Our New Beginnings Come Unto Christ: Diamonds in the Rough 2014

We had our ward New Beginning's last night. We did the (typical, I'm noticing) theme of "Diamonds in the Rough" that I'm seeing everywhere.  I don't feel bad doing the same as a lot of other places, because the girls like glitzy glam stuff and its fancy, and it goes SO well with the youth theme this year of "Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him."  I love the idea of our hidden potential to become perfect beautiful diamonds if we come unto Christ, allow the trials and pressures of life work on us, and become shaped into something beautiful.

We invited all the parents, family members, and bishopric to come enjoy in this evening.  Of course we had fancy invitations that we handed out a few weeks prior and mailed to those we didn't catch at church.

Fancy schmancy! 

Then we set out to decorate the black and white and light pink the girls requested. We are so blessed to have wonderful sisters in our ward who have collected decorations over the years from weddings, and proms and whatever events and we got to pick and choose from their stash. So lucky ! And we came up with the following:

The program table. (Iron needed, I know!) Got the Theme print out here.

Absolutely loved the idea of the girls pictures surrounding Christ. They were excited to see their pictures and take them home.  This was probably my favorite part. 

The table post closing prayer. Excuse the mess :]

Oh and admire my awesome cupcakes I made. Um.. yummy? First time with fancy frosting and I love it!

The program was very simple. We didn't want a long program, hours into an already long Sunday. We had a talk by our YW President, introducing the theme for the night, Diamonds in the Rough, and talked about the diamond process and how we can relate this to Coming unto Christ.  We also had a talk by the YW Secretary who's over the Personal Progress and her talk was on... Personal Progress! And how we can Come unto Christ through Personal Progress. Which you can get more info here.

From here we turned the time over to the YW and they presented Jenny Phillips program "Come Unto Christ" which can be found on her website.  We just swapped out her music for ours, for time constraints of learning the songs and we have instrument talent we wanted to show case.

But we did have the girls learn and sing the theme song, Come Unto Christ (so good!) and an arrangement of I'm Trying to be like Jesus with a beautiful vilolin part, and a few more Christ related songs. 

After that we presented a homemade "Mormon Message" by yours truely (that I wanted to make for my faith project). We previously recorded the girls answering the questions: What does it mean to Come unto Christ, how do you plan to come unto Christ and how has/does Personal Progress help you come unto Christ? I then did some snazzy editing in iMovie (woo!) and smashed it all together and go this! 

You can also go to the YouTube link here!

All credit goes to the artists for their pictures & the song is the minus track of Come unto Christ.

It was so incredible to make this video. Being able to sit in on their testimonies and here their answers was amazing. I had to be very aware, because I'd get teary eyed but couldn't cry since sniffles wouldn't be easy to edit out of the video! 

We also made them tiles with cut vinyl (shout out to my awesome cricut!) and had each one for the girls. 

Simple. Nothing fancy. We just wanted something for the girls to take home. Tied to the back is a copy of the video I made in a little sleeve so they can keep it forever and watch it everyday, right girls?

All in all, it was a very stressful event. We had SO many mishaps along the way. Nothing big, but just one thing after the other. The poor YW president and I were so ready to rip our hair out. But by the end we knew it was just Satan trying to frustrate the whole evening and stop us from having this event. Which we knew the Lord wanted so we persevered and survived ! And loved it. So many stories and memories. 

Here's one for the road ;]

Oh that happened. ::shivers::

It was a wonderful night. With wonderful girls and the wonderful spirit. I loved seeing the girls showcase their talents and testimony. And hearing the rave reviews of the night from so many. I love being back in this calling !

Our beautiful girls !

To food, or not to food?

I had this thought a few weeks ago. I've been trying to figure out how to say this.

In the past few years, decade, whatever, people have become more health conscious.  All natural, organic, free range, grain fed, no genetically modified, pesticide blahblahblah. There's movements, movies, groups, songs [maybe not] all about the horrible things in our food and the horrible things you are then putting into your bodies.

While I'm not saying we shouldn't be worried, or wary, or conscious about the GM foods, high fructose corn syrup and whatever else people are up in arms about, I thought of some other things we take into our bodies, that aren't as good.. But we aren't picketing these things.

So here's my picket sign.

Maybe because I'm getting old. Maybe because I have "mature" [haha] taste.

Do you stop and think about the music you listen to? What about the movies? What's the language like, the scenes? What about those friends you choose to be around? I'm not talking about the school hall talk; obviously you can't control that and you need to be in school or work. But when you choose to be around those people.

The standards for members of the church have been set forth in the "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet, which surprisingly isn't just for youth.  In the entertainment & media section, the First Presidency has stated, "Do not attend, view, or participate in anything that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way. Do not participate in anything that presents immorality or violence as acceptable. Have the courage to walk out of a movie, change your music, or turn off a computer, television, or mobile device if what you see or hear drives away the Spirit." 

Pretty straight forward?

There is more information in other sections, language, music & dancing, friends, etc. We've been directed by modern Prophets on what things to allow "into our bodies" and what things to stay away from. 

So where are the news crews headlining this? Where are the documentaries, the protesters demanding awareness for these spiritually detrimental things we allow in our bodies, our families, our children? 

Food for thought. 

[pun intended]   

Quickly

I probably shouldn't update when I'm feeling frustrated. I'm afraid you'll sense the angst in my writing and it won't be fun. Well, I hope my normal writing is fun.

I just thought I'd put a quick update on here. Nothing big going on.

Logan is officially a crawler. Almost a week now. He just decided one day that he wanted to crawl. And then he did. No learning. No awkward attempts. Just mastered it. Bam. 24 hours and he's a crawler. He's so fast. He loves getting into the dogs water bowl. Great. But he loves his baths, so I'm not surprised he loves to splash in the bowl. He's stood twice in the last few days without holding on and just stood. No biggie. It was pretty intense except he didn't realize it. He just plops down. He loves when we try to get him to stand and he falls one way or the other. He giggles and laughs. Its amusing. Did I put he got his first full hair cut? It was a few weeks ago. Chris did it while I was a church one day. I came home and it was gone. He did ask permission. But I didn't realize he was actually going to do it. Logan grew like 2 years in a matter of 2 hours. It was sad.  But he's so cute.

Long shaggy before hair

it's all gone ! He looks so much bigger. Crazy !

 He's 9 months. Had his check up. Not quite 20lbs which kills me, cause I would have sworn he was. He's taller than he is wide. So that explains why all his shirts come up over his belly. That fat little belly. Which is why i love him in footie pjs. I don't have to worry about the bottom of clothes coming halfway up his leg, or his shirts riding up over his belly. And had his second flu shot. So sad. Poor kid. Not excited for his 1yr check up when he gets stuck with all kinds of stuff. His sad little face. I can't take it. But that's all thats new with him. He's not walking quite yet. He loves walking along the furniture. He discovered his walker toy he can walk behind, since he's only ever climbed up on in and played with the activity front part of it. Now he likes to get it and walk all over the living room. He walks crooked. Like he's drunk. Silly kid. He doesn't like food. Well, real food. He eats all his jarred food and then some. But give him the real version of what his mashed food is, he hates it. Spits it out, makes the grossest face. I hope this kid isn't on jars forever.

Chris applied for graduation last week. Since the deadline was Friday. Nice. I am excited about that. He's on schedule. Should be fine as long as he passes all class. He said he's pretty sure he can get all D's this semester and still graduate with an air force acceptable GPA. Woot. He talked to a recruiter for the Air National Guard in Charleston. They have a pilots position open there. Chris wants it. So he got all the info, just needs to start working on that. Ie, studying for the tests, physicals, reference letters, etc. We may be west virginia-ers a few years longer. Who knows.

Chris got me a Nexus 7 tablet for my early Valentines present. I'm excited to use it. I don't really know what to use it for. Most anything I can do on it I've been using my phone for, so it seems redundant so far. Except when I have to teach church, then it will be wonderful, since the new curriculum is online and printing it all is a pain and just having it there on this cute little tablet will be lovely.

Life has been pretty hectic. I'm kind of at my end. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I'm just tapped out. I'm not tired, in that I'm not sleeping. But just so much. All the time. I can't. I mean I can. But it feels like I can't. There's just always something. And I'm not handling it well. I know it will be over soon. I know I should be positive and have that optimistic outlook and blah blah blah. And I will. But not right now. Let me be cranky, and moody and eat chocolate every night. I keep thinking this is a challenge for me. I've been just going through the motions lately. Not really into what ever it is I'm doing. And a few times, I've been thinking about how to challenge the Young Women to follow the theme for this year "Come Unto Christ" and then I think about what I am or can be doing to do that as well. And maybe that's what this is. Unfortunately, it's not until we're tired, lost, broken, forsaken, alone that we turn to our Savior. And maybe I am not being a good example to the YW and this is going to push me to be.

At least thats what I'm going to tell myself while I'm dealing with stuff.

Progress

Progress: noun

ˈprägrəs,ˈprägˌres,ˈprōˌgres/

1. 1.

   forward or onward movement toward a destination.

I've been thinking a lot about progress lately. Maybe because I'm watching my sweet little boy master crawling, or pulling himself up preparing to walk off across the room at any moment. Maybe because Chris is a few short months away from graduation and we get to move forward with the next step. Maybe because of some things I'm dealing with in my life as a YW leader. That's probably it. Because this will focus more on the Gospel's (well my version of the Gospel's) view of progress.

Members of the LDS church talk a lot about the Plan of Salvation. If you want more information that I may not cover proceed here ---> http://www.lds.org/topics/plan-of-salvation?lang=eng. I found a fancy color picture depicting said Plan for this purpose.

There's a lot of information there. Bear with me. 

This is huge for members of the church. This is THE plan. Where we came from, where we are, where we are going. It's the purpose, gives you direction. Gives you that destination we're progressing towards. I love having this knowledge. I don't have to wonder. 

[Hopefully] quick break down. We lived in the Premortal existence with our Heavenly Father and Christ and all God's spirit children. There two plans were proposed, Lucifers plan, which lacked agency, basically forcing us all to making right choices and return to Heaven and Christ's plan which allowed us to use our agency and potentially return to live with Our Father again, or not. Based purely on our choices in life. These opposing plans started "the war in Heaven" between Lucifer's followers and those who supported Christ. 1/3 of all the spirits in Heaven sided with Lucifer and God ultimately cast them out of Heaven. Those who remained and followed Christ, left the Premortal Existence and came to Earth. We have forgotten all this because of the Veil (seen) so we can be objective and make our decisions in this life, whether to follow Christ's example, make right choices, follow the scriptures, commandments, prophets etc. This is where we are (duh right?).  When we leave this world, through death, our body will be buried, and our spirit will continue on to one of two places: spirit paradise or spirit prison. Placement is based solely on your decisions here in this life. If you've kept the commandments and follow Christ and his prophets you will enjoy paradise. If you need to work on some things, repent, iron our your kinks in obedience, you will go to Spirit Prison where you will have the opportunity to be taught and fix what needs fixin'. This is currently happening for all those who have died since the beginning of the world. And will continue to happen until... the Resurrection. Christ rose on the 3rd day. Agreed? We are to follow his example and because he broke the bonds of death by being resurrected, we too will be resurrected. This will be the rejoining of our body and spirit so we can stand before God and be judged according to our works in Earth life. From here the judgement takes place of all spirits/people who lived on the earth. Here is where things get a little awesome (imho) instead of just a pass/fail system, there isn't just Heaven or Hell, good or bad.  There are three kingdoms of Heaven. Celestial is the best, most sought after. Where we will live in the presence of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. It's compared to the glory of the sun. Brightest, most glorious. The second kingdom is the Terrestrial, compared to the glory of the moon. Still bright. Still beautiful, but not quite as magnificent as the sun. And the last is the Telestial Kingdom, which is comparable to the glory of the stars. And for those that are absolutely horrible, and basically evil followers of Satan/Lucifer, get to go to outer darkness. No light. (See 1 Cor. 15:40-41).  

Ok. Overwelmed? Sorry. I had to make sure we were all on the same page. 

So back to my progress. So you see how going through this plan is sort of linear. You start from one and go to the next and continue on. Until you reach the destination. The definition, remember, of progress says the forward or onward movement towards a destination. Not backwards. Not sitting still. Forward. Go. Move. 

There is no progress in standing still. 

Would it make sense in the grand scheme of this Plan, to say, stop after you come to earth? Refuse to leave? Stay in earth life... forever? No. What's the point? We came here to experience, use our agency, make choices and prove ourselves worthy to return to live with our Father in Heaven. Or even after death. Let's stay dead... What? Why? What was the purpose of any of that? At any point (beyond making it past judgement and into one of the kingdoms) there is no reason to stop. There is no reason to stand still. We must progress. We must push forward toward our destination. No matter how scary that next step is. I'm sure leaving the comfort and glory of our Father in Heaven to come to this dreary world called Earth was intimidating, fearful, you name it. I'm sure we felt scared. But we trusted God. We trusted our Savior. We had faith. We took the leap and came here. Now people talk about fear of death. Fear of what's next. Why yes, we fear the unknown. But if we exercise a little faith, and see what's next, see what's coming, would we delay it? Would we want to live forever, just because we're scared of the next step? No. It seems silly. Childish, to throw a tantrum because we're scared and refuse to move. We must go forward. This is the plan we agreed to before we came to this life. And knowing what comes next and what we can obtain, the goal we are moving towards, that wonderful destination... why fear? "This is a time for faith, not fear" (reference). 

So (how could I keep going!) to relate this to life. My life. My things. Working with Young Women (girls ages 12-18) in such a scary transient time in life, there is a lot of fear. You're dealing with so much uncertainty at that time in life. But... you still move forward. What would you tell the little 11 year old who's preparing to leave the children's primary program and enter the Young Women's program, who's afraid. Who doesn't want to leave the comfort of the familiar Primary program. How silly it seems. Ask anyone, Young Women's rocks. But they don't know that. They don't know what goes on there. They know what happens in Primary. And they want to stay. Sadly, they don't get to stay. You must progress. You must move forward. And before you know it that scared preteen is loving Young Women's, loving the new friends, the teachings, the activities and wonders why she ever fought against this natural progression. 

So what I'm trying to say, move. Forward. Not backwards. Move. Don't stand still. Have faith not fear. This whole entire Plan is based on the next step. Planning, preparing and moving forward.