The Power of Commitment So last month I had this business trip to Salt Lake City. Before I left one of my friends told me under no circumstance should I sign anything if I visited the Visitor Center for the Mormon Church. I have been to Salt Lake a few times and all I can say is holy smokes talk about sprawl. The entire valley is developed from north to south and east to west. I couldn’t believe how much it has grown since my first visit. And all the suburban houses have lovely blue grass lawns. Remarkable, especially since the whole place is sitting on a sage prairie or it used to be a sage prairie. They have a nifty program there where all the homeowners in the new communities get unlimited water for irrigating their lawns for five bucks a month. Where is that water coming from???? Well it is easy to understand that the far fetched notions about piping water from the great lakes isn’t so far fetch when you see what is going on there. I did get up to Park City a couple times and even got up to Sundance and drove the alpine loop. Quite spectacular. Easy to understand why Robert Redford loves the place. Anyway the big Mormon complex was right across the street from my hotel so Saturday night, we took a stroll around the grounds and the place is spotless. Simply lovely if you happen to go for the manicured lawn and grounds look. In the visitor center they have all these computer terminal set up and you are invited to punch in your name and check out your geneology. They are noted for all the geneolgy records that they keep there. Well I sat down and started to type in my name etc when an alarm went off in my head…. I had been warned not to sign anything and I thought, Wow this is pretty sneaky. So I stopped myself and got up and continued to look around. There is a pretty good connection back to Kirtland for the Mormons. Kirtland is where good old Joseph Smith got a lot of insight about how to structure the church and all that sort of thing before being driving out of town when the Mormon bank had some financial difficulties When I left the VC I stepped inside the Tabernacle where the choir does their gigs. I must admit the place had pretty sweet acoustics and it was all I could do to stop myself from belting out a few notes just to hear the reverberation. On my way out the door, this sweet little 70 plus year old lady approached me. She asked if I would be at the concert the following morning. I told her no I would be on a plane back to Cleveland. She asked if I would like a CD of the choir and I told her I had one already. She asked which one and I said that it was a collection of Christmas Songs. It seems like we do somewhere, so I didn’t think I was lying. She said she had several of their River of Promise CD’s and she wanted to give me one. I really couldn’t say no so I expected her to dig one out of her purse…. Oh no, that wasn’t the program, she pulled out her check book and asked if I could writer my address down and she would send it to me. As I was writing Steve, she leaned over my shoulder and said make sure your address is legible so I can read it. At that point the alarm went off once again and I knew I had been had. You see if they can get your address, you become a target for all their young missionaries to come visit you in the future. In a panic, I put my work address down. Three days later in the mail a CD arrived along with a DVD about the Mormon faith. Being the spiritual kinda guy that I am, I placed them both on the desk of a co-worker with a note saying that I had brought them back for his spiritual enlightenment. I have been told by those in the know that I can expect random visits from young men in ties and white shirts for at least two years.