Hee Hee... love that picture. Anyway, moving on. Chris has been taking a fly fishing class through the city... or community... whatever. He is actually in the 2nd part of the class so they're doing a lot of field trips around the western US. This weekend he'll be in West Yellowstone, next weekend is somewhere in Idaho, he is been to a few places around here in Utah and he seems to really enjoy it.
As for me, my stake has been doing a 'Spiritual Season' and challenged us to study our scriptures and pray for 30 minutes a day, repent, attend the temple more regularly, serve our neighbors, get 100% home/visiting teaching etc. Now I'm always up for a challenge and felt like I needed a push. Man did I get it! Now its like everything I pick up has this amazing message and so much to teach me. I've been reading Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson who is an old professor I had at BYU. It's just like being in his class again, and trust me if it was possible for me to audit that class every semester for the rest of my life - I would! He is amazing.
It's funny because when I read all this stuff it's like everything just fits. It's like no matter what subject I'm studying, it somehow fits perfectly with what I learned about the day before or 3 days before or what I'll read tomorrow. Like I was reading about Love, and how when we truly understand what it means that Jesus Christ loves us then our priorities align and we want to love others and obedience is something we want to do, not what we have to do. Because if we say that we love Christ and don't follow him, then really we're just being a hypocrite.
Well, that seemed to fit in to my lesson I'm preparing for my YW class about supporting your family and your parents and brothers/sisters. It also fit with the Believing Christ book when he was talking about the Atonement and how we don't have to overwhelm ourselves with everything we feel we should do. (ie bake whole wheat bread, sew all our clothes, help all the kids with homework, do your geneology, write your missionaries, go to PTA meetings, do the housework... etc) you get completely overwhelmed and he says it's because you're trying to save yourself. You're not letting Jesus do his part. All we need to do is to build that relationship with Him so that we become 'one' (get it... At-one-ment) and we've made it. We're done. I don't know, I guess writing it out it doesn't really seem to mesh... but it really meshed in my head yesterday. It was fabulous. So I've been having fun.
I've also been sewing a quiet book for Nathan. I want to post some pictures one of these days, but I've still got to finish some things. I need to get some help from my sister in laws (the sewing queens) to help with some fairly basic things. A zipper, button holes... (scary!). Now I'm to the point where I wonder how much more I want to actually do. How many pages do I really need? Most of the pages aren't typical quiet book things either. There will be a zipper and buttons, and a shoelace, but the rest of it is just cute little animals that you play with at the zoo or on Noahs Ark or under the sea. Just fun stuff. :) Alright, my cookies are done so I'm off. Grandma, not sure whether to love you or hate you for teaching me shortbread. LOL! Everyone here loves them which is great... but then I eat way too many of them... not so great.
2 comments:
What a great challenge from the Stake... It sounds like you're really enjoying your new study time. Maybe I should follow your example and do the same.
You'll have to post pics of your quiet book once you finish. I haven't been brave enough to undertake that one yet. I'm building my way up to making one of Sara's "easy" skirts.
Hey Angie, it is easy! :) Mary, I have been thinking about this a lot also. I appreciated your words on how if we know Christ loves us then we just want to obey him and not feel forced to do so. So true. I think it's hard to realize at times just how much He does loves us, but the way I like to think about it is in terms of how much I love my kids. I can't even exclaim the amount of love that I have for them. Even if they made really wrong choices, it would not make me love them any less. I would ache for them. To think that His love is even greater than this for each of us, is so humbling. We are all His children no matter the circumstance. It's our responsibility as those who have more knowledge than others to serve and teach those in our lives who have less.
Anyway, didn't mean to go on and on. Did you know you can take online Religion classes online for free? As well as more secular classes from Yale, U of U, etc. It's kinda cool. Every once in a while I'll log on to watch a video. I want to take a B of M class to motivate me more to read and study. Maybe we should do it together?
Also, let's sew soon!
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