

Jordan Mulholland read this tribute from Scott to Dan at the wedding reception.



BROZ!

Elder Paulsen (one of my companions) says this will go down in history so he rubbed his hands all over the page.  Great kid.  Hey Dan, how is marriage so far?  It’s too bad I couldn’t be reading this out loud in person but it is just the way it goes.  I’m bummed to be missing out but I know this is where I’m supposed to be and also what you are supposed to be doing.  I am extremely proud and happy for both you and Natasha.

Huge shout out to Natasha for agreeing to may you, jokes of course.  Man Do I love her.  Great pick brother.  You guys are going to have a great eternity together.  Super excited for you two.  Congrats!  We are going to have a lot of good times in the future as a family.

I would like to now share what my brother means to me.  Dan, We may not have been the best of friends always, but I have always been proud of you.  I have always looked up to you and thought of you as a great example to me.  You have gone through trials that I couldn’t even imagine myself going through and I know that has made you a better person and you will be able to handle anything life throws out to you.  You always shown me you could do hard things.

The last letter you sent me is a testament of the great things you can do.  Let me explain for those of you who don’t know.  My brother was called to the Micronesia Guam mission, English speaking.  We went to the MTC in the English program.  He got to Guam only to find out the Lord wanted him to learn the language of Chuukese all on his own.   Over the next 9 months Dan studied the language so he could teach the people on the island of Chuuk.  The craziest part is you learned it while never hearing it in person.  The only way you learned this language is by reading pamphlets and other books.  You didn’t even have a fully translated book of Mormon.  That’s even more impressive to me now that I am learning Tagalog and that’s with multiple textbooks and plenty of teachers who speak both English and Tagalog.   Danny used these skills and translated General Conference in Chuukese.

I’ll always remember growing up with you in the basement and the times we have bonded.  Do you remember getting the WII?  I’ll explain.  I remember you and I decided to pool our Christmas gifts together to justify getting this top of the line gaming console.  It really was top of the line at the time.  I remember we would try to convince mom why it was so epic and why we had to have it.  She said she would think about it.  A few weeks later it was Hook, line and sinker, she said yes but they were very hard to get a hold of one, they sold out very quickly everywhere.  Then one day she shouts down to the basement “market mall game store has one, we have to go right now”.  We raced in the car to go buy one, we bought it and the rest is history.  WII tennis was our game.   Good times playing on that thing.

I also remember at Emily’s wedding after Eric and Em departed, you and I made a bet.  The first one to get married gets $100 from the other person. The day I went to the MTC on June 15, you and Emily dropped me off.  I had to make sure I held up my end of the bargain so I gave you the only $100 currency I had on me.  So I gave you a $100 philippino peso.  I did the math and that’s about $2.30 American.  Whoops!  That conversion bites.

I would just like to say in conclusion that you are one of the contributing factors of me being on a mission right now.  While this is being read, I will either be in the air flying or in Hong Kong airport or landed in the Philippines.  I am excited to meet one of your old Filipino companions at the Manila MTC.  I’ll send a pic over to you.  Mahal Ako Kayo.   I love you guys so much and am excited to hear about your experience together as husband and wife.  Natasha, keep an eye on hi for me.  BFL’s.  We are separated by an oceans but connected through love.

Work hard, Pray hard

Elder Kearl

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