I was down in the area so I asked Google how far I was from the Newport Beach temple: 6 minutes! So I stopped by to visit.

I walked around and found out from a gardening crew that you have to be mormon to get the contract to work for los mormones. But only two of the four crew were mormon.

Then I met Richard J. Trask. I had no idea who he was. It seems the temple is closed on Mondays, and he was there helping to clean up, specifically they were vacuuming the rugs. There was nothing unexceptional about him and we chatted pleasantly.

He pretty quick asked me what I knew about the mormon church, but he didn't call it the mormon church... I said, "I'm an apostate!" with a big smile on my face. Then I went through my mormon bio. He asked what years I was on my mission and I told him, '65 to '67. He said he went a few years later, to the Philippines. He then said he'd been back on church assignments to the Philippines, as a mission president and then as the Manila MTC president. I made a 'WOW face' at him...

We had a very nice chat, during which I brought up president Groberg of the Tokyo South mission. He indicated total ignorance of Groberg's reign, so I filled him in. He took it well, only saying that it was a shame that it had happened.

He did a very good job of praising the missionary efforts in Asia. "The church is really growing there!" he said. When he was MTC-Manila President, they got kids from all over Asia, and it was a miracle how everyone got along.

I didn't ask him about many natives going inactive after their missions when the money stopped coming in; and how many third-world missionaries were said to have credited their missions with being their peak earning years. I can be polite that way.

I've looked him up now. There are photos of him online standing next to then-apostle Rusty Nelson! He's been well used! I believe his claims to have received phone calls from a number of past and current members of the Big 15. Of course, they were church-related; he's not buddies with them...

It was a very pleasant conversation. It's obvious the church works for him and he's totally all in. He was very proud of the fact that young people he'd baptized back in the 70s are still active and many have risen to prominence there in the Filipino version of mormonism, and many of those he baptized thanked him personally when he went back as a mission president and then as the MTC president.

In the end, we shook hands and wished each other well. His parting words were, "Come back to the church! You need it! And the church needs you!" I responded pleasantly, "Oh, that'll never happen; but I'll always be a mormon, just not a believing mormon."

He seemed like a good man. I found no flaws, no play-acting. And he did reveal one thing that I think is a common thread throughout mormonism: he jokingly said, at one point, that he wasn't well enough off, financially, to rise any higher in the church. But apparently, he forgives ghawd for allowing such a standard to exist in the church if it really does.

Anyone got any stories about Pres. Trask? And maybe one who knows him could let him know that he tangled with Notorious EOD, the Gadianton rapper, and lived to tell the tale?

So you saw Dick Trask taking out the trask cans?

I have never had a meaningful--meaning positive--conversation with an LDS leader although I did sit next to Mick Jagger on the Mad Hatter's Teacup ride at Disneyland. True story, sort of.

Does that count?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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>
> Does that count?

Steve Tyler's daughter stiffed me on a lease in 2010.
True story. Does that count?

At least she didn't make you listen to Aerosmith.

Well, he certainly married above his station!!

I wish his wife's origin had come up in conversation, because my last companion, Elder Garibay, was from Montebello, where his wife was born, and now I'm curious if she knew him or of him... Elder G. and I never once did a lick of missionary work during our three months together. I've always been curious about what happened with his next senior companion?

I thought about that, but the given names Genevieve and Diane suggest that her family may have been in the States for generations. I have a friend whose last name is Torres and he's of Spanish extraction via New England.

So she may not be a Princess of Manasseh after all.

Way to step on my dream, Gladys!

But Elder Garibay was also a multi-generational Mexican-American, unlike my unwashed self, who is a first-generation Mexican-Gringo.

Oh, the shame!

That's not "humility" that has him asking directions to the restroom.

Jesus doesn't always drink beer, but when he does it's Dos Equis.

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Oh, the shame!

That's unfair, Jesus. Not everyone can boast of pure Lamanite blood like you, O Ruler in Israel, and I'm told that some Spaniards are in fact decent people.

Pres. Trask and his wife only had four children as opposed to the five to seven children of the other mission presidents, so I draw the only possible conclusion that they are obvious slackers. :o)