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.