The middle of June

This is a post without a punchline, just journaling about our week.

Was it just last week that President Nelson spoke to the youth and gave them 5 challenges to prepare for the work of the Gathering of Israel? That's been a big part of the week. Marriner and I decided to join the youth in the challenges. First, he challenged the youth to take a 7 day fast from social media. I'm part of a Facebook group of a diverse collection of women committed to listening to people with different opinions to understand their positions (especially political) better. Not trying to convince anyone, just understand. On Saturday, a question came up about Mormons, and the Mormons in the group opened an "ask us anything you want about our church" thread. It was pretty amazing, one of the neatest missionary opportunities I've ever had. A lot of the members of the group just had some weird ideas. So that was neat. But I didn't feel like that was a great time to start a social media fast, so I waited until Wednesday to start. I'll admit - it hasn't been easy. I use Facebook when I'm tired and want to veg a bit. And what do I do when I can't? That's been a tough question to answer. I've read the news some more. I've tried to think of projects I'm interested in and research them a bit. I've tried to make myself get up and do something more often. Sometimes, I just want some adult interaction. So I've called friends some more, done things the old fashioned way - one on one. That's been good. But sometimes, I still want to get on the internet and tell everyone about the funny thing my kid just did. In other words, it hasn't been enjoyable or easy, but it's been good for me :)

Another one of the challenges was to make a sacrifice of time for 3 weeks to help the work of the Lord. We decided to use date night for that. Marriner set up for us to go with the missionaries to teach a new member lesson on Friday night. That was just fabulous. It was fun to get to visit and fun to teach. It reminded me of my mission sometimes, when you're trying to teach something, and you know how fabulous it is, but you're just hoping that what you're feeling is what you're actually saying. Of course, this is how we know the gospel is true - people still gain testimonies even though we do such a poor job of expressing things. One of the missionaries was brand new, so the two of us were pretty quiet. Marriner, on the other hand, is not quiet, and actually contributed to the lesson. Good for him :)

On Sunday, the branch president (who is really just a wonderful guy, I must say) asked all the youth to share a little 2-5 minute testimony of their thoughts and experiences from the fireside. Lige did a great job of signing really clearly and understandably about how he felt a call to repentance on being a missionary. The other youth gave really powerful testimonies, too. The neat thing was that they'd all listened to the fireside, then they'd all gone and acted, and had spiritual experiences as a result. How powerful is that! They were so inspirational to me.

Our sharing time lesson this week was all about hearing the Holy Ghost. The lesson used a lot of sound analogies to explain how the Holy Ghost works. Even though everyone involved in the lesson was hearing, it just kept striking me as inappropriate for a Deaf branch to have a lesson completely based on sound. I guess I want our class to be accessible to anyone who may show up - branch leader, visiting child, whatever. So I spent some time thinking and praying about how to adapt the lesson for our branch. In the end, we used a visual analogy, with the Holy Ghost sending a written message for them to receive. I was really pleased with how the lesson went (even though no Deaf person dropped by) and really felt like the Holy Ghost had helped me out.

Well, it's my bedtime, so no more stories from me today. Thanks for reading!