Why Am I here???

I spent two years trying to tell people the answer to the question,” Why am I here”? I did it with limited success but feel good about my efforts to answer those three big questions that Latter-Day Saints have answers to, and just can’t wait to invite their Non-Mormon friends and neighbors over to meet two nineteen year old know it alls to tell them the answers to questions that they may have never asked, nor even considered.

More specifically, why am I here in Hawaii? There are literally thousands of colleges and universities that are found in the mainland United States. I probably would have been accepted to any number of small schools, and by a miracle, not unlike the sun standing still or my brother’s gerbal coming back from the dead, could have gotten into a well known University. But I decided on doing something that relatively few people do, living their dream.

I was going to BYU Idaho, the Tehran of the church schools, and was not happy. I had tried everything that I had heard in John Bytheway tapes and books about trying to meet other people and make friends and had little to no success. I guess John just does not know really all that much after all.

I was really burnt out on Utah/Idaho Mormon culture. I am from Georgia and at first loved it, but after a while the culture had nothing left to offer. Any further attempts to fit in would have been like drilling wells in the Arabian Desert.

If you have watched “The Steppford” wives you can kind of get an idea of what it takes to fit into this version of Mormon Culture.

I needed to get out of Rexberg before I climbed the clock tower with a high-powered assault rifle under the impression that I was the angel death, and that the time of cleansing had arrived. For the safety of the school and myself, I decided that I needed to get away and seek greener pastures.

At the time when I came to the conclusion that I needed to transfer to a different school, there were several that I had in mind. But there were only two that were currently accepting applications. I sent applications to BYU in Provo, mostly to please my mom who wanted me to go there, and BYU-H. I knew that of the two I had the best chance of getting into Hawaii because my GPA was not competitive enough for Provo.

There are not many things that I have sincerely prayed for in my temporal life. I usually have had what I needed and gave thanks for that and didn’t think that I really needed to ask for anything above and beyond that. But this was different. I knew that I needed to go someplace else and asked my Heavenly Father that if it fit in with his plan, that he would prepare a way for me to get accepted. Shortly thereafter my prayers were answered. I got accepted to Hawaii. Provo sent me a kindly written letter of rejection saying that I was too stupid to attend their school.

Why am I here? Because this where God wants me to be right now. I have met people that I would not have met otherwise and have come to the great understanding that there is a whole world outside of Georgia, Utah, and Idaho. This also a great place to really discover who you are without the constant voices of conformity urging you to give in.
So that pretty much answers for now. I could not have imagined going anyplace else and am glad that I have had the privilege of going to school in a Tropical Paradise.