Hail, the Gang's all Here
(This is an excerpt from the letter I sent Hannah last Sunday)
This week has been a very quiet one for me. The boys were at high adventure camp all week, doing ropes courses, river rafting, kayaking, hiking, shooting bows and arrows and rifles, having cooking competitions and other fun stuff, as well as getting sunburned and feasted on by mosquitoes.
Meanwhile, I had plenty of quiet time at home to clean (which I did on Monday and it stayed clean all the rest of the week... imagine that!) and read and prepare the RS lesson I taught today and go for long walks, and paint. Yes, I did mention painting... but it isn't finished yet, and I'm afraid I kind of messed it up last time I worked on it, so I'm not going to show it to anyone yet.
Tuesday evening we had a RS activity. We called it an "Instant Pot Night" but when we were passing out invitations before Sunday School last week, some of the men in the ward pointed out that here in Colorado, that could be misleading... people might think we were peddling a drug rather than discussing different ways to use a trendy pressure cooker. Oh well. The activity itself went really well. We had at least ten sisters there (which is a good turn out for our ward!), and we had great food and great discussion. I even invited and gave a ride to a sister who just moved into our ward and who was just baptized about six months ago.
On Thursday we attended a community dinner.... Anyway, our stake has teamed up with a few other churches to provide a free dinner to the community that is held every Thursday at the Westminster Presbyterian Church. Our ward gets to be in charge of it two days a year, providing the food, serving, setting up and cleaning up. I think it went really well.
The boys got home yesterday afternoon, dirty, sunburned, mosquito bitten and tired. Honestly it is nice to have them home again. I realize that [Steven] and I are only about 5 years from being empty-nesters, and there are some things that I look forward to, but I do enjoy having my children around.
Last night after dinner, we heard thunder rolling as a storm moved in. I hurried to put the van in the garage. I'm wishing I had taken a few more precautions. It poured rain in torrents, and then hail began falling - marble sized to jawbreaker sized hail, just pelting down. We got a lake in front of the house and the playroom flooded. When we went out after the storm had moved on, the ground was strewn with tons of fallen leaves and twigs. The poor plants in our garden were broken and sad looking. [Steven] and I walked the path through the park to see the river (maybe not the smartest thing since there was still lightning flashing not too far away, but oh well), and the water level was about as high as I have ever seen it.
My lesson today was on Elder Renlund's talk from the last conference, "Abound with Blessings." It basically teaches that if we want blessings, we need to act in faith to obey the commandments on which those blessings are dependent. I encouraged the sisters to search for the "if-then" statements in the scriptures and in the words of modern day prophets: If ye will obey my commandments [then] ye will prosper in the land. [If ye] bring the tithes into the Lord's storehouse [then] he will pour you out a blessing. If we embrace the Come Follow Me curriculum, [then] we will survive spiritually, increase our gospel joy and increase our conversion to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I think the lesson went well.
This week has been a very quiet one for me. The boys were at high adventure camp all week, doing ropes courses, river rafting, kayaking, hiking, shooting bows and arrows and rifles, having cooking competitions and other fun stuff, as well as getting sunburned and feasted on by mosquitoes.
Meanwhile, I had plenty of quiet time at home to clean (which I did on Monday and it stayed clean all the rest of the week... imagine that!) and read and prepare the RS lesson I taught today and go for long walks, and paint. Yes, I did mention painting... but it isn't finished yet, and I'm afraid I kind of messed it up last time I worked on it, so I'm not going to show it to anyone yet.
Tuesday evening we had a RS activity. We called it an "Instant Pot Night" but when we were passing out invitations before Sunday School last week, some of the men in the ward pointed out that here in Colorado, that could be misleading... people might think we were peddling a drug rather than discussing different ways to use a trendy pressure cooker. Oh well. The activity itself went really well. We had at least ten sisters there (which is a good turn out for our ward!), and we had great food and great discussion. I even invited and gave a ride to a sister who just moved into our ward and who was just baptized about six months ago.
On Thursday we attended a community dinner.... Anyway, our stake has teamed up with a few other churches to provide a free dinner to the community that is held every Thursday at the Westminster Presbyterian Church. Our ward gets to be in charge of it two days a year, providing the food, serving, setting up and cleaning up. I think it went really well.
The boys got home yesterday afternoon, dirty, sunburned, mosquito bitten and tired. Honestly it is nice to have them home again. I realize that [Steven] and I are only about 5 years from being empty-nesters, and there are some things that I look forward to, but I do enjoy having my children around.
Last night after dinner, we heard thunder rolling as a storm moved in. I hurried to put the van in the garage. I'm wishing I had taken a few more precautions. It poured rain in torrents, and then hail began falling - marble sized to jawbreaker sized hail, just pelting down. We got a lake in front of the house and the playroom flooded. When we went out after the storm had moved on, the ground was strewn with tons of fallen leaves and twigs. The poor plants in our garden were broken and sad looking. [Steven] and I walked the path through the park to see the river (maybe not the smartest thing since there was still lightning flashing not too far away, but oh well), and the water level was about as high as I have ever seen it.
My lesson today was on Elder Renlund's talk from the last conference, "Abound with Blessings." It basically teaches that if we want blessings, we need to act in faith to obey the commandments on which those blessings are dependent. I encouraged the sisters to search for the "if-then" statements in the scriptures and in the words of modern day prophets: If ye will obey my commandments [then] ye will prosper in the land. [If ye] bring the tithes into the Lord's storehouse [then] he will pour you out a blessing. If we embrace the Come Follow Me curriculum, [then] we will survive spiritually, increase our gospel joy and increase our conversion to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I think the lesson went well.
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