crazy.beautiful.life.: "God Be With You Til We Meet Again"

Today, May 2, 2012, I said goodbye to my cousin Levi Harris, as he dedicates the next 2 years of his life to the Lord. He's leaving to Bogota, Colombia North Mission, to share the beautiful message of the gospel to all the people there.

Such a goof. Levi was my very first best friend. We've lived across the street from each other basically my whole life. We have grown up together, and we've always been close. Even times when we didn't see each other for a while, once we got together again, it was just like old times.

    We made movies, caused some mischief, hung out, and we were always on the same team whenever our families would play games together such as Capture the Flag...apparently it was one of the great injustices of his life to always be paired with me...but I was always really shrimpy and bad at those games, so that's understandable. Haha. I used to call him Wubbies, because that was obviously much easier to say than Levi....

    Levi and I have had countless adventures. Of course, when we hung out right before I moved to Utah, he told me we couldn't do anything too crazy because he has really bad luck, and always gets caught, and I have a knack for getting other people in trouble, so he'd get super busted, which for some reason he wasn't cool with...I don't know. He'd had been getting in trouble a lot. One of my favorite memories is one of my most recent trips to Durango, and he, Jacob, and I were just walking around and we see this guy with a bowstaff, doing flips and tricks and stuff: WP_20120312_205657Z.mp4
Ain't no thing. Yes people in Durango are like that. Anyways, then we plotted this whole scenario to walk up to the guy and tell him we were there to complete his training. Jacob was Zeus, Levi was Thor, and I was Jazellda, the forrest sprite. Unfortunately the guy left as we were approaching him. Had we not been laughing so hard we probably would have made it to him before he peaced. We're weird.

     I can't even tell you guys how much I'm going to miss that kid. I know he's going to be such a great missionary. The gospel has always been so important to him. He sees every experience in relation to the gospel and the Plan, and I really am looking forward to hearing about everything that's going to happen in the mission field. He's going to love it!

For as long as I can remember, he has loved Captain Moroni, and looked up to him, and idolized him. Just before we dropped him off, he was talking about the Title of Liberty. Captain Moroni is a Book of Mormon hero. My sister just blogged about this and told the story, so if you're curious: http://adventuresindisneyworld.blogspot.com/2012/04/stripling-warriors.html I couldn't have said it better myself. So I won't. But raeding that, I'm sure you can see where Levi gets his admiration. Even the scriptures say "17 Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto ^aMoroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the ^bdevil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men." -Alma 48:17. Well, in all honesty, I can say, Levi is like unto Moroni. He has always strived to live his life in a way that he shines as an example of our Savior. He has always had a strong testimony. He has always had the biggest, kindest heart. My little brother looks up to him in every way, and I love that. Levi is crazy and funny, and one of my best friends. Even though I know he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing, I've been feeling a little sad about saying goodbye, until I was reading my scriptures and I came across 3 Nephi 5:13 "Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life." And that's what Levi is doing. I am so proud of him. I couldn't be happier for him. I love that guy! Be sure to keep him in your prayers while he's out there serving. I pray that the Lord keeps him safe.