Trust

The young Nephi in the Book of Mormon stirs in us a desire to develop trust in the Lord to obey His commandments, however hard they appear to us. Nephi faced danger and possible death when he said these words of trust that we can and must feel steadily in our hearts: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” ⁵

That trust comes from knowing God. More than any other people on earth, we have, through the glorious events of the Restoration of the gospel, felt the peace that the Lord offered His people with the words “Be still, and know that I am God.” ⁶ My heart is filled with gratitude for what God has revealed about Himself that we might trust Him.

For me it began in 1820 with a young boy in a grove of trees on a farm in the state of New York. The boy, Joseph Smith Jr., walked among the trees to a secluded spot. He knelt to pray with complete trust that God would answer his pleading to know what he should do to be cleansed and saved through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. ⁷

Each time I read his account, my trust in God and His servants expands:

“I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

“It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!” ⁸

The Father revealed to us that He lives, that Jesus Christ is His Beloved Son, and that He loved us enough to send that Son to save us, who are His children. And because I have a testimony that He called that unlettered boy as an apostle and prophet, I trust His apostles and prophets today and those they call to serve God.

That trust has blessed my life and the lives of my family.  Henry B Erying Oct 2010

http://lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/trust-in-god-then-go-and-do?lang=eng

Just lost power to the NOC, was able to down most critical systems before the UPS tanked, now just sit and wait....

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

All Hallows Eve Festivities

We did a ton over the this Halloween, several activities: Pumpkin Carving, Trunk or Treat, Fall Fest and Halloween it self.

 

 

Camping with the Dad

Dad invited me to help out with a Fall Camporee in Farmington last weekend, it was supposed to be a little cold.. it was super cold and it rained all night! It was actually very awesome. There is nothing like rain on a tent.  I took the boys and we had a blast. I got to help with geocaching and learn more about being a man from my Dad. He is a responsible and hard working guy. Every body's go to guy. Need to be more like him. Check out all the pics.

String Cheese as a fashion statement!

Makin' camp

"Glorious" or we weren't that lost.

So, let me first say; We were not lost, more temporary misplaced.  We went looking for a newly placed cache in the northern part of the Cibola National Forest. It was in one of the most beautiful places I've been here, always surprised by the "new" places we find, and the interesting spots I have never been to after living here all my life. It is the perfect time of year, fall, my favorite. Everything is changing and the light of the afternoon sun lights it all up:

Got to really break the Jeep in:

But totally worth it:

Finding the cache(kinda long and I'm no camera man)

So after finding it, we headed out, but not the way we came in, and I had a bad feeling about it, but we did. We hit the edge of the National Forest and could proceed no further:

(we're the blue dot)

So it was dark by the time we doubled back and started to head out. We ended up missing our original road in the dark, and took a very long bumpy road out. We ended up going way too far South East,

 and got home about midnight. Not without scaring the kids a little and having to stop and make a good action plan for getting out. Good thing our GPS had full charge, and TOPO maps with roads, so we plotted a course that would lead our to the main road. This helped calm the kids calm, letting them watch as we got closer t the waypoints. 

  

Lessons I knew but forgot:

1) Always turn on Trails at the beginning of the trip, for obvious reasons: Good to look at your whole trip afterwards, and of course to get back out., I had mine off for purely aesthetic reasons, and that was stupid, epically when you can hide them even when on.

2) Always have a spare set of batteries. Mine were fully charged, but still.

3) Don't rely solely on your GPS, take a map.

Lessons I became more aware of:

1) Don't panic, your only as lost as you think you are

2) Be prepared to stay put if you have to. Daylight is very refreshing.

3) Take lots of water, always.

This was one of the funnest adventures I've been on in a while, here are all the pics. Want to go back to and remark the road...

For those of us that are visual learners..

Sunday Morning Session

President Eyering
Lack of trust, never know all the reasons, just that it happens
Trust is not coincidence when blessing come

Elder Boyd K. Packer
Proclamation of the Family

Elder Dalin H. Oakes
2 lines of communication
1) Personal Line: Holy Ghost, Prayer,
2) Priesthood Line

President Monson
Giving Thanks
Walking with Gratitude
Frequently express love and gratitude
Reflect

Priesthood Session

Elder Russell M Nelson
Why we have missionaries
Go into all the world
We teach by example
We need more worthy missionary
Increase your circle of friends

Elder Patrick Kearon
Flip flops vs shoes
Scorpion sting. I knew that flip flops were not shoes
We know the standards, we have been taught, rebellious and lazy behavior leads us to be stung.
Lay down your weapons of rebellion.
To survive in a mine field you must follow the tracks in front of you.
Not one of you has thrown away your chance.


Go and say I'm sorry

President Uctdorf
Pride
Difference between pride and being proud of
A sin of comparison
A personal Rameumpton
To be admired or envy
Looking for flaws and generalize them

President Eyering
We have been called to use divine power
Common theme: power of the priesthood to serve and change lives
Put our lives in order to qualify
Service will allow you to know the needs of those you serve

President Monson
The power of choice, some are trivial, make no difference. Others make all the difference

1. Right of choice = agency
2. Responsibility of choice = no middle ground
3. Result of choice = salvation

Saturday Afternoon Session

Elder Robert D. Hales
"Mormon Jargon" his friend wanted a page or definitions
Plan of salvation

Quinten L. Cook
Age of Plenty and Age of Doubt

Richard C. Edgley
Faith is a choice
What I do not know I bridge with Faith

Saturday Morning Session

5 New Temples
Hartford Conn
Tijuana Mex.
Indianapolis Indiana
Philippines
Lisbon

Elder Jeffery R. Holland
Service rendered without reward in mind

Mary Wixom: Primary General President
Teaching children is a sacred responsibility.
It usually happens by example more that by words.

Cloudio Costa
Role of a prophet, modern and ancient

David McConkie
The How of Learning: What made that special teacher special?
The attitude or spirit
4 Principals of Gospel Teaching
1.Emerse your selves, cannot love what you do not know
2.
3.
4.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson
purity
work/leisure
respect

Elder Dieter M. Uctdorf
Simplicity is the ultimate Sophistication - Leonardo De Vinci

rAWr

That's a lot of dice...

Happy Friday!

Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea : Image of the Day

Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea : Image of the Day

It's not that Tianna caught the bouquet so much that she was up there in the first place?

Haven't been around.. here is what I missed.

Spirit City

Had to..

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex

Caching turned into hiking

So we took the scouts to hike the Hogback. I was pretty jazzed cause there was a cache nearby, si I donned my Spider-man Jersey and headed up.. right up the face off the frontage road.

... well, apparently we took a different road, that didn't take us near the cache at all. We didn't get started until 7, with plenty of light. But it got dark soon enough. The guys had a good time, great views and nice hike. Ill have to go get that cache later...

Great views...see more here

Thank you $2.00 insurance reimbursment check for paying for the gas it takes to take you to the bank.

The jeep is so excited to be driving it now randomly honks the horn!

So what are the "candels" when there is an internet blackout? If only...

Happy Friday!

Getting pulled over in a work vehicle not pricless. In fact it costs like $125

Tablet PC & Sketch Book Pro

hmm

Astronauts are heroes.

via:Gizmodo

Wanna replace adds in Gmail with useful information?

TED Tuesday

if you don't know don't ask

Caching

So while in Utah last week and a little this weekend  in Ramah,we did been doing some major geo-caching, so much it seems that I'm making the boys tired of it. Not Tianna, she loves it. She has been up for any cache we have gone to find. 

So on this last trip we fond no less than 9 track-able items, some travel bugs and some Geocoins. One of the coolest (and first) we found was the "The Amazing (Duck) Race - Daddy Duck". Turns out this little duck is racing other ducks, Travel Bugs have a specific mission..., well you can click the link, but the kids found it to be fascinating. The Maps of each travel bug are the most compelling. Well I lie, the Google Earth file ( View in Google Earth) that you can open make Travel Bugs both fun and educational without making it known its educational. This weekend we were down in Ramah and it RAINED! Hard Core. After is stopped the kids and I went to find a cache that was close, a bonus find was an awesome frog pond, a loud frog pond. Click the small pic for video and audio!

From Geocaching

Life in a day

Commodore Amiga celebrates its 25th birthday, Andy Warhol still dead

Goro Fujita

What?!

Oh local Gallup business owner, don't you know thats crazy

supposed to be for a optometrist..

Cole just flew by with his X-Wing, "R2-D2, we just got hit with a proton torpoedo, thats Bull Shit!" I said "Cole! There were no proton torpoedos in Star Wars!" Then I asked where he heard that word... yeah from me.

Family reunion auctions:
Yes I'm greatful for the improved kitchen, but that 4"x4" crossstitch scarecrow is not worth $50, besides scarecrows are just farm clowns

Party in the usa on the radio

Interwebs!

Leave it to work to gt me to find internet. With that small emergency taken care of:

Magnetic Fields Captured!

Small town of Hatch, UT. Found several small caches here and some along the way. Why can't I send pics to blogger with my phone?

Couldn't miss this

The rest of camp...

12:09 am, Tuesday/Wednesday

Today flew by, it was nice. The guys started shooting at the shooting sports and we got to do leader swim training. It was more sunny today but not terribly hot. The afternoon was spent carving a golf ball, yeah a golf ball. We have been challenged to the  Chimyo Classic Putt-PuttGolf Tournament, all balls and clubs must be made from materials found here at camp. My putter is quite nice if I do say so my self, found the perfect smooth-faced piece of sort-of-rectangular granite, lashed to a pine branch shaped and fitted just right. The dilemma of the ball was a hard one, wasn’t sure what to use, rope, clay, wood, and without a good knife I finally decided to raid the Woodcarving calss and use their rasp and formed a fairly decent “ball.”  

The staff challenged the adult leaders to a trap shoot, to which they were very confident at their chances of winning. Even though I only got 4 out of 6 of my shots, I think we surprised them my beating them handily. Even if they gave their camp director a repeating 12 round magazine and several shots at each clay. It was just fun to watch her shoot.

The real highlight thought was the astronomy observation we just got back from. Not a cloud in the sky, and up here where there is no light-polution the boys could identify several constellations. What I would have given to have Google Night Sky with me. There are so many tools avaiblre to us now that can help us ineract with the natural world, you don’t have to be the uber-nerd who has obscure knowledge that you have to share to impress, now everyone coud have it at their fingertips, and even a novice stargazer could get a lot out of one observation. We waited for the moon to rise so we could look at it through a professional telescope, which was rad. The saying “feeling small” does not capture it. Saw many a satellite.

During the meeting...

Picnik's editor now built into Picasa Web Albums

Kyle Vrieze (bermudafreze) displayed this deadly beauty of a SHIP at Brickworld. Unlike other ships, itcarries combat cargo. Watch out ground forces, the last thing you might see is its shadow above your head.