Provo temple walk

I love to see the temple.
I'm going there someday
To feel the Holy Spirit,
To listen and to pray.

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For the temple is a house of God,
A place of love and beauty.
I'll prepare myself while I am young;
This is my sacred duty.

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I love to see the temple.
I'll go inside someday.
I'll cov'nant with my Father;
I'll promise to obey.

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For the temple is a holy place
Where we are sealed together.
As a child of God,
I've learned this truth;
A fam'ly is forever

Lauren and I had a great Grandma adventure today while Ellie and Jordan were napping. We went to the MTC to meet Rick and the missionaries from our branch for lunch. Lauren walked pasted the "Easter picture" and wanted to have her picture taken by Jesus.
Afterwords, we walked around the MTC grounds and looked at all the pretty flowers. We smelled most of them and identified each color. Next we went to the Provo temple grounds and walked around to the "backyard" as Lauren called it and we even went in to a couple of "jungles" and gathered a few pine cones from underneath the huge pine trees there. We talked about getting married some day in the temple. Lauren learned that this was the temple where Aunt Claire and Uncle R got married.

Saturday we payed a visit to Rick's parents home. Pat made us a delicious meal and we had a nice time visiting. The girls loved playing on the trampoline and running around the yard and swinging on the swings.














Here is a picture from our front steps 48 hours after the huge snow storm featured last Thursday. Rick was moving the lawn less than 48 hours later. Utah weather. Ya.

Conference word cloud

I always think these word collages are so interesting. They take the words that are most frequently used and enlarge them to show which words are spoken the most often. It kind of gives us an "at-a-glance" summary of the important messages and themes of the LDS General Conference.

I thought this blog was very interesting. The following thought comes from it:

When Elder Neil L. Andersen rose to the pulpit last Sunday morning for the first time as a newly sustained member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, these were his first words:
My dear brothers and sisters across the world, my knees are weak and my emotions close to the surface. I express my love for you and profoundly thank you for your sustaining vote. In so many dimensions, I feel inadequate and humbled. I take solace that in one qualification for the holy apostleship where there can be no latitude extended, the Lord has deeply blessed me. I do know with perfect and certain clarity through the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, the Beloved Son of God … To those who know me, if ever I have been less than I should have been in your presence, I ask for your forgiveness and patience. I so very much need your faith and prayers in my behalf. I know that I am not what I must become. I pray that I might be willing and moldable to the Lord’s tutoring and correction.
In short, Elder Andersen briefly acknowledged how nervous he was, and then immediately fulfilled the key responsibility of being a Special Witness–he bore a plain, but powerful, testimony of the reality of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He concluded his introduction with a genuine prayer for forgiveness and patience from those he may have wronged.I was so impressed by this opening statement that I was inspired (or maybe just driven by curiosity) to go and seek out the first words of every other living Prophet, Seer, and Revelator on the Earth today. A couple of observations, as well as the quotes from each address (with some minor editing on my part) are presented below. Note that many of these men spoke in General Conference prior to being called as an Apostle.

Barbie on her 50th

Now, that's more like it.

Sprinter

The Arizona girls didn't quite know what to make of this white stuff. They had a great time playing in it and tasting it. So sad for all the trees with blossoms on them. So many had broken limbs and were badly damaged. Weird, weird spring/winter, April 16.

Britain's got talent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY - Susan Boyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEo5bjnJViA - Paul Potts

I can't embed these links directly to YouTube here on my blog because the videos have been disabled by the poster for embedding. Just copy them and paste them in your browser directly.

Most of us are pretty average people. Yet none of us has average dreams--we have all wanted greatness in something, somewhere. When we first see Susan Boyle, she looks like us--average. We think she can't succeed, she doesn't fit the stereo type. She's beyond the years for achieving musical stardom. Yet this plucky lady, with great courage, shows all of us that nobody is average, and it is never too late to conquer a dream. When I cheer for Susan Boyle, I cheer for myself and every other "average" person, for our dreams and aspirations, and I feel just a little more inclined to follow them.

Check out this article in the DNews.

Anyway, check them out! They are both inspiring human interest stories and they will make you smile. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things! Plus it's great to hear the Brits speak.