Vai's View: Blood is thicker than water

If you bristle at name-dropping, as one reader did last week, let me warn you now. Go elsewhere. I'm dropping names. The way I have the last two weeks. Bobby Salazar. Eleven-year-old Scott McGrath. Two big-name, high-profile guys. I roll with the big dogs.

Of course, I kid. Here's the deal. I'm a sportscaster and a blogger/columnist. I'm around famous people. If you're a pilot, you're around flight attendants and airline agents. If you're a school principal, you're around teachers and students.

I also come from a very small place on the globe that produces two things in abundance: Latter-day Saints and great football players. There are just over 100,000 Tongans walking the planet. Half of them are LDS. I'd guesstimate 100 Tongans are playing college football, possibly more and perhaps 10 to 12 are on current NFL rosters. Twice that many of Samoan descent. If that many college and NFL players came from Provo, which is comparable in size to Tonga's population, would that amaze you? But if my mention of a famous athlete irritates you, be patient with me, many of them are just family so I don't think of them as famous. Explaining how I'm related or connected to a Poly athlete may appear self-serving, but I do it for them. They appreciate the public acknowledgment of our personal connection. Same with the "not-so-famous" and infamous that I try to weave into my stories and experiences from time to time.

Above all, I write to entertain, inform, enlighten, edify, inspire and occasionally to poke and prod. The market place of ideas ultimately determines whether I succeed or fail. But I do appreciate the feedback — good and bad. Yet, the indicators I'm getting is to press forward. So, here goes.

I accepted four invitations to speak this week while in Utah. Two of them were incredibly meaningful.

Sunday evening following General Conference, I was invited by the Missionary Training Center Presidency to speak to the 2,500 missionaries in the Provo MTC for their weekly Sunday night fireside. Following two days of intense note taking given the doctrine they were taught by prophets and apostles, I began by simply asking them to put their pens and notebooks down. "I'm not going to teach you anything more than what you've already been given by our Church leaders this weekend. I just want you to enjoy an evening of listening, watch a few clips of missionary-related stories from my work, perhaps share a laugh or two and hear my testimony of the amazing journey you're about to undertake." There was a collective sigh of relief as everyone put away their notepads.