Devotional and Dating

Sophi gave a talk in Primary at church today, AND she wrote it all by herself! I thought she did such a good job! Super cute. I'll write it out but will correct the misspelled words, but look at the photo to see some of those incorrect words (like "izerlight"! - cute.)

"My talk: In the Book of Numbers, the Israelites finally made it to the promised land, but were all scared and focused on how hard it would be and how they saw giants and blah blah blah. Sometimes we can be like the Israelites when we are given a task, we only look at the negative things and not look and see all of our blessings. We want to be like Moses and the two other Israelites, Jacob and Caleb. They had complete faith, saying all the good things in stead of the had things. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Isn't that great? Good job Sophi, I'm especially impressed that you did it totally on your own! I led the Sunday school lesson today, and it went ok I think. I felt a little scattered, but hopefully it was ok. Corey teasingly pointed out afterwards that I spelled Reintegration wrong on the board (I wrote "reintigration"). That was when we were talking briefly about consecration and the Nazarite Vow, which plays a fun part in the story our courtship. We made a few Nazarite Vows with each other. 

My biggest take away from this week's lesson is, like Sophi pointed out, that I really want to learn to trust God and not fear. Fear not is a message that the Savior repeated over and over again. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not just faith in, but FAITH! We sang "I Believe in Christ" as the closing song in sacrament meeting today, but as we said that line, I thought "I Believe Christ" - the fourth verse really touched me and made me tear up - 

I believe in Christ; he stands supreme!

From him I’ll gain my fondest dream;

And while I strive through grief and pain,

His voice is heard: “Ye shall obtain.”

I believe in Christ; so come what may,

With him I’ll stand in that great day

When on this earth he comes again

To rule among the sons of men.

We may have a dream of our promised land, like the children of Israel did. Christ will help us gain it! He says "Ye shall obtain!" He wants to give it to us, He CAN give it to us, don't look at the challenges, but trust. We may have to strive through grief and pain, but we can obtain it. Christ said it's possible, so IT IS POSSIBLE! BELIEVE HIM. We can build Zion. That is our promised land today. Believe it is possible. Imagine it! I think the book The Enoch Letters by Neal A Maxwell was a great exercise in imagining what it is like to live there and what I'd tell someone else about it. Imagine myself there. Those were some of my thoughts after church, and they continued as I listened to the Devotional tonight with President and Sister Nelson addressing the Single Adults of the Church. She told us to ask ourselves "What would a holy young adult do?" and since I'm not a young adult anymore, I thought of myself instead as a citizen of Zion, and so I'm going to experiment with "What would a citizen of Zion do?" :)

Joseph went downtown for the devotional, and Mel was going to get a ride with him, so I took her to the freeway so he could pick her up. When Life360 told me that he was a 20 minute drive away, I figured we best leave. I didn't notice the speed that he was going... 6 mph. It was 20 minutes away for me, driving south, but Joseph was coming up from Provo, and BYU... where there were a whole lot of other Young Single Adults driving up for the devotional. It took him 45 minutes instead of 20. There were a few accidents on the road. We called each other a few times, to see if maybe I should drive her further south to him. At one point he said "we're just going to come to the house" so Mel and I turned around and headed home, but then we noticed that his speed had increased significantly, so we called him, he didn't answer, then he called us "Hey I think we're going to go for it!" so I turned around again and brought Mel back to the freeway again. They did make it down and were able to watch it in one of the overflow locations. 

Joseph brought Mel back home, and he was with a mission companion named Jared. They were talking about dating for a while, and some of their complaints about the whole dating process. They talked about the Mutual app and another app that Jared said is better than Mutual. Joseph and Jared were both complaining a bit about girls who don't follow protocol, like texting a "thank you" or some kind of follow up after a date. It was funny listening to them, cause Mel is one of those that might not be following the unwritten rules they were talking about. They insisted it is just common polite manners, but Mel said "If you're not interested, that might be leading them on..." It then turned into a continuation of the conversation Mel and Joseph were having last week after he came up for Mother's day. We had been watching the movie Unbroken with the kids, and there's one part where the guys are starving on the raft stranded in the ocean and tried to attract a bird. Mel shared an Instagram video of a guy who sat out in his yard with birdseed in his hands for hours, and eventually had birds eating out of his hands. "That's how to get a girl. They need to not feel threatened, to feel that it's safe, to have the freedom to come and go..." Joseph thought that was ridiculous. His last words as he closed the door and headed to his car last Sunday - "Its impossible..." and 10 minutes later, after pondering quietly in his car, he left a message for Corey, sounding irritated but also sincere - "Speaking of trying to catch a bird though... so in the movie, they were really still, they held a shiny object to attract it, so... at which point do you pounce?" referring to this this clip). Corey was laughing so hard and replied "Well, you only pounce if you want to kill it..." You can't pounce when you're finding your wife.  So, still talking about last week, after Joseph arrived back in Provo, he sent Corey a clip of this part of The Sandlot movie. I guess he's seen the light. He's been going about dating all wrong. But tonight he still vented about it a bit. He's frustrated with the dating scene at the moment and got some understanding sympathy from Jared. Take it slow and be patient, you young men. Trust and fear not! She's out there, you'll find her!

It was also a lunar eclipse tonight. It was cloudy but we were able to see it in it's red eclipse for a little bit. Very cool. I love the miracles of nature.