It's Official

If you haven't heard by now, here it is...We're moving to Washington! woohoo we're excited but also sad to leave having family here. More details to come soon...

Engagement Pictures

Dani has been posting a lot of the pictures, but here are some new pictures that she has just finished editing. I love them and her! We're trying to decide which picture to use for the invitations, so check out her blog here and let us know which you like best.

New Year's Resolution!

This Christmas, Santa Claus was nice enough to give me one of the presents I had asked for: a collection of audio talks by Truman G. Madsen titled The Presidents of the Church. I enjoyed listening to these recorded talks once on my mission, and wanted to go over them again. Madsen takes about an hour or so and recalls the lives of each prophet up to Gordon B. Hinckley. He offers insights on each president that helps you become acquainted with their characters and attributes.

Anyway, there is particular excerpt on the life of Heber J. Grant that I thought was well worded by Truman G. Madsen. I enjoyed the clarity in which he described the importance of keeping the commandments, and offered an explanation as to why so many times we choose to disregard the most basic but important commandments only because they do not seem to jibe with worldly traditions or because we are afraid of others opinions. He mentioned something B.H. Roberts had said about Heber J. Grant, that “What you expect [from him] is straight forward one-liners: Keep the commandments.” Truman G. Madsen continued by stating “That is the law and the prophets. That’s exactly what needed to be said and still needs to be said. He believed that intellectual reasons either for refusing to investigate or for leaving the church are after the fact, and the fact is behavior. One has to find rationale when his life is out of harmony with the truth. There is enough of the light that he is trying to suppress it and invents plausible reasons why he doesn’t have to obey. But the truth is that we all know that our conscience does voice protest at our lives and our sins, and also kisses us as it were when we honor the core of our hearts which is truth.”

I am glad this was stated the way it was because it plainly described the course we naturally take when we REALLY don’t want to follow a commandment. I believe the major reason why this happens in our lives at one point or another is because of the lack of gospel knowledge AND the lack of desire to obtain gospel knowledge, because if we would search out the proper way of keeping with doctrine and commandments, we would stay on the correct course.

One of my resolutions this year is to gain a deeper understanding of the Gospel and the commandments so that I can not only continue on the right course, and also understand WHY I am on the right course.

This CD collection is really insightful and I highly recommend it, if you would like to borrow mine, just let me know!

We're ENGAGED!

WOOHOO! as of 12/12/09, Danielle and I are engaged! You can find out the details of the engagement by visiting Danielle's blog! www.adoseofdani.blogspot.com. I'm not as good as she is at the list thing, but I CAN tell you that she is everything good in life all compacted into a beautiful person! I am so thankful to know her. I cannot wait to experience everything that life has to offer with her. Love you Danielle! You're all I ever wanted!

Ultimate experience at the Christmas Devotional

Last night Dani and I had one of the best experiences of our lives! We had the opportunity to obtain some tickets for the Christmas Devotional from a coworker. It was 6 of us total. We decided to meet up at door #5 about 30 minutes before the devotional was to start. One couple was bringing the tickets for all of us. Well they were late in arriving because of the traffic and lack of parking, so we waited until 5:57, just about a minute before they were to close the doors! We were kind of down because we knew we wouldn’t get good seats. So we go through the metal detectors, and soon after a brother comes up to us and asks if we wanted some really good seats, OF COURSE! He said it would be in the floor area So we’re thinking ‘oh well we lucked out at least we’ll be closer than we thought’ well it turns out they put us all on the 7^TH ROW! It was amazing!! Here we are walking in on the hour and sitting on the 7^th row right in front of the presidency. We were just so amazed that it happened the way it did. We enjoyed every bit of the devotional, the choir and orchestra was just so powerful, I had never experienced that from so close. After the Devotional ended we get up and realize that we were SURROUNDED by all of the apostles! Our faces must have looked pretty funny, we couldn’t believe it. We were ushered through the front of the Conference center, along with the rest of the general authorities. I thought the experience was priceless, especially since the crowd was slow moving, which gave me the chance to chat with Elder Cook (which happens to be my mission president’s brother) Sis. Dew, and greet just about every other apostle. They took us through the long tunnel underneath the conference center and the temple, that was a neat experience in and of itself. The whole night was just was just priceless. Especially since I got to experience that with Danielle :)