Why I am a "Mormon"

     I think some might wonder why I have chosen a Mormon lifestyle. I feel impressed to make a post on the matter. So here I am.

     Some might say that I am a Mormon because my my parents are and I was brain washed into it or I am just trying to please them. This couldn't be farther from the truth, though I do like to make my parents happy after all the sacrificing they did for me, this is not a way they taught us to make them happy. They taught us that they would love us no matter what and that their house was a place where we were always be welcomed and loved. They encouraged us to find our own testimony of Christ.

     When I was about 13, my curiosity started to grow. I had friends that challenged my belief. There were people at church that behaved in a way that made me wonder why I was going there. I started to pray to know what was true. My parents were very good at allowing me to attend other churches. I went to several, a Catholic church, a Christian church, a Jewish church, a Baptist church and a few others. A close friend of mine had a wonderful mom who would tell me to go to church and look for ways to help others. I truly wanted to know where God wanted me to be. I remember asking Him to write it on my wall if the LDS faith was where I was supposed to be. Though this prayer was not answered in the way I wanted the answer came over the next few years through a series of experiences. I did what the gospel of Christ taught. I prayed, read the scriptures, fasted, attended the temple.

     God gave me some amazing leaders and friends from unexpected places. One of these friends was not always the best influence, but challenged me in ways that gave me the burning desire to know for myself. Without this friend I don't know if that desire would have been so strong.

      I knew that the Book of Mormon was supposed to be the "keystone of the LDS faith". So I needed to read it. I started with a little bit at a time each day. I was not an avid reader at this time and this is what I could handle. God knew me and guided me to the scriptures I needed to read. I read things like "I am encircled about eternally in the arms of His love" and "receive the Holy Ghost, it will show you ALL thing what ye should do." and "be familiar with ALL and free them with your substance, that they might be rich like unto you." and "yea, thus we see the gate of heaven is open to ALL, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God". It teaches over and over that Christ loves all and is waiting for you to look for him and love him back. The Book of Mormon and it's teachings made the gospel of Christ easier to under stand. If filled in some missing parts. The history and the way it was compiled and written in it's self is a testimony of the miracle that it came about. There is no way that a young farm boy who did not have access to undiscovered world history could have made this up. There was no turning back. I knew it was true.

     The LDS faith teaches and encourages people to pray for themselves to know. To read and to study it out in their minds. Not to contend with other in the matter of religion, but to teach "by persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, by kindness." No other church offered this in my experience.

     I was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease which gave me a lot of opportunity to put my faith to the test. I was given a husband that could handle the situation and has helped me to climb out of my shell. I have had many other chances to evaluate my beliefs and each time I look to the gospel principles to help me. They always work. Sometimes it takes some perspective to understand a situation, but if I approach difficult circumstances with gratitude and a prayer I always come out of it feeling the love of God.

     I am a Mormon because of my faith in Christ, not man. Man cannot inspire me and comfort me like He does. Sometimes His comfort and inspiration is through man because I am young in understanding when it comes to hearing Him. He knows how to reach me and it's up to me to "see" it.

Grandma's Little Pizza's

When I was a child, I have fond memories of driving to California to visit with Grandma Jill.  I have many fond memories to Husker du to the lemon tree in the back yard.  Most of my memories stem around food.  My favorite thing my Grandma Jill would make are these easy mini pizzas.  I hadn't made them in a long time and decided to try it Kibbie style.  She would make them on English muffins.  Since I can't have them I made my homemade rolls and cut them in half.  The rest of the recipe is as follows:

One can of olives

Home made pizza sauce

shredded cheese

Dice the olive then mix the ingredients together and spoon on to bread halves.  Put them under the broiler for about 5 mins or until the cheese is melted and golden color.

So yummy on a cold winter day!

 I found this non dairy cheese at Whole Foods the other day and love it.  It actually melts and as far as I know it tastes good and there really is no dairy in it.  Aiden, Emma and Eva love it! (for those of you in Utah, it's cheaper at Whole Foods than Good Earth)



God be with you, till we meet again

Over the past 2 years I spent a lot to time with my sweet childhood friend Melissa Waller as her caregiver.  I got the amazing opportunity to be by her side through her fight with stage 4 lung cancer.  She was an amazing fighter and really did not complain much.  Of course the terms of this condition weighed heavy on her as she had to make many decisions and knew that her life was being cut short. But all in all she stayed true and positive through this horrific disease.  I often thought of her mom who also lost the fight of cancer.  I'll never forget the last time I was with her mom and hearing her talk of skiing again and not letting this disease define her.  Melissa had the same outlook on life which I know stemmed from her mothers example. 

My heart aches to think that the Waller family has lost two of their close family members to cancer.  Through this experience I learned what mourning with those who mourn means.  I truly felt like I lost of part of me.  I felt much comfort in being there for her family and in the understanding of God's plan for us and knowing, with out a doubt, that the part of me I lost the day she died will again be together when it is my turn to move on from this mortal life.  I am forever grateful for the kindness that was given to me from the Waller family.  They truly treated me as their own family member and I was honored to be able to be with her through her last breaths.  She died on a beautiful Arizona day which happened to be Thanksgiving.  The feeling that she was not alone as she left her body was undeniable.  Everyone who was in the room with her knew and felt that her mother was there to assist her on to her new beginning.  I personally felt the Spirit of God very strongly through out that last week with her.  We shared much of our young life together and I am touched by the love that Melissa and her family showed me during those years. 

Here we are the last time I got to spend one on one time with her in September.  This was the last time I really communicated with her.  We had a great time that week.  She dolled me up with a "Melissa" makeover from head to toes.  Then we went out to her favorite restaurant Postinos in Phoenix.  On this trip I brought all these letters she had written me after her family moved to Park City.  We used to write each other about twice a week.  The letters made her laugh so hard.  We laughed for a good hour and a half reading and talking about how silly we were in our early years.  I am so glad I made this trip.

This is us back in 1992 shortly after they moved to Park City. I flew down and spent two weeks with Melissa and her family.  I arrived to a welcome banner that the family made for me, taped to the garage door (I still have this in my scrapbook). 

Here we are about two years before the last picture at the Waller's home in Washington.  This was the beginning of the many "Melissa makeovers" that I had.  Her mom was so patient with us when we got into her bathroom and closet.  We used to love to sit in these "spinning chairs" in their front room to spin and talk.  Around this time I was ridding my bike to her house every morning to french braid her hair, then we would ride to school.

What a treasure!

The other day I checked my mail and there was a package address to me that wasn't a part to a washing machine or wood stove or anyother house project.  I was so excited that I opened it before I got out of the car.  In it was a beautiful hand knit set with a note from my aunt that said this was an outfit that my grandmother knit for my aunt way back in 1964 and she thought it would look best on me :).  It brought tears to my eyes to think that I now have such a treasure from my grandmother who passed on about 6 years ago.  It was also even more meaningful because I just have learned to knit (a challange I have battled many times over the years) and I know how much time this must have taken her to complete.  It fits great and I wore it to church today and thought of the kindness my aunt had for thinking of me and I thought of my sweet grandmother and my childhood memories visiting her and my aunt each summer.  Thanks Aunt Ann and Grandma Jill!

Ode to my Old Jeans

So why is it that once you jeans turn into your most favorite comfy jeans that they wear out?! It's so sad to me that this happens. I think I am the most picky when it comes to the way something fits. These jeans have been so nice to wear that I go to great lengths to wear long shirts with them to hide the holes that have developed around the back pockets. I do not like clothes shopping because I'll spend hours trying clothes on and come away with one thing that worked. I remember having battles with my mom with clothes because I didn't like the way they fit. Sure they were cute, but if they were restrictive or uncomfortable in any way I would protest. Perhaps this is the reason why I have a hard time sewing for myself because it's hard to tailor something on your own body. If any of you out there are good at this and are willing to give me some tips I would LOVE it! Now on to my search for the perfect jeans...

Here I am in my current favorite jeans that will soon be in the "jean graveyard" (don't mind the construction in the back ground, that's what happens when your kids take your picture ;), she did a pretty good job otherwise):

A close up shot of the wearing out. Notice the holes in the knees and the fraying around the cuff...

Recent Reads

I recently finished this book "Yearning for the Living God" by Enzio Busche which was recommended by a friend. This book is filled with his personal experiences as a child and finding the "Living God" as he puts it. I loved to read how he lived by the spirit and followed his promptings, lived life with honor and love for his fellow man. I loved that he highlighted people who others would not think anything of, but how he learned deep lessons of loving God and others through them. What a beautiful story about loving God and loving others.

Sewing strike...ya right!

So I told myself about 2 months ago that I was going on a "sewing strike" because I did so much sewing I found myself really not liking it at all. HAHA, well it worked for about 2 months give or take a few days. I'm starting to feel the sewing fire building under my creative soul after going to a few quilt shops with my mom last week. My favorite shop for ideas is a little nook of a shop in Gardener village called Pine Needles. They have a lovely array of adorable patterns along with the best selection of fabric I have seen. They don't have a lot of fabric, but I would use pretty much any fabric from that store. With Christmas fastly approaching, I am getting the desire to make home made gifts for everyone, but then I remember that I have 5 kids and I am homeschooling them and we might possibly be moving in October and have all the other tasks a mother has and so my list of sewing begins to shrink.

I did have a lovely time visiting with my mother for a week. We had many great conversations about life, religion and family stories. We went to the Salt Lake cemetery, pioneer museum, we went thrift and fabric shopping, to the Utah State Fair, we went on a fun bike ride through our little town, my mom had more energy than myself (for those of you who have known me since childhood would know that my energy was a little on the high end so this is saying a lot for my mom) I'm so proud of my mom and am so grateful for the loving kind woman she is. For all that she taught me and loving me when I wasn't a lovable person.

Graditude

For a moment I would like to give my utmost respect to those who have served and helped my family through our tough times in life. Many of you have helped watch kids, make food, given words of encouragement, shown love, forgiven when it's hard to forgive, loving phones calls, helped improve our home, shared your muscles when moving, given quite unknown service, hugged when needed, sweet helpful prayers that were heard, etc. Many of you know who you are and many of you don't. Just a smile here or a welcome feeling when in a new situation have deep meaning for me. I am even grateful for others who have sometimes made my life sad at moments because of the lessons I have learned of forgiveness, being able to look for the good in others and learning a little humility. This mortal experience would not be the same without ALL of you. True joy would not be desirable without the good AND the bad.

One day long ago, I was feeling quite sad about living in a new strange land (Utah) and missing the friendly nature of our old place of worship in the beautiful Evergreen State. One morning I felt the desire to attend the temple after praying for comfort and peace that we were living where the Lord wanted us to live. I have a profound respect of the people of Polynesia and have only wonderful accepting experiences with them. To my delight, as I entered the temples chapel, there were several of these beautiful people sitting on the front row. As I approached the seating I saw a woman with a flower in her hair sitting on the end and she seemed to be in prayer, so I naturally headed for the row behind her as to not to disturb her. Before I knew it she said to me "sister, why are you going back there when you can come and sit by me?" With a large smile on my face and the welling up of tears I took the seat next to her where she proceeded to hug me and tell me that she was so happy to see me in the temple that day. The whole temple session this beautiful woman smiled at me and told me wonderful things. The Lord knew I needed to feel that acceptance at that time and He sent me and angel to remind me how much I needed to be here. My largest amount of gratitude is to my Father in Heaven for loving me through my toughest times. For the tender mercies of love and angels He sends us. It's our job to look for it and recognize it.

Laugh

Majorie Pay Hinkley is truly someone I wish I had known. I loved her ability to make people laugh in such a fun way. I hope to be able to laugh more and find more joy when things get hard. One of the hardest lessons for me in my life is to find joy in trail. I love the song from "The King of Egypt" called "You Know Better Than I", which says that in your trail, you may not know why you are going through what you are going through, but God knows. We need to let go of what we think is best and put our trust in His will. Sounds so easy, doesn't it? Life does become easier when we trust in His plan. When we trust in His plan, then it's easier to find joy and laughter.

His plan is the Great Plan of Happiness. When life is hard, doesn't it make the good times even better? I find that through all the times I've been ill that it is such an amazing joy to be able to use my body to hike or play or be able to hug my kids. It's very hard to find joy when depression hits or when you feel alone. That is the time to see through the cloud of despair and to remember to look to Christ. To let Him in, knock and find Him. Then you can feel His loving arms surround you with His love. Will life still be difficult at times. Yes, it will, but your foundation will be sure, your purpose will have meaning. You will understand that these difficult times are to help you learn and you will have a new profound ability to be grateful for hard times. Your thoughts will turn from "Why me?!" to "That is so wonderful that I just got to learn that!!" That is what joy is in trail.

Seeing My Friend Melissa

I just got back from a visit to Arizona to be with my dear friend Melissa who I have known since we were about 6 or 7 year old. She's in a battle for her life with stage 4 lung cancer. It was wonderful being with her and being able to help her. I loved spending time with her and making her laugh with some old letters she had written to me after her and her family had moved to Park City back when we were 13. It was funny to see how much we have grown up since then and how things that mattered then don't matter much now, except for our friendship. It was a good reminder of why we were such great friends and actually helped me to feel closer to her. We also got to hang out on her bed and watch movies, talk, sunbath by the pool and she also treated me to a manicure and a pedicure. She's an amazing person and we have a lot of the same feelings when it comes to living by principles. I'm so grateful to have had a little more time with her and I look forward to having more time with her. She's talking about have a big celebration party (instead of a wedding reception or something close to it) to celebrate her life and those going through cancer. I can't wait to be able to attend.

Melissa and I

Myself with Eva

My toes after the pedicure

Eva sunning by the pool

Why we are weird to some LOL

My friend Sara found this quote and I read it this morning on an email that she sent me:

"In the latter days the time will come when there will not be enough doctors to take care of our medical needs and problems, and it will be necessary for men to honor their priesthood and to be prepared to take care of the sick; and every woman will have to be a home nurse with a working knowledge of nursing to meet the need."

J. Reuben Clark, Jr.; General Conference, 1937

There is a time and a place to have good knowledge. It is important to stay open to new possibilities so when truth comes to you, you are ready to accept it.

This quote is a perfect example of how important men and women are in their respective roles. I feel that woman need to honor their men and take pride in being a mother to whatever respect that may be (married with kids, single, divorced, widowed). All woman can be a mother in some way. It is very sad to me how motherhood and serving your husband has been frowned upon. My joy comes through serving and loving my family. I have been extremely blessed with a loving and supportive husband and 5 healthy beautiful children. Why wouldn't I take pride in that?

Why?

I found myself pondering a certain question time and time again. I feel that we all come back to this question every now and than and I believe that it is healthy to question and re-evaluate how we believe. The question is: Why do I go to church and believe the things I do. Is it to be social and to see friends? Yes, to some degree this is true, but if this was the only reason I would have stopped going to church a long time ago. You see, going to church in a way is to help strengthen one another to do better to become more one with Christ. It's also to follow His principles and to keep covenants. People are not always perfect at this, but I believe (weather a church goer or not) that most people are trying to be better. It is important not to get caught up in mans fallacy's because with so many trying to do better there is going to be mistakes made and feelings hurt.

So my final reason for going to church and believing what I believe pertain to the principles that are taught that bring joy and peace into my life and knowing that I, a child of God, can know God himself and receive answers for myself. I don't have to rely on man to know God. My promises are to God not man. Church is a great place to practice forgiveness. Forgiveness gives us great power to unite one another (my memory of a quote from the movie Invictus). Forgiveness and the ability to "love" past peoples walls that they place before you, sets your spirit free and brings so much joy. Through forgiveness and the power to love comes the ability to serve, to give and to build much needed relationships. I believe that the lack of "knowing" our neighbors is what is weakening our society. Our intolerance to love past walls and to see others as children of God pushes people away and makes them "a stranger".

The Book

So many of you know that I am in the process of writing a book about my journey with cronic illness. It will take some time since I have four very cute little distractions :) Here's a excerpt from what I have written so far so you can get more of an idea of what it is about:

"Logically that path doesn’t make sense. Why do I have to go through this? You told me to go this way… The unexpected path helps your faith it gives you more of a chance to rely on God as your guide and to ask Him to lift you up, literally.

Others will think your mad for choosing such ways and may even mock you. You’ll find great joy in this direction if you allow yourself to see the joy. It’s very easy to become bitter and angry when you ask for direction and you are guided down a path that is less traveled if you are unwilling to see what the Lord is doing for you. This is when the Lord is at the edge of His seat waiting to jump in. Do we have so much pride that we can’t simply ask for His healing touch. How often do we run to a doctor first before we ask for a blessing or ask God to come with His mighty touch to heal us. How sick do we have to become before we remember the Lord? He should be the first thing on our “to do list” of healing."

Please go out and vote!!!

This election time I have had the overwhelming desire to know more about what we are voting for and to be more involved. Then this morning I came across a very inspiring scripture in the Book of Mormon, Mosiah 29:21-27:

21 And behold, now I say unto you, ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous aking save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.

22 For behold, he has his afriends in iniquity, and he keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;

23 And he enacteth laws, and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he acauseth to be destroyed; and whosoever doth rebel against him he will send his armies against them to war, and if he can he will destroy them; and thus an unrighteous bking doth pervert the ways of all righteousness.

24 And now behold I say unto you, it is not expedient that such abominations should come upon you.

25 Therefore, choose you by the avoice of this people, judges, that ye may be bjudged according to the claws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord.

26 Now it is not common that the avoice of the people desireth anything bcontrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the cpeople to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.

27 And aif the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction even as he has hitherto visited this land.

Wow what a powerful statement of using the right of being the voice of the people. What a blessing it is to live in a country where we have the power of being the voice. Let's choose to not have that right taken away. From this scripture we learn that the more part of the people seek to do good. Those who want to do evil is the smaller part. We do have the power as a people to promote good in our country and we need to not feel hopeless when it comes to voting. Take the time to know who and what we are voting for. It's not a loss cause, it's our future as a people.

The blessings of Charity

So I wanted to share an experience that we had yesterday. After we returned home from our trip to Washington we found ourselves with many money emergencies that came up within about 2 days some of which were giving to others (not to brag, but to bare testimony). Our budget became very tight after spending money to reserve a park pavillion for a homeschool activity which I was to be refunded at the party by the participants. I had ordered a few food storage items from a friend of mine and I was planning on paying her when we got the refund. Well because of our emergencies we didn't have the extra cash around so I was planning on paying her with our next pay check, no big deal.

Well I had planned a family dance for Friday where quite a while ago, I had paid to rent a pavilion at our local park. I had a health issue come up and could not be there so I asked a good friend of mine to be in charge. While she was there she asked all who came to donate some money to help pay for the pavilion. She came over yesterday with that money. I needed $74.50 for the items I had ordered. I counted it and the total was $75.50!

I know that when you are willing to give no matter what your situation is you will be blessed! Also this experience was a testimony of tithing. I am grateful for this truth in my life and for wonderful friends who were willing to be a part of this miracle!