Temple time

I love those times in your life when the Spirit moves and you just feel like you need to renovate your life just because. Change is underway. Watch out.

Dad, can we still be friends?

Interesting story, in church about how we do things that upset our parents and we feel that we may be cut off forever, or if you are not melodramatic you realize that things will never be the same. And how it can prompt us to want to re-establish that connection, and how with God it is similar. We sin and thereby tell God that we don't love Him, then through the Atonement are able to come back. If I discover anything poignant I will be back to share it.

Mormon Messages

Have you ever had a hard day and wanted to know how to make it better?
I recommend watching a Mormon Message. 
They are great!
You should give it a try even if you have before.
It will be well worth your time.
LDS.ORG

Zomibe Apocalypse

So I just found out that apocalypse is spelled phonetically and I think that is pretty cool.
But on the other hand I thought that I would get in on the action of "the world is ending tomorrow since it has been everywhere. Let me just say that if it is tomorrow and if there is a zombie apocalypse that Spanish Fork would be a really bad place to start, and especially my house. Nuf' said.
It was actually interesting hearing a bunch of people talk about it at work today, because the overall consensus was that we really felt bad for the people involved. 
I don't know if you have ever really wanted something.
Wanted something so bad that you put all of you hopes, and dreams, and wishes and belief into it.
Then had that thing ridiculed.
That is terrible.
The worst thing though is not to have it ridiculed, but to find out that that thing that you had believed in was not at all what you thought that you had believed in.
It would crush most people.
It was interesting as I taught people on my mission and then again as I came home to see peoples reactions to me. Probably the best compliment I have ever got went something like, "You know if God appeared to you tomorrow and gave you sufficient evidence that He was God and told you that there was no true church on the face of the Earth and there would not be until the Second Coming, you would wake up the next morning and keep on living you life the exact same way that you are right now wouldn't you?"
To which I responded yes.
He wanted to know why.
I told him something to the effect of, "I have never been happier in my entire life. Though I would like to make a clarification. When you say the exact same way you are right now I want you to understand that I live life in crescendo. I would not be the same in two years or two months or two weeks. But, yes. I would still serve out the rest of my mission, I would still go to the temple, and church and read and pray, and do everything that I am doing now. The reason why is because it is simply a better way to live. Can you tell me the same thing about the way that you live?"
To which he replied no. 
I relived that conversation many times over with many different people in many different circumstances with some variation in the dialogue. Faith, hope, and charity. I truly feel bad for those who are going to have their lives crushed tomorrow. But I feel that there will be more opportunity to go out and find those who unfortunately have to answer no.

Home

So yeah my little sis is home from her mission. She is probably one of the best examples that I know and we are super excited to have her with us so I may not be regular for a bit but I will have some epic tales to tell

Long awaited days

Waiting for a day is something that I don't do very well.
But this time I have done really well. For the most part.
My sister comes home tomorrow from her mission to the people of Houston, Texas. They are super lucky to have had her for 18 months! Which has actually been more like 18.5 months. 
We are all super excited for her to be back. 
It is interesting when you lose a piece of a puzzle you can put it together as many times as you like but it is still missing a piece. We know that she was needed out there and has had a great time and we have been truly blessed while she has been out, but to think of everything that having her back will mean to our family and me is pretty exciting to think about. 
Looking forward to a grandiose day tomorrow. 
It has been a long awaited day!

Trees

For FHE we went to a local cemetery and helped them clean up for Memorial Day.
We were digging up dead rosebushes.
My Bishop (who is incredible FYI) was teamed up with Roger (who is also incredible) and myself. The bishop was telling us how they make rosebushes like the ones that we were extracting and about their root system and it was incredible. Roger was also talking about how some of the greatest and tallest trees (Coast Redwood) grow root systems that are only feet above the ground, but can stay standing because they intertwine roots with each other. 

Another interesting thing is that we each started digging on our own until we found that three digging on one bush was much faster than any of us were working on our own. 

We had some other great insightful moments, the difference between hacking at the leaves vs the roots; using the right tools for the job, and elk hide gloves. 

I think that our ward is the greatest ever, lessons I learned while digging up rosebushes.

Obedience?

So obedience is one of those things for me that you don't know that there is much more you could learn and then my favorite thing about the gospel happens and I get surprised with new things that I need to learn, or things that I apparently didn't learn well enough and have forgotten etc. 
So we have a bunch of sacrament meeting talks about obedience and we are in the Doctrine and Covenants 130th section that everyone reads. 
It talks about how there are blessings that are obtained by obedience to laws, which is true...But then I got to thinking.
We are obedient because of our love for and trust in Heavenly Father. 
Obedience qualifies us for blessings.
King Benjamin even says that, "He doth immediately bless you."
Then I thought about a lot of the kinds of blessings that we get/are given. And they are usually not just handed out on a platter like a buffet. 
I am looking that even though obedience may qualify us for certain blessings I believe that in order to receive some of those blessings we may have to ask. 
We learn that some blessings which Heavenly Father is already willing to give us are withheld on the basis of not asking. 
I am going to look into it some more and let you know back on my findings, but it is interesting anyway for now.

Magical Magic (Magic pt. 2)

I find that along with places that are easier to talk with God magical places have this aura that erases time. 
The fact is that we are not creatures of time.
We have always existed. That in and of itself should floor you. We not only have always existed but we have always existed in a place where time did not exist.
Now we come to Earth and have deadlines, traffic jams, start times, end times, late, early, etc. not to mention the need for sleep.
It is a concept that is completely foreign to our eternal selves. 
Magical places have a way of erasing all that. 
When you can go to the temple and spend hours that feel like minutes. You can go up in the woods and trees and spend days that feels like an afternoon. Disneyland, where hours melt away and you feel for once like you are not only beating the clock but you are in control of the clock. The Art Ball where you can dance the night away and never think about it twice. 
Yes, so, I may have discovered a new magical place. It is interesting. Being an eccentric person I have a certain taste for the unique and different. The Art Ball is held at the Springville Museum of Art and it is an old building. Old hallways with stories that could take a thousand life times to tell. A courtyard with statues and a fountain (okay several fountains throughout). Rustic wooden doors that could not have come off an assembly line. It was fantastic! 
It is just one of those times when time stands still and becomes irrelevant. We begin to understand time and space as God understands them (infinitely less, but hey, you have to start somewhere). We can go forward and use those experiences to benchmark our life. We can reflect on those feelings and make sure that we are keeping ourselves in check with what we have found to be correct. I love those experiences.
Thanks to a very special friend who shared her magical place with me tonight. 

Zigzag

Z is one of those other letter that I haven't used yet, until now.
Up and down, side to side, the zigzag is one of the most misunderstood designs ever. People usually hate it. You feel like you never get anywhere and there is a logical reason behind that, being that the shortest path to any point is a straight line then a zigzag has to be the longest. 
The sad thing is thought that people don't pay attention to the direction they are traveling. While we may do lots of side to side or up and down in life we are moving forward. If there were no up and down then there would be no forward. 
It was on Tuesday when I was leaving for work and David asked how my week was so far and I responded with, "Absolutely grand, but I wish the weather would stop teasing us and it would just stay warm."
He then proceeded to tell me that the apocalypse was upon us because I had said something not 100% positive. I simply explained that you have to embrace all the good in life, but it doesn't do anyone any favors to ignore the bad. If you just ignore it then it will only get worse. 
The weather is something that I cannot control (although that would be freaking sweet) so I pick out all the good in my life, separate it out from the bad. and then separate each pile into two piles. Things I can control, and things I can't control. Then I group all the things I can control together and all the things I can't control together. Acknowledging the good and the bad that I cannot control are also essential. 
I never took very much happiness in the, "the sun will still come up tomorrow the world is not over attitude." Granted that is something to be happy about and grateful for, but the fact is that I did not have control over that. I did nothing to help or hinder that nor could I. 
I needed something to be happy about that I could control. 
I decided to pray that everyday God would put someone in my path or let me know where to go to find someone that I could help. Then no matter what happened during that day it had a purpose. I was finding the person God had prepared for me to find and help. I have also done other things over time that have helped me to be more positive, but just remember that along the zigzag of life you need to keep focused on the forward movement and wear your seatbelt. Because just when you think it is going to zig it ends up zagging.

Magic

Being a Disney freak I love magic!
A lot of people speculate about what is magic and what is good and bad about magic. 
I find that most people can't describe what magic is yet most people have no problem categorizing it as bad or good.
Magic is funny that way.
The hard part about magic for most people is that it is trying to explain a feeling.
For me magic is when I get to experience my true self. My ancient, eternal self.
Most people cannot describe this feeling and they call it magic, magical, special, spiritual.
Spirituality is different for me. Spirituality is more of my progression here in this life.
Magic is the re-awakening of something just as real, but ancient and powerful.
It is fantastic!
It is not necessarily the card tricks and other things although I believe that some magic is useful.
Sleight of hand is often referred to as magic. It is in a way helping us realize that what we physically perceive is insufficient at best. It teaches us to not rely on ourselves and our instinct and that we should be observant but not so focused that we miss the point. 
It teaches us to look for things. The fact is that there is a logical explanation for magic. Whether chemicals in your brain, or having a card up your sleeve. What is behind real magic though is something great. 
I notice it most in environments. Some people are social and some are not. Some love the mountains and others love the beach. Some love Mt. Rushmore and some love Disneyland. But there are certain places that we go to feel and remember and reconnect with our powerful self. 
I believe that it is true that there is a lot that has to be said for vacations and lack of stress triggering things in the brain, and that there is a logical explanation for most things in life. But the good things of God that help us to become better people and give us a strength beyond our own learned strength here is not so easily explainable. 
There is no reason why when I go to the mountains and take pictures and talk with God that I can handle the next week better. There is no reason that when I do something for someone else my natural talents are magnified 100 times over. There is no reason that going to the temple can shift me into a different realm of thought for days. There is no reason that Disneyland is also one of those places either.
The only thing that I can really think is that it is a place that for me it is easier to talk to God. Some people may think that is strange, especially if you have been in the summer, but wherever your place is. I recommend that you find your places where it is easier to talk with God. 
They are magical.

Oceanology

I am so excited to hear that Kid History is going to pre-release in a theater in Pleasent Grove (I typed PG, until I realized that looked kinda bad). I think that kid history is a great insight into the way that kids see things.
We tell stories based on what we remember and the rest we fill in. 
Some people call it exaggeration, some people call it enhancement, but that is just part of story telling.
It is interesting to see what kids fill in when they can fill in with anything. 
These are probably stories that have been told and retold, and the kids find interesting pieces and then fill in the rest.
I am always interested to be able to actually look through the eyes of someone else to gain new perspective on life.
But to look through the eyes of a child is something that is priceless. 
What they see as important and the kind of language they use and the way that they end stories, and start stories, and the people they include and what they have certain people saying and the fact that they just sometimes get lost while telling a story and start talking about something that can hold their attention. 
Not to mention that they are just great, clean, funny videos. 
I am making plans to attend the premier in June. Fact!
Will you be there?

Hate

One of the most interesting things. 
It is always so blind.
And people think love is blind.
Stupid is probably more accurate.
But hate is incredible to watch from the outside.
For whatever reason you believe that that thing or person is so evil that they will never change. Maybe even that they can never change. This logic will only damn ourselves. For the fact is that we have all committed that sin which keeps us out of the presence of the Holy God forever. 
One.
That is all that it took.
One sin.
And if not for Christ we would all be damned forever. 
Hate would do that to others, and then ultimately after we have fed the beast and nurtured it and grown it so powerful that it would crush those we hate it rears it's ugly head and destroys us. 
That which we would take from someone else, the power to be forgiven, is the thing which we need the very most.
Hate is blind, not love.

The Plays the thing

So tonight I got a treat that I don't often have and that was to go to a play!
An original play nonetheless.
I love the theatre. The lights, the acting, the story, plot and sub plot all masterfully displayed on the stage. I love the written plays, but I must confess that they are extremely hard to get through, even modern day ones when you compare them with the actual play.
Hence the play's the thing for me. Reading them, and I love reading, is nothing compared to seeing it on stage.
I think that the fact is that I cannot really connect with all the characters as I am reading. 
The fun things about plays are you see the flippant attitudes strewn across the stage in full color and they being to remind you of people.
Then I suddenly see the play with people I know in their places and it becomes so real for me. 
It is a lot like a dream for me, but only in real life. 
You always have those dreams, where you are in a movie or a book and you replace yourself with the good character and your friends and you are off on an adventure. The adventure of a lifetime.
So I say thank you, because the play's the thing.

My Mom

It's only fitting to post a Mother's Day post on Mother's Day. 
I really have always been blessed with great parents who love me a lot. They have always acknowledged that all of their children are different and have let us do that things that we naturally love. That is a major reason for always being so happy. I have always got to do the things that I feel passionately about. And while I've also had to do things that I hate, because it builds character, they always temper the experience so that it is bearable. 
Even though I am far from the perfect kid and my parents are far from the perfect parents I feel that in that way we were made for each other.
Happy Mother's Day

Computation

So yes my computer is back up and running.
I also love my family.
I was telling my brother what was wrong and what I had to do to fix it and he was going right along with me and understanding everything. 
He tells me at the end, "You know it is funny to think that there are people who wouldn't know how to do what you and I can do."
I lost at most 24 hours. 
That is excluding time to put everything back, but still
I know people who have lost a lot more than that, and I wonder about life.
My life is not my computer, but it is really nice.
But I think about things that are much more important that people are just as careless about. 
Relationships don't have a nightly backup that you can run, they don't have a history restore point.
You think that people would take better care of relationships. 
I have seen people ruin relationships for really stupid reasons. I have ruined relationships for reasons that I only found out were stupid after the fact. (I think those are inter-related)
It is funny how very little it takes to actually care for a computer. It took me about 3 minutes to realize something was wrong. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that I could not repair it.
It took 8 hours to backup and another 4 to get everything rolling again.
But that is not the whole truth. The fact is that I have know for well over a year that my computer has not been operating at optimal service, but I just let it go never having enough time to work on it.
It may seem like relationships fall apart like a blindside, but they never do. Things happen that you notice and then choose to ignore.
It will go on until we consciously choose to fix it or it ceases to function.
Then if you are a computer you start recovery and cleanup. If it is a relationship then that is much harder.
I have been thinking about it a lot I suppose because I have lots of great relationships that give me some of the happiest years of my life. I also realize that there are those that are less than happy. But I suppose that I think about it mostly because of a determination to live so that in future I can have the kinds of relationships that really make a difference.

Choose your own adventure

I want to know if anyone remembers these books. You are reading a story and you get to a fork in the road and you make a choice and then you flip to a different page and keep reading and finish out the story based on decisions that you make while reading.
It was really cool. 
Sunday during our stake conference we were told (by Sister Cook) that this church is a "multipurpose, full service choose your adventure church."
I love that imagery. 
It is for everyone (multipurpose), it is for everything (full service), and the ability to take advantage of it is ours (choose your own adventure).
However, much unlike the books which I would end reading the entire book to get the story that I wanted we begin with the end in mind. 
We know what ending we want our book to have and we know how to make sure that happens. 
If we follow the Lord Jesus Christ then we will have our happily ever after, our sail off into the sunset, our a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, or whatever other brand of adventure we yearn for.

Throne of Fire

It may be a cool title for my blog but it is not my title, it is the second of the books in the Kane Chronicles. Again no spoilers, no teasers of any kind, because i don't really like that kind of thing, but all of these books that I read have a pretty common set of themes; good v.s. evil, discovering your own great potential, love or some other grand quest, happiness...the list is quite extensive. Some books have some themes in greater depth than others or some are missing themes all together and have some of the regular with their own original twist (my personal favorite like from an aspiring author I know).

I notice that some books can really move you forward and backward and keep you on the edge of your seat and wondering what happens next, and some books are just boring. I find that the books that I like most usually have themes that I can relate to. 

That is why I will never understand why people find the scriptures so boring. I find themes that I can relate to so well; having no idea what to do about some some task, good v.s. evil is obviously in there, friends who are good influences, bad influences, good parenting, bad parenting, love, and of coarse happiness.

I find that of all the themes that happiness is the greatest. You want a how to do it yourself book on happiness? Well unfortunately there isn't one but the Book of Mormon is the closest that you will get. 

Here's to good reading.

Just another manic Monday

I think this is a great Monday song. I hope that you had a fabulous Monday! I sure did.

So needy

Have you ever not gotten what you wanted?
The initial answer is probably yes, but you may want to reconsider your answer shortly.
Sister Wixom quoted Elder Bruce C. Hafen , "You can have Eternal life is you want it. But only if there is nothing else we want more."
The "but only" is the key as it is in most cases.
Thinking back I find that most often when I did not "get what I wanted" I ended up getting what I wanted most.
The problem is that we realize rather quickly that it is not a well-rounded diet of eating our desires.
She later said that we need to have a plan and believe in that plan with firm resolve and once we have a plan then that plan will drive everything that we do. 
This will allow us to get what we really want.
It was a great fireside and you can watch it
HERE