Bulwarking from the Book of Mormon (and going to church)

Scriptural insight of the week: Alma Chapter 60. Moroni is a gung-ho for the Lord, righteous kind of guy. He’s standing up for what he believes in, doing his best in very trying circumstances to survive and to protect everybody around him. He's a role model.

Then he gets pretty indignant with somebody that’s on his team. (Because of the circumstances, he can’t see his teammates’ side of things.) He’s actually quite abrasive.

But I know what happens next. (I read it before. :) )

His teammate is able to reach deep into the wells of Christ’s charity and continue to hold out his hand in genuine respect and cooperation. They remain brothers and are able to work together and accomplish great good.

What a fortifying story for marriages and mission companionships and siblings and all the relationships we have. On this day, I hope to be Pahoran. I feel very touched by the whole thing.

Another thing that’s helping me this week, is a talk from Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. The speaker was talking about family scripture study. She said it’s like brushing your teeth. If you’re tired one night, so you go to bed without brushing your teeth, do you just throw in the towel and give up? Let your teeth rot in your head because you missed once? Of course not.

So. Just because we had pizza and cherry pie on Saturday for Michael’s birthday... and then on Sunday, somebody (who shall remain nameless :)) brought over several dozen delicious cookies left over from a Stake Employment Fireside...then the neighbors brought over leftover cake from a birthday party and it had a layer of pudding in it and thick wonderful frosting and I indulged in way too much of all that stuff, doesn’t mean I should not get up to go exercise.

NO. I will continue to brush my teeth. I will start again writing down what I eat and keeping the calories under 2000 a day. Sigh.

I guess the moral of these stories is that there really is a benefit to belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ—there is strength to be found in supping from modern-day (and ancient) scripture and hearing talks in the church meetings. He knew what kind of help we’d need to make it happily through this life and He planned for it. I’ll keep taking advantage of it.

(I liked what Paul (Elder Soderquist in the Philippines, not Paul the apostle in Philippi) said in one of his letters about him, as a missionary, just being there to “invite”. It’s what Christ does—loves and invites. It’s up to us (and investigators) to accept and act and take advantage of the resources He offers.)

Kindergarten Visit

I visited the Kindergarten class this week. We have a new school building and the classroom is Darling. I found Chris in his favorite spot--the reading corner. (Picture to be included next week.)

When the teacher called for everybody to get their “go books” out of their desks, Chris immediately stopped what he was doing, went to his desk, got out the book and opened it— ready for her instructions. When she told them what to do, he did it just like she said…only fast. Within just a few minutes, he was back in the reading corner. That happened several times in the half hour I was there.

The other interesting thing about the visit was the boy that sits next to Chris. He's mean, Chris says. I didn’t think he was mean, but he was fairly active and in Chris' space. He followed Chris around the room. He leaned over onto Chris while he was trying to work. And he took Chris’ bicycle that he’d just cut out and said he wouldn’t give it back until Chris apologized. ("Apologizes for what?" "Apologizes for hitting me!" ?????)

Chris did an excellent job of ignoring him,so when the boy got up to throw the bike in the garbage, I had to follow him across the room and fish it out.

And Chris was just drawing his road and trees and not paying any attention...

(When quizzed, Chris said, “Yes, I hit him...but he started it!” And that's all I could learn of that story...)

Valentine's Day

My usual modus operandi is to avoid doing whatever I can avoid doing.

But Valentine's Day fell right on Family Home Evening this year. It didn't seem right to go about our usual routine. The day needed a family party!

Too much trouble, I thought. But then I remembered Mom's way of organizing a family party...

So Sunday night, I made eight slips of paper--three that said Decorations, three that said Games, and two for Refreshments. Everybody drew what committee they were on out of a hat (aka tupperware bowl) and it was all organized!

We actually didn't start preparing until 6 PM Monday night. Amy gathered Aaron and Jonathan in a room to plan the games. Every once in a while you'd see one of them come out to gather supplies. They were so excited and ended up with six or eight games. We played them all!

Quin and Rachel worked in tandem in the kitchen and making all sorts of pink and red goodies. (They made so many that we had to eat them all through the party instead of just at the end.)

The decorations committee (Chris, Eric and me) made a pretty nice party room in the basement if I do say so myself. We had a delay in our preparations when it was discovered that Snowball the parakeet had died during the day. We had to give one of our committee members time to have a funeral and grieve. :(

But at 7 PM, we gathered and had A LOT OF FUN!

Thank you, Mom, for showing us how to create happy memories.

(Check out that great "Don't Eat Pete!" paper!)

Sending Off a Missionary

After waiting four and a half months, February 2 finally came and Heidi was able to enter the MTC and start her mission.

She was THRILLED! We went down to BYU a little early so she could see friends one last time in the Cougareat. She was extremely happy to see everyone that came. There were lots of hugs and happy chatterings.

(Chris and Aaron get tired of the waiting at BYU.)

Then the time came that she had to tear herself away and we drove the five minutes to the MTC. She’d sobbed and sobbed when we dropped off Daniel and Paul in October because she had to wait three more months to come herself. There was no sobbing this time. In fact, she almost forgot to hug us good-bye, she was so ready to be on her way.

I’m really quite proud of her.

But I find the situation a little anticlimactic from this end.

For the last four weeks, Heidi and I have done everything together. We’ve gone to all sorts of appointments, shopped, run errands, discussed outfits and hairdos and missions and friends and relationships and gospel principles. We’ve even done Zumba together. And we’ve shopped…and shopped, did I say that yet?

So the flurry of preparation comes to its conclusion. And for Heidi the adventure finally begins.


But for me, it ends. I come home to a quiet house and she didn’t even leave a mess of her things for me to clean up. It’s all neatly stacked in bins at the back of the storage room.

Thank goodness for weekly letters. I’m sure looking forward to the first one.