Brazilians in Utah and a Sealing in Timpanogos

During the first week of October I ran around with a bunch of Brazilian business people who were visiting the USA. Through my personal contacts -- mostly through the BYU Management Society -- I was able to set up visits for them at Adobe, Zion's Bank, NuSkin, Google, Samsung and other such companies. I also took advantage of the opportunity to take them to the This Is the Place monument and Temple Square. Below is a picture of us with a regional president of Zion's Bank.

We took a tour of the BYU campus and had two days of lectures at the business school from a variety of specialists. I was the final lecturer and am very pleased with how things went. My friend Herbert is bugging me to get together a group of American business people to take a tour of Brazil this year.

About a month ago my dad and step-mom got sealed in Timpanogos Temple a few weeks ago. Grandma and Grandpa Boothe came out for the ceremony and stayed with me and Becca. We have been very blessed to have so many wonderful guests since we have moved into this house. They were married by their bishop years ago so we had a small and intimate get together.

My brother Grant and I were the witnesses. The sealer pronounced Dad's name wrong, which is not uncommon since Dad's name is uncommon. Generally I let things like that go but they were getting sealed for goodness sake! Fighting the temptation to simply sit there and look pretty I stopped the sealer and kindly insisted he say Dad's name right. Grandpa invited us all out to each lunch and afterwards we changed clothes and went on a hike. It was a great day.

July, August and September

Mariah and Xavier have gone back to Modesto to be with their grandmother who missed them terribly. Maria (who we affectionately call Tía Macle) was sitting in the chair in the driveway waiting for us to arrive from our long journey across the desert.

They missed their grandmother but both asked to come home with us. We had lots of fun this summer and we miss each other tons.

Here they are at the farm with little Rory, our friends Megan and Ray's daughter. They enjoyed holding the baby bunnies.

We went to the water park a lot in July, three to four times a week. We bought season passes and I would often take the children myself in the mornings. We had a routine set. We knew which water slides got busy the soonest so we'd go on those first. Then we'd go on some inter-tube water slides and finish in the kiddie pools. I loved watching Mariah and Xavier conquer their fears of heights or the dark tunnels of one of the rides.

Here is Mariah with her friend Ayelen. One of the things the kids loved spending their Boothe Bucks (fake family money) on was enormous ice creams at Macey's. We'd go to the water slides and then stop at Macey's on our way home.

The neighbor girls, Saidy and Miley, were especially good friends to Mariah. Here we are enjoying snow cones at one of several snow cone stands that magically appear in the summer on Main Street here in Springville.

I was very pleased with how Garit, Grant, Tristine and Breanna were all great with the kids. Here we are at an international dance festival.

We went to parks quite often too. This is one in Spanish Fork where we had a family night.

Xavier is generally a very well behaved child and learned that a quick way to earn Boothe Bucks was letting Daddy read library books to him in Spanish. He had a favorite one about the food chain that rhymed and cracked us both up. Here he is with his buddies Marco and Joaquin. Xavier not only had enough Boothe Bucks to invite two friends over for a sleep over he also treated them to ice cream. We had a boys night, complete with short Bruce Lee videos and play fighting.

We took them to see several temples. Here we are in front of the Provo Temple. We hope that the good times we had and the good things that we tried to teach them will stay with them until we can see them again.

Becca has been quite the renovator. She has mostly finished our basement family room and my basement office as well. We are especially grateful to Uncle Phil for lending her some very important tools and giving her some very important pieces of advice. He really wanted to make sure she got off on the right foot.

Becca also enjoyed the visit of her grandmother from New York.

I've been traveling a fair amount lately. I got to visit my friends Cameron, Brian and Sophia Crane, Uncle Greg and Aunt Jean and cousin Laurel and her husband Fred in Texas. I hadn't seen any of them in quite a while and it was really fun to catch up. The picture above though is from my recent trip to Brazil, which different relatives have been asking me about.
 

The Regional Administrators' Council flew me down to Brazil to give three speeches for local business people, business professors and business students. All in all I ended up speaking for over 1,500 people at three events in three different cities.

I was taken aback by how in the spot light I ended up being. I was asked to present awards and then, after each event, the students flocked to take pictures with me. They must have taken 10,000 pictures of me in those three days.

This is actually a candid photo, not including one of the gazillion I posed for with students. We had little cocktail parties after all three events.

I must strike this pose a lot because there is a picture that's almost identical to it that was taken of me at the conference in Budapest.

I gave speeches in Fortaleza, the state capital, (both for business people and at a Stake Young Men's Fireside), Juazeiro do Norte and Sobral. The picture above is from Juazeiro do Norte, which we took a plane to travel to from Fortaleza. I was rather sleep deprived from all the traveling and late night dinners so trying to understand my travel companions' thick country accents (in Portuguese) was tough.

I was proud of myself for actually losing weight (one pound) during my week in Brazil. Latin people love to stuff you with food and there were lots of business lunches and dinners. This picture was taken during my last night in Brazil, in a town called Sobral. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and hope it will not be my last.
 

We were all surprised when Tristine brought Ben Fjerstad to family dinner not too long ago. The two of them are quite in love and will be getting married at the beginning of December. They have decided to be married in the Manti Temple, almost exactly nine years after Becca and I were married there. Their wedding will be doubly special for us.

The Beginning of July with the Kids

During the last weekend of June Becca made a kamikaze trip out to California to pick up Mariah and Xavier. She drove all day Friday and arrived in Modesto in the evening only to wake up early the next morning and drive all day Saturday to get back to Springville that night.

A fourteen hour car ride with one adult, an eight-year-old and a six-year-old is not a great recipe for happiness but the three of them did great.

We are very grateful to Grandma Maria for letting us borrow the kids for a month. She's spending a well deserved vacation with family in northern Mexico and southern California. We expected two problems that have not occurred these past two weeks. One is missing Grandma and the other is missing Grandma's wonderful cooking. The kids haven't complained once.

Life has been full of activities. I'm taking a lot of time off this month for a much needed (partial) break and to enjoy being a family man. I'm having a blast and so are they!

The end of each day starts with a little family devotional. The kids change into P.J.s and then we sing a Church song they know; we choose a story from the scriptures to read with the kids; we have family prayer and then we sing them two lullabies. After that Becca and I enjoy some secret ice-cream just for the adults and review how the day went. 

If you look into the background you can see what a great job Becca has done decorating their room. The ferocious power struggles we went through with the kids during Spring Break taught us that something needed to change with the way we were parenting. We set up a system of "Boothe Bucks" where they can earn or lose fake money for a variety of reasons during the day. The "Boothe Bucks" can be exchanged for lots of things they want (sleep-overs are the big item now though I think Xavier will want a Happy Meal tomorrow). While things are not perfect, their behavior has improved TREMENDOUSLY in just a week and a half. 

Mariah and Xavier loved being "twins" with the neighbor girls, Saidy and Miley. The 4th of July was lots of fun. Garit and Lorena organized our activities and hosted dinner at their place. It all worked out great! We met up at the Provo Recreational Center and had a great time on the water slides and in the pool.

Then we went over to Garit and Lorena's where Mariah and I had a dance off with the Wii.

We all had a nice time chatting and then went outside to enjoy the fireworks. As this was the first 4th of July in Utah for everybody but Becca and me, the group was pretty surprised to see the powerful fireworks being set off in the sky by ordinary folks. We enjoyed setting off our own fireworks and watching others being lit off at the park across the street.

It's been great for me and Becca to see how nice everyone is to Xavier and Mariah.

We've been wanting the kids to have friends here and we are fortunate that they get along so well with the girls next door.

An old college buddy of mine (David Higbee) has two kids who are the same age as Mariah and Xavier so we've been paling around with them too. After one of David's concerts we all had a sleep over at our house. The kids slept outside in a tent while the parents took the two beds inside. David and I then took the kids on a hike up to Y Mountain and came back to a wonderful brunch.

Becca has learned from the kids' grandma how to make delicious homemade tortillas.

They were such a big hit that Evy (David's wife) decided that she wanted to start making them too. Evy is Argentine and they don't eat tortillas down there so that's a big deal!

Here are Mariah and Ayelen making friendship bracelets before Family Home Evening at the Higbee's apartment in Salt Lake.

 Here are the kids with David and one of his band members after their concert.

The kids have also enjoyed going to the farm at Thanksgiving Point.

I accompanied them last week and we all had a good time.

  

Xavier got to hold a baby bunny in this shot.

A friend from Church has a horse and Mariah got to ride it around the neighborhood last week.
  

We bought some awesome season passes to a couple of places in the area. We are all loving the miniature golf and water-slides.

Thanks to my father-in-law, Becca's garden is producing more than ever. The kids help from time to time, especially to water since that is a way to earn Boothe Bucks. Here we are preparing to eat peas from the garden.

 

The kids love the dogs and the dogs love the kids.

Becca's uncle Phil came over to let us borrow some tools and give us some pointers about putting up a new ceiling in our down stairs family room. I thought he'd only need to stay for a little while to get us on the right track be he ended up working in our basement for three days at three to four hours at a time. He could see that we didn't know what we were doing and wanted the job done right. We are grateful to him being so generous.

We try to instill culture into the kids with music and literature. One of the best ways to earn Boothe Bucks in by reading in Spanish. Speaking of Spanish, my new website is up and in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Disappointing Score

I've received several emails and texts asking me about how the GMAT went. Here is an email that I wrote to the director of admissions at the Marriott School of Business at BYU that sums it up:

Dear Dr. Merrill,

      I hope this summer has been treating you well. This hot weather will be perfect for a 4th of July pool party. While I have been able to do a few fun things over the past month or so, I have mainly rearranged my schedule to in preparation for taking the GMAT today. I even decided to hire a private tutor this time.

      As part of my preparation I took several practice tests, including both of the official GMAT practice tests. I was pleased to see my scores improve. I was able to get a 620 and my last official GMAT practice test came out at a 610 on Saturday. No reason to call MENSA just yet but that's a significant improvement over my last scores. Imagine my sad surprise when I got a 570 today. Though it is better than my last official score it is not the 600+ I was expecting.

      I am disappointed but I feel undeterred. As I drove home from Draper I decided to bite the bullet and sign up to take the test again on Friday. I know I can get a 600+ and obtaining such a score by Friday would still allow me to reapply by the end of this first week of July. I found out that, unfortunately, test takers are not allowed to retake the test for 31 days.

      I recognize that I am presenting you with a less than ideal situation. I am, however, not at all afraid to take on the challenge of the few MBA classes that will require lots of math. Math has made up much of my study recently and I have found myself enjoying it. I am sure that almost none of your admitted students sail easily through all their courses. If I were admitted this fall I would not hesitate to meet with a tutor or to ask for a little help from teammates in those classes. There have been occasions in my life when I have had to do that and I have no problem doing it again. I am also very confident that I would excel greatly in all my other courses and contribute to the success of my teammates as well. Since I have been a self-employed consultant for several years now I can tell you with certainty that my boss won't ask if I graduated at the top of my class and neither will any of my clients, present or future.

      I am not asking for a wink or a nod that indicates that I am a shew in if I reapply later today or tomorrow. What I am hoping for is full consideration. What I am asking is for you to think about the cases where other applicants in similar situations (great professional experience, great recommendations, good undergrad grades but a lower GMAT score) were admitted into the MBA program. Though you have told me that some struggled, did any succeed?
      I am not afraid of struggling sir. Struggles are part of any good career, academic or otherwise. I am willing to struggle in a few classes. In addition to considering those candidates who successfully obtained an MBA from BYU, in spite of a lower GMAT score, I would like to make a personal request that you ask the Lord if perhaps I could also be one of these successful candidates. Since we both subscribe to the ideals and beliefs that BYU represents I hope that this request does not seem impertinent to you.

      No matter what your feelings are regarding this situation, or my personal petition to you, I want to make it clear that I, at no point, have ever felt frustration towards you Dr. Merrill. You do not decide what measurement tools are used to rank the top business schools but it is your job to help BYU get the best ranking possible. I am sure that good GMAT scores are a good indication of who will be in the top 10% of the graduating class. You have explained these things very patiently to me and I am grateful.

Best regards,

Ryan Boothe


I sent that email on Tuesday and have yet to hear back from Dr. Merrill. I am putting it in the Lord's hands and feel paradoxically calm, most of the time. I want to send out a special thank you to those of you who prayed and fasted for me this week. I know the Lord heard our prayers and I feel that this ordeal is not quite over. I am staying hopeful and I hope all of you will too.

My Last Week of Preparation

Dear Family and Friends,

One of my favorite missionary companions was Mauro Soldan, from Buenos Aires Argentina. Before his mission, he liked going to discos on the weekends. He would head out most Saturday evenings come home, exhausted, between 4:00am and 5:00am on Sunday morning. His dad made him go to church anyway. Mauro slept through a lot of sacrament meetings, reeking of cigarette smoke. Almost as a joke, he would tell people that during the first month of his mission his entire ward back home fasted so he would make it through his first month at the Missionary Training Center in Chile. Encouraged, they decided to fast and pray as a ward so he would make it through his first month in the missionary field. Today I am asking you all to do something similar for me.

For about two years now I have felt very convinced that I am supposed to go back to BYU and get an MBA. Some of you know that I had an interesting meeting with a professor from the Organizational Behavior track in the MBA program. He and I talked a bit about my career in conflict management and he shocked me by encouraging me to apply a second time, ASAP. The admissions committee will most likely accept this second application if I retake the GMAT and get a 600+. The last time I took the test I only got a 560.

Since I returned from Europe I have been spending over twenty hours a week meeting with an expensive private tutor and pouring over preparation materials. The good news is that I scored a 620 on one of my practice tests. The problem is, of the four practice tests I've taken, only once have I scored over a 600. My last score was surprisingly low. So I can get the kind of score I need, I just haven't been getting it consistently.

My two main problems are getting nervous and failing to recognize which operations the math problems are asking me to do. I would like to ask you to remember me in your prayers every day this week, my final week of preparation before I take the test on July 2nd. Prof. Nielson, the professor who has stuck his neck out for me and championed my cause, will be joining me in a fast on June 30th (a week from today). I would like to invite all of you who are willing and able to join me in fasting so that I will get a score that the admissions committee will be able to accept. I believe that the Lord will hear our prayers and honor our fast. If it is His will, I will start grad school this fall.

Thanks,

Ryan

P.S. Either way, I will let you all know what happens.

Germany and Austria - May 2013

A couple of months ago I was invited to speak about conflict management at a conference in Budapest. Having never been to Europe, I jumped at the chance. Before going to Hungary, I spent a few days in southern Germany (in the state of Bavaria to be specific) with some friends I have there.

I've flown in and out of Atlanta several times but I had never before noticed this little interfaith chapel. I'm glad that they have it there. Not everyone at the airport is flying for a happy reason. In an attempt to adjust to the time difference, I had tried to go to bed earlier and to get up earlier but ended up just sleeping less. I decided to look on the bright side and figured that being tired was a good thing: that way I could just sleep between Atlanta and Munich. I laid my head down at about 5:00pm Atlanta time to try and just sleep the whole way. To my disappointment I woke up two hours later, quite awake.
 

Overall this trip was fabulous, unforgettably good. One of the few regrets I have is not bringing a proper camera. Here I am in the picture above with my friend Elisabeth. She's been my language exchange partner for four years and this was the first time we had met in person.

Bavaria is beautiful. Those are the famous Alps in the distance. Those beautiful yellow flowers cover miles and miles of fields along the highway.
 

It had rained for a week right up until the day before I arrived. Overall, there was very good weather wherever I went. I'm actually on a ferry in this picture, heading out to crazy King Ludwig II's second castle.

After you get off the ferry you have to walk a ways into the castle grounds. It reminded me a bit of scenes from the last movie adaptation of, "The Count of Monte Cristo." I found out later that that wasn't just my imagination.
 

The reason for this is King Ludwig had the best parts from other castles in Europe (mainly from France, Spain and Italy) copied and put together to make this one. It reminded me of a French castle from the 1700s because its builders had copied big French castles from that time period.

This shot is for Becca who loves to take close-up pictures of flowers.

 The water was eventually turned on and high streams jetted out of those little frogs' mouths.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the tour inside. It was more grandiose than the grounds. King Ludwig had a huge bed, specially made to look like the king's bed in Versailles. The thing is, it was just for show. He almost never slept in it.

The place was absolutely opulent. I tried to imagine such immense wealth and luxury back when people in Germany died of huger on the streets. The level of skill and ability shown by these amazing craftsmen and architects is awe inspiring, even two hundred years later.

Here is the River Inn. It separates Germany and Austria. If you follow it, it will connect you to another river which takes you into the city of Salzburg in Austria.

Along this river is Europe's longest castle, originally built in the middle ages.

 Here is a view of the town below the castle, on the river.

A section of the castle is normally closed off to the public but most of it is not. I walked the length of all parts that were open. There are docents there, dressed up in traditional German clothing, who were eager to tell you anything you wanted to know about the castle.

It's easy to see that this castle was not for impressing visiting aristocrats, like the castle that I had seen on the lake earlier in the day. This castle wasn't made for comfort; this castle was made for war.

 

I tried to figure out why the medieval Bavarians would have built such a long castle here. What did they want to protect? I finally broke down and asked a docent. She told me that the holy Roman emperor (who lived farther north in Germany) of the time had the castle build to control the shipments of salt coming up from Salzburg (which literally means Salt Castle). He built the castle for the same reason the US controls the Panama Canal and gives billions of dollars every year to Egypt: control of commerce.

That evening Elisabeth, Martin (Elisabeth's boyfriend) and I walked over from their apartment in Bavaria to a restaurant they like in Austria. You see this statue as you cross the bridge over the River Inn into Austria from Bavaria. I love that we could just walk over as if it were nothing. Why can't the USA do something like this with Canada? It would be great!

Bavaria and Austria are both Catholic and there are a lot of pretty churches.

You can't tell from this picture but this building has been abandoned for quite some time. Elisabeth and Martin motioned to it and told me that that was the exact place where Hitler grew up.

This plaque stands in front of the building and says, "Für Frieden, Freiheit und Demokratie. Nie Wieder Faschismus. Millionen Tote Mahnen." (For Peace, Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Remind Us). This is a great representation of the attitudes of the German speakers that I've met over the years towards Hitler and WWII.

This was my first dinner in Europe: wiener-schnitzel with potatoes and a side of jelly. I quickly discovered that a wiener-schnitzel is a thin, breaded, fried steak. People eat this in Argentina all the time and call it milanesa! The seasoning is different but the concept is the same. All the food I had in both Germany and Austria (homemade and in restaurants) was good.

The next day we drove ninety minutes south into Austria to visit Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. I visited the house of his childhood later that day. Again, no pictures allowed. After going through that house/small museum, I really felt like I understood not only Mozart better, but also the world he lived in. I was pleased to see that historians believed that he and his parents enjoyed happy marriages.

Here I am with Herr Mozart. One thing I learned about Mozart's legacy was that his wife was largely responsible for perpetuating it. She was not yet 30 when he left her a widow. He was very famous and had made good money but he was also a big spend-thrift. What was she supposed to do? She had his Requiem finished by one of his students, made a compilation of his collected works and had his biography written. Smart lady.

This was on the back of a minivan in Austria. It reads, "Witches used to ride brooms. Today they ride in minivans." I'm glad I'm not married to a woman like that but, then again, we don't own a minivan. Mental note: don't buy a minivan.

I actually visited a lot of cathedrals in Europe. On my way into this one a man asked me to take off my hat in German and then in Spanish when I didn't react quickly enough. At first I was just embarrassed that I forgot to take off my hat in a church but then I thought it strange that he would try Spanish with me after German. English is the default language in the world if you don't know the other person's native language. I went to go talk to him after viewing the cathedral and chatting with a nice Taiwanese tourist. The gentleman knew to use Spanish because I was wearing a Chilean soccer team's hat. How did he recognize the team's logo? He was born in Chile but raised in Austria. Small world.

Salzburg is a touristy town. I came across people from all over the world. This street is famous because it's been a sort of market place for hundreds of years. 

The shops proudly display their old signs.

We hiked to the top of a hill above the city.

 This castle overlooks Salzburg.

That "c" symbol represents a euro like the "s" in $ represents the dollar. I had no idea they had a 99 cents store or dollar store in Germany.

We spent my only full day in Germany in the Bavarian capital: Munich. It's a big, prosperous, modern city that is firmly rooted in it's past.

Like I said, I saw a lot of cathedrals and churches. Martin told a friend that I was Mormon and his friend asked if I tried to convert him and Elisabeth. He told his friend that during my visit to Munich that they took me to three Catholic cathedrals. "Who is trying to convert whom?!" he joked.

This footprint is at the entrance of one of three of Munich's cathedrals that I visited. The story goes that the devil entered the cathedral while it was still being built. As he looked from this spot down the nave of the cathedral he could see no windows (from this spot you can't see the cathedral's windows because there are columns in the way). He said, "A cathedral without windows isn't much good!" stomped his foot and left the builders of the cathedral in peace to finish their work. 

This is a very tall "May Tree." In May, there are community competitions to see who can climb their community's May Tree the fastest.

This was one of three pictures a nice Japanese man took of me, Elisabeth and Martin. I think this was the best one too.

I love this little angel. He's pointing to the pulpit. We need one of these little guys lining the ceilings of a few LDS chapels.

This is actually a WWI memorial. It says, "To Their Memory, To Their Memorial."

The English Gardens in the middle of Munich have a river that runs through them. At this spot, you can actually surf and lots of locals do.

The girl in this video was actually one of the better surfers.

Germany has a multiparty system. The Pirate Party (no joke) was out in force that day. Their main thing is transparency in government. What government transparency (which I support) has to do with pirates I have no idea. Maybe I should have stopped and spoken with one of them.

Here's BMW's home office.

Martin wanted to do a little day dreaming. He said he may get one of these in another fifteen or twenty years.

It was really cool to go see the Olympic Park that was made back when Munich hosted the Olympics in the 70s.

This is Munich from Olympic Hill.

My last meal in Germany was something strange that I had heard about and had been curious to try. It's called "currywurst." It's sausage served in a spicy curry sauce. Somehow, it's turned into a German staple food, as common as bratwurst.