Confess Not His Hand in All Things

So this last week been hectic. I seemed to have forgotten how fun you have with girlfriend and how time seems to rush by. I've done lots of homework, work and even more hanging out with my wonderful girlfriend. Well I'm now home here in Utah with my family and my good friends, Chellie and Erick.

This weekened (because this is what I remember) Barbara and I had dinner with my sister Megan and her boyfriend Garrett. The next day (I think) my Mom and brother Aaron came up to take us down here to Utah. They both were able to met my girlfriend who was a tad bit nervous at meeting my family. Barbara watched as my sister, my mom, and I played a card game that is notorious in our family called Spite and Malice. After hearing all of the friendly banter among my family members, Barbara remarked "Your family is a lot of fun." I agree with my Mom's assessment of Barbara, she's a keeper.

This week I read in section fifty nine of Doctrine and Covenants for my class. In there I read one of my favorite verses, verse twenty one, which reads "And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments."

This week, I have realized that I am not always very good at acknowledging the hand of the Lord in all things. I mean I know He does a lot to help me in my life but I don't always remark it as often as I should. Something that I've found to be helpful is writing in my journal often helps me to better recognize His hand in my life. To paraphrase President Eyring, it helps to remind me of ways that the Lord may have helped me but that I may have over looked at the time. The Lord has given me so many blessings, my family for starters. I love each of them and I wouldn't be who I am today without them. My friends are another one, who bring happiness, joy and a good deal of advice to my life. My wonderful girlfriend who makes me happy and who lets me make her happy. My college is a blessing; I'm gaining, what is is my mind, an invaluable education on both secular and spiritual matters. Most of all I am glad to have the gospel of the Lord in my life that allows me to know of my Father in heaven and to be able to see His hand in my life. I hope that you all during this season of Thanksgiving can find more ways to acknowledge the hand of the Lord in your life. If you're bad at journal writing like I was, make a renewed effort to better at it. Just start one day at a time. I know you can do it! Because I have! Have a good week!

The Little Things

So this apparently has been a good week for all of my family. Two of my other family members had good things happen to them on Friday. And I got a girlfriend. :) So I think I will start with that story so as my sister Megan put it best "I don't have to tell a story a million different times". Not to mention people have been clamoring for the details. Don't worry, I'll get to my spiritual message following that.

The best place to start is at the beginning. During the break between semesters, my roommate Noé started a group on Facebook called BYU-I Harmony. I decided to join it mostly out of curiosity and a bit of boredom. As Noé got busy dating a girl, he assigned other people as to be administrators over the page. Many of them got busy too and so one day, Noé made me one because he knew that I checked up on the page regularly. Well the semester started and the group kinda died out. I aske around and found out that there was no girl administrator. So I asked for volunteers. A brave girl, named Barbara Spaulding, stepped up and volunteered. I made her an administrator and added her as a friend so that we could more easily communicate and coordinate things on the page.

Two weeks ago I contacted her and talked to her about trying to get the group going again. Last Sunday I decided that I should get to know my co-administrator a bit better. So I went explored her facebook page. I commented on couple of things on her wall and then I noticed that she was on. I decided to chat with her because we almost were having a conversation on her wall. Well we had really good open conversation about dating. We talked about we both hated dating which was ironic since we are both administrators of BYU-I Harmony. Well then, she said, maybe this was a sign that we should go on a date. So I asked her if we could meet up and then we could decide if we'd like to go on a date. She agreed. So then I got her number so that we could arrange our meeting.

We texted constantly for the next few days until we met. I was excited to meet her. Talking to her was better in person than it was digitally. The next day we hung out with my sister Megan and her boyfriend. We had a lot of fun and a good time. We decided then that we wanted to date each other. On Friday I asked her on a double date with my friend and former roommate Erick (pictured above) and my friend Sarah. It went well and we all ate well. Since then we have talked a lot and become very good friends. As my former roommate Victor told me. There are two types of girls, ones that you chase constantly; the second you chase each other. I feel like Barbara is the second type and I like it better.

So my message this week, is about the little things. Something that the Lord has placed an emphasis on following the small promptings. The devotional this week mentioned it, I read about it and many of the talks today in church today talked about following the promptings in the small things. I have learned that if follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost in small things that the Lord will be more willing to lead and help us. But we must make the effort to do so. I have seen how that works or doesn't depending our obedience. I am reminded of the scripture in Alma "that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise." (Alma 37:6) I know that the Lord uses small means to bring about His great works. I feel like since I started what I thought was just a small side conversation, has turned out to be a great blessing in my life.

I hope that you will strive to follow the little promptings or like I like to think of them as spiritual nudges. May the Lord bless you with happiness is my prayer. Have a good week!

The Power of Choice

So this week started out with me fighting the despair and discouragement; it seems to me that Satan must have been running a campaign against me. I asked Heavenly Father to help me overcome but promised to do what I can to overcome it. I will say that Heavenly Father helped provide me with love and support that I needed. I want to share an idea that helped me. I have made a list of songs that I call my "Pick Me Up" . I listened to that song which contains a mixture of my favorite hymns and quite a few of my favorite modern songs that have positive music and positive lyrics. Listening to these songs truly helped keep me buoyed up through that rough patch.

On Tuesday, I think I had a pretty powerful lesson in Brother Pyper's class; his pictured below with me. One of my class mates told a story from her life and taught us an application of scripture.

This week, I had a string of good scripture study sessions mainly because I followed the promptings of the Spirit and I read some different talks and scriptures that I wouldn't normally have read. On Friday I went and watched a movie with one of my good friends, Chellie. The movie is called "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". As may be obvious from the title, it was about time travel. I liked the movie because without meaning to, it highlighted how our simple choices have a large impact over the long run. This seems to have been a theme for me, at least this weekend.

The last two days the stake to which my sister and I belong has had it's stake conference. It has been very good to get so much instruction. This afternoon, a girl in my French class (who's apparently in my stake) gave a really good talk about the Atonement and choice. She said that everyday she gets on her knees and tells the Lord that she's going to give or loan him her agency; I really like that idea and want to set that as a goal for myself. Another sister in our stake referenced President Ucthdorf's talk "A Matter of a Few Degrees" and said that we should also look at that a few degrees of improvement can have a large impact for good. She also encouraged us to get to the temple as often as we can.

So this week I'm going to try to make some improvements in my life. One of them is smiling. I feel that if I'm happy that I should be smiling more than I do. Another thing that I'm going to do is pondering after doing scripture study so that I can better apply it. I will continue to make a small list of things to improve. My challenge to you is to find small things that you can improve and to make those choices and stick with them because you don't know the importance it may have in your life.