Skyler's Home!

Hooray for holidays! Skyler is home and will spend the first Thanksgiving in 2 years with the family. I can't wait for us to get away to Lake Arrowhead and just hang out together. Today I worked on menus, made shopping lists and bought a ton of groceries. We may need a trailer just to haul it all up. I also bought some jacks and some pick up sticks and I'm going to pick up a deck of Uno. I am so excited to spend an entire long weekend (well at least a good 3 days plus) with my whole family, including my little grandbaby!

I'm teaching in Relief Society tomorrow. The lesson is from a May 2008 conference talk "Service, a Divine Quality" by Elder Carlos Amado. I will probably have a hard time filling the whole time with this lesson, but I did have an "aha" moment while preparing. Elder Amado quotes from John 6:26-27 - where Jesus exhorts the crowds who have come after the feeding of the 5,000 not to "labor" for the "meat that perishes" but to labor for the "meat which endures." He is referring to the fact that the crowds have shown up not because they witnesses a miracle in the loaves and fishes, but because they got fed! I didn't really understand what that had to do with service at first. Then I realized that there are many meanings in that little bit of scripture (aren't there always?). First, the service the Lord provided allowed an opportunity for Him to teach the gospel; second, service is a "miracle"; and third, the Lord was ful"filling" promises in "filling" (feeding) the crowd - service fulfills covenants. It is a great example of service as a "divine quality."

I'm glad the Proposition 8 stuff has started to calm down. It is so hard for people who do not practice an orthodoxy to understand how those who do. It is so representative of the situational ethics of most people. They can't imagine any time at which something simply is right or wrong and regardless of price, pain, consequence, a stand must be taken and upheld. No one on the traditional marriage side can not sympathize with the feelings on the other side. But when you believe that God has said that a thing is wrong, and you believe you have an obligation to walk, as best as you can, in the path that God has set, there simply are no other choices. It is hard sometimes to accept absolutes, but standing for a thing eventually makes you stronger if for no other reason than you learn just exactly what you yourself are made of. I am grateful for the opportunity I am currently having to have even a small bit of understanding what the early Saints (both old world and new) must have felt during their times of persecution.