"I love and like EVERYONE in the WORLD!"

As I walked into the church foyer today, Martha ran off. I shouted, (as quietly as I could...) "Hey, Martha, come back!" but she didn't hear me. Ellis said, "She's going to give Sister M a hug." What?!? Martha has been so shy around the adults in the branch. But she went in to the chapel and hugged every single woman in there with the biggest smile you ever saw. (The men were all bustling about getting things ready, I don't know if she would have been brave enough to hug any of them...)

Martha's old nursery teacher was called to serve somewhere else, and Martha misses her terribly. She saw her during sacrament meeting and sweetly smiled at her for 10 straight minutes.

When she went to nursery, she decided for some reason that she's now friends with her new nursery teachers. When it was time to part, she told her teacher "I love and like you!" and gave her a big hug and her winning smile. Her teacher was shocked - usually Martha just gives her looks of suspicion :) Now they're best friends!

Martha's only 3. I prepared lessons and props, taught object lessons and songs, but in the end, I wonder if Martha didn't do more to further the work of the Lord today than I did. She shared the love of Jesus with everyone, lifting and lightening everyone she touched.

After church, she declared (in English), "Mom, I love and like EVERYONE in the WORLD!" What a great thing that is.

Sam's turn!

Well, we all know Martha's main purpose in life is being really adorable learning sign language. But it turns out that Sam does really adorable things, too! He's just really camera shy - and more aware of parents being sneaky! But I caught him the other day, finally :)

As you can tell, he totally saw me, but he was having a fun time playing with my tablet, and he was afraid if he talked to me, I'd tell him to put it away. So we sorta mutually looked over each other's crimes.

This first one is Sam signing "I am a Child of God," which, alas, was interrupted by Lige wanting to give Sam a fancy pocket hanky :) It's really pretty close to the way we sign it in Primary, too :)

This next one is, "If the Savior stood beside me." Sam turns around when he can't remember how it goes because the signs are posted on the wall behind him to help Mom practice. It's a hard song! I don't think he actually USED the papers, though - they were up too high for him. I can tell because he's making up his own translation in that section :)

The other reason I really just love this video is because it's soooo realistic. I watch the ending and think, "Yup, that's my family in a nutshell! Signing beautiful songs one moment, smacking our sisters the next. And a mom who keeps on taking a movie instead of jumping up and stopping the fighting." Good thing I have my priorities straight! :)

Listening to the Prophet

Last night was pretty awesome. There was a a special meeting for all the youth age 12-18 to listen to the prophet, President Russel M. Nelson, speak to them. For historical perspective, the only other time the prophet has spoken just to the youth of the church was in 2000, with President Gordon B. Hinkley. I was not a youth (and I was in the Philippines) so I didn't get to go to that one. Fortunately, parents were invited to this talk! :)

Ellis is 11 years and 9 months old. We let her come, too. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

Youth groups were encouraged to meet and watch the broadcast together, but this is more complex when your mom or dad has to drive you an hour each way to the church. So they decided to meet by Facebook! We all joined a group video chat before the broadcast, had brief remarks from the Branch President, then said an opening prayer. Then we turned it off and watched the broadcast with our families.

It's not perfect. You have to sign slowly. It's hard to tell who is signing to whom. But it was beautiful to me to feel like my kids aren't alone. Sometimes we feel pretty alone. And we don't mind. But feeling like part of a group is great. It's only 7 kids (if you count Ellis) from 4 families, but we're a group!

The broadcast was quite fabulous. The youth were given some specific challenges to help them become more useful in the work of the Lord. It turns out that they were pretty great ideas for moms and dads, too, so Marriner and I are joining in. I sure love our prophet. I'm excited to do what he asked. Because, you know, you're only as old as you feel, so I totally count myself in his target audience. Here they are:

1. Hold a seven-day fast from social media. ("Take a break from the fake." Awesome!)

2. Make a weekly sacrifice of time to the Lord for three weeks.

3. Keep on the covenant path. If you are off, repent and get back on the path.

4. Pray daily that all of God’s children might receive the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

5. Stand out. Be different. Be a light. Give to a friend one copy of the booklet For the Strength of Youth.

For #2, we had a hard time thinking of something we could do. Honestly, we don't spend much time doing things that aren't for the Lord, already. We sorta feel like that's the big measuring stick of life: if it doesn't make a difference in the long run, then don't do it. But we had a little inspiration that we could use our next 3 date nights to do service together. That way it's a date AND it's doing the work of the Lord! And since a strong marriage is the work of the Lord, it counts DOUBLE! Yeah baby :) 

In which blogging finally pays off

I have heard about people making money by blogging. Personally, I think being a professional blogger seems exhausting, but don't we all have a little dream deep down inside that our hobby will suddenly become really popular and we'll be rich and famous? So I guess there's a part of me that thinks that I should get SOMETHING for all of this excellent writing :)

You can tell it's excellent writing by the way I use emojis. Very professional.

It's not even an emoji. It's a colon-parenthesis smiley face. The height of writing sophistication.

But this week, my blogging paid off! It all started back in...like...2005 or something...when we met Donald and Laura Mueller in grad school. They were some of my favorite people pretty quickly.

Ok, now we'll skip forward to 2018, when the Mueller's son won his regional spelling bee and qualified for the NATIONAL Spelling Bee, held at National Harbor, a short 4 miles from our house!! They contacted us for traveling information, and of course they came to visit us when they got to town, and it was SO. MUCH. FUN. reuniting with them. (Another example of sophisticated writing...) They're still some of my favorite people.

Of course, now you are all wondering how their son did in the spelling bee - he did wonderfully! He missed the cut-off for the final by only 1 point, which puts him at about 46th (or was it 43rd?) out of 500 participants. Wow.

But the part that relates to this blog is that Laura had read my blog, including my gush about Tostitos chipotle salsa. So she brought me some!! I mean, who has friends that not only read your blog, but also remember things in it AND bring them to you?!? Me, it turns out! After they left this afternoon, I put my kids down for naps, got a bag of chips, and dipped in. It was lovely.

So, any of you other loyal readers out there... (.....crickets chirping....) Ah, never mind.

Us with the famous person! He's the one in the back by Marriner. And Laura - I chose this pic out of the 3 we took because this is the only one you could see the celebrity's face. Ha ha! Great at spelling, but still a kid :)

Communication is so essential in marriage!

Tuesday night is Marriner's "Branch Night" where he goes up to the church after work and does all his interviews and meetings that he can't fit in on Sunday. And I think I've mentioned before the night-owl-ish nature of some of the people in this Branch...so...Marriner is out pretty late sometimes! (Since those very same night owls might be really confused if they read this, let me define "out really late" as "getting home after 10pm." Hey, I'm an early-to-bed sort. )

So this last Tuesday, Marriner got home about 10:30. I was so tired. So was Marriner. He came in and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. We tried making small talk, but it sorta failed. It's a little hard to start a conversation because I don't know what parts of his day were sensitive or confidential, and I don't want to start a conversation about something I shouldn't have. And it's even harder when everyone's a little tired and grumpy. So finally, after a few false starts, I just blurted out, "There has to have been SOMETHING that happened today that wasn't confidential. Tell me about it!"

Marriner thought for a second then he responded enthusiastically, "I know! Lige has a talk on Sunday!"

And I'll just stop right there. :)

Princess Mom

More Martha...because she's really cute.

Transcript: Hi, my name is Christine. This is my daughter. She wants to tell you her name. (To Martha:) Hey, what's your name?
Martha: Princess Mom.
Me: What?!? Why are you Princess Mom?
Martha: Dress!
Me: Ooohhh...it's a princess dress. Why mom?
Martha: Dress!
Me: So, wearing a dress makes you a mom?
Martha: Uh-huh!
Me: You're cute. Bye!!

Going from failure to failure

An inherent part of learning a new language and entering a new culture is messing up. And I was pretty ok with that when we were brand new. But being in a sustained mode of constantly messing up is hard on the morale. It's easy to get stressed out. It's easy to want to hide.

I started off with the decision to be enthusiastically engaged in the work. But one of the side effects of enthusiasm is making a high number of rookie mistakes. I cringe to think of how many dumb things I've signed and done - both because my language skills were lacking AND because my thinking and understanding were lacking! 

Should I have been more reserved at the beginning, to keep from offending people or hurting feelings? Maybe. But one thing I'm sure about - the Lord calls people who don't know what they're doing ALL. THE. TIME. And He expects us to learn by doing. And if you don't do, you don't learn. So maybe I'm a little over-enthusiastic, but I guess I'd rather be reprimanded for being too enthusiastic than for being timid...ok, I'd rather strike the perfect balance of caution and boldness, and be amazing, but since instant perfections isn't one of the options, I'll take boldness.

So, since FAILURE is a theme of my life right now, here are some amazing quotes from a General Conference talk that spoke directly to me, by Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Seventy. Because now that the newness of not knowing what I'm doing has worn off, my next step is to continue from failure to failure without losing any enthusiasm. So here we go!

"To learn a foreign language, one must face the embarrassment of making thousands of mistakes—maybe even a million." (See, I told you he was talking directly to me!)

“Success,” it has been said, “isn’t the absence of failure, but going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm.”1

"Repentance is God’s ever-accessible gift that allows and enables us to go from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. Repentance isn’t His backup plan in the event we might fail. Repentance is His plan, knowing that we will. This is the gospel of repentance, and as President Russell M. Nelson has observed, it will be “a lifetime curriculum.”

 “Change” is the principal word the Guide to the Scriptures uses to define repentance: “A change of mind and heart that brings a fresh attitude toward God, oneself, and life in general.”18 That kind of change results in spiritual growth. Our success, then, isn’t going from failure to failure, but growing from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm.

We may wonder—if both Nephi and Moses were on the Lord’s errand, why didn’t the Lord intervene and help them achieve success on their first try? Why did He allow them—and why does He allow us—to flounder and fail in our attempts to succeed? Among many important answers to that question, here are a few:

• First, the Lord knows that “these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good.”4
• Second, to allow us to “taste the bitter, that [we] may know to prize the good.”5
• Third, to prove that “the battle is the Lord’s,”6 and it is only by His grace that we can accomplish His work and become like Him.7
• Fourth, to help us develop and hone scores of Christlike attributes that cannot be refined except through opposition8 and “in the furnace of affliction.”9

 So, Christine, just remember that.