The Old Testament is Awesome

This year in Sunday School we're learning about the Old Testament. Every four years I get very excited for these lessons again. I keep up with reading the lesson material during the week so I can get more out of Sunday's lesson and I feel like I get a lot out of Sunday School this way. I love it.

Then the lessons start to get longer (as far as the reading material goes for that week's lesson). That's when it starts to get tough to keep up on the reading and then I end up not doing well for the rest of the year. If I can make a good habit then I can keep up my momentum. And that's what I've been doing this year.

A few weeks ago, when we were in the thick of talking about Joseph (the "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" Joseph) and his brothers getting ready to sell him as a slave, there were comments made in class about stuff that I didn't read in all the lesson material. It was some really cool stuff that I wished I had read and I didn't remember it from previous years of Sunday School or lessons from seminary/institute. What's up with that?

That's when I decided to read the chapters between the lessons (or the chapters that got skipped in the lesson) and I found all sorts of awesome stuff going on. Yes! That was super cool. I loved finding all that stuff...and more!

So for the last few weeks I have been reading all the chapters of the lesson plus the chapters that get skipped (in the lesson and between lessons). I've totally loved it.

This week's lesson is about Moses and Aaron and all the pestilences against Pharaoh and the Egyptions. It took a lot of time to read, more than what I normally read for my personal scripture study, but it's been worth reading all of it and getting tons more out of the history and connecting people to their stories, there wheres, whens and whys. Nice!

I just read this morning about Pharaoh driving the Israelites out of the land (600,000 men plus their children), quickly regretting his decision (after all the plagues the Lord just sent upon him!) and chased after the Israelites with 600 chariots to enslave them again. (It's pretty obvious from these chapters he didn't want to lose his slave labor.)

The Israelites turned to Moses and said they preferred to be slaves than to die in the wilderness. Whatever! I was thinking, "Please, guys, listen to the prophet. He knows the way!"

The Lord put a cloud between the Israelites and the Egyptians for the night and Moses parted the Red Sea with "a strong east wind all that night" (and I wondered about the crickets that could have still been floating in it from that past pestilence...they were driven into the Red Sea by a strong West Wind). They made it through on dry ground and during the next morning's watch they saw the Egyptians chasing after them. The Lord told Moses to stretch forth his hand and let the water come over the Egyptian army. And so it was. And then the Israelites were glad they listened to the prophet.

Oh, and the reason the Israelites went that way was because the Lord didn't want them to go toward the Philistines, see war and want to head back into slavery. That was a nice little gem to pick up too.

Wow! Good stuff in the lesson this week. I loved it. The Old Testament is totally awesome!

I'd Love to Start Writing Again

I miss writing blogging about gospel living. I've written 4 blog posts in the last year and a half, which were attempts at starting to write again. A lot has happened in that time.

Around September 2012 I was getting very close to wrapping up my PhD research and preparing for graduation. I don't remember making any decision like, "Wow, I don't have any time to blog." But I definitely had my mind on other things like moving and finding a job.

I looked for a job for a very long time, starting in June of 2011. That's when I thought I was going to graduate the next spring (of 2012). Looking for a job in "industry" (that's what the academic world calls it) is pretty tough as a graduate student approaching the end of his/her work because you have to keep focus on actually finishing, writing and defending, but you also have to somehow figure out what kind of job you want and how to convince a hiring manager/company that your skills can actually help them make money.

Try doing all that while being surrounded by students who have never done what you are trying to do and, therefore, have no advice to move you along and faculty members who never wanted to go into industry and wonder why in the world you don't want to stay (in academia; everyone knows you don't want to be a student forever! For that matter, they all know you wanted to graduate a long time ago).

So I did my best to find a job. The hardest part was turning academia's version of a resume, which is called a curriculum vitae (or CV for short), into a form that give employers an easier time of understanding your skills. Oh, and CVs have no page limit! It includes everything from your career, not just what will help you get your next job. Contrast that with employers that want to see the "you on a single page (and make it good or you're going in the trash)" type of resume and you'll get the first glimpse of why it's so hard to transition. That, plus skills learned in grad school and in research/development have to be presented in the right way or you won't get a second look. And I saw a lot of that!

Anyway, after finally defending my dissertation in March 2013 and walking (graduating) in May of that year and still not finding a job by the end of that summer, we decided to move away from that college town where there were no real job prospects and headed west. We landed in Utah for what we thought would be a short time while I worked at getting a job in California, but I ended up getting a job here. And we're elated!

So I'd love to start writing again. I think it's time to make it a higher priority. See ya'll!