How Lovely was the Morning

This semester I took a religion class called Foundations of the Restoration. The class discussed the foundational events of the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We started by discussing Joseph Smith's First Vision, and moved through all the key events until his martyrdom, and the succession. We touched on hot topics like the seer stone, blacks and the priesthood, plural marriage, women and the priesthood, etc. I could spend hours writing about everything I learned in this class.

For our semester project, we were instructed to create something that captured our faith in Jesus Christ and in Joseph Smith's calling as a prophet. You are not obligated to read this post, so if you have hard feelings about either of those topics, I won't require you to read what I have to say. The purpose of this blog post is not to teach any doctrine, or explain about Joseph's life - I just wanted to share my project and a brief explanation.

For my project, I chose to compose an arrangement of a hymn about Joseph's First Vision. (click here to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing it)

The words of the hymn are as follows:
Oh, how lovely was the morning!
Radiant beamed the sun above.
Bees were humming, sweet birds singing
Music ringing through the grove.
When, within the shady woodland,
Joseph sought the God of love.
When, within the shady woodland,
Joseph sought the God of love.

Humbly kneeling, sweet appealing
'Twas the boy's first uttered prayer
And the power's of sin assailing
Filled his soul with deep despair
But, undaunted still he trusted
In his Heavenly Father's care
But, undaunted still he trusted
In his Heavenly Father's care.

Suddenly, a light descended
Brighter far than noonday sun.
And a shining, glorious pillar
O'er him feel, around him shown.
While appeared two heavenly beings,
God the Father and the Son
While appeared two heavenly beings,
God the Father and the Son.

"Joseph, This is my Beloved,
Hear Him." Oh, how sweet the words
Joseph's humble prayer was answered
and he listened to the Lord.
Oh, what rapture filled his bosom
For, he saw the living God!
Oh, what rapture filled his bosom,
For, he saw the living God!

As I composed this song, I tried to think about the words and reflect on what they mean to me. Over the course of my life I have frequently prayed to understand Joseph's role as a prophet and to come to know for myself that he was in fact called of God. It is beautiful to me to think that just as God always called prophets before, he again called a prophet in this dispensation. The only way to know if something is of God is to ask God. I have asked God for myself and have felt the witness of the Holy Ghost bear testimony to me that Joseph Smith was called as the Prophet of the Restoration. I thought about these things and tried to put that feeling into the song. There is a marvelous power in music and I hope you can feel the Spirit touch your heart too when you listen to my song.

If you would like more information, here are some links:

Who is Joseph Smith?

What is the First Vision?

What do Mormon's believe?

If you remember, you won't forget

School has been so busy this week. I had this huge research paper/project I've been working on for a month that was due last week. I've spent hours in the library reading and rereading and typing as editing... Let's just say I didn't sleep much. I'm really glad that's over. This week I only have one test so things should be a little less crazy.

For the most part, though, I am loving college. I forgot how much I love learning new things. One of my classes right now is about Literacy and Language Development. It is truly amazing to learn how children learn literacy. It's almost miraculous that their brains are able to comprehend so much when they are so young. I could study stuff like this forever. It is incredible to see how perfectly God created us.

I've been studying in the scriptures a lot about remembering lately, and what it really means to remember the Lord. I liked the quote from Elder Holland in this month's visiting teaching message in the Ensign. He says, all are invited "to join in the adventure of the earliest disciples of Christ who also yearned for the bread of life - those who did not go back but who came to Him, stayed with Him, and who recognized that for safety and salvation there was no other to whom they could ever go." The VT message also reminded me of a Mormon Message that one of my companions always talked about, one from Elder Christofferson's Daily Bread series called Pattern. (Watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMJ6ZDCAp4)

It's hard to come home and see the choices some of the people from your mission are making. It brings tears to my eyes sometimes because I know that they could be happy if they just kept living the commandments. But I have to let them have agency. All I can really do for them is love them and help them remember the Lord. In Dueteronomy 4:9 it says, "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons." Honestly, this is probably one of my new favorite scriptures about remembering. If you don't diligently keep your soul, your testimony will depart from your heart. I particularly love how it emphasizes that the best way to keep your testimony is to share it with others.

I think about those people I love, investigators, converts, less actives, returned missionaries, and how disappointed and sad I am when I watch from a distance as their testimonies depart from their hearts. I just wish they could remember. Remember those things that they knew. Remember the Spirit that they felt. Remember the covenants that they made. That "godly sorrow" I experienced as a missionary when people wouldn't change is still there sometimes.

All those people are sinning because their needs aren't being met. They just need someone to go and show them that the gospel will meet their needs and that they can come back. All it takes is a little bit of remembering. And that's what it really means when we take the Sacrament - that we're remembering all that our Savior did for us and we're promising that we will never forget. 

What does that mean? It means that we choose to be converted. We choose to always put the Lord first. We choose to act on the testimony that we have. We choose to patiently endure the hard things that come in front of us. We choose to keep reading our scriptures every day and keep praying and keep going to Church and keep our covenants. We need that daily spiritual sustenance to nourish our Spirits almost more than our physical bodies need to eat. 

I like the perspective this quote gives: 

Our relationship with the Lord, the things we know to be true, the testimonies we have, all of those things are supposed to help us become something. That's the whole purpose of the gospel - to help us become like our Father in Heaven.
I think about this in relation to my studies for school. It's important for me to remember the things I am taught and to remember the skills I learn, otherwise my education is worthless. In the same way, if I don't remember the Lord, my knowledge if Him grows meaningless. If my testimony doesn't change me, than it really isn't worth very much. 

Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave a talk in April about gratitude. He said that gratitude is the solution to all of life's ails because it forces us to remember the Lord. I won't expound on that much more, it's just good for the thought. Ask yourself - what did I do today to remember the Lord? How have I expressed my gratitude? How has my testimony changed me? And how could I help others remember the same things?

That's all.

when you are in the service of your fellow beings

This was a pretty decent week for me. I've still been doing tons of family history work. I've had some distinct spiritual impressions about my family members. It has been really neat.

Speaking of service, I've been praying to have opportunities to serve people. This has led to some unique experiences, like when the sweet Mexican man came by our apartment trying to sell fresh tamales. I got the distinct impression that he needed my money. So I bought some tamales from him. My roommates laughed at me, saying "now that you bought some he'll be back every week." They were good tamales, so I won't mind too much if he comes back, but the real point is that if you follow the Spirit, and the Lord can trust you, you will have interesting experiences because Heavenly Father will know that He can ask you to do anything. I'm not perfect at this, but I'm trying.

My roommates and I went and saw the Meet the Mormons movie. It was fantastic! I laughed, I cried, I just loved it! Encourage those you teach to see it because it is definitely a good introduction to the gospel.

I've been pondering a lot about the Lord's plan for my life. As a missionary you experience almost constant inspiration and revelation as the Spirit tells you where to go and what to say. At home it doesn't really work like that. The Spirit is always with you, but you don't need that constant guidance, so you don't have it, and that takes some getting used to. It's really different to be expected to decide on my own where to go and what to say. I've been praying a lot about my future and haven't received too many answers yet. But I loved what Elder Christofferson said in conference. To paraphrase, he said that we need to make plans so that the Lord has something to work with. In the Sunday afternoon session, Elder Godoy of the seventy said a few things about decision making, and vision. Y'all know how I feel about vision....

Anyways. There's some snippets of how my life has been.

That's all.

some attempts at reading Danish

I got one word: midterms. Whew! That's mostly over now. But let me tell you- test taking is not my favorite part of college. My schedule got a little off at the beginning of the week, and it was all downhill from there. I still haven't caught up on my sleep.

I got so much family history done this week! It's been truly amazing. I haven't had such powerful spiritual experiences since my mission. I have literally felt the Spirit guiding me to specific names and specific records. I have gathered quite a collection of names for the temple and I've learned a lot about my ancestors. I've gotten into the part of my family that's from Denmark and it's been a bit or challenging to read their records than it was for my English ancestors.

I went to the temple twice to do baptisms for some of those names. One of my converts from my mission flew to SLC for General Conference and I got to see him. We went to the temple together and I was baptized by proxy for both of his grandmothers. It was just incredible to sit in the temple with him and talk about the gospel.

We had a mission reunion. It was good to see so many people from the mission. I can't believe how quickly the time is going by! I thought my mission flew by but the past 3 months have gone by even more quickly. 

And Conference. I don't even know if there are sufficient words. I went to the Saturday morning session in the conference center with my concert and that was just great. Ashlie Metcalf and I watched the Saturday afternoon session in the Tabernacle which was also pretty neat. We rode the front runner train to Salt Lake and we realized on our way home that we had forgotten to ask someone to pick us up from the train station when we got back. We were chatting with this couple next to us, and when we got off the train they offered to give us a ride home! They didn't seem to sketchy and I didn't feel weird about it , so we accepted. Wow. People are so kind.

My favorite talk was very Elder Godoy of the seventy. I didn't get to hear all of it, but unknown that one was for me. I really need to go back and listen to it again. I'm so grateful for living prophets. How amazing that God has given us priesthood power and guides us through these HBLL servants. 

That's all.

walmart dating and other news

This was a good week in Provo. A little crazy, but good. My homework had gotten to be a little overwhelming, but that's college life for ya. I'll start off with a crazy story, then I'll tell you some spiritual stuff.

So my roommate and I went grocery shopping at Walmart. We were standing in line for me to fill my prescription and there was this Chinese guy in front of us. He looked like he was maybe mid thirties, early forties. He asked me some questions and he asked me if I was a member of the church. I said yes, and he said, oh! Members of Church of Jesus Christ are very nice, very kind people. Then it was his turn to order his prescription, so he said, I would like to continue this conversation, and walked up to the counter. Honestly, I thought he was just being polite and that he was a little confused about American culture. So we continued our shopping, and a like half an hour later we were in the cereal aisle and he came up to me and said, I was serious about continuing conversation. So we visited a bit about my mission and I was thinking to myself, this is the strangest missionary opportunity I've ever had! Then his face starts turning red and he tells me that he's sorry that he always gets a little nervous and then I'm like, dang he is going to ask me out! And he says, pretty girl like you probably seeing someone, right? And I said yes, because obviously I wasn't going to date this random man from Walmart. And then he apologized and said he hoped he didn't offend me, and he left. So I'm standing there trying to process all of that, and this old lady had heard the whole thing so she comes up to me to offer me her pepper spray. Oh gracious, it was just the strangest thing. People in Provo are crazy. 

So aside from that, wasn't the women's conference awesome? 

President Uchtdorf is the sweetest. His talk really touched me heart. I also loved what Sister Marriott had to say about how our bodies are like temples. Just beautiful. 

I've been getting into family history work. My whole mission I always wanted to be able to find names but I never had time. So lately I've been going on family search and just checking everyone for possible duplicates to try and fix my family tree. On Saturday morning my roommate and I went to the temple and did baptisms for some of her family names. I felt so strongly about a particular part of my family line, so I got on family search and started looking at them. I resolved all the duplicates and got them all sorted out and now they're sealed to all of their children, not just the one on my family line. I could really feel the mother guiding me as I found things to pull them all together. That was really neat.

So yesterday I did some more work. I found out that one of my ancestors made the clock for the Church of England, which is obviously in England. That man, William Cook, was a Methodist preacher. His daughter and son in law were the first members of that side of my family to join the church. I kept going down the line and again, felt so strongly about a particular name. As the Spirit guided me, I was able to find two entire families of people to do temple work for. It was just a beautiful experience. Y'all, the church is so true.

Anyways, that was long and drawn out. I'm excited for conference this weekend. It's going to be wonderful.

That's all.

back to school

Well y'all. This was a pretty crazy week. Honestly, I thought that coming back to real life would be  easier than missionary life. I don't know why I thought that, just somehow I believed that nothing could ever be as stressful as the mission. Wrong. I mean it was a good week and all, just a little hectic.

School is good. I've never been such a good student. No joke. I've really enjoyed learning and planning and going to class. I decided to have my own little "weekly planning sessions" so to speak, mostly just to give myself a moment to sit down and figure out when the heck I'm going to do all my homework. So far it has been a successful choice. I spent several hours on Saturday getting ahead on some of my readings for my classes. Work was good too. I love my job. Seriously, there is nothing better than working with students all the time. I loved loved LOVED being able to get to know so many people this week.

But life wouldn't be normal if there wasn't a little crazy thrown in there, right? Ashlie's car overheated. Like a lot of times. So we had all kinds of adventures pulling over on the side of the road, turning off the engine at stop lights, spending 30+ minutes at a gas station, going to Auto Zone late at night in really nice clothes, turning on the heater and smelling burning rubber, walking 12 blocks at 10pm to turn in our rent, etc. She found a quick fix for it this week until she can take it to be repaired.

One of my companions came to visit me. We had a blast! We didn't even do anything - just went to a really great pizza place and sat on my couch and talked. I ran into some friends from freshman year on campus and we sat outside of the library for an hour just talking about our missions.

On Friday night, my roommates and I went to the Provo Rooftop Concert Series. I didn't even know that thing existed. It was a great experience, but not quite as much of a dance party as we were looking for, so we left after the first band and went to the Guru Block Party for a couple of hours. We stopped by Sodalicious on the way. I'm being exposed to all kinds of Provo culture that I didn't even know existed. We got home at 2 am and I was so tired. My feet and legs were aching from all that dancing. I think I'm dance-partied out for the rest of my life.

Now that I've updated you on all my experiences, here's something I've been thinking about a lot. At the end of my mission I wrote/talked/though a lot about something my first mission president's wife said - "You fought hard for the growth you gained on your mission. Don't go home and go back." I've been pondering about what that means, particularly as I've considered what things I want to let back in to my life and what things I want to leave out. I think that's been the hardest part of coming home. It's hard to stay changed when everyone expects you to be who you used to be.

It makes me crazy when people tell me, "oh you'll get used to that," or "you'll be normal soon." Because what if I don't want to be over it? And what if this is normal for me? I mean it's not like I have it all figured out right now, but I already know that there are some parts of the girl I was before that I don't actually want to have in my life anymore. That girl was so unhappy and I have such different priorities now. Gracious. There are a lot of choices to make. But I'm starting to understand why returned missionaries are so "awkward" so to speak. Part of it is that I forgot to to act in certain situations, and part of it is that I'm uncomfortable, but most of it is just that I'm different.

I read this awesome conference talk this week. I started reading all the conference addresses from the year I was born. This one is by Glenn L. Pace in the October 1992 General Conference. (Here is the link.) My favorite part is this quote: "I believe the time has come for all of us to feast on the fruit of our own testimony as opposed to the testimony of another person. The testimony of which I speak is much deeper than knowing the Church is true. We need to progress to the pint of knowing we are true to the Church. We also need to increase our capacity to receive personal revelation. It is one thing to receive a witness that Joseph Smith saw God and Christ. It is quite another to have spiritual self-confidence in your ability to receive the revelation to which you are entitled." Wow. Put that together with this quote from David A. Bednar: "The essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ entails a fundamental and permanent change in our very nature made possible through the Savior's Atonement. True conversion brings a change in one's beliefs, heart, and life to accept and conform to the will of God and includes a conscious commitment to become a disciple of Christ...Conversion is an offering of self, of love, and of loyalty we give to God in gratitude for the gift of testimony." (and here is the link to that one)

So I've been thinking a lot about who I really am. Which changes did I fight for on my mission that I want to keep? What part of me came from becoming more deeply converted to the Lord? What offerings of self do I need to give back to my Father in Heaven because of the testimony that He has given me?

That's all.

#reallife

Coming home from a mission is strange. People keep asking me about it, and all I can really say is that everything is weird. Everything. But nothing is at the same time. It doesn't make any sense at all, and I guess that's okay.

I changed my blog. That shouldn't be too shocking though, because almost everything about my life has changed these days. But after a year and half of weekly blogging, I wanted to write about my post mission life. Partially so everyone could keep reading about my life, partially to keep a record of my experiences. Things aren't as exciting outside of the mission. Life goes on at a slower pace and things have more of a predictable rhythm. 

This was a good week. I moved back to Provo two weeks ago. Man. It was hard hard HARD to leave my family again. Y'all. Those people mean the whole entire world to me. But it's good to be back. I went back to work right away. We had 54 hours of training. (yep, count 'em) It was a wonderful reminder of how much I LOVE my job. Seriously, I have the best job in the world. It is such a wonderful experience to focus on meeting the needs of others. There are all kinds of parallels between mentoring and mission life, and that's great. 

After all that training, I went to NSO (New Student Orientation). I met all of my students and learned all the things I had forgotten about BYU. That's been a strange thing for me, actually - realizing how much about college and work I have completely and totally forgotten. I crammed so much gospel knowledge in my brain that there just wasn't room for anything else, I guess. It's almost worst than being a freshman because everyone expects me to know what is going on and I've pretty much forgotten everything I know. Anyways, sorry about the tangent...NSO. It was good. I wrote down some deep thoughts. One of my favorite things was a quote from Karl G. Maeser that is on the wall in the Education in Zion exhibit on campus (this exhibit talks about the history of religious education in the Church and at BYU). The quote said, "Precisely as you partake of the Spirit, so will you progress in your studies."

This has given me a lot to think about. I've been making vision and goals and plans for my semester, and thinking about the things that really matter. Largely I've been thinking that I should be much more focused on learning than on grades. I love the idea that they presented while we were in the exhibit - education is for eternity. What an amazing idea! I mean it's the truth, right? The Lord encourages us to seek learning out of the best books (D&C 109:7). 

Classes start on Tuesday. I'm slowly remembering the parts of college life that are less than glamorous, aka studying, tests, homework. I hope I'm ready for all of this again. Sometimes I still wonder why it wasn't a better idea to take a semester off and spend time with my family. But I prayed about it a lot and this is where Heavenly Father needs me to be.

Church was good today. One of the speakers in sacrament meeting talked about covenants. She talked about how we have to be changed to be in the presence of God, and then noted that covenants are the steps we take to change ourselves to be prepared to be in the presence of God. She encouraged each of us to spend time each day thinking about how we can more fully live our covenants. That's an interesting thought. How do my covenants change me? Well they should make me something different. They should make me like my Father in Heaven. There's this quote from John Taylor that I keep in my journal. He says, "When men say unto us, you are not like us, we reply - we do not want to be. We want to be like the Lord."

Ashlie and I went to the temple yesterday. Beautiful. Just beautiful. I love the temple. It always makes me think of my mission. It's so wonderful to just sit and feel the Spirit and remember what really matters. I'm so grateful I got to be a missionary. So grateful. Those experiences will forever change my life.

That's all.