onward and upward

Tuesday, 3/20/18 Hello Nate, God bless you! I am not sure what you do to celebrate FHE on Monday nights. Once a month we have a group that meets together and call it Empty Nester's Family Home Evening. I am the only single guy that attends. And we always have a pot luck dinner. I have a severe allergy to monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer, also called MSG. It is in gravies and salad dressings and flavored potatoe chips and tomato sauce and on and on. Rather than try to decide if there is anything I can eat I just eat at home and sit at the table without a plate and visit while everyone else eats. You may ask, why go if you can't eat? Answer: Socializing Sounds strange doesn't it. Let me tell you it is strange and it causes everyone around me to reevaluate their own motivations. After FS yesterday I ran some errands and then went home for my late lunch and reading time and nap. Then when I am not fighting sleep I can index some more, refreshe...

Good Wednesday morning Nate, God bless you! I am so proud of you! Full time job, prepared and blessed the sacrament Sunday, morning scripture study group, trying to fill you time with purposeful and uplifting and righteous activities! Yay for you! I wrote you last time about the specialness of patriarchal blessings. They are so special that some of my children never felt worthy to get one! Two of my three daughters waited until after they were married to get one.  I felt similarly. We talked about patriarchal blessings at church all through my Sunday School years but it wasn't until I was going away to school that I felt, "worthy or not I needed one."  So precious! I got to see what HF had to say to me, typed, in words I could read and memorize if I wanted to and stored in the church vaults in Salt Lake City! My son youngest son Michael'92 still does not have one. Karen and Jessica have never shared theirs with me. Next, I have been quite introspective lat...

Hey Nate, Today was the day! How did it go? Someone read the blessing on the bread so calmly and understandably today that I felt blessed just hearing it. I purposefully did not look up to see who did such a great job. But I felt closer to God because of that blessing offered in my behalf. It is hard to stay worthy of blessing the sacrament. The good news: just repent first! I always prided myself on being a know-it-all in the church. It is easy to know more than everyone else when your family teaches the gospel. They did! Too bad my parents didn't live it. That messed all of us up. At BYU after my mission i got to be roomies with my best friend, next door neighbor, David Jentzsch. He taught me something his father taught him that surprised me. I guess I didn't know everything after all. 9  But behold, I say unto you that ye must  pray  always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall  pray  unt...