I Trekked the South Mountain Challenge

Cedar Ridge Trek 2014

Parent Discussion Challenge Topics

March 19, 2014   Wed. night--Pretrek FHE

A mountain of buckets and sleeping bags filled the cultural hall the night before we departed for our historical reinactment of the handcart pioneers trek across the United States to the West. 

The youth arrived buzzing with excitement.  We introduced Ma’s and Pa’s and began the challenge of blending families--the first being what would become our surname.  The family name, selected by the youth, and reflecting our ancestral heritages was crucial to achieving unanimity.  The Rockefellers, Ripleys and MacCalters, won out.   

 We broke out into families and got to know each other.  One family asked how were each of them pioneers? What is our purpose in the Lord’s plan? We volunteered for family role assignments to fulfill what the prophet advises--to fit in we need a purpose, and a friend.  And we needed another challenge, so we were all given a heavy baby to symbolize the small and innocents on the trek. Ask about our baby's name and how it was decided.

March 20, 2014   Thurs. morning 7 a.m.  Pickup, bandanas and travel to trek site

·       In our morning meeting, Bro. Watts showed us a shawl carried across the plains by his ancestor--the young girl, Mary Elizabeth Rollins in Independence who rescued the book of commandments pages from the mob.  After we arrived out past Henryetta, the youth were responsible for packing their personal buckets and sleep material onto handcarts.  We decided that our super youth needed this super challenge and still some trek parents had to simply walk away as they observed the potential packing failures.  
      
      As incredible as it seems, they piled all their buckets and mountains of sleep gear into a five by five cart, stacked it up and then covered and roped it.  When we walked that first day, the loads did shift and carts... excreted.   But, first day packing failures are great training.    Some families tore a Title of Liberty, wrote their name and flew it on a pole.  Carrying a pole became the challenge to some walkers as they looked for incentives to keep up.  

      Admittedly many of the challenges on this trek were man-ufactured--created to challenge the youth in difficult situations and crafted to create discussion and to push the youth out of their comfort zone to seek spiritual guidance.  They had to learn how the pioneers turned to the Lord so they could test His strength in their/our own personal trials.  

Yet, some of the trials were accidental.   The boxes of food were loaded but at lunchtime, one box was just gone.  We did not plan it, but when the kids were told of the situation in pioneer parlance, “that one family was thus challenged” the youth rallied, combined their stores and set into motion a lunch line and delivery system that was marvelous.   Ask about the pioneer story of miracle of the shoes or the pie in the road.  Miracles happen.

·       Our youth worked together coordinating cart-pulling duties all on their own.  I explained that our family would have extra challenges with our dozen orphans that the other companies did not and that our older bro and sis would have to step up.  They had to forge ahead like many true pioneer children did as parents fell behind caring for others or perishing.  

Pa and I fell behind that first day, sometimes far, far behind as the two of us built a trust relationship for the challenge that our two weaker trekkers would face ahead.  In that first day, there was talk of illness, of calling for the truck and talk of giving up and each time youth rescuers would step in, add encouragement and even one youth, the youngest, and shortest offered to take the youth’s biggest pack. 

      Uplifting and pertinent conversation. There was  only one incidence of  the youth interacting about worldly issues (I asked one youth to discuss videogames with another to take his mind of the misery and they do mesmerize and take the mind off the current miserable task).  Otherwise, the walking conversations were to be focused on history, comparisons and personal live challenges.

      Each individual upped their personal trial level and we parents were encouraged to allow it.  Some youth stepped it up (ha pun!) and initiated a barefoot challenge to authenticate their experience.   Wow. When one walker twisted an ankle, these same youth improvised and perched the injured atop a precarious pile.  That’s what the pioneers did.  It was the story of the woman who pulled her husband the sixteen miles up Rocky Ridge that helped the youth understand that this could only have been accomplished with the help of angels. Thereafter, packing plans included that potentiality.

        It was truly a vision of the promised land that the youth experienced when at the days end we parked at the shores of what was to be their Sweetwater or Platt River crossing challenge.  Ask about that evening, and the success of the soothing sand/water activities.   The topic of conversation was “What is your Trek Trial?”  Our beach devotional was insightful.  It was about then that the youth voted to limit my devotions to morning, noon and night.  After all the stories, they marveled that any pioneers ever survived.

      That night was the terrific stew/spoon challenge—again planned only by the Lord, but inventiveness and sharing again prevailed.  Ask about Zane’s bark spoon.  Again, no complaining.  Ask how your youth adapted.

     The potential for crossing the river challenge was deeply felt.  The youth sent out explorers to test the depths, as they brainstormed how to make it easier.  There was talk of dumping buckets and attaching them as ballast to float across.  The group packed the next morning with purpose and dressed in water shoes, preparing well.  When they were told it was too treacherous, their mental planning served them well for the next challenge.        

       The immediate mustering of the men for the battalion challenge was emotionally overwhelming for all of us.  They left for battle still in their worst water shoes, and as the male priesthood presence exited (not period authentic as not all the men left,) the women experienced the lack thereof.  

      Ask your youth about the survivor guilt these men must have felt as they were government funded, fed and clothed.  The discussion and comparison to current day was deep and impactful to all of us.  Ask about the boys watching in silence and difficulty of them allowing the girls to test their own strength and endurance in the women’s pull.  Ask girls about the discussion that sometimes we will put our spouses on the spiritual wagon, and sometimes vice-versa. For the women, the stops for prayer, (once kneeling) along our journey was significant.  We increased our trust in the Lord.  Sometimes when we feel more bodies would be better, prayer works best.  

 At times, in spite of best planning, the Lord’s small challenges continued.  Ask about the jug water challenge, unplanned but it fit well with our own 4 oz. biscuit challenge.  Even when the youth saw the extra rations in the box and knew that the food challenge would end, they stepped up to the spirit of the challenge and tested their own limits.  They chose to either eat, share or pocket their stores and then pulled harder to reexamine their own endurance.

That evening upon reaching camp with minimal stores, they still pitched camp, and joined enthusiastically in all the authentic activities prepared to coincide with stories of the true pioneer challenges.  The deprivation hunger challenge served it’s purpose and not one complained about it as they explored their own personal spiritual starvation.

.  Ask your youth about games:  the blind guide game, the boy/girl wagon pull, and the three-legged jump. There was some small murmuring about feeling at their peak for competition, but after the Joseph Smith stick pull, the guys and girls proved they can survive fasting deprivation and with the strength of the Lord, it is possible to endure and excel!

·       Ask about the afternoon rescue party who brought fresh baked bread and three cookies each to us. When the group finally opened the stores, the food was even more appreciated.  Ask about the second wave rescuers whose dutch oven dessert included three or four delicious choices and ice cream.

·       It was here that the group met one of its hardest social challenges, dancing.  We hoedowned, Virginia Reeled and learned three line dances.  Aside from a few, all participated and enjoyed themselves.

      The firesites and vignettes added much spiritual depth to the trek, the sacrifice of their pie, the Indian encampment, the deceased family complete with bagpiper and  Hudson, our three year old child actor portraying the deceased, who did not step out of character, and Jim Bridger telling them not to go.  President Fox speaking of trials building strength and Bishop advising “Find Joy in your Journey,” regardless how arduous.  Ask what they learned about themselves in each of these situations--particularly when two babies of our company died and one adult merely disappeared.  They learned like the pioneers, that they could do hard things.

·         Break-feasts were the bounty.  Fruit, scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, biscuits, sausage gravy, juice milk; we ate like royalty in the mornings and enjoyed quick and tasty lunches on the trail—like our ancestors we never went hungry as we focused less on sustenance and more on the feasting of the Spirit.  

      Each night the youth set up their own camp, prepared for any bad eventuality (I promise I did not once say Indian raid at night-- that was totally camp gossip. Well done! whoever started that.)  Each morning they broke camp and packed again.  By day two the handcarts were packed tight and strong!  This challenge promised initial failure but the process of thinking and packing stimulated their pioneer spirit and the resulting success made their next challenge even more do-able.  

      We were all changed by this experience, and this was best demonstrated by the change in our most challenged walkers who by the second day were discussing how they might improve, how to gain a second wind, challenge themselves, and by the third day even the first day’s weakest were pulling the cart—in the impromptu single cart challenges.  Go Andrew the Ox!    The youth stepped up to challenges we couldn’t even imagine for them.

We Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked and walked, and walked, and walked.  Even when the youth got that we were retraipsing trail to extend the experience, there was no grumbling.  There was joy in the journey and we became grateful for the journey of our forbearers who persevered as an example for us so we could gain the strength and testimony from their journey. More than once it was mentioned that they did their trek for us—in a literal and figurative and spiritual sense.  Bishop once told us that Family History creates resilient teens.  Knowing about others who faced greater difficulties and then experiencing a taste of that challenge make life-altering changes  for these youth.

And then it was over.   I watched as the white flags waved and the trek ended and the teens relished time to hug parents but then felt the need to immediately return back again to their trek brothers and sisters in regret and sorrow, taking a moment to adapt to the return to reality.  Continuity in our ward family was just what our youth needed and what they came to yearn for.  They were still filled with reluctance to give up the greatness that these life-altering experiences offered them.   

This was reaffirmed when the next morning I received a lengthy text from a teen.  “I miss trek.  I want to wake everyday with the excitement and enthusiasm for the thrill of a new spiritual experience.  Help me!  What can I do now?  Do you have ideas for service projects or challenges for me?  I can’t give up this feeling.  I want the Spirit with me all the time.  I want more.” 

They can do hard things and with enough challenge, they will Find Joy in The Journey.  

My Practically-Perfect-In-Every-Way Public Schooler, is Why I Homeschool.

I have a valedictorian, college-graduated, successful daughter who is a shining example of public school system success.  She excelled in the top ten percent.  My darling, wonder child led an exemplary high school life and surrounded herself with a social group of great kids with diverse interests that also were dedicated to “achievement.” 

She is my impetus for home schooling her sibling. 

 I admit, it was very heady to watch her success and to claim a little of that accolade for being “the good parent.”    From the top looking down, it does look like the challenge of scaling the lofty peaks is preferable to the trials of the underachiever. 

Her life adventure was well rounded, not only in academia, but in sports as a swimmer, with community service,  involved in the arts; a classically trained pianist, she wrote for the city paper, learned four years of French, traveled to Europe, excelled in vocal music in honor, state, and national choirs and was even a soloist.  

 In her climb to excel, she took five AP courses every year, graduated valedictorian from one of the state’s best high schools, and missed a perfect ACT score by only two points.  

She attended and graduated college on a full scholarship as an English major with excellent grades--finishing in five years, in spite of spending two years abroad, living in Hong Kong and learning Cantonese.

What a success right?    

She is why I home school her sibling. 

It’s senior year in college, the very last semester and she calls home, “Mom, I am an excellent student and a great tutor.  My professors love me, they write accolades to me and they beg me to join their graduate programs.  What now?”  She had reached it, the apex—the highest point and the view from that precipice can be daunting.  Where does one go from the top?

I saw it coming—this cliff.  When counselors in high school viewed her transcripts, they brushed aside her concerns about the future and said, “You can do anything.”  What they neglected to say was, “But, you can’t do everything.”  

No one ever offered her the vision that successful scholarship is not about momentary academia, but about finding your lifelong passion and pursuing it.   

She clarified her dilemma, “Mom, I’ve lived life to excel at the test, and when I’m no longer being graded, how will I gauge my worth?" She anguished, "Is my only choice more school, and if so in what?”   

So the Masters degree search began and time and time again she was told by wise professors, “If this is what you want to do,  go do it and don’t waste two more years in class preparing to do it.”  

Finally, one wise professor said, “Today’s assignment is to skip school and dedicate the time to something you really enjoy. Then return and report.”  That event sent her down a new path.  When I called the next week to see how class went she responded, “Oh, I skipped this week too.  There was this idea that I’m interested in exploring …” 

She got it, finally, and she began to search for the vision, her passion, her mission.  Tutored by mentors, she dived into the study of achievement vs. education in America.  It was her exploration of the fallacies of academia that opened my eyes to the real problem in education. 

It is in part through her tutelage, that I began to understand the other“FAILING 90 PERCENT” in a educational system that stifles creativity, discourages imagination and promotes a false sense of achievement.  What if her path had lead directly to her passion before four (no, eight) years were wasted in a fruitless search for false achievement in the guise of conformity.  How far could she have excelled?  

Admittedly it prepared her well for her college success—that of learning how to please professors.  She will be able to please bosses too, but what else could she have accomplished if creativity not conformity were her goal?  What could America be with youth like that? 

All this happened, just in time for my last child, a boy who was finally succeeding at education by sitting down, shutting up and shutting off.  He had become proficient at the test and by middle school, his early passion for creativity, ingenuity and thinking outside the universe was gone.   He was finally excelling at learning what-- not how-- to think. 

 I saw the vision of a couple more years of this fruitless trek and then he would be forced to opt out for his own sanity.   With the Oklahoma public school drop-out rate doubling this year from last, when I do the math, that is a public-school fail.   

With our daughter’s encouragement, my husband and I are working with our son to craft an alternative education—the kind that identifies personal genius, encourages ultimate creativity and inspires greatness.  

Our son now seeks purpose, which promotes the passion to pursue his interests and that encourages a true scholar education.

*  *  *

Just yesterday, I received a note from a young doppelganger of my daughter.  She is offended by my comments on social media about the public schooling failings in America.  She has done as most youth do and personalized my comments about the public school reform. ("It’s all about me," is a typical teen thought process.)    

Let me clarify.  I engage in civil dialogue, never once do I disdain a student, teachers nor their dedication to teaching.  But I cannot stand back knowing what I know and seeing the failure from every angle, top to bottom and from both sides.  

We must have a broader vision for the good of America; we must become better at a brighter educational experience for everyone.   

Zombie to Warm Body: Our Transition to Homeschooling

Last week I finally saw the movie Warm Bodies.  It was an assignment for my homeschooler—that he find and be prepared to discuss the thematic elements of the movie as it relates to Shakespeare.  

(Advanced work really—assigned to my daughter’s college class, Shakespeare in Film, but as homeschoolers, we supersede our eighth grade curriculum--often.)

In the film, the zombie teen is restored to human form.  The premise was not new to my husband nor I because we’d seen just such a change in our own son.  In the past year, our Zombie child morphed into a more self-directed teenager with greater confidence in his own talent and abilities—a phenomena nearly as incredible as that in the movie! 

It began last year when my husband and I pulled our pre-teen student out of one of our state’s best public schools.  He had become a problem.  I don’t mean at school, because over the past nine years he had finally perfected “normal studenthood.”    

He would consume copious amounts of information and produce admirable hoards of paper and his teachers were thrilled that he could finally sit still and shut up.

It was our problem.  When we recognized that our potential inventor/engineer had adapted by turning off his inventive mind to meet the expectations of a conventional education we panicked.  He had adapted a little too well and excelled at sitting still, staring blankly at the wall and uttering banal inanities.  ZOMBIE!  Dinner conversations were limited to a serving of, “I don’t know,” with a side of “Nor do I care.”  

The straw that shoved the camel through the needle’s eye was when his homeroom teacher said, “To help your son be more successful, I recommend that you come in each day after school and preview each of his six teacher’s assignments on their boards to make certain he has all the details of the work written down and then go to his locker and make sure he has all his books and papers necessary to complete the work at home. AND I DID IT!  For a week, then it dawned on me that for years I had been schooling during all of our home time and that home schooling full-time might take less time.    So, we left school with the hope that if we do this, he may “at least finish high school.”  What a dim view of his greatness.  

Instead we were granted unexpected benefits as we unwittingly set in motion five changes that modified the ZOMBIE child.  SKIP TO THE END if you are rushed to lasso answers amidst a whirlwind.    

Zombie Strategy #5  

SLEEP:  Rising at the crack of dawn to stumble to a bus that leaves one hour and fifty minutes before school starts.  Lack of sleep is the number one problem interfering with child learning, just ask any educator.   Hence the sunken dark circles and the vacuous Zombie stare.

Those wasted hours of bus time are about how long we spend completing our book-learning.  Now we have actual leisure time for his anti-zombie training, i.e., scouts, piano, robotics, tae kwan do...

Zombie Strategy  #4  

PURPOSE:     There can be nothing more difficult for a teacher than struggling to create interest in a subject with a ZOMBIE.  Until a youth can take power over their own education, forced learning remains an instrument of torture—for the child and the adult.  Then at least two hours of homework drudge were added on to the end of an already learning-deficient school day.

Right now my son splits Math Mondays between coding classes, (codecademy.com) and college algebra (udacity.com).  Many of these on-line courses offer free certification to students upon completion. 

Zombie Strategy #3

 

DE-STRESS:  Educators know stress inhibits learning in children.  And thus develops the callous sense of self preservation so apparent in Zombieland.

Herd learning is a schedule of strict classes on a tight schedule, of time consumed by the classmate who should be the subject of  (not a group member in) the psychology project.  After which, the teen then lumbered across campus in the seven minutes allotted.  He bypassed the locker book exchange and yet without text, still only staggered into the classroom by the skin of his teeth.  If he arrived late and slammed into a closed classroom door, he was rewarded with a half-hour long after-school detention with the same babbler from psychology class.  

We have gifted that teacher with less stress and that classmate with greater personal attention as his teacher now instructs only 149 students daily. 

Zombie Strategy #2 

CUSTOMIZATION OF EDUCATION TECHNIQUES:   Homeschooling relieves the burden of pressure when a child is not yet brain ready and prevents the schism in the parent/child relationship created by that failed expectation.

  Freed from the bounds of teaching with a text to a test, homeschooling offers classical learning in the world of Platonic (stories) and Socratic (questions) education through virtual situations, simulations and infinite questions.  Both are more effective than learning by rote repetition, lackluster lectures, and wearisome worksheets.  My rapidly morphing teen is learning how to think, not thoughtlessly consume and regurgitate.   In a workforce of ZOMBIES, his leadership skills will be invaluable.

Development or Drills?    I should own the patents to every math, science and reading skill-builder  known throughout the history of man. I had no inkling of developmental readiness because in public education, all children must progress the same--together, with none left behind—a common core.   He and I fought-taught spelling utilizing every culinary tool from soup to nuts and I promise you, Zumba’s got nothing on the athletic gyrations of a mom-bod in full-out alphabet spell.

SOCIETY:  No more school lines, a half-hour-long waiting zombie-like to shuffle into the restrooms alone (the new safety rule at school)—all part of that cool school social thing that home school deprives him of.   We don’t miss that, nor do we miss the isolation of that creepy counter-culture lunch crush.    

 We are now eligible for a myriad of home school groups that orchestrate field trips and social activities.  These occur so frequently that we find ourselves struggling to fit in content amidst the hands-on and on-site learning.  We find these groups to be diversely educated, multi-cultural, intergenerational bastions of children flourishing in alternate learning cultures; a society in which children are challenged—the antithesis of Zombie. 

Zombie Battle Strategy #1 

WE LOVE ONE ANOTHER!

WINNER!  Before home school, my son and I shared an autocratic relationship wherein I pressed him mechanically to perform.

We no longer live in a Zombie (parallel) relationship; we interact in a new way and I believe it’s because he exults in the exercise of control over his own education.  We trust him to pick, choose and direct his own path—which translates into confidence as a competent adult. 

 My heart warms when strangers admire and comment as they watch the new interaction between my young teen and me, (it happened twice in a month!)

THE WHIRLWIND ANSWER:

Back to the warm metaphor, I believe the zombie teen in Warm Bodies evolves due to an increased awareness of feeling—of my hope for him, and ultimately of love and self worth as he recognizes the value he offers the world.   I know that for our former Zombie, the most important change is that he knows there is an infinite world of knowledge out there and he is confident and capable of discovering his purpose in that challenge. 

If you think your child doesn’t know that, find ways to warm that body.   Zombie Attack!

If I Make You Angry, I Win

Children teach.  The very act of parenting is a daily dabble in the puddles of patience and long suffering, but there are moments when a child turns a shallow little dip into a complete submersion of a vast and spiritual depth.

My oldest son Ian, is inordinately bright, and that makes him an odd ball to his peers.  We have faced our share of challenges, like his response to the “bully on the bus.” He ax-kicked that kid in the head, but the driver assured me that the incident would go unreported because, in his opinion, the other kid had it coming. I still initiated the “turn the other cheek talk,” and I further explained that turning the other cheek was not in preparation to throw a 360 back kick. 

    

It was ten years later when Ian was a senior in high school that he came to me again.  “Mom there is this guy in AP World History that just won’t let up.  He trash talks me every day and it goes on and on until the girl behind me sticks up for me and tells him to leave me alone.  What am I going to do Mom?” 

I reminded him of the bus story outcome and I gave my best mommy answer, “respond politely.”  Long after graduation, he told me the rest of the story and his solution became one of those headlong dives into unplumbed depths.

Aside from (or perhaps due to) the bus incident, my son has become a person that is slow to anger.  Scripture encourages us to become so and gives many examples of Christ being slow to anger.  An example: The story of the woman taken in adultery and brought to Christ by adversaries with a hidden agenda.  He faces a lose-lose scenario; either answer he would give will be wrong.  What does he do?  He doesn’t flare out in anger, doesn’t protest in rage, doesn't let his temper rule, he simply crouches down and draws in the dirt.  And he thinks.  He becomes our great example of marshaling our thoughts and controlling our responses.  He is slow to anger. 

I am a passionate person, a drama queen and I love nothing more than a good argument.  My father assures me that it’s in the genes and I work to manage this character trait.  My son’s response to his World War History problem encouraged me to work at this even harder.

We live in Oklahoma where we really get to practice freedom of religion.  I am offered a blessed day when I leave Walmart, and when we moved there, one of the first questions was if we had yet found a church.  Practically every street corner offers one of a different faith.  As I drive down the street. the big posted church bulletins are thought provoking... “When you feel abandoned, it was not Christ that moved.” Another states, “If I make you angry, I win.” 

Wow.  “If I make you angry, I win.”   It could be my touchy neighbor speaking, my adversary at work, my spouse, or that guy in the passing lane on the freeway, or a random person at the supermarket.  He that provokes me to anger WINS!  Or it could just be Satan speaking.  “If I make you angry, I win.” 

A quote from Thomas Monson states:  “To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan.  No one can make us angry.  It is our choice.  Anger, Satan’s tool, is destructive in so many ways.” 

From the Holy Bible, in Matthew 11:11, after Christ makes his majestic entrance back into the city, he goes to the temple and sees what is happening there.

In our minds, we have the artist, Carl Bloc’s depiction of what happens next.  In this painting, Christ is wielding a whip over his head and the animals are running amok.  There utter chaos in the frame, but in a talk Gordon B. Hinckley states that this “is not an outburst of uncontrolled anger.”   

So what really happened?  If I remind myself of doctrine, I know that Christ was perfect on earth, and so I reread the verses with added insight. 

Verse 11: Christ enters the city, visits the temple, views what’s going on and then goes with the disciples to Bethany.  Maybe he ponders on what is happening and gives himself time to marshal his thoughts?

      

Verse 12: It isn’t until “on the morrow,” that Christ goes back to the temple, and methodically--for the second time--casts out the moneychangers.  He upends the tables and the chairs and verse 16 says that he “would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.”

I have a new and enhanced view of the story--Christ was perfect, slow to wrath, and not dictated to nor governed by anger.  I am further convinced by what happens in the very next paragraph—he teaches.

Verse 17: And “he taught” and said to them, “is it not written that my house shall be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves.”  No one learns well when frightened and the ability to influence others is lost with anger.  Christ taught immediately after the incident, so he must have cleansed the temple in a manner that did not appear that he had lost hold of his senses, nor become “possessed” in anger.

My new son-in-law begins law school in the fall and he doesn't like to argue... with me.  He protests that I have just changed my mind, contradicted myself, gone off on a tangent and diverged too far from topic.  I protest that I’m not in it to win, I’m in it merely to argue. 

But Gordon B. Hinckley gave an example of truth as he related a story of a man that pitched a fit when he asked him to move a train.  The man ranted, screamed, stomped on his own hat and Pres. Hinckley couldn't help but laugh at the man.  He quotes Ecclesiastes 7:9:  “be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry:  for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”  When temper gets the better of us, we lose the ability to convince, to teach or even to influence.   

 Verse 18 proves the efficacy of Christ’s teaching ability as “the scribes and chief priests heard, and sought how they might destroy him, for they feared him.”  It was not his actions they feared, but his impact on the people, “because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.”  Christ was effective just as the son-in-law will be as cool heads prevail.

In Priesthood talks given in conference in October, 2007 and 2009 respectively, President Hinckley and President Monson relate many heartbreaking stories of lives ruined by anger, the result of emotions ruling people who, upon reaching their breaking point, act.  Many later responded, “I don’t know what came over me.  I just went too far.”  I believe that the influence of Satan governs our actions more freely when we relinquish control and it does take only that small suggestion to push us over the brink. That is why we see good men doing really horrible things.  In Tulsa recently, one terrible story ended tragically when a pregnant woman in the midst of an argument pushed her husband through an eighteen story window.  Tragic and life altering consequences result when anger acts. 

The world would have us be true to our natural being—encourages us to disregard what it terms “old-fashioned convention” and to do as we feel—to act on our base nature—be authentic and real.  In contrast, the Lord and his gospel would have us marshal our thoughts and emotions and control our actions. 

As a teenager, my son, Ian really liked Chuck Norris—the jokes and stories and because he has an impeccable memory, he recalls them all.  When I asked him about how the situation in World War History resolved, he told me this story; it could be a fable, who knows. 

Chuck Norris was sitting in a bar and a man came into the bar up to him and said, “You are in my chair.”  Chuck looked at him, stood up and moved to another.  The other patrons at the bar said to the man, “That guy is Chuck Norris, he coulda trounced you.”  The man was prompted to go to Mr. Norris and ask why he hadn't stood up for himself—why he hadn't fought him.  

It's said that Chuck Norris looked at him and quietly responded, “It’s a chair.”

After relating that story my son said, “Mom” he said, “I figured it’s just a chair.”  

When I related the response to my husband, he responded the opposite of me. He said, “I have not paid for ten years of martial arts training for that boy to turn the other cheek.”

I must admit that I did think that if my son had taken his black belt to school and set it on the desk with the three gold stripes showing, the problem might have been resolved.

But in the big eternal picture, such action would have taught no eternal principle.  And with a worldly perspective, in the end my son would have gained nothing and his effort to become more like Christ may not have begun.

I have a testimony that our efforts on earth to marshal our thoughts, to learn to control our bodies—will help us emulate Christ. 

I know that these are mere tools preparing us for the eternities to come, for a time when we will be like unto God and we must train now at His feet.  I encourage all of us to further study these talks, to take these principles into our lives to become slow to anger and to endeavor to become more like the Master.

Exact Obedience or Not?

It's an awesome talk and it leads right into the question I pondered today at church, “Is keeping the sabbath day holy a commandment from God or not a commandment when your swim coach says so?”  I asked it of two great teens today as they were leaving to go “swimming” because the coach said they had to.  I said, “JUST SAY NO!”  (Uchdorf) And they said they couldn’t.  I related  my daughter Dia’s story of her fight to wear a modest choir dress and the sabbath battle she fought for what she believed.  She was a pioneer in a world that ignores the Sabbath--to her teachers she became noteworthy.  

The great thing is that these teens will get another chance.  Another great take-away from church today:  Brother Gentry said, "The Lord keeps giving us chances (adversity) until we get it right."     

Later today, my daughter texted me that a Samoan in their ward spoke, 'My culture says I can get a tattoo and my LDS friends think it would be great.  I know that for me the answer is No.  The real question for me, “Is my culture more important than my God?”'  

What he said to my daughter was, "noteworthy."  She took note and passed it on to me. 

So my point to ponder this Sabbath is “Exact obedience, and Why?”

My youngest son is going backpacking with my husband in the Sierras this week, they have fifty pound packs, they are going above 11,000 feet in elevation and they are packing food for six days—in bear-proof cans.  No one says to them, “Don’t know why you bother with a bear can.”  Everyone knows why. 

My husband got into poison ivy this week and is so hideously affected that the doctor prescribed a steroid shot, and a pill pack for a week.  Despite the drug's terrible side effects, no one who sees him and his “Popeye” arms asks, “Why Are you taking steroids?”  Everyone knows why.

My Elder son in Alaska wrote me last month, 

“Exact Obedience=God's Power.”

And that is why. 

Elder Bednar, “And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority.”  

And That Is Why.  

Bears, Steroids and Exact Obedience Part 1

We just got back Friday from a trip to the Mormon Mecca, Nauvoo, (a journey for rededication of self to spiritual roots.) We saw the temple site in Independence, Liberty Jail, Adam ondi Ahman, Winter Quarters, Kanesville Tabernacle and ended in Nauvoo at the temple there. We felt a  beautiful spirit and enjoyed videos and talks all given by youth and senior missionaries with great spiritual influence. 

  

The overwhelming take-away for me of the entire trip was the stories of early saints and how obedient they were—the ones that acted on the prophets words.  These people, through their obedience became the people we admire—they became a people of note and of worth,  “noteworthy.”

The missionaries serving at all these sites are doing a work of great worth, and through obedience, they are becoming “noteworthy.”  One young sister missionary had the courage to say something so powerful to my husband, '“So does your son ask weekly like Elder Bednar did to his dad?  “When are you going to be baptized Dad?”' 

From Elder Bednar’s talk, April conference 2013, Powers of Heaven.As a boy I asked my dad many times each week when he was going to be baptized. He responded lovingly but firmly each time I pestered him: “David, I am not going to join the Church for your mother, for you, or for anyone else. I will join the Church when I know it is the right thing to do.”

I believe I was in my early teenage years when the following conversation occurred with my father. We had just returned home from attending our Sunday meetings together, and I asked my dad when he was going to be baptized. He smiled and said, “You are the one always asking me about being baptized. Today I have a question for you.” I quickly and excitedly concluded that now we were making progress!

My dad continued, “David, your church teaches that the priesthood was taken from the earth anciently and has been restored by heavenly messengers to the Prophet Joseph Smith, right?” I replied that his statement was correct. Then he said, “Here is my question. Each week in priesthood meeting I listen to the bishop and the other priesthood leaders remind, beg, and plead with the men to do their home teaching and to perform their priesthood duties. If your church truly has the restored priesthood of God, why are so many of the men in your church no different about doing their religious duty than the men in my church?” My young mind immediately went completely blank. I had no adequate answer for my dad. 

I believe my father was wrong to judge the validity of our Church’s claim to divine authority by the shortcomings of the men with whom he associated in our ward. But embedded in his question to me was a correct assumption that men who bear God’s holy priesthood should be different from other men. Men who hold the priesthood are not inherently better than other men, but they should act differently. Men who hold the priesthood should not only receive priesthood authority but also become worthy and faithful conduits of God’s power. “Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord” (D&C 38:42).

I have never forgotten the lessons about priesthood authority and power I learned from my father, a good man not of our faith, who expected more from men who claimed to bear God’s priesthood. That Sunday afternoon conversation with my dad many years ago produced in me a desire to be a “good boy.” I did not want to be a poor example and a stumbling block to my father’s progress in learning about the restored gospel. I simply wanted to be a good boy. The Lord needs all of us as bearers of His authority to be honorable, virtuous, and good boys at all times and in all places.

You may be interested to know that a number of years later, my father was baptized. And at the appropriate times, I had the opportunity to confer upon him the Aaronic and the Melchizedek Priesthoods. One of the great experiences of my life was observing my dad receive the authority and, ultimately, the power of the priesthood.I share with you this pointed lesson I learned from my father to emphasize a simple truth. Receiving the authority of the priesthood by the laying on of hands is an important beginning, but it is not enough. Ordination confers authority, but righteousness is required to act with power as we strive to lift souls, to teach and testify, to bless and counsel, and to advance the work of salvation.

In this momentous season of the earth’s history, you and I as bearers of the priesthood need to be righteous men and effective instruments in the hands of God. We need to rise up as men of God. You and I would do well to learn from and heed the example of Nephi, the grandson of Helaman and the first of the twelve disciples called by the Savior at the beginning of His ministry among the Nephites. “And [Nephi] did minister many things unto them. … And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority” (3 Nephi 7:17).

See part II