Skip to main content

09/28/14 Churchy week...good lessons

Holly and Katie snuggling together
9/28/2014

It's been a pretty churchy weekend!  Maddi got her endowments out yesterday morning so spent all morning in the temple.  Yesterday evening was the women's broadcast.  Katie, Holly and I enjoyed the meeting together. Afterward we picked up dad and had late dinner at Carl's junior (I love their oreo icecream bars!!!)
Dallas
The whole meeting for the broadcast was centered on living your life so you can attend the temple. If you are old enough of course you should be attending but if you aren't or can't for some reason still live for the temple.  Read your scriptures, pray, radiate the light of the spirit, be a good example, etc.  One sister said that her husband was a stake president and when people came in for interviews he could always tell if they were worthy to attend the temple because they had a "spirit" about them and a "glow" and he could just tell. Cool, eh?!


I hope that my family will always have that spirit about them!
Last Sunday was the Ogden Temple dedication and that had a similar theme. They talked about how fortunate we are to live so close to the temple and how we need to take advantage of that great blessing in our lives.  
Holly
They all talked about the peace and joy you find in the temple and the blessings your receive from serving God.  I do agree. Whenever I attend the temple it seems to help to slow me down and lift the stresses off my mind and chest. Sometimes I might "stew" about something for a long time and if I go to the temple it seems to magic erase the problem or help me think of a solution. It helps to clear my mind and heart and help me focus on what really matters.
Pres Ochtdorf was awesome as always. Here is a little bit of what he said:  Heavenly Father has high aspirations for you.  You are preparing for a future better than you can imagine. You are a child of God qualifying for incomprehensible blessings.


Abide God's law. Receive the law and walk the path of discipleship. Obey the commandments. Live the Gospel joyfully with all our heart, mind and soul. Why doesn't it feel joyful sometimes? Do we sometimes ask if we really need to obey ALL God's commandments?


Katie
God knows something we don't!  Yes!!! we do! Choose what is best for you. Follow God's path and you will find the right way.  It will bless you throughout your life.  
Heavenly Father is constantly raining blessing upon us.  Don't block his blessings. (sin, unworthiness, bad attitude, etc)  
Receive his shower of heavenly blessings! The commandments bring peace in this life and eternal life.  Follow his instructions to us.  Commandments are the recipe for happiness, peace and eternal life. Humble yourself, exercise faith, take upon you the name of Christ, Seek him in word and deed, resolutely stand as a witness of God at all times, in all things and in all places.


Discover your real self, your best self.  Your joyfuy self. Being a disciple of Christ (he was talking visiting teaching but in your case it is even more true) always brings Joy.
He said in his cute accent something along the lines of Heavenly Father doesn't want you upset because someone un-followed you or un-friended you on facebook! He doesn't care about your hair or your nails or your make up or your size. Heavenly Father loves you for you! You can be more than you can imagine!  
Place selfish desires and unworthy ambitions on the sacrifice alter and follow the commandments - live the gospel joyfully!
What a great and true message.  I always feel more happy and at peace when I am making right choices and doing what I know I should do rather than what I think I want to do!


I hope that you are finding joy and peace and happiness as you make this huge sacrifice in your life. I am sure there are hours, days whatever where it feels like you are giving up more and it's not worth it.  But heavenly father is aware of you and your service and he will bless you long after your time of service there is done.  If you will lose yourself in being his disciple you will have great joy and happiness through the journey!
Finding joy in the journey is something I have always struggled with. I think I'm getting better in my old age (tee hee).  I always want to BE THERE (wherever THERE is) and not GET THERE...I am trying to change my attitude and enjoy getting there too.  Sometimes getting there is a far longer portion of a project and once you get there you realize all the great things along the way that maybe I hurried through instead of enjoying.  Bleh...not sure I'm making sense.  
I just want you to enjoy your time and have a happy joyful attitude and love for every day.  And this isn't just about mission life.  It's about ALL life.  There are so many things that feel hard but we can enjoy them if we change the way we look at them.  This is something I'm still struggling through even now so don't take this as a lecture to you.  Just thinking out loud on paper here!  
Anyway, today has more church in it for us as we are going to Maddi's farewell and then back to our ward for primary program practice and dad has early meetings etc.  Should be a great day!


Maddi doesn't actually leave until Oct 15 and then will spend 9 weeks in the MTC so it's kind of early for everything but with general conference and fast Sunday etc her ward didn't have another time to farewell her until she was already gone! I attached a picture of her announcing her mission farewell.  She looks so grown up!

I will send a couple more pictures in another email. LOVE YOU!!!! Pray for you daily. Love Mom!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

01/12/26 Just a couple of things going on

Every Monday night we do family night pizza. This has included Eldon and Diane for quite awhile now. They left on a round the world cruise and will be gone from January - May. So we sent them a pic of these two cuties and told them we missed them.  Found this fun scratch off -- you can mark everywhere you've been. We want to travel in our retirement and thought this would be a fun way to keep track of it. (We also have a world map but I think 1 on the wall is enough).  SO this is our little inspiration wall to remind us to get out and see the world! Holly painted this picture on her wall a couple of years ago. I added some words and music notes in vinyl to it. I'm working on turning her bedroom into my music sanctuary.  The WELCOME pineapple sign was starting to peel off. I took off all the vinyl and painted the words instead. Gave it a nice refresh! We signed up for classes at the college too -- currently we are taking World travel, AI (artificial intelligence), Aging an...
Post a Comment
Read more

01/13/26 How Many Cookies?!?!?

  I planned to visit Washington City and go to the ladies luncheon (they do it monthly on shut off day). I found a new recipe that included putting smashed pretzels in the mix. (I had smashed pretzel, cereal mixture leftover from Christmas).  The recipe said it would make 22 cookies. I figured I would triple it and have 66.  Welp...they must have been some BIG cookies they were making...cause I got 126 cookies!!!!  What the heck?! I backed 24 of them and put the rest in the freezer. Someone will have a nice treat another day!
Post a Comment
Read more

08/23/25 Organ

The Washington First Ward Building was sold to the City of Washington. Part of my responsibilities included dispensing of the organ and pianos in the building (along with other things).  It is an Allen, approximately 1970s.  I put the organ up on the auction. There were a couple of other people that were bidding on it, but I ultimately won the bid (for under $100). On the day I won the bid I was able to arrange a mover!!! I paid $250 to have someone from the piano store move it to our house (I have no idea how he managed to get that into the back bedroom....but he did it!!!) Then, it wouldn't work. 😭 I waited for approximately 6 weeks before a guy (who had to be 80 years old) came down from SLC and repaired the organ. (So the organ wasn't actually broken, it had to do with the electricity and the house talking nicely to one another.) It took him a couple of hours to figure it out. He charged about $200 and voila! I have a working church organ.  Cool, eh?  Now, I got...
Post a Comment
Read more