Overview of Fifth Area: Lebanon

My fifth and final area was Lebanon. I know how it's spelled but if you pronounce it like it's spelled you will be mocked. It is pronounced Leb-e-nen. I was here for 4 1/2 months (February 2007 - June 2007). We covered two wards here. The Pioneer ward which was in town, and the Snow Peak ward which was in the outer reaches of the area. We shared a car in this area; a 2006 Toyota Corolla we called Roxy. Our apartment had a wicked speed bump going into the lot. You had to be careful if you were sitting in the back seat. We played a little game at times where if you were in the back seat and you weren't paying attention the driver would go over the bump slowly with the front two wheels and then mash on it and slam the back wheels over the bump as quickly as possible. If you were in the back and not paying attention there was a 99% chance your head would slam into the roof and you'd deal with a headache and possibly a bump if it was solid enough (I never said it was a good game). If you knew what was going on you'd be smart and duck. The weeks we didn't have the car we'd work mostly in town. The weeks we had the car we'd plan on things in the ward out in the boonies.

This is the area I was introduced to Racquetball. I've never been much of a sports fan, but for some reason I find this game fun. We spent a lot of P-days playing Racquetball. I took a couple of classes in college after I got home. I think I've improved quite a bit since then.

My last transfer out I was made District Leader. I still can't figure out why I was made a DL right before I was going to go home. Maybe it gave me something else to focus on. I did have a little fun with it though. My last district meeting I made sure we sang "Ye Elder of Israel" purely for the joy of singing "Oh Lebanon, Oh Lebanon I bid thee farewell. I'm going to the mountains of Ephraim to dwell!" (of course I changed a few words to suit my needs) Since Ephraim was where I was going to college, I made sure to rub it in just a bit.

This is the only area I had more than two different companions. I had three, they were rotated every transfer. The first one was my "step son". I follow up trained him. He drove me crazy. The other two I got along with. This was the first area I was in where the zone had more than one district. It was also the first area I was in that actually rained a bit. It was west of the mountain range and I was there before summer officially hit so I did get to see a little bit of the rain that makes everything so green around there.

This area had a particularly steep road. It was several miles long and had the better part of around a 20% grade in places. I was determined to ride my bike down that sucker at least once. I did with my last companion and achieved a speed usually reserved for cars. My speedometer read pretty close to 65 at one point. 65 in a car and 65 on a bike are two completely separate things. You can wiggle the steering wheel on a car at 65 and not worry much about it. If you wiggle your handlebars on a bike at that speed you'll probably be eating rocks. One of the elders in our district did the same thing at about 35 on a dirt road and he had to go to the hospital and get staples in his head and a sling for his arm. He was wearing his helmet but the clip broke the first time he biffed it and and the helmet flew off. The rest was pretty painful.

I don't have many pictures from this area. I had a digital camera that I had been sending the memory cards home when they got full and my dad pulled everything off and would send them back. For the last six months of my mission I didn't send them home because I figured that I would just unload them when I got home. I pulled everything off when I got home and then forgot to back them up and formatted my computer. About 30 seconds into the process I remembered that I had just lost 6 months worth of pictures. What little I have are from a CD that one of my investigators burned for me that had stuff from my companion, and some video I had from my video camera. Lesson learned.