Power in scripture

So my husband and I have been reading the Book of Mormon every day trying to finish the book. He was behind me when we started the challenge and I honestly liked being ahead. Falling short on my goal he is nearly catching up. I am in the book of Alma(for those who are familiar) and in the recent chapter have found many scriptures that really stood out. Below are screenshots of those that stood out. 

Wow!!! So powerful. I have been struggling like I said and when turning to certain family members I have received some not so nice comments about my choices to have a family rather then save the money and buy a house. I know my plan I have a family with my husband is important to me and know it is worth it. 

What scriptures help you? share! Whether it is in the Bible or the Book of Mormon (another testament of Jesus Christ)

Support through struggle

I am going to be honest and admit I have been struggling lately. If you are just reading in I have been struggling with fertility issues since I lost a baby at 5 months pregnant back in April of 2012. This past April I had an early loss after having some extra help from the doctors. I tried again this past month with no luck. The next step is a shot to help me each day and it's not covered by insurance. It's nearly 1000$ and we have just spent too much in the last two years already. I've thrown in the towel right now on motherhood. Then yesterday(seeing as I am writing this at 3am) I went to a local baseball game. I had my mom and her new husband there along with his parents, my siblings and my husband. A couple rows in front of me I see this amazing family with 5 kids. One of them is a young girl with cancer. She was the most beautiful girl I have seen and the biggest and brightest smile. So I decided to see if social media would pay off and I began tweeting to the local team and it's mascot. I simply kept asking for her to be visited by the mascot to make her night. 3-4 tweets later and a manager of the stadium surprised this little girl with gifts from the team. He then saw she had siblings and soon included them. Her family was taken up to the press box and had a meet and greet with the mascot Spike. The feelings I had of joy and excitement when it actually worked are priceless. I never came forward to the family but I did stop the manager and thank him,telling him I was the one who messaged and how grateful I was to be heard. I text my mom that if I can't be a mom right now...I am going to help those who are fighting so hard to still be a parent. 

“Whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day.”

—Alma 36:3

So I will put my faith continuously in my Heavenly Father. I will do the right thing for others and myself because at the end of the day that feeling is what I need. I will be a parent in other ways and who knows what the future holds besides HIM.  I am thankful my mom raised me to think of others. 

 This is a picture of the little girl being sneaky and trying to move up a few rows from her parents. Her laugh was so cute!

Mormon Lingo

Below is a list of common lingo from members of my church...the link I found this at is http://minorproblems.wordpress.com/mormon-the-minors-terminology/

Mormon Lingo

So I realized that there are a lot of things in my blog that you may not understand if you are not Mormon. Ergo, I am creating this page to be filled with terms, concepts, and their definitions to keep things clear. This is going to be a big work in progress…

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: This is the formal title of the Mormon church, but so many people know us as Mormons they think they are two separate churches. Also sometimes we may go by “LDS” as an abbreviated version of the Church name.

Active: This is a term for someone who is Mormon and regularly attends church meeting and activities. Now this doesn’t mean the person is completely awesome or anything, but that they’re at least committed enough to wake up on time for church.

Inactive: A Mormon that doesn’t go to church or follow any of the rules… like drinking or R-rated movie…

Institute: This is like a Bible study class for college age people in church, except we have a wide range of classes like gospel principles, old testament, book of mormon, history of the church.

R.M: This is an acronym for Returned Missionary, meaning a person who has served and completed a full-time mission (you know the ones with the name tags who go knocking on doors teaching about Christ). Many men in the church go and serve one when they turn 19 and when they come back at 21 they are a lot more mature and better looking.

Premie: Pre-Mission, meaning you can date the person but soon they’ll be off limits because missionaries aren’t suppose to date while on a mission.

Ward: this is just our term for congregation, except you go to a ward depending on where you live, much like school districts. They also have wards for single adults (also known as student wards because you normally don’t go to those until you are in college), spanish-speaking wards, deaf wards, and regular family wards.

DTR: This is an acronym for “Defining The Relationship.” It is that awkward talk where you and that other person you’ve been dating a while decide if you are an exclusive couple or just dating…

Elder: This is an official title of a man who is serving a mission or is a higher up in the church

Bishop: Same thing as a Pastor in other churches, except he isn’t paid and does not give a sermon every week. It is actually members of the congregation that speak and teach during our services.

Bishopric: Every bishop has two counselors to help him out and they are known as being in the bishopric.

EQP: So the men’s group in the church is called Elder’s Quorum, and EQP stands for Elder’s Quorum President. Think like a leader of the men’s association in a church and Elder’s Quorum is the name of that men’s association.

Relief Society: This is what we call the women’s association in our church; we are known for our mad cooking skills and having more fun than the guys.

General Conference: This a conference held twice a year where the President of the church and his counselors, apostales, and other church leaders give an address to all the members of the church about what they feel we need to be instructed on.

Singles Ward, Singles Ward II, The R.M: These are all Mormon movies; they are hilarious with much better acting than most Christian movies.

FHE: This is an acronym for Family Home Evening; it is a time set aside on Monday nights for families to share a gospel message and have a family activity together. Since I’m in a singles ward and we’re not living with our families we do it all together- and my calling is to put it together ever week for my ward.

Mormon.org: So you may have seen ads for this site, good. There are a lot of misconceptions about the church (like it being a cult or something) so these ads have been created so people know where to go to clear up these misconceptions. I’ve got a profile you can check out listed on my blogroll

Member: This means you were once baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This doesn’t mean you are active, but once a Mormon always a Mormon.

Non-Member: So this means you aren’t Mormon, usually this is how we classify how much of our lingo we’ll have to explain if we’re talking church stuff in front of someone who isn’t LDS.

Nicmo: This stands for non-committal make-out, or the Mormon version of hooking up.

Jack Mormon: Someone who only acts like a Mormon on Sundays. Basically the Mormon equivalent to a “Sunday Christian”

This is a great list! and will help others like me who converted, and just anyone reading that may be confused by what I say. I hope this helps!!

My mother

So I wanted to reflect a little bit on my mom again. Especially with Father's Day being done with. What?? Yep talking about my mom! A single mother part of my life she played two roles. Well actually about a dozen different roles whether it was mother, father, friend, role model, teacher, etc. a year ago today I got a call the night before I was supposed to drive to Florida with a good friend to be a witness in her adoption. The call was from my moms soon to be husband at the time ,Rod, my mom had a stroke and was in the hospital. I knew Florida needed to be cancelled and within minutes I packed and was heading on my way to Ny with Andrew. The next few days were some of the scarier days I have had with my mom. She had some speech delays and comprehension issues. My brother and sister still chuckle as to why I started balling when I told my mom I loved her and she had no idea what I was saying and what it meant. Granted they are 13 and. 14 years younger then me..they didn't understand how such a simple sentence can mean the world.  Heavenly Father has really watched over her and my whole family. We are all blessed to be alive and together. I love my mom and I love my Heavenly Father.

Sacred Grove

Hello everyone! On June 11th my husband and I celebrated three years of marriage! Originally we never even had the day together due to work conflicts etc. but somehow it opened up and was possible to do something together before he had class at 6 for the fire dept. Andrew has the best sort of luck when it comes to winning prizes off of the radio and he win this concert at lunch time with an up and coming artist. However in my mind I knew where we needed to be together on our special day. I felt the need in my heart to go to the "sites". These include Joseph Smith's farm and the Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah , Alvin Smith's grave and an LDS store in the village of Palmyra. We shared this special day with Elder Kyle Willis and Elder Alex Anderson. This was the second time visiting many of the places and the feelings I had were completely different then the first time. I learned more about Joseph Smith and all that he and Emma went through to have children.  This builds my strength and testimony of faith  and endurance. I loved going to the LDS bookstore and gift shop and finding great books on loss and just about anything else you could think of. Not many members of the church will ever make it to these beautiful sites. And I live a little over 40 minutes from them. I touched things Joseph Smith touched and walked on the land he did when first trying to decide in which religion is for him. 

I have been reflecting a lot lately especially with my brother and sister taking their first lessons. Everyone positive in my life has had some soft of faith and wanted to be a good person. Easy to comprehend right? I never saw these correlations until last night. Try and surround yourself with positive people. 

Inspiration

While reading Alma chapter 5 I came across these verses : 14 And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?

15 Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body?

16 I say unto you, can you imagine to yourselves that ye hear the voice of the Lord, saying unto you, in that day: Come unto me ye blessed, for behold, your works have been the works of righteousness upon the face of the earth?

 (Alma 5:14-16)

I never thought I would be so incredibly happy discussing faith. My face lights up when I speak of Heavenly Father and all he has done. Today I had a quick meet and greet with an investigator (someone the missionaries have been taking too) and I was just so alive when speaking.  Heavenly Father has given me all that I have. I used my voice recently at my job to day I would not stand for the individuals I served to be blamed because of their disabilities.  I am proud I stuck up for them. I am done with that company and moving on. I feel right about my decision. 

Recently I was speaking to Elder Fierros about his time in the Medina Ny area. He said he had had a lot of missed opportunities for miracles and he really wanted to see something happen before he gets transferred. I told him I would pray about one individual who seemed to be on the fence about her faith. Sure enough today he messaged me saying my prayers worked. How incredible is that?! I hope and pray for anyone and everyone going through a hard time. 

Be inspired by me to take a step towards learning more about the Book of Mormon. Check out Mormon.org and speak to Mormons!  Check out lds.org for inspiring messages. And keep praying!! 

Below is a picture of me reading in the park the other day!

The second picture is my (new)vintage Book of Mormon from Elder Barnes! What a fantastic friend!!

Love your enemies

We have all heard of the expression keep your friends close and your enemies closer right? Well I guess you could say below is a form of that phrase. But this says love them. Forgive. I loved this passage below..


“Love your enemies, … do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44). (Chapter 44: The Second Coming of Jesus Christ)

The full part is here : He will take His rightful place as King of heaven and earth. When Jesus comes, He will establish His government on the earth. The Church will become part of that kingdom. He will rule all the people of the earth in peace for 1,000 years.

When Jesus Christ first came to the earth, He did not come in glory. He was born in a lowly stable and laid in a manger of hay. He did not come with great armies as the Jews had expected of their Savior. Instead, He came saying, “Love your enemies, … do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44). He was rejected and crucified. But He will not be rejected at His Second Coming, “for every ear shall hear it, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess” that Jesus is the Christ (D&C 88:104). He will be greeted as “Lord of lords, and King of kings” (Revelation 17:14). He will be called “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

(Chapter 44: The Second Coming of Jesus Christ)

This was so strong and powerful to me. I have had an anger in my heart before and it is just not something that you want. I am freeing my heart of this. Why not join in on the 100 days of happy campaign and see the positives in life?



I had a great weekend this past weekend. We had dinner with the elders and one of the elders friends from Canandaigua. She has the cutest little boy! He was so sweet and playful. Then the elders all came over for service and helped us paint a bedroom for our upcoming exchange student. (And a wall in our bedroom) It was so much  fun doing this with them! Then we had a picnic the next day with my inlaws/and sunday was church. The first sunday of each month is fast and testimony. (you fast for as many meals as you can in one day...most skip breakfast and lunch) Then anyone from the church can get up and share how this church has helped impact them, and how they feel/know it is true. I did not get up to speak, However I know this church to be true, and speak up about it often. I hope this blog lets my readers look at their own faith and wonder...is this what I really want? Could there be more.