things that stay

the schedule:

july 14th- spoke in sacrament meeting, taught laurels class

july 21- taught adult sunday school

july 28- taught laurels

july 30- in charge of personal progress activity for all young women

august 4- taught youth sunday school

august 11- taught laurels

august 18- main speaker at bishop youth discussion

august 23- taught laurels
sept 1- taught primary class
september 3- in charge of laurels planning meeting
september 8- taught laurels

the past 8 weeks have been incredibly busy. not only preparing everything that is required for back to school but i have been teaching SOMETHING at church every single week. some weeks more than one thing. it was great. i truly loved it. if i'm going to be busy, i'd prefer for it to be spiritual preparation busy. i feel like the majority of my life is rather draining. that's just the nature of the beast while raising children. however, i've found that scripture study and lesson preparation are things that will never drain me. tired, absolutely. but not drained. study is a thing that stays with me. even when i'm exhausted by the time and effort that goes into preparing and understanding and pondering the direction a lesson or a talk or an activity needs to go, i'm not drained. 

for a really long time, i've allowed myself to have a bit limited in my scripture study because i do have so many young children. it was still happening but as time went on, i realized that i could be doing more. i think everyone should do as much as they can and sometimes it's just a snippet here and there everyday. in the past few years, i've found there are lots of little pockets of time in my day for scripture study via listening. 10 minutes to listen on my way to the grocery story. i used to dread listening to anything but music while running or exercising, but 2 conference talks goes by really quickly while running. if it's a weightlifting day, 5 minutes of listening while warming up and 5-10 minutes of listening while stretching equals 1 conference talk. these small efforts have compounded into an overall better feeling about my day. I AM YELLING LESS! that's something i do want to shout about! if i want something to feel better, turning to the Lord by listening to His word makes even hard things seem doable. i don't even have to be strenuously striving to glean information. oftentimes it's simply having the word on and my mind is allowed to absorb and wander to where it needs to go. there are still plenty of hard days. last week i had a day so chaotic that everything was turning into a comedy of errors. but i held it together because i had already invited the Spirit into my day. 

also, reagan gave his first talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. he wrote it himself. i did a little supervising for content. he hand wrote it on notebook paper and then i had him type it out. we printed out two copies and i brought the hand written original. i was taking no chances. we got the the chapel early enough so that he would have a chance to practice speaking slowly and distinctly and modulate his voice for a microphone. 

i will covertly take pictures in the chapel till i die. go ahead and judge me.

i was pretty nervous that there might be some last minute revelation from the pulpit but he stuck to the script and for that i was relieved. 

Hello my name is Reagan and Ive been asked to give a talk about how I feel about Jesus which is happy. Because I pray to heavenly father in the name of Jesus Christ. And I also pray to when I need help. One time I lost my favorite chick hicks car. I prayed to know where to look. Then I listened to know where to look. My mom and I looked in the backseat of my car and there it was.

 Also, I love going to young mens young mens because I do lessons with my friends as a group. We are learning about Jesus and being brave men. I can help my family with scriptures every day. Sometimes I get bored from it but It’s the right thing to do.

I have the best young men teachers.

And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

my favorite line is "how i feel about Jesus which is happy". 

Jesus makes me happy too.