A Good Read:

A Review From Publishers Weekly:

Mirandette made headlines when he and two friends were severely injured by a terrorist bomb in Cairo, Egypt, in April of 2005. His brother, Alex, who was weeks away from his 19th birthday, died in the attack. It was a tragic end to a journey that began in Cape Town, South Africa, months earlier when three young men (a fourth joined them later) set out on the journey that would change their lives. Mirandette had felt God's insistent call while studying at the U.S. Air Force Academy; he left the U.S. to help a relief organization in Melilla, Spain, then to assist earthquake victims in Morocco. But he felt he needed to see and experience the rest of Africa, so the young men took off together. His account of their 9,000-mile motorcycle journey is riveting. They faced wild animals, hostile people, civil wars, a lack of food and several crashes along the way, but this intrepid group never wavered in their resolve to finish the trip—until a bomb ripped their worlds apart. Mirandette reveals his own religious searching, questions and qualms, yet urges readers to make the choice to "follow and believe." This is a tale of spiritual quest and huge adventure that ends in tragedy but not regret. (Apr.) 

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Another Good Read:

Description from Amazon:

From the author of "Latter Days: A Guided Tour Through Six Billion Years of Mormonism" comes this exuberant and groundbreaking autobiographical novel about the modern Mormon convert experience. Revealing the author's hard-won path to meaning, faith, and forgiveness, "On the Road to Heaven" is a love story about a girl and a guy and their search for heaven-a lotta love, a little heaven, and one heck of a ride in between. In a style reminiscent of and offering homage to Jack Kerouac, "On the Road to Heaven" traces an LSD-to-LDS pilgrimage across the geographic and cultural landscape of two continents in the late twentieth century. From the 1970s hippie heyday of the Colorado mountains to the coca fields of Colombia, it's a journey through Thoreau ascetics, Ram Dass Taoism, and Edward Abbey monkey-wrenching to the mission fields of one of the world's fastest-growing-and most trenchantly conservative-religions. Few stories have ever described a more unusual road to redemption.

I just finished this book and WOW!!! It was definitely one I was marking up along the way! 

"Whenever I think I need a therapist..."

So the other day at work we were talking about President Gordan B. Hinckley and how awesome all of his talks were. This came up because I came across a quote from him that I absolutely loved. It goes:

"Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around and shouting that he has been robbed. The fact of the matter is that most putts don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey...delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."

Pres. Hinckley Evening with a General Authority, September 1980

I love this quote because it is almost exactly what I needed to hear right now. So I read this to my co worker and then proceeded to tell her, “Whenever I feel like I need a therapist I wish President Hinckley could be my therapist.” She got a kick out of it. Apparently her favorite part of it was, “Whenever I feel like I need a therapist…”

My therapist.