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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Inspiring Story

Here is a eye opening story of what it means to be "rich" verses "poor".

The Rich Family In Church
By Eddie Ogan

I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.
By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1.
We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.
We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.
That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering.
We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.
As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night.
We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed—I didn't even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.
Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."
Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Getting Ready for Conference

The church website now has a page dedicated to printouts and activities for general conference for kids. I think I might print out the notebook pages for myself as well. They have a picture of each person and then lines for taking notes.
It has been nice that this month's theme in Primary is Prophets and each week we have been learning verses to the song "Follow the Prophet" and have also been singing the 12 apostles to the tune of "Books of the Book of Mormon" in the Primary song book. Additionally, I have been working with my boys to memorize the poem in this month's Friend magazine "I Love to See the Prophet". Tom gave it as his talk in Primary and was so excited that he was able to do the first verse by himself.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Sunday, March 14, 2010

10 years later

Okay, so here is my dear husband 10 years later.
Not quite so baby face as he was 10 years ago, but he doesn't really have a beard, just once last year and now he's trying it again this year, but every day he threatens to shave it off. I really like his beard, oddly enough, he looks really good with a beard, however, the beard combined with the mesh-back hat screams "Redneck" and I don't claim him as mine when he is wearing that hat.

Today was such a beautiful day, but did you know that it was daylight savings time change today? I did not, luckily I wasn't the only one late to church today. Primary was fun. We had the jr Primary kids act out some of the Old Testiment prophet stories and then sing the verse from "Follow the Prophet". The senior primary kids, by class, taught the rest of us the song verse of one of the old testiment prophets. It was fun to get them involved and I'm glad that was the plan for today because my lungs are very irritated and trying to sing sent my into coughing fits.

After church I was so tired. Jeremy had stayed home with Tom, who also has a cough, and he had the kitchen all clean and food ready to make dinner - it was such a nice thing to come home to. My throat was sore from coughing, so I indulged and had a large bowl of ice cream for lunch. I don't eat ice cream very often, I prefer cookies for a treat, but that cold, creamy ice cream felt so good on my throat.

I kind of take Sunday as my day off from normal duties of food and kids and Jeremy is really good to indulge me. I dozed on the couch for awhile, it's amazing how much a lung cold takes out of me, and when I came to I saw 2 little naked bums running around the house. Lydia is into taking it all off, at least 10 times a day, so that was normal for her. Becca, however, is usually dressed, although it is in a different outfit about every 2 hours or so, so it was unusual to see her running around naked.

After curry stir fry for dinner, that Jeremy made, our friends, Fenus's and Prescott's were walking by and invited us to join them on a walk. It was such a pleasant evening, and it was so nice to get out of the house. I am so glad we have wonderful friends, and that they live near by. There are at least 6 others student/utah families that live really close by and they are all so wonderful and feel like family which is such a blessing since we live so far away from our family.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Young

Thank you for your input on my shoe dilemma. Unfortunately our van unexpectedly needed new tires, so my car gets the new treads instead of me. Oh well.
So today I am rearranging the home office so that my computer is in there, next to the printer, because even though the printer is "wireless" I don't seem to be able to set it up right, so I need to attach it via the cord. Now that it is all set up I wanted to try out the scanner so I can scan in some of our pre-digital photos.

This picture was taken about a month after Jeremy and I met. Next month we celebrate our 10 year anniversary. If I can get myself to be ambitious enough I would like to put together a nice book of our photos and memories from the past 10 years.
I'll kick it off with sharing the details behind the photo above.
That photo was taken Dec 4, 1999. My parents who lived in Sugar City, Idaho decided to come to Provo to celebrate their anniversary (which was a little out of character for my parents). I thought nothing of it at the time, I was just excited for them to meet Jeremy, who I had met the month before on an online singles website. We met my parents at the Hires restaurant in Provo and had a nice lunch and a nice conversation. The photo was taken after lunch out in the parking lot. I don't remember if it was my camera, Jeremy's camera, or my parents camera that took this photo. Meeting Jeremy in person put my parents at ease at the guy I had met online (the real reason they came to Provo) and I was happy my parents got to meet the man I was falling in love with (and am still in love with and will always be in love with).

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

New Shoes?

I've been wanting a new pair of shoes for a long time, but it is so hard to find shoes that I like. Most of the shoe places just don't seem to have any shoes that I like. So today I searched the internet and I was able to find a selection of shoes that I like. I just need to narrow it down and choose one pair.


I need help deciding, which one would you choose?

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

I need more imagination

When you see one of these beauties what do you think?
Old, out of date, don't want it.
 

But what if you had a little imagination, like these people did, and turn it into this.


I have my own real kitchen, but I want one of these for myself, but really, I think my kids would like it too. Here's the link for more pictures and info.

Monday, March 01, 2010

God's Love For Us




"Think of the purest, most all-consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount--that is the measure of God's love for you." -Dieter F. Uchtdorf