Mormon Bloggers

I think some of the most interesting stories come from family vacations.  A friend of mine just went through a nightmare of a trip which included getting sick and discovering three of their combined children (her sister’s family was there too) had lice.  Add to that the fact that they were in Arizona and it was still hot inside, even with the air conditioning.  Not really my idea of fun, but they were happy to see family.  On the way back, they got sick again. 

I remember our last nightmarish trip well.  What are the chances of both of your headlights going out at the same time?  I checked them both that morning, they were both on, and yet they both went out that night.  Between that and other problems, our normally 16 hour trip took us 24 hours.  Thank goodness that last problem happened while there was still an auto parts store open, because we would have been out of luck.  Also, we were grateful for our fog lights that allowed us to get to the auto parts store safely.  The drive back was equally fun.

The memory that makes me laugh the most is one from when I was on the way to San Francisco with my family.  I was about four years old and apparently was still learning bladder control because my mom was taking me to use some bushes by the side of the road.  We wandered for a bit until my mom saw a man laying on the ground.  She yelled, “DAVE!  DEAD MAN!  DEAD MAN!”  I still remember the feeling of her yanking me away from the morbid scene and wondering why we were running, because what exactly was the dead man going to do to us?

But the dead guy sat up.  Turns out he wasn’t so dead after all.  He was just a homeless guy taking a nap (and was rudely awakened by my mom’s screams).  My dad figured the least we could do was give him a ride into the next town.  So into our station wagon we went – my dad, my brother, my mom, my brother, my sister, me, the not dead homeless guy, and my still full bladder.  I think the shock of the situation helped me hold it another 20 minutes. 

What is your funniest vacation story?  Do share.

One of my interests is old songs from the 50′s and 60′s. I have another blog called “A Delicious Decade of Music” that celebrates the music of the 60′s….
popular hits of the baby-boomer generation.

While researching for my music blog, I came across this beautiful religious song from the 50′s. It’s called “He” and it is speaking of God our Heavenly Father and His gift of forgiveness.

This recording reached #4 on the Billboard Top Hits chart in 1954. Can you imagine that happening these days? Most music on the charts today I wouldn’t even want a child to hear. Our society and culture has certainly changed alot over the last 50 years. Thank goodness Our Father in Heaven NEVER changes!

Christianity,Spirituality,Meditation,LDS,Mormon,Christian,Jesus,Family,Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,Prayer,Scripture,Religion

My son is seven today.  It’s a significant year being the last one before he will get baptized.  In our church. children are baptized when they turn 8, which we believe to be the age of accountability – when they are capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong.  We believe that children are innocent.  Of course, they do plenty of things that drive us bananas, but they don’t really comprehend what they’re doing.

My son has been talking about his baptism for the last two years or more.  Today, one of the first things he said to me was that he is almost old enough to get baptized now.  When a person gets baptized in our church, they are taking Christ’s name upon them, and when they are confirmed, they receive the Holy Ghost and become a member of the church.  He says he is especially excited about receiving the Holy Ghost.  He will spend this year preparing more for this event.  He has the physical preparation down – he is now a pro at going under water.  He just needs to work more on the spiritual aspect of it.

He is a sweetheart.  He is a very sharing boy and says that tonight when he opens his presents, he wants his sister to help him because he thinks it would be fun for her.  I don’t know many kids willing to do that.  He begged for a sister for two years and now that he has her, he has been the greatest brother.  She is 11 months old now and the novelty still hasn’t worn off for him.  He constantly protects her, finds ways to make her happy, and finds joy in every little thing she learns to do. 

Last week when we went to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party, he got 5 suckers with his tickets and said he was going to save two for his dad.  Again, I don’t know many children who would do that.  Most kids I know would want to keep it all to themselves.  I am proud and fortunate to be his mom.

I’m off to give him the best birthday I can despite today being the hottest day Seattle has ever had.

by Primo LeviRated PG-13Primo Levi was an Italian Jew of 25 years of age when he was arrested by the Italian fascists and sent to Monowitz-Buna, a work camp in Auschwitz, Poland. An arresting narration, this book chronicles the struggles of life in the camp, the deep deprivations, the seeming random assignment of death, and the tangled knot of rigid rules that would wrest the very humanity and

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Wow, what a great thing it is to be a missionary! I love it here in Anhanguera, Campinas. Things here are really cold!! This past week was a record week for rain here in the city. EVER! It literally rained all day friday, saturday, and sunday. All day. It never stopped. It was crazy. Luckily for me a brought SO many sweathers and umberellas. (I really didnt bring a single one.) So I have been soaked head to toe for 4 days!! I love it. The work really goes better in the rain, people dont have anywhere to go, they just stay in the house the whole weekend. So this weekend we meet alot of new investagators here!! The only problem was that it was almost impossible to convince people it was worth it to walk to church in the rain.. So we only had 3 investagators in church on sunday. But it was good compared to the ward, there was only have 50 people in the ward in total.. But on Sunday something amazing happened here!! The Bishop announced that the Stake President sent in the papers for the ward to start building a chapel here!! Everyone is way excited, we really hope that Salt Lake approves it. Hey Mom, tuesday I recieved some letters that were really old, from uncle Dan, Mandy, and you.. it is because you guys sent them to the MTC in Sao Paulo!!!! So it is taking for ever for your letters to get here, I got a letter like a month and a half old haha. So you need to send them to Campinas, it is really funnny actually, but yeah my address is
R. 10 de Setembro, 38
Cambuí 13023-100
Campinas-SP
Brasil
You should defintely send them to this address, or else it will take forever for me to recieve letters. So the maple you sent me is amazing mom thank you!! I am loving it, and making french toast every day now, Elder Garcia loves it. It is pretty awesome.
So Hilda, and her kids are doing great. Elder Garcia went there yesterday to talk about baptism with them for this saturday.. well, the kids really want to.. but Hilda was being really shy and hiding something, so Elder Garcia used some great questions, and found out that about 2 months ago Hilda recieved some help from a local church with food and stuff too. Well one of the conditions for the help was that her kids needed to be baptized in the church. The church actually made Hilda give all her money she had to “pay for the salvation of her kids” So she feels obligated for her kids to baptize in that church, because she and her family didnt have any food, and that chruch helped her. Well, I wasnt there, so I dont know how it is or anything, but Elder Garcia said today that he isnt sure if they will be baptized. So we are going to go there today and talk to them about this and see what we can do. I hope that they we can help them through there struggles and see that they need to be baptized.
Next week we have 3 baptism! Fatima, Rita, and Gisele are a family that is amazing!! They already have been to church 2 times, and are loving it. They really enjoy the church. Fatima is the mom of the family, and she is amazing. She has two other kids, but they are kind of rebellious, so they dont go to church or anything. But we are really excited for them to be baptized. But we are really excited for them, and they are amazing, the best part is she loves being a missionary already! She wants everyone she knows to hear our messages, so the referencies are starting to fly in!! We are way excited! Well this is week 5 of the transfer, and i am really excited to finish this transfer with some baptisms!! I dont know if I will stay or not, I dont wanna think about it. I just wanna concertrate on the work for now, and whatever happens happens

We’re having a heat wave in Washington State.  Today it’s supposed to be over 100 degrees, which is pretty much unheard of.  People mock our whining about the heat, but we don’t have air conditioning.  I believe in most places where these temps are the norm, they do have air conditioning.  There’s a reason why you have air conditioning in hot climates, people.  Because it’s miserable without it!

Yesterday for the first time ever, I chose to hang dry my clothes not because my dryer was broken or because the electricity was out, but because I didn’t want it to get any hotter in here. 

Yesterday because it was so hot, I looked up this.  I’m really tempted to actually try it, but don’t want to spend money on something inefficient.  Apparently real air conditioners are sold out, so I bet a lot of people will be resorting to things like this.

In the past two days, I have taken my four children swimming four times and I’ll probably take them two times again today – swimming for a couple hours, followed by lunch and a possible nap for my baby, then dinner a while later, followed by more swimming.

I am one of the few lucky ones who actually has some air conditioning.  We have a little window AC, but it’s not working all that well.  I think the filter needs to be changed or cleaned because something in there keeps freezing and it’s definitely not getting this place as cool as it could be.  Yesterday my husband was sick and I didn’t want to bother him to investigate the problem further.  He’s handy.  I’m not.  Unless you count handy as going to the store and putting a new air conditioner on the credit card. 

It’s 7am and I am already feeling the urge to turn on my air conditioner even though it’s rather faulty right now.  I’ve learned again that hot climates are not for me.  I’m going to start pre-hydrating now and I might as well start the sunscreen application process since it takes us about an hour to get out of here.

Signed,

Sweaty in Seattle

This year in groups of six:

Been through 3 vacuums so far

Kicked addiction to spider solitaire…sorta

Football stinks. Carpooling at 5:30 am

Can’t dive, still plug my nose

Writing Group is obviously not helping

Wrote iphone app – a whoopee cushion

Didn’t spank kids, but wanted to

Working from home – new co-workers loud

Bought PedEgg, need to use it

Writer’s block caused this lame blog

Next post better, on my honor

At least you know I can count

oh, whoops

P.S. There were 11 truths in this post and 1 untruth. It’s up to you to discover which one isn’t true.

Wow what an amazing week that i have had! we are being blessed so immensely it is increddible! So many miracles have happened this week it has been awesome! If you remember i told you about 5 weeks ago that my zone set a goal to get 12 baptisms this transfer. which is 1 baptism per companionship for the whole zone. well i decided that our district could set that same goal. and we set the goal to get 12 baptisms as a district. and well so far we have only had 3 But this week has been a week of miracles! and we now have 6 people committed to get baptized next week. so that would put us at 9 for the transfer. this is week 6 of the transfer, and i have 5 more investigators that could get baptized next sunday as well, because they have been to church 3 times now. They have just not accepted a baptismal date. they all have different problems that they need to work through that are keeping them from getting baptized, but it definitely could happen if they have the faith, so please pray that we will be able to help them as much as we can. and also that they will have the faith to change whatever is necessary to get baptized. These people are; Keith, Alvin, Daniel, Gloria, George.. yesterday was a great day. cynthia had to work and didnt get off until 2 o clock, but she arranged for a lady in our ward to pick up her kids and bring them to church and than cynthia came late. the kids loved church again. after church we sat down in the chapel with cynthia and her family and another family in our ward. and we taught a lsn on Temples and eternal families. it was amazing! they loved it and the spirit was really strong! We committed shauna and jaleesa to get baptized next week with their mom and they accepted! it was a really cool experience. their family is so amazing! this is the family that i have been praying that i would be able to teach. cynthia has made great progress in her faith and knowledge of the gospel. I have no doubt that i will be attending the temple with this family in about 1 year! tonight we are doing a FHE with that same family that we did the lsn with after church. and cynthias family is coming too. Karen and alvin came to church yesterday as well and loved it again! we met with them a few hours before church and they both expressed concern about the book of mormon and our belief in the bible. cause she said that when we study with her we rarely read out of the bible. well god is a god of miracles, and everything is done according to gods timetable. so we get to church and the first speaker gets up and talks about the book of mormon, what it is? where it came from? why we need it? etc… it was a great talk from a lady in the ward. and than the next speaker gets up and talks about the Bible, we believe in the bible(as far as it is translated correctly), we love the bible, Doctrines from the bible, missing links of the bible(creeds, translations, councils etc..) so basickly it was exactly what karen and alvin needed that day. it was incredible they were both crying, karen is going into a job interview today and she is worried that they are going to ask her to work sundays. i told her to stand up for what she knows is right and to tell them that she will not work during the hours of church. the only problem is they really need the money from the job and in this economy it is really hard for people to find reliable jobs, as i am sure you all know. so please pray for her, that she will have the strength and the faith to decline the job if she has to work durring church. and that she will be able to get another job or source of employment. we taught the word of wisdom yesterday and she accepted to live it, she has addictions to smoking and coffee, with just about every other single person that lives in new york does:( ha but its all good. i know that she can overcome it! alvin is doing great. he is reading alot about joseph smith because he is facinated with the whole history. he said yesterday that when he read he was visited by john the Baptist that chills went down his spine and he knew that it was true. he is doing great and i th ink it is a great possibility that we wil be able to baptize him this next sunday as well. he has smoking problems and coffee as well. wow so many other amazing things happened but i just done have to time to tell about all of them. just please pray for the people that i have talked about. they need all of the prayers that they can get. i have been in this area now for a long time. 6 months! transfers are next week so dont send anything to my address, rather send everything to the mission office addresss.. 85-69 60th dr. elmhurst, NY, 11373.
I have truly loved serving in this area and who knows maybe i will be here for a little while longer, who knows. well i guess god and my mission president do. but if i do stay here than i know that there is still much for me to accomplish here. it will be very sad leaving all of the people that i have come to love in this area. My comp elder judd is doing better, he is still having alot of fears about talking to people and he is worrying to much about what he is going to say exactly. so he gets nervous and doesnt say anything. so please pray for him as well. wow i have done some pretty fast typing today i am proud of myself.
Hurrah for Israel!!
love Elder Olsen

In our church, we have an activity for the youth called “Youth Conference” in each stake (a grouping of congregations) once a year.  These are a combination of service and fun – well both if you have a good attitude and think cleaning up thorny bushes at the zoo in 90 degree heat is fun.  Usually we were rewarded for all of our hard work with a dance at the end, which was great, because then you would get a chance to dance with whoever you had been flirting with during the service part of it.

One year we had our dance on a boat, which was pretty awesome, except the records kept skipping.  It was a pretty care free night and a memory I’ll have forever.  The following year we had it at a barn owned by one of our congregation members.  This wasn’t the type of barn you would expect – it was used for recreation, wedding receptions, etc., it had a boy’s and girl’s bathroom, arcade games, and had no barn odor that you would expect, but the architecture certainly looked like a barn.  I don’t remember dancing with anyone special that night, but watching all of my friends who I had known for so many years – some since I was 5.  Some I looked at and realized I didn’t know that well anymore because we hadn’t kept in touch after our congregation boundaries changed.  But I remember in particular looking at my friend Bryan and wondering how he was and would he turn out OK.  He still seemed like a good guy to me and still a bit rambunctious.

The next morning was to be our testimony meeting.  I spent the night at a friend’s house with some other girls and we got the news that there was a terrible car accident with about 5 kids from our stake involved on the way home from the dance.  One girl was crying about one of the other boys, but I kept wondering about Bryan.  It turned out he was driving and I couldn’t get my mind off of him.  I worried all night.

When we woke up, our mood was much different than it would have been if the night hadn’t ended in tragedy.  We arrived at the church and there was a card to sign for Bryan who had been airlifted to a trauma center.  At that moment, I knew in my heart he wasn’t going to make it. 

To everyone’s amazement, two of the other kids involved showed up to our testimony meeting despite their injuries.  They were eager to share what they learned and it was even more shocking when Bryan’s mom got up to try to make a positive out of a negative.  As Bryan drove these kids home, he tried to pass a man who he thought was going too slow.  The man sped up and so did he, until it turned into a race.  Bryan over-corrected and ended up going off the edge of the road where he flipped his van end to end and side to side about 11 times, and sometime during that chaos he was thrown through the windshield because he wasn’t strapped in either.

Bryan’s mom very matter of factly told us that this happened because he made a bad choice and didn’t listen to his parents.  She had told him to be careful when he drove.  It was determined that he wouldn’t pull through and they were basically keeping him alive for research.  I don’t know if I’ve ever met a woman so strong.  She didn’t act angry, but had genuine concern for the youth – that we would also make a fatal choice someday.  The two boys told their stories too, one of which had a cane.  He carried that for quite some time and one of the girls involved was too injured to come.  I don’t know exactly what her injuries were, but from then on she had to use crutches with the arm braces on them. 

Seeing the kids involved in the crash was a reminder to everyone that we weren’t invincible and that we can use our agency, but we can’t choose the consequences.  After being in a coma for about a week, my old friend passed away and I had the opportunity to sing at his funeral, which his mom told me I could only do if I was sure I wouldn’t cry.  I promised I wouldn’t.  If she could address a large group of youth the morning after losing her son, I could certainly grant that request.

I wonder how many of us were spared from our own bad choices because of what we learned from that experience.  I know for me, any time I had the urge to speed or pass anyone, I thought twice.  Whatever I wanted at the moment just wasn’t worth it.

by Augusta TrobaughRated PGAs the name implies, this novel reads like an old Southern spiritual. Four women wearing out the floorboards on the front porch as they rock and tell their family stories to each other, over and over. Only there are some stories that have never been told, stories that hurt too much, stories that no one should have to remember. And if nobody remembers them, perhaps they