Holiday Fun

Thanksgiving is all about.... 

.... Giving oneself a fu-man-chu....

.... being so sore after a 'friendly' game of family basketball that you only speak in grunts for the next few days.... 

... eating way too much pumpkin pie.... 

And for more than half of us- seeing it a second time just hours later :)

Yay for holidays! 

Super Halloween!

The Vision of the Tree of Life

I didn't feel like writing today, but I still wanted to share some thoughts. So you get to be subjected to my artistic abilities and your own interpretations! I would suggest you read all of 1 Nephi 8 and 11, and then go back through the specific scriptures for each item represented in the picture, starting with black, then red, and finally green. I would love to hear any thoughts, as well as any additional symbols or cross-references that would fit well within the picture. So let me know what you think! 

(Sorry the picture is sideways.... I couldn't figure out how to fix it on the blog!)

Katelyn says hello!

Hi family! I just wanted you to know I'm now 1 lb 5 oz and the doctor says I am super healthy! My favorite things to do are to fold in half and touch my forehead with my toes, kick mommy in the belly, and drink amniotic fluid after mom has a chocolate chip cookie! That's what I am doing in the picture below :) 

I can't wait to meet you! Love you already, 

Katelyn Marie 

Sent from my iPhone

Home teaching fun

Thanks to a mom who loves taking pictures, we have our home teaching experience from yesterday captured in scrapbook format! 

Chad spent hours putting together some awesome bionicles Lego sets a couple weeks ago while he was down with the stomach flu just for a young man he home teaches. In turn, we got to see the young man's Lego collection and his sister's rubber band creation. She even made me a little rubber band pencil before we left! 

Chad taught a lesson using a pink tie. He talked about how our mistakes and sins sometimes create a chain that keeps us down. But through the atonement of the savior, all things can be made beautiful like a flower :) 

Priesthood Power

 

Kevin asked that I post some thoughts from the Young Women's lesson I taught on priesthood power back in June. So here they are (finally!)... feel free to add!

To introduce the lesson, I told the girls I was leaving on a 3 month vacation to the Bahamas and I asked for volunteers to take care of my various possessions and responsibilities. I gave each volunteer a responsibility and then the respective key from my key chain so that they could fulfill that responsibility. For example, I asked someone to keep my house clean, to check in on my car, and to check my emails at work. I told them that they were welcome to ask others to help because I knew I had given them a lot of responsibility, but told them that they were to be the leader over their specific section and that they were to keep track of the keys and who they let in and out.

I asked the girls what they thought I would do if I heard that one of the girls was misusing my car key and had been dragging main. They immediately knew that person would most likely have the key taken away and the responsibility would be given to someone else who was trustworthy and who would better fulfill the responsibility.

We used this analogy to discuss the differences between priesthood keys and authority, as well as the characteristics God expects in those He asks to take care of His responsibilities here on earth.

We then went on to talk about priesthood power and how it differs from priesthood keys and authority. I made the terrible wives' tale mistake of opening an umbrella indoors and asked one young woman to come hold it to protect herself from the invisible rain. I then asked if anyone else wanted to get out of the "rain" and had several other girls and leaders join us under the umbrella. I then asked, is it necessary for all of you to "hold" the umbrella in order to benefit from it's protection and blessings? Of course not.

We then finished up with answering the following questions by reading the attached quotes and using the scriptures or other church resources.

1)  What different responsibilities do men and women have?  What can you do now as a young woman to best fulfill your responsibilities?

Dallin H. Oaks: “The Lord has directed that only men will be ordained to offices in the priesthood. But, as various Church leaders have emphasized, men are not “the priesthood.” Men hold the priesthood, with a sacred duty to use it for the blessing of all of the children of God.”

Dallin H. Oaks: “In the eyes of God, whether in the Church or in the family, women and men are equal, with different responsibilities.”

2) What blessings can we as daughters of God receive through the power of the priesthood?

Sheri Dew: “Sisters, some will try to persuade you that because you are not ordained to the priesthood, you have been shortchanged. They are simply wrong, and they do not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. The blessings of the priesthood are available to every righteous man and woman. We may all receive the Holy Ghost, obtain personal revelation, and be endowed in the temple, from which we emerge armed with power. The power of the priesthood heals, protects, and inoculates all of the righteous against the powers of darkness.” 

 3) Do you have to have someone in your home that holds the Priesthood in order to have access to Priesthood power and blessings? How do young women obtain the power and blessings that come from the Priesthood?

Daughters In My Kingdom: One young man shared, “Just as I was preparing to serve a full-time mission, my father left our family and the Church. Under these circumstances, it was difficult for me to leave home for two years, but I went. And while I served the Lord in a faraway land, I learned of my mother’s strength at home. She needed and appreciated the special attention she received from men who held the priesthood- her father and brothers, her home teachers, other men in the ward. However, her greatest strength came from the Lord Himself. She did not have to wait for a visit in order to have the blessings of the priesthood in her home, and when visitors left, those blessings did not leave with them. Because she was faithful to the covenants she had made in the waters of baptism and in the temple, she always had the blessings of the priesthood in her life.”

In a separate lesson taught by the advisor I work with, we reviewed the following scriptures and wrote down the responsibilities that priesthood holders have: D&C 20:38-67. This was a pretty cool experience for me, so I would invite you to do the same. Once the girls wrote down all of the responsibilities, she had them each teach a piece of chalk and circle the responsibilities they also had as young women. It was a perfect way to visually see how interconnected men and women are in fulfilling God's work here on the earth, as well as to distinguish between the few significant differences between our responsibilities. 

I'd love to hear any additional thoughts!

(Just a note... I can't take credit for the umbrella analogy! A friend of mine used it in a Relief Society lesson & I loved it!). 

Baby Noble

Baby Noble is 11 weeks old, almost 5 whole centimeters from head to bum, and has a strong, healthy heartbeat!

Word to the wise

Just a little bit of automotive advice....

Before hiring a mechanic, before bumming rides off of co-workers and ward members, before taking away your sister's access to a non-airconditioned vehicle for 2 weeks, before complaining to everyone about how inconvenient unexpected car troubles are, before buying a $560 fuel pump, and before you have your hired mechanic install that mechanical rip off under the back seat of your car....

Check to see if you are using the proper key. 

Such a simple task may require that you tear up your house in sheer frustration hoping you didn't accidentally throw your keys away like Chad did his wallet... It may shine light on the fact the Chad doesn't really have the special automotive touch that allows him to turn the car on and Rachel to not like he may have once thought.... And it may keep you up at night wondering why in the world you would ever have put the keys in the pantry with Nike's dog leash.... But it will save you $700. 

Trust me. It's worth it.

Do you have flat arches?

We forgot hiking shoes, water shoes, a laptop cord, our river rafting reservations, matching Sunday socks, glasses holders for the river, water bottles, a backpack, an extra pair of garments... and utensils. But we were extremely creative! Chad here demonstrates how coffee straws can be used as chopsticks... chopsticks that shovel microwavable mac n' cheese into one's mouth after the cup has sufficiently cooled. We also used pieces of cardboard on which to microwave hot dogs. When we ran out of toilet paper (Chad doesn't trust the maids, so the "Do not disturb" sign hung on our front door for four days), we ransacked Chad's car and as miracles would have it, we even found an extra roll.

I was too slow to catch the cow in the middle of the road on our way to Canyonlands, but my finger made it in the picture just fine. 

The time spent in the motel was full of "constructive" activities...  like building a house of cards. 

And of course a rambunctious game of Solitaire for me while Chad watched the NBA Playoffs.... I take after the Utah Jazz... I lost before I even started... I'd like to blame it on the fact that I realized partway through that I didn't have a full deck...

Double Arch in Arches National Park. From our final drive through before we left Tuesday morning. 

The view from Dead Horse Point. Luckily no horses today.

 My new friend Manny. 

 We're so happy, we're "glowing!" Taken from the Dead Horse Point overlook.

 Us being silly in the motel before hiking Delicate Arch Saturday morning. Chad tried to help me "fix" my hair. Turned out lovely...

Window Arch in Canyonlands on Sunday. Beautiful. 

If you look really close between the two people on the right, you'll notice that Chad and I are not in this picture. That's because we have neither a waterproof camera, nor a way to be in a raft and on the shore taking pictures at the same time. We did, however, go through a Class III rapid at the beginning of our half day river run on Monday afternoon. They even let us out half way through and fed us some BBQ'd food at a lodge for the extremely rich. It was a very windy day, and had we not paddled, we still would have been in the same place we started.

Shoeless in Arches

 Window shopping on Main Street in Moab... Whose teeth look better? Or at least, less freaky?

 Chad's good eye spotted us several big green frogs!

 I am so outta shape...

 Chad saw Delicate Arch before me because he peeked through this one first....

 A nice lady from Cincinnati took our picture in front of the arch. 

The country store has a lot of great items, including gym shoes and water shoes (I forgot both and Chad forgot his gym shoes), but I'm thinking maybe we should stay away from the maple bars.... That is, unless you like licking the frosting off the bottom of the box!

I would highly recommend letting my people go...

I learned so much from studying the story of Moses and Pharaoh this week! Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to share it other than in a chart. But I still feel I need to give a little background to ensure that it makes sense. So here it goes... 

In Exodus Chapter 3, Moses asks Jehovah what to tell the people when they ask who sent him. Jehovah responds: "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me." A very odd name, you might ask? I think a little Spanish lesson comes in to play here. The Spanish verb 'estar' translated into English means 'to be.' In the every day usage of the Spanish language, the verb endings change to reflect whether or not the verb is referring to the past, present, or future, but the root word "est-" always stays the same. Now back to Moses. If God was speaking Spanish, I think he would have said something like this: "Tell them that 'estar' sent you." I think He would have used the non-conjugated verb, demonstrating the word's capacity for past, present, and future tenses. The English translation? "Tell them that 'I was, I am, and I will be' sent you." I think He's preparing the people to understand His eternal nature, as well as the role that He has played in their past (the Creator), His relationship to them in the present (their Savior), and the significance of His existence to their future (their Salvation)!

Keeping this is mind, I then did a study on the meaning of the 10 plagues. I mean, God could have chosen anything, so why lice and boils? To sum up my study (and the chart below), I discovered that Jehovah both defied Egypt's powerless Gods AND testified of Himself as the true omnipotent Creator and Savior through the use of those specific plagues. 

God is amazing! But that shouldn't surprise anybody. 

I recognize there are holes and stretches below, so any insight and thoughts would be helpful!

**A cleaner copy of this chart can be downloaded from Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/taihles5l32tr4d/Plagues.docx

Plagues	Egyptian Gods Defied	Symbolism of the Savior	The Creation “Undone”	Further Witnesses of the Savior for the Hebrews
Nile turned to blood	Apis- God of the Nile	Living Water Blood of Atonement	Day 2- Separation of water from land	Moses gets water for the thirsty Hebrews from a Rock
Frogs	Heqet- Frog-headed God of birth/fruitfulness	JESUS AS CREATOR =>	Day 5- Creatures of the sea
Lice/Gnats	Geb- God of Earth	JESUS AS CREATOR =>	Day 5&6- Every living thing
Flies	Re/Uatchit- depicted as flies Khepri- God of rebirth & Creation	“You must be born again” Jesus created the earth (See the section to the right for more thoughts)	Day 5&6- Every living thing (Note that man is given dominion over animals after the creation, but that man obviously has no control over the animals during these plagues)
Death of Livestock	Hathor/Apis- depicted as cattle	LIVESTOCK- Food=Bread of Life Beasts of burden=”Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden…”	Day 6- Land animals	The Hebrews are fed “bread of life” thru manna while in the wilderness
Boils	Sekhment, Sunu, Isis- Gods of Health and Disease	Jesus heals all manner of disease (Matt. 4:23-24)	Day 6- Man	Those who look on the raised up brass serpent are healed (Note that the Lord commanded Moses to turn his rod into a serpent before the 1st plague)
Hail/Thunder/Fire	Nut- Sky Goddess Set- Storm God	JESUS AS CREATOR =>	Day 3- Dry land and plants	Led by God in a pillar of cloud by day
Locusts	Osiris- God of crop fertility Serapia- Protector from locusts	JESUS AS CREATOR =>	Day 3- Plants
3 days of darkness	Re- The Sun God (also a symbol of Pharoah)	Light of the World; 3 hours of darkness associated with crucifixion	Day 1&4- Light from darkness; sun, moon, stars	Led by God in a pillar of fire by night (I also love how it says they had light in their houses during these 3 days of darkness)
Death of 1st Born	Isis- Protector of children	Heavenly Father sacrificed His first born son to save the rest of His children	Day 6- Man	Unblemished lamb’s blood saved the Hebrews