Life

12 JAN 15

All things denote there is a God. (Alma 30:44)

Every time I get out and have a chance to see the night sky outside of a city I think of this scripture. One of my missionary companions drew a very nice picture inspired by this scripture. I’m going to attach it to this journal entry to share with my instructor. The picture features the Denver Temple with the World as globe (the earth), the sun and the savior as part of the clouds bringing our minds to him.

Korihor came to believe his own lies. (Alma 30:53)

As I was reading Alma 30:53 I was struck by the confession of Korihor and the change he went through. I was thinking to myself of what type of experience it would be to have an “angel” appear and tell him the things that the devil told him. Deep down he must have known what he was saying were lies. He didn’t say he believed the words until he had so much success. It’s like a modern day scam artist starting to believe his con after selling it for a while.

13 JAN 15

We can worship in places other than houses of worship and more than once a week. (Alma 32:10-11)

When reading this scripture I thought of all the interesting places I worshipped while deployed. We used old building of Saddam Hussein, tents and  steel warehouse buildings. If we waited for a nice church building I would have never had sacrament. It was also interesting to have times when we blessed crackers, tortillas or “bread” from MRE’s for the sacrament. This scripture reminds me to open to worshiping in many unconventional locations and to also remember to worship in the home.

It is better to be humble without being humbled. (Alma 32:16)

Alma first describes those who are humbled by circumstances in the world. He then goes on to describe those who “humble themselves because of the word” (Alma 32:14). I think the second group are those who find the Gospel and choose to be humble due the Holy Ghost and Gospel teachings.

If you have proof, you can’t have faith. (Alma 32:18,21)

People seem to want to try to say the Gospel isn’t true due to a lack of evidence. While there is some supporting evidence, it really all comes down to faith. The Lord isn’t going to take away everyones opportunity to have faith in something.

14 JAN 15

The words of the Lord are given to men, women and children. (Alma 32:23)

As I was reading the assignment this week I came across Alma 32:23 and it made me think of how much more this scripture means to me now. I previously had marked this many years ago but that was before I was a father. I have a three year old son and we have been blessed with how well he has taken to praying and his love to pray with us. We started by including him in prayers pretty early and we have had prayers over meals and family prayers every night. The things he picks up and remembers to pray for astound me sometimes. As I read the scripture and it said that “little children do have many words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned” I thought of my sons words and how confounding it is that he can pick up when a family member needs to be remembered in a prayer. I know that each of us may receive promptings and revelation like this, even little children.

15 JAN 15

Pray in all places and all times. (Alma 34:17-27)

In Alma 34:17-27 Amulek is given an opportunity to testify to us. Midway in his words he exhorts us to pray. Not only does he tell us to pray but he goes into detail of many times and places to pray both publicly and on our own. As he went into detail of some of the various places to pray, I thought of some of the stranger places I took the opportunity to pray. One regular opportunity was while I was deployed in Iraq. My Detachment Sergeant often had to have me help him with things and he was not very good at some of the job. It was pretty frustrating to clean up some of the messes he made. When ever I became too overwhelmed with things, I would take a quick break by jumping in my Humvee and reading a scripture from my pocket Book of Mormon and saying a prayer. While the vehicle was hot and dusty and the time taken was only a few minutes, I always felt more peaceful afterwards. It gave me the peace I needed to carry on. I know that if we pray for assistance, we will receive it no matter where we are.

16 JAN 15

The Zoramites stir up the Lamanites and prepare for war against the people of Ammon. (Alma 35:10-11)

This makes me think of this as a historical parallel to some things in the Church’s past. During the 1850’s there was the Utah war which was brought about by anti-Mormon groups and the false testimony of those opposed to the Church. I can’t help to see this as a warning to the Saints. Could this be applied to us today? A literal war would be very unlikely but there are wars that go on in public debate and the courts that concern the Church. I think it would be still wise to watch for those that would stir up the forces of the devil against the Saints.

The tomatoes were drying up pretty badly at the end of summer but now that San Antonio has decided that it’s finally fall, they are coming back like crazy. Today I had to build some new supports for the vines. They were growing to the ground over the old trellis and the weight of the fruit was tough on the vines. I improvised some supports with some scrap wood. I picked all the ripe fruit before taking these pictures, so all that you will see is a whole lot of green fruit.

So yesterday I made sure to be all set up to leave work right on time. As I got out to the parking lot, I saw a coworker trying desperately to get her car to work. There was another coworker using her phone, trying to read over some directions to fix things. I decided to help out also. Apparently the gear shifter was stuck. After checking a few things we ended up deciding it was the brake shift interlock that was the problem. Luckily I like to be prepared. In my trunk I had a flat head screw driver that made it easy to depress the manual release for the  brake shift interlock. I let her borrow my screw driver in case she needed it driving home. Today she returned the screw driver with a thank you note and gift card. The gift card was actually unnecessary but appreciated. I was just glad to help out.

I wasn’t quite happy with our old table so I decided to build a new one. I looked around and decided to build a “farmhouse table”.

Step 1. Research.

I looked at over a dozen designs and tutorials from websites like Ana-White.com and YouTube.

Step 2. Draw up a plan.

So I didn’t go with a pre-made plan but bits and pieces of other plans make up what mine ended up being.

3. Buy the lumber. I went to Lowes for the lumber and had them cut all the lumber. I had the number of pieces and lengths planed ahead to make the task easy. One Newb mistake I made was not realizing that they did not cut 4×4’s. I ended up going over budget by choosing turned legs as replacements but I have to admit they do look better.

4. I laid all the lumber out in the kitchen to build the table. It’s hot in Texas this time of year. I wasn’t going to hang out in the garage that long. Sarah took Joseph to the zoo and then the mall so that I could have the space to myself.

I also turned on Patton to have playing in the background. It helped make sure the requisite testosterone level was met in the house. I’ll also note here that those beautiful table legs were a pain in the butt to drill in and place screws. I’m not sure what wood they are but it’s much harder than the white pine I used in the rest of this project. Here are a couple more in progress pictures:

 

5. After building the frame of the table I turned it upright and placed the boards for the top on. I just screwed the boards down and made sure to countersink the screws. I then placed wood filler in the holes and let that dry for a few hours.

6. Later in the evening I painted the legs white and stained the table top. I turned on some fans to help get some air movement to dry out the project.

 

Friday night I called about some wood chairs advertised on Craigslist. I ran out to Boerne on Saturday morning to pick them up. I also placed our old dining table on Craigslist and had a buyer by Saturday morning. They stopped by Saturday evening to pick it up. It can be a little weird buying/selling something to a complete stranger on Craigslist. Luckily this is Texas so I was discreetly armed and aware each time and luckily the weapon wasn’t needed. They were really nice each time. I’ve had a few people that seemed pretty sketchy in the past.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how the table turned out. My next big project will be sanding and painting the chairs. We are planning on painting them green to be a bright match to an accent color that is in our downstairs area.