Letter - Birthdays and New Beginnings

Sunday, March 30, 2014

2:20pm

I’m writing this as we head out to go visit Joseph’s graveside.  His birthday was on Wednesday and so this is the time every year where we visit him.  I love our new 10:00 church time.  We now have time to do these types of activities before family dinners and firesides and stuff like that. 

I love the spring flowers that have been blooming around our neighborhood the last few weeks.  This is a picture of our neighbors cactus that has beautiful blooms every spring.  The flowers only last a day or two.  This is the most blooms I've ever seen on it.  Its lovely.

A neighbor's apple tree just starting to pop.

This week of Joseph’s birthday has been emotional for me.  I’ve been busy which resulted in me getting stressed out and so my emotions have been intensified.  However, I’m feeling better now that things have settled down a bit. 

On Monday I threw a joint birthday dinner party for Chad’s Dad Art and Joseph.  Joseph was born on Art’s birthday.  This is the first year we’ve ever done something for Joseph’s birthday other than visiting his grave.  I enjoyed it.  Hopefully we can do it again.  A few of Chad’s siblings were able to attend the party, Jennie and Trever’s family, Shannon and Aaron’s family, and Devin and Suzannah’s family.  It was sure nice to have them join us in honoring Art and Joseph.  I made a BIG pan of Skouson enchiladas and some green tomatillo salsa.  The evening was very nice.  I made a special book of Joseph’s pictures for Art.  You can access the link to view it HERE on my blog.

When I go for a walk with the girls Tilly likes to have a turn to walk too so when we are close to home I let her get out and get some exercise too.

Tuesday was another busy day for me.  We had our ward Young Women’s new beginnings program.  We decorated for it in the morning and then I made some mini fruit pizza’s for refreshments in the afternoon.  Our program went well.  The Young Women ran most of the program and all I really did during the actual program is accompany the special musical number and lead the music.  I ended up leading the music at the last minute because I forgot to give the young woman we planned to conduct the music the assignment and she didn’t know how to do it without prior notice.  I made sure to apologize and admit my mistake in front of the whole group though since her name was on the program and everything. 

Bryant had a book report due on Wednesday.  His teacher sent out a text on Monday reminding that it was due this week.  Bryant hadn't even picked out a book.  It was an oral book report with a visual aid on a non-fiction subject.  I got after him a bit for procrastinating and forgetting about his assignment and then made a special trip to the library to find him a short book.  I found one about Walt Disney.  He worked on his visual aid on Tuesday afternoon.  He drew mickey mouse from an online tutorial  and practiced his presentation for me.  He ended up getting a 95%.  He would have gotten 100% but he forgot to have me sign his report paper.  Stinker, I was kind of hoping for a good life lesson to teach him not to procrastinate, but he pulled off a good grade anyway.

Wednesday was Joseph’s birthday.  During Grammy days I went up to our rental house to meet a garage door repairman so I could let him in to fix our garage door opener.  While I waited I walked around the neighborhood to get some exercise in and then since it was close I decided to go to the Mesa cemetery to visit Joseph for his birthday.  Well when I got back to the rental house the garage door repairmen called and told me they had trouble with their truck and were going to be very late, since I needed to go pick up my girls I just hid a key for the repairman to get in and then paid them over the phone.  We ended up having the buy a new opener and when Chad went to pick up the hidden key he said the new opener works well and they did a good job.

Chad's sister Jennie made us this special cake for Joseph.  Thanks Jennie!!

Thursday was Marlee’s birthday.  I didn’t have anything scheduled that day so I was able to spend all my attention on helping her to have a wonderful day!!  It was so nice.  For breakfast she ate the M&M’s she got from Grandma Flake.  For lunch she wanted to go out to eat at McDonalds so Tilly and I had a fun lunch date with her.  She had preschool in the afternoon and our way to school she saw the park and said, “Can we play at the park today?”  I said sure!!  Marlee took a bag of powdered sugar donuts to share with her class.  She likes donuts better than cake so that is what she chose for her treats.  After school we invited her friend Jade to play at the park with us.  For dinner that evening we went to chick-fil-a, her other favorite restaurant, then we came home to have her blow out candles on her donuts.  It was a beautiful, relaxing day for me and I think Marlee had lots of fun too.  I like our tradition of eating out on birthdays.  Marlee sure is a sweet girl and as she was playing with her new dolly she said, “Thanks for giving me the dolly mom.  I love it.”  I appreciated her gratitude.  Chad had a football game Thrusday night.  He left after Marlee blew out her candles.  I didn’t watch his game, but he told me that he caught an interception in the other team’s end zone and ran it the full length of the flag football field (80 yards) for a touchdown.  I would have loved to see that.  He said he felt like he was going to die after that run because he didn’t just run up the field he had to juke and run around players the whole time.  He got so tired, he's starting to worry about the time when he'll get too old to do those kinds of things, but I'll still love him when he's too old to do those amazing things.

Friday some of the young women’s leaders in our ward and I met at our new building to put all our young women’s stuff in the cupboards in our new building.  We went from 3 cupboards down to 2 cupboards so we had to decide what stuff we wanted to get rid of.  Friday evening Chad and I went to dinner and a movie.  Dinner was good.  We ate at Chipotle.  The movie was terrible.  We saw the movie Noah.  I feel kind of like Matt Walsh where he stated in his review of the movie on his blog that I should convince two people NOT to watch the movie in order to cancel out the $20 we spent on the movie.  Basically in this movie they portrayed Noah in such a way that he wanted to kill off the whole human race and save the world for the animals that were the only innocent beings left.  The antagonist in the movie who was a wicked blood thirsty man said that man had dominion over the animals, so they portrayed that as a bad thing.  It was terrible.  It made good evil.  Don’t go see it, that way my $20 will be canceled out. 

Yesterday was another busy day.  I donated blood in the morning.  I made up a song while I was there.  It is to the tune of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from the movie Frozen.  Here’s the song:

Do you wanna be a hero,

Do you wanna save a life,

Come on down and donate blood,

Don’t be a dud,

You can save a life!

You can save a life.

Of course I did all this in my head.  That would have been awkward if I started singing it out loud.  That song was running through my head all day yesterday and now all day today.  After donating blood I hurried home to get ready for the baptism of Aaron Bodemann who is one of my new young women.  It was a beautiful baptism.  I was notified at the last minute that I was on the program to be welcome her into young women’s.  Luckily I had thought that might be the case and I am used to giving those types of remarks from when I was the primary president so it wasn’t a big ordeal for me.  After the baptism I went to watch Spencer’s football scrimmage.  Chad said Spencer caught a pass and had a good run off the pass while I was gone and it took 6 boys to tackle him.  Good job Spencer!  He was noticeably less nervous yesterday than he was in his game last week.  After the scrimmage Chad took Bryant to his game and the other kids and I went home so Tilly and I could have a nap.  I had a headache.  Not sure if it was from lack of sleep the night before or from donating blood or both.  Either way the nap was heavenly.  I should nap more often like my mom always did while I was growing up.  Yesterday evening instead of going to the stake center I stayed home to watch the first general Women’s Conference of the church.  It was so nice to watch it with all three of my daughters playing quietly around me.  They enjoyed all the singing.  It was a beautiful meeting that brought tears to my eyes on several occasions.  I love that now all the women will meet together every 6 months.

Today I taught the Laurel’s class lesson.  It was titled, “How Can Repentance Help Me Every Day?”  It went well.  We divided Elder Neil L. Andersen’s talk “‘Repent … That I May Heal You’” into sections and then all underlined the parts in our sections that stood out to us and discussed them.  I sure love our young women.  They are amazing.  Tonight we have a Bishop’s Youth Discussion fireside in our backyard at 7:00pm.  That’s one of the reasons why I did so much yard work last week.  We’re going to have a real fire at our fireside!!  The bishop is going to bring his propane fire pit instead of using our fire pit that requires wood so it won’t be so smoky. 

Tilly's tongue has healed well since last week.

My quotes for today are the scriptures I used to close my lesson today.  I read them last week in my personal scripture study and I felt it went really with our repentance lesson.  “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalms 46:1). God is very present in our lives when we decide to repent and turn back to Him. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalms 51:10).  Our hearts will be made clean when we repent and our spirits will be at peace.

Love,

Mindy

Joseph's 11th Birthday

Joseph's 11th birthday was yesterday.  He and my father-in-law Arthur Sanders share a name and a birthday.  A few weeks ago in talking with Art I found out that he didn't know about the scrapbook and pictures we have of our little angel baby, so I scanned in my scrapbook pages and made him THIS book, had it printed, and presented it to him at their joint birthday party I hosted for them on Monday evening.  Yesterday I added a few other pictures of our family visiting his graveside over the years.  I wish I would have remembered to add those into the book I had printed for Art.  :(

This week has been very emotional for me.  Most of Joseph's birthday weeks aren't particularly hard on me, but I've had an extra busy week so the stress brought out lots of emotion.  My niece Sarah happened to share her experience about loosing her baby Alma on Facebook this week as well and while it was healing for me to read her experience it also brought my memories closer to the surface.  I feel such a bond with Sarah and Jayze and with all parents who have lost a child.  It is good that we have each other to help bear one another's burdens, but more importantly it is good that we have the Savior who "hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4) and whose atonement has made it possible for us to be eternal families.

2014 Coronado 2nd Ward New Beginnings - Seek the Sweet: Come Unto Christ

We did it!!  We completed new beginnings on Tuesday of this week.  It went very well.  The girls all got to participate and they had lots of fun.  Here are some pictures of the decorations and the final version of our script that we used for our program that night.

One of our young women drew this welcome sign and all the value posters for us.  She did such a great job.  She spent a lot of time on it.

This was the table after we finished setting things up in the morning.  We didn't add the other decorations and fill the jars with candy until right before it started that evening.  I'm sad I forgot to get a picture of the finished table.  

Seek the Sweet: Come Unto Christ – 2014 New Beginnings

Conducting:  Sydney (Laurel President)

Opening Song:  Sweet Hour of Prayer

Pianist:  Jane

Chorister:  Gabby

Opening Prayer:  TBA

Narrator: (Our Counselor over the Beehives was the Narrator)   Welcome to new beginnings!  The purpose of new beginnings is to help young women and their parents learn about the Young Women’s program in the church.  We are excited for each of the new 11-year old girls to join us in Young Women’s as we SEEK THE SWEET and Come unto Christ.  Tonight each of the young women in our ward will tell us a little bit about what you can expect when you join Young Women’s.  We’ll get started with Abbey Schenck and Madison Hall as they tell us the 2014 Mutual Theme. 

Abbey & Madison - 2014 Mutual Theme:  (Show Slide #1)** - The 2014 Mutual theme is: “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness” (Moroni 10:32).

      **The slide show we used was found HERE.  We only used the first 7 slides.

Bailey & MiKylah - YW Motto and Logo: (Show Slide #2) – The Young Women motto is “stand for truth and righteousness.”  The Young Women logo is a torch surrounded by the Young Women motto.  The torch represents the light of Christ, inviting all to “come unto Christ.”

Courtney & Aaron - Young Women Theme:   (Show Slide #3) – We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him. We will “stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” as we strive to live the Young Women values, which are:

Faith • Divine Nature • Individual Worth • Knowledge • Choice and Accountability

Good Works • Integrity • and Virtue

We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values, we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants, receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.

Narrator:  There are three different classes that each girl will attend while there are in Young Women’s.  Each class has a specific age group, purpose and symbol.

Laura - Beehives:  (Show Slide #4) – Twelve and thirteen year old girls attend the Beehive class.  The beehive was a symbol of harmony, cooperation, and work for the early pioneers of the Church. Beehive was also the first name by which young women were known. Beehives today learn to work together in cooperation and harmony as they strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ and prepare to stand for truth and righteousness. This is a time to “arise and shine forth” (D&C 115:5).

Annabelle & Krishell - YW Share about a SWEET Beehive activity:

Melissa - Mia Maid:  (Show Slide #5) – Fourteen and fifteen year old girls attend the Mia Maid class.  The name Mia Maid refers historically to the Mutual Improvement Association, which adopted the emblem of the rose as a symbol of love, faith, and purity. Mia Maids today learn about love, faith, and purity as they strengthen their testimony and accept and act upon the Young Women values.

Hailey - YW Share about a SWEET Mia Maid activity:

Paige - Laurels:  (Show Slide #6) – Sixteen and seventeen year old girls attend the Laurel class.  For centuries the laurel wreath has been a crown woven from the leaves of the laurel tree. It is given to someone who finishes a significant achievement as a symbol of honor and accomplishment. Laurels today are finishing their preparation to make and keep sacred covenants and receive the ordinances of the temple.

Megan - YW Share about a SWEET Laurel activity:

Kathryne, Lindsey, MyKaila, Alexa, Lily - Special Musical Number – “Come Unto Him” by Sam Cardon

Narrator:  While in Young Women’s you’ll get a change to strengthen your talents and abilities through the personal progress program.  As you participate in Personal Progress, you join with thousands of other young women who are SEEKING THE SWEET and striving to come unto Christ

Gabby and Addison - The Purpose of Personal Progress:  (Show Slide #7) - Personal Progress will help you strengthen your faith in and testimony of Jesus Christ as you learn His teachings and regularly apply them in your life. It will help you strengthen both your present family and your future family. It will help you prepare to make and keep sacred covenants and receive the ordinances of the temple.  Young women work with their parents, Young Women leaders, and other exemplary women to set and accomplish goals based on the eight Young Women values.  Personal Progress can help parents and leaders improve their relationship with young women as they work together.

Narrator:  Now I’d like to invite each of the new 11-year-olds up.  (Give each girl a treat bag.   A few young women come up one at a time and give each 11-year-old girl a candy that represents the color of each value and then explain why that value is SWEET to them.)

Megan - Faith: (Hand each 11-year-old girl a White candy) - The color white represents Faith.  Faith is SWEET to me because….

Alyssa - YW share a Faith value project they completed:

Kyleigh - Divine Nature:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Blue candy) - The color blue represents Divine Nature.  Divine Nature is SWEET to me because….

Jane - YW share a Divine Nature value project they completed:

Jessica - Individual Worth:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Red candy) – The color red represents Individual Worth.  Individual Worth is SWEET to me because …

Allison - YW share an Individual Worth value project they completed:

Ashley - Knowledge:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Green candy) – The color green represents Knowledge.  Knowledge is SWEET to me because …

Sydney - YW share a Knowledge value project they completed:

Annabelle - Choice and Accountability:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl an Orange candy) – The color orange represents Choice and Accountability.  Choice and Accountability is SWEET to me because …

McKenzie - YW share a Choice and Accountability value project they completed:

Isabelle - Good Works:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Yellow candy) – The color yellow represents Good Works.  Good Works is SWEET to me because …

Jensen & Elizabeth - YW share a Good Works value project they completed:

Hailey - Integrity:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Purple candy) – The color Purple represents Integrity.  Integrity is SWEET to me because …

Taylor - YW share an Integrity value project they completed:

Chantelle - Virtue:  (Hand each 11-year-old girl a Gold candy) – The color Gold represents Virtue.  Virtue is SWEET to me because …

Minni - YW share a Virtue value project they completed:

Narrator:  Now we would like to get to know a little bit about each of the 11-year-old girls who will be joining Young Women’s.  Could we please have a parent of each girl come forward and introduce us to their daughter?

Lily

Gracie

Kelly

Liv

Claudia

Bishopric Member Concluding Remarks

Closing Song: #176 Tis Sweet to Sing the Matchless Love

Closing Prayer: TBA

Refreshments:  Mini Fruit Pizzas and Candy in all the YW value colors

Letter - P.S. Apparently I have a lot of free time.

P.S.  I forgot to add that Chad got a new calling in church today.  He is a primary worker.  He was hoping for that calling.  I love that he loves primary.  I also forgot to add something funny one of my Beehives told me on Tuesday when we were rehearsing a special musical number that a few of the young women will be singing at our New Beginnings this week.  Before we started we were talking about personal progress and the virtue project of reading the Book of Mormon.  I told the girls that if they read 2 pages a day then they can finish the Book of Mormon in less than a year.  I told them how I start at the top of the left page and read two pages every day without worrying about chapters.  One of my Beehives said, “Well you have more free time than me.  I have to get up and go to school every day.”  I’ve been laughing about that all week!  Sometime in one of my lessons I want to tell all my YW that if you don’t read the scriptures with the time you’ve got, you’ll never read the scriptures with the time you’ll get.  That’s a spin on my Aunt Nerita’s quote.  “If you don’t give with what you’ve got, you’ll never give with what you’ll get.”   

Letter - New niece, Eventful Sunday evening, Grace

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Happy Sunday!  We just had a bit of a change up in our ward, we are moving to a new building and a new time of 10:00am.  There has been a lot of growth in our stake and they created a new ward today necessitating some building changes and what not.  Luckily we get to keep Tuesdays, our current night, for mutual and we don’t have to change buildings until Sunday, which means we get to hold our special New Beginnings program, that is planned for this Tuesday, in our current building and we won’t have to schedule a new building or anything like that.  Remember when I was Primary President and we had to change buildings the week of our Primary program?  I do.  I think I cried that week.  Oh well, that which does not kill us makes us stronger right!

Last week our kids had a bit of stomach trouble.  Bryant missed school Monday, Karalee missed Monday and Tuesday, and Spencer missed Friday, which was a half day.  Luckily Spencer felt better by Friday afternoon and was able to go on his scout camp out that night.  I think the dairy they’d been eating caught up with them.  I need to make sure they take probiotics every day and then I don’t think they will have that kind of trouble with dairy if they eat it in moderation. 

My two sickies

Monday morning my second counselor and I met with Lily Lines, who turned twelve this week, to teach her a little bit about the Young Women’s and the personal progress programs of the church.  It’s fun to meet with the new beehives.  They are so excited to graduate from Primary and I am excited to welcome them into the next phase of their lives.

Tuesday I registered Marlee for Kindergarten.  She’s so excited to start school with the big kids this fall.  I’m glad it’s only half day kindergarten and that I’ll get to keep her at home most of the day still.  I made a big batch of cookies that day for our combined YM YW mutual that night.  The kids played crab soccer -- you play soccer with several big light weight bouncy balls while doing the crab walk.  It looked tiring, but fun.  Thanks to Chad’s mom Brenda for coming to babysit AND for bringing us a yummy dinner since we started mutual an hour earlier than normal and Chad had to be at work.  She sure is kind and I love her dearly.  She is a great example of giving meaningful, Christ-like service.  I’m extremely blessed to be her daughter-in-law.

Wednesday while the girls had Grammy Days I attended a session in the Gilbert temple.  It was very busy.  Every single seat in the session was full.  They had several women sit on the men’s side.  Since the Gilbert temple only offers sessions every hour on the hour, except for in the early morning or later in the evening, it’s a long wait if you don’t get in to the session you were planning on.  Thanks to Shannon for watching my girls since I ended up being late for Grammy day pick up since the session was so crowded.  My sister Amy had her baby on Wednesday and I got to go hold her that afternoon.  They decided to name her Sally Ann which is the nickname my dad used for me and my sisters when we were little so of course I really love that name.  I’m kind of sad I didn’t think of using that name for my girls.  Sally has made me an aunt for the 94th time--counting both mine and Chad's sides and my great nieces and nephews.  Being an Aunt is one of my favorite roles in this life. (FYI this is my Mom and Dad's 67th grandchild. My Mom is still hoping for 33 more to give her 100 grandchildren.  I don't think she'll reach that goal.)

The kids helped me plant our garden right after school on Wednesday.

Cute little Sally

Doesn't Spencer look so grown up in his football uniform!

I had to take some pictures of Tilly's funny habit.  She loves to rub people's arms.  She does it anytime she's being held or is near someone or while she's being rocked to sleep.  It's cute, except for when she doesn't sleep well and comes into our bed and wants to rub my arm all night.

Thursday was a busy day.  My van battery died making it an even busier day.  Luckily my battery was still under warranty and I got a new one “for FREEEEE.” (What movie does that quote come from?   Comment or reply with the correct answer and you will be in the running for a prize!)  It took well over an hour to get it replaced though.  That afternoon I made a big batch of rolls for our relief society dinner/activity that evening.  Our getting to know you activity was really fun.  Each of the RS committee members did a video interview of the ladies in our ward, they had several questions, like what was your first car?  what jobs have you had? etc. and each lady chose two or three questions to answer then they compiled and edited all the clips into a video.  We had some funny clips.   

Our relief society is doing this scripture program in preparation for our June Relief Society activity.  I'm looking forward to this program.  I think it will bring "significant and subtle blessings"

I’m back.  We’ve had quite the eventful evening.  We had an “It’s great to be 8” fireside with Karalee and just as it started we got a call from Spencer letting us know that Tilly bit her tongue really bad while playing on the trampoline with Spencer and Marlee.  Chad decided to go home and help.  I wanted to go, but I was the pianist so Chad thought I should stay and he should go.  Tilly calmed down for him quickly and ate a popsicle.  The cut is pretty deep though and it makes me cringe when she sticks out her tongue and it opens up.  She’s been acting fine all evening and has eaten a bowl of cereal for a snack and has been running around playing with the kids.  It’s nice that tongues don’t need to be stitched up except for in extreme cases.  Tonight we also got a call from Chad’s Dad Art, who’ve we asked to be the Realtor on our rental house, letting us know we got an offer on it today.  It’s a good offer which we will accept.  I hope it will go through and that we’ll be able to sell the house.  We will have lost a lot of money on it, but we sure gained a lot of experience. :)  “Chalk it up to experience.”  (That’s what my dad told me once when I called him crying about a bank fee that I got from a silly mistake during my first year of college.)  However, the price we were offered is more than we owe and will help us pay down the home we are living in.  I also just got a text from Amy letting me know about her husband David’s new calling as a counselor in the bishopric.  Wow!  He’ll be great.  It’s sure been a busy night.     

Tilly's cut tongue.  Sorry for the blurry pic.

Friday I spent over six hours working in the back yard.  It was my annual spring cleanup.  Lots of leaves had dropped over the winter that needed to be raked up; I pulled out a bunch of crab grass that decided to grow in our lawn.  I tried to get all the roots, but I’m afraid once you get crab grass it’s tough to get rid of.  Trever, do you know any secrets since you’re a landscaper??  Anyway, I love doing yard work.  This week when I went to the temple I found out why.  In the temple we learn that taking care of your garden brings happiness and joy.  It’s an eternal principle which brings happiness. 

Monday night the girls had a movie night and watched the old Disney cartoon "The Rescuers" with Chad while I went to a pampered Chef fundraiser party at my sister-in-law Jennifer's (Brandon's) house.

Tilly has a new big girl bed.  Our neighbor's gave us this toddler bed because their daughter out grew it.  We took down our crib!  Can you believe it?

Yesterday I had a camp kickoff meeting in the morning and Bryant and Spencer had football games.  My meeting was during Bryant’s game so I was sad to miss it.  Last night Chad and I went out to dinner with five other couples from our ward.  It was SO fun.  We’ve sure made a lot of good lifelong friends in this ward.  We ate at our friend’s favorite restaurant that was new to us called Thai Chili on the SE corner of Val Vista and Baseline.  It was YUMMY.  Then we all went over to Nielson’s frozen custard for dessert and more visiting.

Watching Spencer's game

Brothers are the best!  I love this picture of my boys.  They are great friends.

Yesterday I was making myself a snack of apples and peanut butter when my kids pulled out some oreos for a little treat.  I got the idea to try dipping an oreo in peanut butter.  It is yummalicious!!!  

My quote for today is from a talk I posted a few years ago.  Since it is probably my favorite talk of all time I’m quoting from it again.  One of my Laurels used it in the lesson she taught us today.  (We have the girls take turns teaching on the 4^th Sunday of every month.)  “I have born-again Christian friends who say to me, ‘You Mormons are trying to earn your way to heaven.’  I say, ‘No, we are not earning heaven. We are learning heaven. We are preparing for it (see D&C 78:7). We are practicing for it.’ … the more I understand this wonderful plan of redemption, the more I realize that in the final judgment it will not be the unrepentant sinner begging Jesus, ‘Let me stay.’ No, he will probably be saying, ‘Get me out of here!’ Knowing Christ’s character, I believe that if anyone is going to be begging on that occasion, it would probably be Jesus begging the unrepentant sinner, ‘Please, choose to stay. Please, use my Atonement—not just to be cleansed but to be changed so that you want to stay’” (Brad Wilcox, His Grace is Sufficient).  You can listen to or read the full talk HERE.  I’d recommend listening to it instead of reading it since he is such a great speaker.

Love,

Mindy

P.S.  Wanna read a cool blog post (not my blog) about the restoration of the church?  Click HERE

March 2014 Scripture of the Month

Learn more about the scripture of the month club HERE.

Scripture of the Month

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you.

-Doctrine and Covenants 88:63

Letter - Sacrifice, How to Make Men Strong, Small Acts of Kindness

Saturday, March 15, 2014

10:25pm

I keep putting off my letter.  Sunday’s are so busy… most days are busy, but there are memories and experiences I want to record.  I may need to plan a new day to write my letter. 

The week of Feb. 24^th had its ups and downs.  Spencer had a history project due for the 6^th grade history fair.  He had to make a replica of Stonehenge.  He made it out of salt dough, with Chad’s help.  Puring fell and hit her head that week.  She called me to let me know about it.  She had to get 10 staples in her head.  She lost a lot of blood too and had to spend a night in the hospital to get a blood transfusion.  Bryant had a blue and gold banquet for cub scouts.  The cub leaders planned a really fun night with a winter Olympic theme and games.  The dinner was really good too, smoked pulled pork sandwiches.  Yum!  That weekend was the temple cultural celebration and dedication.  It was a busy weekend with many great experiences.  I already posted some of my feelings.  One other thing I would like to add is how I felt to be able to sing for the Lord and for the prophet.  It was amazing.  I had a hard time keeping my emotions in check, but I did well most of the time.  Beforehand I joked that I was probably a waste of a choir member since I’m such a cry baby and it’s kind of impossible to sing when you’re crying.  I was so honored to be in that choir.  I never earned any personal awards or honors in high school or college for music and I felt sad about that, but being a part of that choir was better than those awards would have been.  One cool experience was President Monson’s comment to us after we finished our first song.  The first word out of Pres. Monson's mouth after hearing us sing was “Excellent”.   At our first rehearsal our choir director shared her favorite music quote from David O. McKay.  “Music is truly the universal language and when it is excellently expressed how deeply it moves our souls.”  His comment of excellent meant a lot to our director and to us, because excellently expressing the music was our goal.

Marlee was so cute leading the music in our FHE

Building Stonehenge

We went to watch Chad's flag football game.  They won.

On Sunday March 2nd we hosted the Sanders' monthly birthdays.  Marlee's birthday is coming up!!!

Everyone wanted a turn to hold baby Clark, Devin and Suzannah's cute baby.

The week of March 3^rd was one of recuperating … kind of.  I did have to go to our rental house 3 or 4 times to pay workers and clean things up to prepare it to list on MLS.  Spencer’s Deacon’s quorum did baptisms for the dead in the new Gilbert temple on the first day it was opened.  On Wednesday night Chad and I didn’t have any commitments or meetings away from home so we decided to run to the temple to do a session.  It was so nice to be so close and to save an hour of driving!!  One interested thing happened in our session.  The woman who was part of the witness couple passed out while she was at the altar.  It was so sad.  She was ok, but probably lost circulation while kneeling down.  Since the officiator was in our ward, Chad and I were asked to be the witness couple in their place for the rest of the session.  Karalee had a field trip on March 5^th.  She went to the aquarium at Mills Mall.  Spencer was chosen as student of the month for his class and got an award at flag ceremony on March 6^th.  He’s never been student of the month before.  He came home and said I got it just in time, since he’s about to move to a new school next year.  That same evening we got to go witness my nephew Jake as he was ordained as an Elder.  Sure love that Jake. 

 On Monday we lazed around and I stayed in my PJ's all morning.

We love walking to the park

Our cute little rental home is all ready to sell.

The note Spencer's teacher wrote sure did this mother's heart some good.  This month's virtue was courage-loyalty.  He said Spencer is a bright and wonderful student.  He is not afraid to stand up for what he believes in.  He is a good friend and looks for opportunities to make new ones.  He is strong in his desire to do what he knows to be right.  

March 8^th was the start of our Spring break.  We drove to California on Saturday afternoon after Spencer’s football game.  We actually had him leave at halftime since his game was so late and we had such a long drive.  We got to Jeff and Kayla’s house around 10:30pm.  We woke up the next morning and attended their ward at 9:00am.  They had excellent meetings.  My quote at the end of the letter is from a talk I heard in their sacrament meeting.  In Sunday school the teacher gave an excellent lesson Abraham and how he was asked to sacrifice Isaac.  My mind recalled how Sis. Tidwell, the lady who wrote the TCC production, also had kind of a similar sacrifice when she had to sacrifice the production she had written for a stake dance festival because it was canceled and then in the end her production ended up being used of for the temple cultural celebration.  It was interesting to me that the Lord uses that pattern of sacrifice to test and to teach his children.  I’ve noticed it in my life as well.  For example, I decided to go on a mission because I knew it was a worthy sacrifice, but my heart wasn’t really in it and I really wanted to be able to meet the right person and get married.  It was only after I had the faith to go forward with my mission plans that I met Chad.  I remember at Brandon and Jennifer's reception, a month and a half before I met Chad, going for a walk around the Main Street church and praying that if it was Heavenly Father's will I would serve a mission, but that I would rather be able to get married.  After church on Sunday we spent all afternoon relaxing and playing at the park that is in Kayla’s apartment complex.  We also went to the beach to take some pictures.  We didn’t stay long at the beach because it was so crowded and because Kayla and Jeff had an “It’s great to be 8” meeting with Rachel which they invited Karalee too.  I’m excited that Karalee and Rachel and Malia, my niece on Chad’s side, will all get baptized this year.  Their birthdays are all within 2 months of each other.

We had so much fun staying with Kayla and her family.  I think we looked forward to staying with them just as much as we looked forward to going to Legoland.  Plus we probably had just as much fun at the Larson's house as we did at Legoland.  Thanks again for letting us stay with you Kayla!!!

Monday morning we woke up and drove to Legoland in Carlsbad, CA.  We met Chad’s sister Shannon and her family there.  We spent two days in the park.  We had a nice time.  Wednesday morning we went swimming at our hotel pool and then drove home.  As we drove through Yuma I saw a sign for the Yuma Territorial Prison Museum and we decided to stop and check it out since I had two great-great Grandfathers who were prisoners there because they were Polygamists.  That was interesting to teach my children about that situation.  J  They had a nice touch screen with brief histories of all the Mormon polygamist prisoners.  They also had a huge banner of William J. Flake hanging in the Museum.  You can see pictures our tour HERE.  I took pictures of the histories of my two grandfathers so you can read them at the link above. 

Notice Spencer photo bombing Karalee's picture!!  He's funny.

We sure wore Tilly out.  She crashed for a long time.

Today we had a nice experience in the Gilbert temple.  Spencer was baptized for my Grandma Flake's cousin Sven Hellberg.  I found his name when I was reading my great grandmother’s book "You May Take My Life, But Never My Faith."  He is mentioned with his age on page 142.  We also did some work for Puring’s family.  Puring watched as Spencer and I were baptized and confirmed for her deceased daughter, mother, grandmother, son, father, and grandfather.  It’s pretty neat that 7 people have now been baptized from sharing our tomatoes with our neighbor.  It is such a miracle for our family.  You never know what blessings will come from small acts of kindness.

I loved this quote by Elder Marion D. Hanks that I heard in Kayla’s sacrament meeting regarding the broken bow experience.  Emphasis added. “Nephi went to his father and said, ‘Dad, the Lord has blessed you. You are his servant. I need to know where to go to get food. Dad, you ask him, will you?’ Oh, he could have gone to his own knees. He could have taken over.  I count this one of the really significant lessons of life in the book, [Book of Mormon] and, I repeat, the pages are full of them. A son who had strength enough, and humility enough, and manliness enough to go to his wavering superior and say, ‘You ask God, will you?’ because somehow he knew this is how you make men strong, that wise confidence in men builds them. Lehi asked God and God told him, and Lehi’s leadership was restored” (Steps to Learning, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year [May 4, 1960], 7).

Love,

Mindy

P.S.  What do you think of these pictures I took of my kids at the beach?  I like them.