A Call for Conviction

Oh, how I love The Ensign! I love that we can get a magazine every month FILLED with amazing talks, lessons, poems, songs, stories and art all about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I absolutely loved this talk by Elder Holland that was in this month's Ensign: Faith to Answer the Call. It's about pioneers, but more about having and developing faith and strength. My favorite quote:

"And so I issue a call for the conviction we all must have burning in our hearts that this is the work of God and that it requires the best we can give to the effort. My appeal is that you nurture your own physical and spiritual strength so that you have a deep reservoir of faith to call upon when tasks or challenges or demands of one kind or another come. Pray a little more, study a little more, shut out the noise and shut down the clamor, enjoy nature, call down personal revelation, search your soul, and search the heavens for the testimony that led our pioneer parents. Then, when you need to reach down inside a little deeper and a little farther to face life and do your work, you will be sure there is something down there to call upon."

Norway.

I'm so completely saddened by what has happened in Norway today. My thoughts have been turned towards Norway a lot these last few weeks as I have been fervently working on some genealogy and have discovered so much about my Norwegian ancestors. I was lucky enough to have made some amazing and dear Norwegian friends in college, and my heart just aches for them and what they must be feeling right now.

Since I first heard the news about the bombing, and then the shooting and all of the details that have been coming out about the two incidents, I keep thinking back to how I felt on September 11, and have been just aching for my Norwegian friends and their families and their fellow countrymen and how they must be feeling today.

I don't really know where I'm going with all this, I just wanted to let them all know that I'm thinking about them, praying for them, and am just praying for peace in this crazy world.

We're having a heat wave . . .

. . . a tropical heat wave! The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising (etc.)!

Seriously guys, it's crazy hot here! We've been in the mid 90s all week with humidity in the 60-70%! Don't get me wrong, I can handle my heat, but when you slap on that 60-70% humidity, it is ROUGH!

We're having something called an "extreme heat warning" or something like that, and they (whoever "they" are) are telling everyone to stay inside, drink lots of water, check on your elderly neighbors, etc. They're even opening fire hydrants all over town to help people cool off. It's kind of good that they are opening them, because if they city doesn't do it, people will just open them on their own anyway and that creates all kinds of problems (or so the local news tells us). Even our poor air conditioner, which usually does an amazing job, is struggling to keep up with the heat. We have it set at 70 and for the last couple of days it has struggled to keep our inside temperature at 72/73! Poor thing! There is just too much water in the air!

But, it's really not all that bad, and I'll take the heat and humidity over the cold and grey ANY day. The sun has been shining non-stop for a week now, which is quite the achievement for little ole' Ohio! I think it's going to be like this until Monday, and hopefully then we'll just have some normal Ohio summer weather (hot in the day, storms at night--love it!).

And until then, I'll keep singing and dancing to music from "White Christmas." :)

A visitor!

We have had a busy week this past week! Ben's mom came up for the week for a visit! Ben's dad works in Dayton, commuting every Monday morning 7 hours from their home in High Point, then working 40 hours in 4 days, and then drives back Thursday night! Talk about a long commute! Well last week, because of the holiday, he came up on Tuesday & left Friday and he brought Ben's mom up with him to spend time with us! It was so fun!

We went to the Columbus Zoo, took her to the Church historic sites in Kirtland one day, visited the Columbus Park of Roses, made a cheesecake, ate at City Barbecue (and had some Cheerwine!), had Graeter's ice cream, and generally just had a grand old time. We'd love to have her back anytime. And we'd love to have any of our family or friends for a visit any time, too!

On Saturday we went to the Church cannery/storehouse for the first time to can stuff for our own home food storage. I'd never done that before and it was SO fun! We spent about $30 and got tons of food storage. We're really excited to go back and expand on what we got this time. Every time I go to the Bishop's store house or to help with various church welfare projects, I'm always so impressed with the church's welfare system. It runs so smoothly and every time I interact with it in some way it is so easy for me to feel how inspired that program is! As a past recipient of church assistance myself, I have such a tender spot in my heart for this program!

Any way, it was just a really great experience and it's been a great week!