Trek

When I was about 14 my stake went on a Trek through the Virginia mountains.
I hated it.
It was hot, sticky, hard, and everyone smelled SO bad.

During the trek all I can remember is how hungry I was.
We're talking starving - i'm an eater.
One night we each got an individual packet of tuna, and four crackers.
After the trek I had trouble eating apples and peanut butter crackers...since that is what we lived off of.

I've never been so happy to take a shower.
Or not live out of a bucket.
And use a real bathroom.
And have a real bed.
And eat fried chicken.

I. Am. Selfish.

In class we read Death Strikes the Handcart Company by Parley P. Pratt and it really made me realize how easy my trek was in comparison.
Really, how easy my life is.

No one in my family died - no one died at all, I didn't go through frozen rivers, I didn't have to kill my food, when my three days was over I got in the van and drove back home.

I am a firm believer that our Heavenly Father gives us things we can handle, which is why I was born in this century. I can deal with the drugs, sex, and corruption going on in our world - but ask me to trek across the United States? No thanks.

I have so much appreciation and love for the people who were able to do this so that we can now be free and be spread throughout the United States.
It takes special kind of people to be able to make it through that, bad attitude or not.
Death, hazardous weather, war, and constantly being worried.
They made it.
We made it.

Opening Day

We're reading a story about a young man who had gone on his mission in Germany and while in Germany he say so many people killed that he decided he would never go hunting again.
Except, he had planned a hunting trip with his dad right after he returned from his mission.
Hunting was what he did with his dad, it was their boding experience.

It made me think of what bonding experiences I have with my parents, and do these things agree with what we're taught through the church?

We use to go on the boat with our friends on Sundays and just ride around the lake and talk as a family and as friends. Is that not keeping the Sabbath Day Holy? We're spending family time together, we're enjoying nature. Is that bad? Its things like these that are these gray areas about the church.

Whipple's - They Did Go Forth

We had to read this story They Did Go Forth by Maurine Whipple.

Real easy read, real good story.

Its about this wife, Tildy, is struggling to provide for her family and her sick baby. 

She doesn't have a lot of food, or warmth, but she tries her best to do what shes supposed to.

Her husband is also serving a mission in England.

In part of the story she questions whether or not it was good for her husband to go on a mission because she is pregnant with another child. She had a hint of bitterness in her heart but she tried to not let it take over. 

She is reading to her children out of the Book Of Mormon when a man appears in her house. 

Her baby is healed and she goes to get a fresh loaf of bread to feed her child.

Her bread has disappeared, along with the man. She figures that he has taken the bread along with the napkin it was wrapped in and she searches around outside to thank him.

She never finds him.

Meanwhile, in England, her husband kneels down in prayer and asks Heavenly Father to please send them some food because they are starving. As soon as he gets up and walks forward he kicks something on the ground. It is a loaf of bread wrapped in a beautiful napkin. 

Our Heavenly Father works miracles.

I've had some trouble connecting with anything we've read in class thus far, until this piece.

Heavenly Father has personally appeared in my house and blessed a family member with full health but I have seen his hand in other ways.

This past October my dad was diagnosed with an auto immune disease called, Transverse Myelitis. It causes his own body to attack his spinal cord. It all started with some back pain and within 72 hours he could no longer walk, he couldn't use to bathroom, and he couldn't feel anything below his hips. There is no medication for this except to pump him full of steroids and hope for the best. Since everything happened so fast the Doctors didn't expect him to really make any kind of progress healing wise. My dad, who a week before was carrying a tree through a forest and rock climbing, could no longer walk or stand on his own.  He was luckily accepted to try treatment at a rehab center specifically for people with spinal cord injuries, they expected him to stay there for a month at the least. He was out of there in eleven days. 

This was a miracle. We had a lot of fasting and praying from out families, our wards, relatives, people we didn't even know. My dads name was put of countless temple prayer lists, employees from his work even joined in and helped me family with whatever they could. My dads recovery was truly a miracle, just like Tildy's baby being healed and her husband being fed was. 

Miracles can happen.

ENGL 3780

I'm taking a Mormon Literature class this semester, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.
For our final project we either have to write and keep up with a blog all semester about the things that we read, or write a final paper and submit it to a Mormon magazine.
So heres my blog.
Enjoy.