After 40 Years in the Desert

This morning I started reading ahead to next Sunday's Old Testament lesson. In Deuteronomy (chapters 6, 8, 11 and 32) Moses tells the Israelites that they need to remember the Lord and all His blessings. The Lord delivered them out of Egypt (40 years earlier) and provided them with manna every day during those years...that was 12,514 times (not including the Sabbath) and fed them those 14,600 days (including the Sabbath)!

By the time of these chapters, all the older members of the tribes of Israel have died (except Joshua and Caleb) and all of their iniquities and longing to return to Egypt have been removed from their hearts as a people.

Now, when Moses tells them to remember the Lord their God, he impresses upon them how serious it is for their own safety and well-being as well as their posterity. For them personally, Moses tells them that if they leave the ways of the Lord they will be destroyed. He also tells them that if they let their sons and daughters marry with the other nations around them (seven of them, all larger than Israel) that their righteous ways will be turned from the Lord to worldly ways. Not good.

Moses really, really wants the Israelites to remember the Lord so he has them put scriptures (rolled up and put in little chests) on their foreheads, on their left hands and on their door posts. Man, talk about a continual reminder!

What a great reminder to keep the things of the Lord continually before our eyes. The lesson has a great set of related questions:

Why do you think Moses told the people to place passages of scripture between their eyes, on their hands, on the posts of their houses, and on their gates? How would such constant reminders affect our actions? What can we do in our homes to remind us of the Lord, his words, and our covenants with him? Do the pictures on our walls, the books we read, and the movies and television shows we watch remind us of the Lord, or do they suggest a longing for the world? (Lesson 17)

There is another part of the lesson that I really like. Moses taught the Israelites that if they ever got in a battle with any of the (larger) nations around them that the Israelites would prevail and not to worry about being a smaller force because the Lord was with them. In victory, they were to burn everything they came across, which included all the buildings, idols and everything else they encountered. If they took any spoils of war and kept them, they would be destroyed. Don't do it, House of Israel (that includes us in the latter days)!

The feeling of "General Conference" is in the air

I love General Conference. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints assembles two weekends a year, in April and October, to listen to church leaders and get a full dose of Spirit for the next six months. I look forward to conference weekend for several weeks before it actually arrives. I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now.

I like to listen to talks in my car from the previous conference. I have made some attempt to keep a growing list of my favorite talks and listen to them in the car too. We used to have to buy the CDs from ldsdistribution.org, but now they put the mp3s on lds.org and I download them within hours or days and burn them to CD. I didn’t want my several years’ worth of sets to go to waste so I gave them to other people to listen to. I was happy to get back so many “thank you”s. The warm fuzzies made it all worth it!

The new signin on the church’s web site allows users to keep notes online. I’ve been marking conference talks mainly, but also making some notes in the scriptures. That came in handy one Sunday in particular. I can’t remember if I blogged about it or not, but I’ve told the story many times. One Sunday there was a mix up with the elders quorum instructor and nobody had prepared the lesson. I borrowed an iPad, accessed my notes on the conference talk and we had a nice lesson.

I love technology.

I also love that song from Naponeon Dynamite, where I got those words/lyrics.

One silly thing about scheduling General Conference is that it’s not on “the first weekend of April/October”. It’s actually on the first Sunday and the Saturday preceding it. The “numbers guy” inside of me has been looking forward to this happening for a long time. I’m sure it’s happened in my life, but I don’t remember when. I’m happy to see that it’s happening this month. Conference starts on Saturday, March 31. Woo!

Our family has a tradition for watching General Conference that we started to get the kids excited to watch it. We talk about this tradition leading up to it and Skyler has already been talking about it. What do we do? We make peanut butter popcorn and chow down as soon as the first session starts. We have usually made a double batch, but found that it’s way too much for us. That was enough popcorn to give us a treat during several of the sessions and still have some left over after Conference weekend. We have trimmed down our consumption to one batch.

Here’s the recipe. It's from our friends, T&L.

2 poppers popped popcorn, remove unpopped kernels
1/2 cup white karo syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

Cook the sugar, honey and syrup for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add the vanilla, salt and peanut butter. Drizzle over the popcorn and stir. (This is the end of the recipe. Try it. And enjoy. Thank me later! :) )

The peanut butter really stands out in this recipe. It’s probably all the sugar and corn syrup. We actually halved the sugar in the recipe and I think it’s tastier now. It was too sweet before. (The recipe listed here has the amount of sugar we use.)

I, Nephi, having been born of...

Artist: Arnold Friberg

That's how 1 Nephi 1:1 begins. It seems like such a common verse, probably for a few reasons. I've heard many people joke about starting the Book of Mormon so many times or that they lost track of where they were reading and choose to start reading from the beginning again. But there's at least one more reason why we talk about this verse and that's what this post is about.

"I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents..."

Nephi's parents were goodly because they were righteous Jews who kept the commandments and followed the Spirit. Lehi was a prophet and had visions from the Lord to know how to protect his family. He lead his family away from the impending danger that befell Jerusalem a few years later. That would have been difficult to leave the comforts of home and live in the wilderness. It would be difficult for me.

The verse continues, "...therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father."

I have always taken this verse to mean that Lehi was a good dad and wanted to teach his kids about life, the universe and everything. With that in mind, I try to teach my kids stuff that I know as well as let them learn things on their own and explore their own talents. I have a feeling that Lehi did all this and much more.

Well, this verse was in our first Sunday School lesson this year. I happened to be in Texas at the time, but I shared something that we don't often think about with this verse. It's this:

Laman and Lemuel were also born of goodly parents.

So, what happened to them? The short answer is that I don't know. The long answer also involves me not knowing. It's just interesting to see that some of Lehi and Sariah's children were obedient and others were not.

That's really all I wanted to say in this post, but it seems like it's not enough. Maybe I'll say that Nephi didn't just follow his dad into the wilderness. Here's a verse that makes Nephi seem more like us, in that he had to gain a testimony for himself.

1 Ne 2:16, 19 show that Nephi wan't born with a testimony. He sought one. Verses 17-18 show that Nephi loved his brothers and shared his testimony with them. I'm proud of Sam for listening to his younger brother. That's not easy for some people to do. He (and I'm sure he wasn't the only one) also tried to help Laman and Lemuel understand the will of the Lord. We also know there are some sisters involved here because they married the sons of Ishmael. Striving to live the gospel was a family affair. Some just did better than others.

I want to be a goodly parent and a goodly son. I am grateful my parents taught me the gospel when I was young. They must have taught me from very young. I don't have any memories like, "Ya, that's when Mom and Dad started talking about church stuff." I hope to be a goodly parent by teaching my kids gospel principles. We already talk about baptism, dating and courtship, the law of tithing, fasting, the Word of Wisdom, temple sealing and eternal life. Angie and I love it when our boys teach us their understanding.

We are all very blessed. The Lord has showered many tender mercies upon us.

Kids teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ

I love it when my kids get assigned talks in primary. Skyler is getting old enough that he can think up what he wants to say almost by himself. It's harder to get him to sit still long enough to come up with the talk than it is to get him to figure out what he wants to say.

I think this is the third time that Skyler has given a talk where we wrote it down and he read it by himself. The two previous times he wanted to write it down in a little notebook that he keeps in his scripture bag. This time he wanted to type it up. I sort of remember typing up one other one so maybe this is the fourth talk that he's done mostly on his own.

Last night we sat down at the computer together and talked about the topic, "How Nephi was blessed for choosing the right." I think it was a little harder for him to think about this topic than others, but that's ok. It just took some extra discussion about the end blessings for the choices he made, rather than talking about what he did to get those blessings.

Here is Skyler's talk. I typed it up for him, but he put all these ideas in. Angie and I both gave suggestions, but he chose what he would actually say. It was fun(ny) to hear him say stuff like, "No, I don't like that sentence so take it out" or "Change the order of those sentences." He wanted to be done a few times before the talk was long enough, but he stuck it through. I'm proud of him. Here's his talk in its entirety.

"My talk is about how Nephi was blessed for choosing the right.

"Nephi was freed from ropes because he prayed for help. His wrists were sore, but he did not complain.

"Nephi got the brass plates from Laban because he followed the Spirit. He knew that the Lord would bless him.

"Nephi was protected from his brothers by an angel because he chose the right.

"The Liahona gave him directions because he followed the prophet Lehi.

"I know the Church is true. We can be blessed by saying our prayers and choosing the right. I know that Jesus lives.

"In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Family Home Evening: New Year's Resolutions

We have family night every Monday evening. Last night we taught our boys about working on goals and personal improvement. We talked about what talents we are each good at and what we might want to work on this year. Angie felt that we should focus on improving something that we are already good at and really excel at it. Many other years we work on things we are weak at, trying to become better at something important. Both seem like good ideas to make a well-rounded person. I was actually pretty surprised at the suggestion, but it was a very great lesson and we set some really great goals.

Part of our lesson focused on saying what talents other family members have. It's great to praise others for what they bring to the family and to the world. Everyone feels special and important. It's also easy to see that we are all different. We are all created in the image of God who gave us these talents.

Then we taught the parable of the 10 talents to our boys. Jesus gave this parable to teach that we are all given different talents, or skills, and that we are responsible how we use them. We believe that we'll one day report to the Lord on how we used our talents. Here's the parable as we told it to our boys.

A rich man went on a trip for a long time. Before he left, he gave his servants some money. One servant was given five talents, the next two talents and the other one talent. The servants knew the master would come back and ask what they did with the money. The first servant worked really hard and earned another five talents. The second worked really hard and earned two more talents. The last guy was really nervous about losing his single talent and getting in trouble. He hid his talent so he could give it back when the master returned.

When the rich man returned from his trip, he asked his servants to report. Two men doubled what they had been given and were each blessed by their master. "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23). The fearful servant gave the talent back to the master. He got quite the rude awakening. He thought he would be praised for not losing the money, but heard this reply. "Thou wicked and slothful servant" (Matthew 25:26).

Ouch.

The lesson we should learn from this parable is that we have all been born with different talents (and a different number of them). We will be blessed for using our talents and we should work at improving ourselves and earning/learning more talents. Imagine how amazing it will feel to hear these words from the Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23).

The 12 Days of Christmas

For the past twelve days, our family has been the happy recipient of Christmas love and cheer from an unknown Do Gooder. We really have no idea who it is. There was a lot of sneakery and staying up late at night for them to put all the gifts on our porch without us hearing them. Angie is up late every night with Briggie and I wake up early in the morning to start my routine.

One night was a little different, though. We heard what sounded like someone tripping on our wooden porch and making a loud thump! We didn't want to run outside to see who it was and spoil the fun. A minute later there was a loud knock on our porch window.

That's odd.

I slowly rose from the couch and looked out the front door's window. There was a plate full of sugary delights. That's when we realized the purpose for the non-sneakery for one night. Those home-baked goodies would have been enjoyed by Ohioan fauna (namely, raccoons and neighborhood cats) before we found them the next morning. Nice move, Do Gooders! And well made!

Our Christmas season has been one of the best that I can remember because of the love and care shown to our family. We have, in turn, decided to help others more than we normally would have. And we tried extra hard to teach our kids that the true meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We talked about the symbols that remind us of gospel truths and signs of Christ's birth. We also taught our boys to be grateful for what gifts they do receive on Christmas morning because it won't be everything they asked for.

We are so blessed. We see the tender mercies of the Lord all around us and feel the love of...someone...doing good and spreading Christmas cheer.

It's a Good Day for Ice Cream

The coolest thing happened a little while ago with my oldest boy. He repeated something back to me that confirmed a really good habit that I've been trying to teach my kids. What he said was, "It's a good day for ice cream."

Even though my kids are young and small, I believe the two pieces of advice that older parents have given me about teaching the gospel. 1) Kids are never too young to learn and 2) out of all the things you say, you never know what will really stick in their minds. So teach them continually and begin when they're young.

Here's the habit that came back to bite me in the bum shake my hand and tell me good job: after doing service, take the boys out for ice cream.

I've been taking my boys to service projects and to help families move in/out of our ward for several years. I started taking them before I thought they could even be any positive use in the actual project. In fact, I thought it was so important for them to see service in action that I took them to activities where I would have to watch out for them and be of little use myself. It was a tough internal battle as I made that decision, but I'm glad I did it.

Now my boys are (well, my older boy is) excited to do service. A few weeks ago I was headed out to help with a move and I thought there would only be a couple people there. I only told my wife ahead of time because I didn't want my kids to go. On this particular day, we ate lunch and I got my shoes on to head out of the door before everyone else was done. My older boy asked where I was going. To my great surprise, he said, "Dad, I want to go!" Why would I say no to that? He finished up his lunch and got his shoes on.

And we were off.

I thought that I was going to be a kid watcher and not a super mover, but I was ok with that. On the way down, when my boy told me it was a "good day for ice cream," I just thought he was trying to sneak in a plug for a sugary treat. I wanted to say no, but first asked him why. "Because we always get ice cream after service!"

Wow.

Awesome.

And that's my story. Well, there is more. I have to say how complimentary everyone was of his hard work. He kept picking up big stuff and actually carrying it without tipping over or dropping anything. We even carried out a coffee table that really belonged to the apartment. Even though it was really heavy for him, he helped me in a big way. However, when we found out that it had to go back he didn't think he could handle it so I carried it back myself. It was really funny. And he did a really great job.

I believe that when we are in the service of our fellow beings, we are only in the service of our God (Mosiah 2:17).

Does anyone have a service experience that they want to share? or a gospel lesson that kids have learned and repeated back to you?