250 Can Friend

Last semester I was the Area Director of Service Activities. If students had an idea for a service project, they had to go through my adviser and me in order to get the approval to go ahead with their project. For the most part, if they project followed the University's guidelines, then the project was approved.

Two students came to me and want to do a "Charity Date Auction." Basically students could fill out an application to auction themselves off for a date with the person who bids the most for them. Because of certain policies, we weren't allow to bid on people with money, so we bid with cans. All the cans would then be given to the Rexburg Family Crisis Center.

I convinced my friends to fill out applications, and three of them were chosen. The event was fun. All the "meat" came out on the stage to begin. Then they left and one by one, each person being auctioned off would come on stage. Music would play and a clip from their video interview would be in the background. Then the bids would start. All three of my friends went for over 200 cans. Another friend and I were in the audience and we bid against each other for one of our friends on the stage. We won the date with her for 250 cans.

Overall, we raised 5000 plus cans of food and other items for the Family Crisis Center. This was such a success that we want to do it at least once a year.

Here are my three friends who were auctioned off:


Here is my friend that we bid on, and the cans/items she is worth:


I guess this is the modern day Johny Lingo.

The Garden of Eden: Clothes Are Optional

I decided since this would be the first Summer that I didn't live at home (excluding my mission years) I would plant a garden at my apartment complex. I asked permission to plant in this square box in front of my old apartment. I knew I would most likely get permission since every Summer the box is usually full of weeds.

One Saturday I bought tomato plants and seeds for green beans and peas. I went out to the garden and began to weed and water. Eventually, others in the apartment complex were curious what I was doing and they joined me. Here they are:


It was a good thing I just pulled weeds and tilled the dirt that week without planting because the next week Rexburg looked like this:


But that was the last snow of the year, so I began to plant:


Finally a few weeks later the peas began to sprout:


And as of a week ago, this is what my garden looks like:


I really should have taken another picture because the garden is about twice as big as this picture shows. The peas now have pods (and almost ready to harvest) and one of my three tomato plants has an almost red tomato (with about 18 green tomatoes). I am still waiting for green beans to show.

I wanted to put a sign in my garden that says:

The Garden of Eden
Clothes are Optional

But my manager said it probably wouldn't be approved by the University. Oh, well. I am just excited in a few weeks when I can harvest my little garden.