Sometimes You Read Words that Change Your Life

Sometimes you read words that change your life. Sometimes you read words that you know should be changing your life, but you're just not "in the mood" or "ready" to take those things to heart. 

I think what gets me to the point where something can really move or influence me is the personal meaning behind it. For example if someone very meaningful to me says or shares something with me it can have a really big impact. I also think we can be influenced when people we don't know well share things with a sincere heart, and that strikes a certain chord due to our personal situations. 

Well I wanted to share something that one of my students wrote to her family/friends in a letter. She was one of my interns this last school year, and she is currently serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She is in Provo, UT for a few weeks to learn Mandarin Chinese in preparation to teach in Taiwan. In her letter she wrote this:

"Obedience brings blessings. But EXACT obedience brings miracles."

Not only does this girl have a special place in my heart as one of my dear friends, but I think the previous day at church helped spiritually prepare me to hear these words. The lesson in church was about reading the Book of Mormon. I was gently reminded the importance of making scripture study a PRIORITY in your life and not letting the adversary trick you into thinking, "I'm too tired, I don't have time, it's boring, etc." 

The fact that we can CHOOSE to be obedient, which WILL bring us blessings (or miracles) is huge! What an amazing opportunity for us to have faith and live life with a positive attitude, knowing that God loves us and is looking for the opportunity to soften our hearts and teach us more about his Son. Being exactly obedient to God [or regular obedient ;) ] is a sacrifice. I repeat. It is not easy, and requires work, commitment and sacrifice. But I believe it will always be worth it. 

As we sacrifice all to be obedient to the Lord, we can expect blessings to come in HIS way. And I trust that His way is always what I need, even if it's not what I want. I know Jesus Christ loves each of us, and that we are all children of God. I believe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth today. Its teachings have brought me closer to God, and I am happy because of my testimony and the blessings of obeying His gospel.

Love you, thanks for reading. 

Some Times Are Hard

It's late. I should be sleeping or attempting to sleep. But things are on my mind.

Life has been hard the last few weeks. It's not bad, just hard. Leaving my family, friends, job, house, weather, mountains, the things I'm used to... I'm trying to keep a good attitude here in MN, in fact I'm enjoying new friends and fun things to do. But there's just something so hard about change, about differences.

The first Sunday we were in MN, while I was getting ready for church, there were two songs that got me all mushy/holdback tears/emotional whoa-ness. The first was Josh Groban's "You raise me up so I can stand on mountains...." In my head I thought, "Oh my heck... I miss the mountains... I love this song... it reminds me of Brock... I miss my family... I hope people like me at church."

Well the very next song that came on Pandora was the LDS hymn that goes "As I have loved you, love one another... by this shall man know, ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another." It reminded me that God loves me and my family, and hasn't stopped watching over us. I need to keep on living His gospel and not give up even though things are hard right now.

So, on top of those two songs making me feel like, "I know, I know I need to have a good attitude and be happy that we are on this new adventure..." the prior night (the first night we slept in our townhouse) Brock accidentally pulled up this talk by Neal A. Maxwell (an Apostle and previous Quorum of the Twelve member).

OK. Time out. Read/listen/watch the talk. Yeah. Spiritual punch in the face of awesome, totally needed, exactly for me kind of words. The talk is called, "Willing to Submit". Here is the one quote from his talk that I think sums up how I took it:

Just as the capacity to defer gratification is a sign of real maturity, likewise the willingness to wait for deferred explanation is a sign of real faith and of trust spread over time.

His talk is about spiritual submissiveness and how we need to continually submit our will to Heavenly Father and trust in him. I feel like that quote about was such a great message for me and has really helped me over the past week to hang on and know that there is a wonderful, smile envoking reason that Brock, Blakely and I are here in Minnesota.

Well. I'm trying to not be up too late. So I'll end here. But there are my thoughts. Maybe they will leave me in peace so I can sleep. We are going to the lake tomorrow!!

First Week in MN

So much has happened since we've been here in MN. It's kind of hard to write it all... I should have written a little each day. Let's see what I can recall:

Thursday - I arrived with Blakely, we stayed at a hotel that night since our "stuff" wasn't being delivered till the next morning. Slept, horribly.

Friday - Moving in!! It was definitely hectic since the owners decided to wait till we moved in to paint the ENTIRE house. Literally every wall in the house got painted. So that meant that there were 2 moving guys and about 8 painting guys running around. The movers couldn't move everything into the house since the painters were in the way, but they did the best they could and left the rest in the garage. Thank goodness for Brock, because I literally can't lift nearly any of the boxes due to a tiny human who has not been named yet.

Saturday - unpacking, unpacking, unpacking.

Sunday - Church! Our church building is about 15 minutes south of us in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. You pass a bunch of fields and stuff to get there. I'm pretty sure you can see Wisconsin from the drive (hee, hee). Church was super. Sacrament meeting was awesome - there were three talks that were all really great. People talked about family history and temple service and things. Then the bishop got up after all the remarks and basically said, "Thanks for your talks, I really like the part where you illustrated that sometimes people are brought into our lives at specific times for specific reasons"... and I swear he looked right at me when he said that. I remember the song from Wicked was stuck in my head, "There are people who come into our lives..." hashtag meant to be? Maybe ;)

MacKenzie (insert last name when I remember it) came up and introduced herself. She was SUPER nice and awesome. She is married with four kids, they invited us over that night for ice cream. She also took Blakely to nursery with her two year old Amelia, and Blakely walked right in and didn't cry once. #proudmommy

It was the 5th Sunday so Brock and I stayed together the rest of the meeting. Sunday School made me really excited to (hopefully) get a calling, and the combined 3rd hour meeting was really good. The bishop talked about temples. Also, during that meeting Brock introduced us and it was fun to hear people say funny things like, "Man these guys are perfect - we didn't have to move them in or anything!"

Monday -Brock's first day of work!! Wahoo!! It's about a 10 minute drive to work (15 with traffic) and I think things went really well. Brock doesn't say much about much of anything BUT I did get really good vibes from him. I think he's really going to like his job, especially when he gets into the groove and starts to really get comfortable.
I was super productive while Brock was gone, unpacking all sorts of things and getting things put away Heck I even made dinner (if you don't already know this about me, I do not like to cook, I like to eat... there is a big difference).

Tuesday - Yet another productive day for me and awesome day for Brock.

Wednesday - crazy loud thunder/lightning storm with some slight productivity at home. We got the internet today too which is a  l i f e s a v e r  for me. #momtrepreneur

Thursday - Blakely and I took Daddy to work, hung out with MacKenzie and kids, did a little shopping, and you know just had fun :)

So far there's not really much to complain about, other than things are different (why is this bathroom counter taller than our at home? why don't we have more drawers in the kitchen? what's up with everything being not Utah and not exactly what we are used to? OH WELL MAYBE it's because it's all different... ya sillies.) and if things being different is our biggest problem right now, I feel pretty blessed.

Love and peace.

Nat.

PS. Lots of pics, video, etc to come.