Great Ward Conference

It is such a beautiful day today.  In the sixties and bright and sunny.  We walked to church today and it was almost warm enough for no jacket on the 10th of November.

It was ward conference today so all of the Stake officers were there and the Stake Presidency.  The Bishop spoke in Sacrament meeting and talked about how all of us are loved by our Heavenly Father.  He said that he has become overwhelmed by the spirit telling him this as he was called.  He also challenged us to find a time to go to the temple regularly that works for us.  He promised us that we would feel the spirit more in our lives if we made this a commitment.  He told of how his wife and children were attending the temple more than him at one time and that after he made the commitment to go regularly that he felt the spirit more in his life.  His wife gave a talk in Relief Society once where she told of the struggle she had when she made the commitment to go every week but then the spirit was able to open things up to her after she kept making the commitment.  Larry and I decided we wanted that blessing so we are trying to go on Wednesday morning.

Our new Relief Society President Ann Shunn gave a wonderful talk in RS on how we need to have patience with ourselves and faith in Christ.  She told us that non of us was perfect and never would be without the help of the Savior.  She pointed out that we need to be forgiving of ourselves do the best we can and that is all that Heavenly Father expects.  He doesn't expect us to work beyond our capacities but we should be moving in the direction of Christ.  It was a great talk and helped me to feel better about myself and my inadequacies and seemed to answer the prayers of a friend of mine who felt like she was a failure because she had not always done what her church job had required of her.

After Relief Society Carla Whitaker share with me the special experience her daughter had in being able to do the temple work for a women that she had baptized on her mission with the permission of her daughter.  She was able to be the proxy for the lady while she was sealed to her parents and she said that the spirit was so strong she felt like Edith, the lady she did the work for was there.

Tonight we are going with Kyle to a youth fireside with TC Christensen as the speaker.  I am anxious to hear what he has to say as I loved both his movies, "17 Miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue"

I feel very busy lately and yet when I sit down to write this it is all so blah.

Monday was a semi-busy day.  We had weight watchers in the morning.  I felt good because I lost 1.8 pounds again despite the fact that it was not a good week for me for following my diet.  I went over my main points every day and used up all but 8 of my weekly points so I was within my limits but sometimes in the past I have not been able to lose when I used my weekly points.  I concluded that it was because of my increasing exercise that I am losing weight.  Only three more pounds to go before I am at the top end of my ideal weight, 174 pounds.

After we went to Weight Watchers we went to the gym where we were supposed to get a free workout with a personal trainer but it was more of a sales pitch.  He did tell us that I was at 35% body fat and Larry is at 30% He also told us how to do the weights and machines to get more lean muscles.  He would help us for some amount of money that we could not afford so we are trying to do the weights and machines by ourselves with a warm up and walking.

After eating lunch we worked on the budget which was good

At 4:00 p.m. we went to a class at our Family Search Center on the premium websites that they offer at the Center.  It was informative because neither Larry or I have used all of the sites that are available and we needed to learn more about what they were for. Larry was already using one yesterday when we went to the center.

Our ward had some people that wanted to try an Empty Nester's Family Home Evening once a month so we decided to go to that.  I think every older couple in the ward was there.  I was a little disappointed because they only talked about how we wanted to organize the meetings and I thought they could have had a spiritual thought but that is me.  Larry said it had to be that way at the first.  We have been trying to meet with Kirsten and Taylor and Kyle because Jon is at work after 3:00 p.m. but that can still be accomplished the other three weeks of the month.

Tuesday we got up read our scriptures and said prayer together ate breakfast like we normally do every morning then Larry took off to Sam's Club to get a fruit tray for the evening when we went to Financial Peace University.  I started to work on the budget again because I had not finshed yesterday and as we were down to the wire.  With some checking of the accounts and the envelopes we were able to make sure that everything should be taken care of for the rest of the month.  I was feeling pretty good about this until an unexpected payment came in yesterday.  So tomorrow it is back to work and what can I sell to get some money in.  I also need to cancel the payment.

After that we went to the gym.  After doing the elliptical and some machines and walking at least 1.7 miles we came home at took a shower and it was time for lunch.  Time flies when you are having fun.  Going to the gym is really invigorating but I still don't know if I could make myself go if I had to work 8 hours a day.

In the afternoon I worked on the Marketing  curriculum that I am writing for Northridge Learning Center. I almost had a chapter finished but I had to add the questions and review for the material I had written.  Larry usually fixes dinner so I can work longer on Tuesday but he went and ran some errands and made some deposits from the work I did in the morning.  We had dinner at our class that night and we already had our contribution.

We drove to our class and it was fun but there was a lot of food there.  We went over our points but it was all good.  I was glad that we had taken the fruit tray though because most of the other food was points.  They had meatball sandwiches, Chicken salad sandwiches,  chips with and artichoke and chicken dip, little hot links, our fruit, a pasta salad with a lot of vegetables, and even thought they said to bring our own drinks they had a big bottle of Diet Coke.

Dave Ramsey is an Evangelical Christian he gave a great lecture about the benefits of giving a Tith to the Lord and helping others.  I think that about 99% of what he said goes along with doctrine in our church.  It was a good tape.  We found out though that the leaders of our group were also Evangelical Christians when we went to discussion.  Our leader actually apologized to us for having so much of the Bible in this lecture.  I got the impression that he believes that we do not use the Bible in our church, which surprised me.  We told him that there was nothing offensive in the discussion and it ended well but I was surprised that someone could live in Utah and not know that we believed in the Bible.

Wednesday morning we got up and went to the temple like we had decided to do.  It was a good session but I have to get to work again because I do not have any of the names left to do that we had processed to do.  So we have to do some serious family history work.  The Stake has challenged us to provide our own names for the temple or do names that someone in our ward has processed.

I love the new temple film and hope that if you have not seen it you will get the chance to go soon to the temple.

We went to the gym when we got home and worked really hard.

Wednesday afternoon I worked on Curriculum again.  I finished the chapter I was writing and sent it to Dana and then started studying for the next chapter.

Merrilee decided that she did not feel well enough to go to Weight Watchers so we went to the gym.  Despite all our work though we did not get very high points on the active link because we did not reach our base line until about 6:30 because we did not go to the gym earlier.  I do not like that about active link.  We worked for the same amount of time but because we did not do much after we went to the gym we were low on points.

When I got to this point last week we went to a fireside for Youth that they had in our stake.  It was TC Christensen the producer of "17 Miracles" and "Ephraim's Rescue".  Both are major films dealing with the pioneers moving west.  We took Kyle with us and it was so good.  He told about filming things in 90 degree temperatures that the pioneers had to go through in freezing temperatures and having his staff and extra's feeling very cold in the water.  He was funny but he had a testimony of what the pioneer's endured strengthened their testimony.  He had those who had relatives in the Willie and Martin Handcart companies stand.  He said that it does not matter where he goes to speak that usually about a third of the audience had descended from them.  He felt like maybe they had to go through what they did to cement the testimony of theses people that was passed down to their descendents.

Probably the only other thing I want to mention is that on my Dad's birthday I made a Memorial Group for him on Facebook.  It is located at https://www.facebook.com/groups/539405079483982/?bookmark_t=group if you want to post something or just take a look.  It would have been my dad's 92nd birthday. We went to Mom's and Mom got some flowers and we took some flags to the grave that we got for Memorial Day so they would be there for Veteran's day.  Several of the other kids came down and did things with Mom also.  Dad was a great man and so many people loved him.