Conference Thoughts and Garden

General Conference was wonderful. I will be re-listening and reviewing all the talks and will hopefully take notes. It was just all so good. I noticed a major theme of Unity, Love, and ZION!!! (Pres Eyring even talked about the City of Enoch in the General Women's meeting! These are good signs!!!) We are being invited to build Zion! And we CAN do this! Love, forgive, repent, serve! I accept the invitation and am focusing and praying for this more everyday, I really love feasting on the word. But more than just talking about it, I want to put it into action in the way I live! This quote from Elder Whiting's talk "Becoming Like Him was awesome:

Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught: “As we ponder having been commanded by Jesus to become like Him, we see that our present circumstance is one in which we are not necessarily wicked, but, rather, is one in which we are so half-hearted and so lacking in enthusiasm for His cause—which is our cause, too! We extol but seldom emulate Him.”² A young minister, Charles M. Sheldon, expressed similar sentiments this way: “Our Christianity loves its ease and comfort too well to take up anything so rough and heavy as a cross.”³

In fact, all are under the directive to become like Him, just as Jesus Christ became like the Father.⁴ As we progress, we become more complete, finished, and fully developed.⁵ Such teaching is not based on any one sect’s doctrines but comes directly from the Master Himself. It is through this lens that lives should be lived, communications considered, and relationships fostered. Truly, there is no other way to heal the wounds of broken relationships or of a fractured society than for each of us to more fully emulate the Prince of Peace.

So yeah, it was awesome. We are living in a pretty fractured society, we need to emulate Christ and plead for his help if we want things to improve. .

A cute moment from Sunday - Wes and Mel trying to take notes as they listened, but cute Peter distracted them when he needed help tracing his hand...

...and Peter then tracing Mel's hand, ha! 

They all took rides on Joseph's bike again. Lily stepped it up by putting on a leather-ish jacket. It's more fun to ride when you're playing the role!

Natalie wanted a turn posing with the bike 

The little boys watched veggie tales in my room during a little bit of some of the sessions. Daniel is holding a bike helmet, waiting for the session to end so they can bug Joseph to give them a ride on his motorcycle again. 

Daniel and Natalie also took lots of selfies on my phone. 

Today we went over to my parents house to pick some tomatoes. We were late though and my mom and dad had already finished picking, but the kids still enjoyed walking around their garden. 

My dad gave us their big sunflower, so that will be fun!

After the first frost, my dad said they can come back and pick out a baby pumpkin from their towering vine - 

Eating tomatoes before we get back in the car. 

We finished off all the little ones pretty quickly

All my little ponies with their heads around the feeding trough. 

One last photo - Lily drew this to enter in the Reflections contest. 

She put it in a frame and was excited to take it to school to show off, but then learned that everything is online, so I just had to help her submit it online. I guess it's not as fun if you don't get attention at school. but I was thinking that that's got to be a lot easier for the person in charge of reflections! And I remembered it being hard for me when I was in charge of it over at the elementary school. That was 8 years ago, I wonder if I'd do less stressing and complaining now, hopefully I'm improving and coming a little closer to being what a citizen of Zion should be.