Three Reasons Why I Love Randall Paul:
Humor - I have so many great memories of laughing with you over the years. I still remember being tickled by you as a kid. I remember laughing until our guts split to Bill Cosby. I remember watching "Matt Foley, the Motivational Speaker" on Saturday Night Live for the first time with you on the black & white TV in your bedroom upstairs in our home in Midland and both of us laughing so hard that we were crying. I have laughed with you countless times on the golf course. And then there were the times where you weren't laughing...but your personality mixed just right that it made mom laugh and that got me laughing (Paraguay, "let's pull over to get some 'pink eye'", putting the car in park and turning off the ignition in the middle of traffic just because mom said, "Randy! Stop so we can see the fireworks!"...just to name a few examples :)
Wisdom - I admit that I missed many of your nuggets of wisdom over the years, as I struggled to stretch my brain enough to capture 2% of your postulations on various subjects including politics, the "carnival in Babylon", stupid juvenile delinquents, how none of us will ever learn to work until we live on a farm, the spoiled kids next door, boot camp, how even the cows 'get it', something about my major malfunction, how decisions about college football are made by the "good 'ole boy network and their cronies in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors", your utter disdain of Brent MUSHburger, never throw a curve-ball until you are nearing the end of puberty, and the evil empire that is the Democratic Party. Your wisdom is vast and is what makes you so unique and so great! :)
Testimony - I taught EQ last Sunday about the Book of Mormon and I shared an 8-minute version of your "bicycle trip". I realized in a new way that so much of the foundation of my testimony has been built on hearing that story over and over again. It has shaped my own testimony of the Book of Mormon. I shared with our quorum the change that happened in your life from the year after returning home from Vietnam to the time you ended your reading of the Book of Mormon in Omaha, Nebraska and decided to return home and change your life. I told them how reading the Book of Mormon brought you closer to God, as stated by Joseph Smith, "than by any other book" and, as a result, gave you purpose and direction. When I share that story and think of how great a father you are, it is a living miracle as to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon to bring souls to Christ and the importance of knowing that the book is true by the power of the Holy Ghost. Your life is a constant reminder to all of us of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Dad, thank you for your living testimony.
I love you!
Ryan
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