Wendy's Flight Home from Neverland

While in my youth my life was filled with experiences that made me a child of serious demeanor.  I was shy in nature, learned at a young age to work hard and talk less.  I was my father's little shadow and learned to have my own ideas and opinions about everything.  Until college I was aloof and very reserved about what I thought of this big wide world that has the capacity to envelop all that allow her.  When my Dad was no longer around to follow I was at loss for direction, guidance, and friendship.  My high school years were those of great trama, struggle, and heartache.  Needless to say while most teens rejoice in being with their friends I became even more of a sober individual merely striving to stay afloat in the cell of my circumstance.

Come to Zion...I was offered a way out and came to this beautiful state; where the Saints had previously traveled an exodus to the west and likewise yielded peace and freedom in this same high place in which I currently reside.  Logan was a place of awakening and reconciliation to the all that was good and my Spirit yearned to find peace with my Maker.  It was here where I came to find Him, my Savior and Elder brother Jesus Christ.  Oddly enough I did so in a cemetery running late one evening with a best friend as she reminded me of the Infinite and Healing Power of the Atonement.  It was here I felt a great influx of His love and began to see life clearly, since I had been a young child.

I had been given inspiration to know my Father in Heaven, His Son, and My Dad, were all very aware of me and I was filled with an overwhelming desire to make covenants or promises to be with them in His Holy House, a temple of God on earth, just as in ancient times.  There are temples on the earth today and they are the means in which we can be with our families again someday...forever with them and all others that are willing to do the work of the Lord and become heirs in the Kingdom of God.  I remember my going to church, the great anxiety that accompanied being there with all of my classmates, dorm-mates, teammates, and friends.  It literally was a time of great excitement as fruits of the Spirit enter into my life and the recognition and consistant feelings of His association became more constant.

As a small child I recall with absolute clarity singing, "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission," and knowing I would serve a mission when the opportunity came.  I was invited to take-out my endowments at 19 years old, feeling entirely inadequate, but having faith God would make up the difference if I did my best in keeping my promises to Him. Despite great familial opposition, I turned in my mission papers 3 months previous to my turning 21.  I would be the first missionary to serve in my family and know as a result, all of my posterity will serve missions, for it was a vital change in my existence, progression, and love for the Lord and everything He's created.  I LOVED the MISSION and it has literally influenced me everyday since.

The best two years or eighteen months...is a tragic understatement of what could be, "The Best of the Rest of Eternity!"  All of the patterns, doctrines, and principles one learns as a missionary has practical application and congruence in progression FOREVER, and therein is a promise any mortal soul can take to the bank, if one's heart, might, mind, and strength is in the work! President Sony, of the Salt Lake City Mission compared service to the Lord of that in a Financial Application. "The Lord has invested in you the whole length of your mission and upon arrival home, He then expects the dividends in return."  I know this is true, much like the story of the talents...we are given much and then comes the requirement and accountability for what He's blessed us with the abilities to perform.

Most missionaries serve in countless family wards, well this opportunity I had plus multiple student wards.  The family wards taught me about the underlying foundation and structural doctrines and of The Gospel.  The rare experience of serving with Young Single Adults taught me the inner workings and unique structure of student wards, religion classes, and institute organizations.  In the years during and since the mission I have been placed in circumstances to serve in every capacity a woman can serve and administer in the church on a ward, seminary, and institute level.  I have been so blessed I could write endless novels about the experiences I've had in seeing the Hand of the Lord in not only my life, but those of all whom I associate.

This summer I was about an inch away from becoming a Mrs. Sarah verses a Miss Sarah.  For clarification purposes, I mean, the temple reservation, the ring, the dress, the reception hall, the wedding luncheon planned, etc...  Man oh man, what a wake up call to find out it wasn't the right thing for eternity, but the right thing for the moment.  My 1st, Mission President Funk promised, "If you live that you may have The Spirit of the Lord with you, He will allows warn you before you could make a wrong choice."  I would do it all over again to get  the closeness that I feel with my family.

This experience has brought my family all so much closer, maybe even my own personal desire to be closer to them as well.  This past summer I've grown closer to my brother as he's gone through a heart wrenching divorce.  I've relied on him for brotherly wisdom as I struggled with the marriage decision and car problems, as he's relied on me for the support and listening and kind ear, sisterly support, and  a warm embrace.  I felt so honored when he asked me to come and live with him, but my home is here in these gorgeous mountains at this moment in time.  He and I shared a bedroom when I was little and we've been best friends ever since.

My elder sister is a detailed, organized perfectionist, and so I asked her to be my maid of honor.  This title means so much to her that it has drawn she and I closer and I have spent more time with her family than in the summer previous.  Her boys I adore in such a way, I can't imagine loving my very own children in any greater degree.  I was given the awesome gift of time to help raise these two young men before my mission and now an additional daughter in the years following.  Her eldest, my little Nay-nay, fills me with unquenchable joy and desire to raise children of my own that they may all be such an heritage to the Lord.  He started seminary this year and we talk or text a few times every week as he rejoices in being in the scriptures and taking what he learns home to teach, testify, and exemplify by being the only Priesthood holder in his home.  He and I have a temple weekend once a month where he comes to stay a day or two and we bring our family names to the temple to stand in as proxy for their baptisms and confirmations.  I wish anyone that belittles the youth in the church could meet those whom I've met.  They love the Lord and He knows exactly who they are working towards becoming.

My lil sis and I have been close our whole lives, even when we may not have wanted to be.  There was never a distance that could separate us.  I wrote her as much as I did my mother from the mission field and she has been the most rewarding evidence of true principles understood changes behavior for both she and myself individually, I've seen yet in my life.  She's my life line and even though we are very different in personality, our hearts are the same in loving God and our family into eternity.  She's so fantastic and I go to her house to feel the closeness of home.  In her there's a workout buddy, my crafty consultant, homeopathic nurse, and the latest and greatest on information in the political realm.

Then my magnificent mother...who next to my Master, has been my sincerest source of succor and support.  Oh my heart aches for those without mothers!  We talk/text everyday and she has consoled, encouraged, and exhorted, in the very distresses in my souls deepest darkest chasms.  There is the saying, "God couldn't be everywhere so He made mothersW"  Well that's how I feel, yet know God really can be everywhere.  She's encourages me on my flight home from Neverland knowing as do I, I've had my last night in the nursery.  Sometime this season I will be waking up, yawning from my slumber, and stretching my arms high into the air ready to embrace the warmth and welcoming invitation to make the covenants with my sweetheart in the House of our God.

  than we've been right when I came home from the mission.  

A heart as big as mine

Yesterday I had a friend come home from his mission.  He and I became friends a couple of years ago as he was my neighbor on The University of Utah campus.  We had many common friends, belonged to the same ward, studied the gospel in the morning, and when all was said and done I enjoyed spending time with him, yet I knew my purpose was to see him get dropped off at the MTC and embark on the mission to which he'd been called. 


I've decided in passing months, I'm impartial and almost indifferent to love...I've been waiting for some bomb-like feeling.  Some huge deliriously happy, stupefying, all encompassing emotion to happen as I surround myself with members of the opposite sex.  


I now believe I'm even more confused with my personal research than I ever have been.  Yesterday I believe I experienced every form of love:


Friend-like love: 


I ate lunch with a friend that when we converse I feel intellectually stimulated, he's very warm, kind and sincere when we spend time together and I know he genuinely cares about me as an individual.  He'd drop anything for me and always checks up on me to see how I am doing!  A true blue friend, yet there are specific attributes he possesses  which hold me back to bonding with him.  


Huge-heart love:


I met my friend's parents and we were off to the airport to pick up the missionary. His family was so excited for his arrival.  It was the best airport experience I've taken part in beside my own.  Aunt's, Nana, cousins, sisters, and both of his parents were there.  Funny, as I stood there waiting and watching I thought how much more adrenaline I was experiencing than jumping out a plane the week before.  He as as bright as a shiny new penny.  I thought how handsome and attractive he looked!  Everyone was hugging him and as he said something to me about coming out to the airport-I shook his hand and he looked at me questioningly.  


We made it back to his house with his parents and we spent a good hour there going through some mission items he'd sent home.  He was so quirky, full of adrenaline and stories, and the Spirit of the Lord.  It felt so good to be with him.  His family told me I should just hug him, but I didn't feel right about it until he was released.  His sister put on a BBQ that we quickly slipped in and out of so that we could rush off to the stake president to have him released.  Earlier in the evening someone had asked who I was and Alex quickly answered I was his BFF.  It's been along time since I've felt like I've been a mans BFF, with the exception of my brother.  I must whole heartedly admit, this title fits well with me and when the Stake President asked who I was, it was a comfortable reply. 


He left as a boy who didn't know God, himself, or what he believed.  In listening to his testimony before being released, he knows all of the aforementioned items, plus in watching him teach his niece how to play the ukulele last night, he's a master teacher filled with an abundance of love and the self motivation and discipline of a man.  A man of God...he's been through the refiners fire and I wonder if I even am worthy to be called his friend, let alone his best friend.  Being with him last night made me want to be better, to go back to every principle, embrace every doctrine, and live all application I've ever known to be true in this life.  Thus too making me one with my master.  I then find myself asking, is not this love?  The love that endures the tests of time and the enchanting promise of the eternities?  


                  Side notes of the experience:   I noted familial love: sisters, mother, father, nana, in-laws, church associated love, etc.


Committed love:


In a committed relationship there are certain responsibilities, commitments, and unsaid rules to be kept.  I've been instructed to grow-up and have taken the leap of faith to enter into a relationship I cannot see the end.  I've exchanged heartfelt experiences and tragedies of my life as has he for a requited companionship.  One with whom I am attracted and feel safe in his embrace, we think about life in a similar fashion and have had some parallel experiences.  Yet I think we may lack the sacrifice and selflessness to make our relationship last.  We are both very strong willed and opinionated individuals who have become comfortable with our lives as nothing more than that-individuals.  This yields the question, love is more than an emotional, physical, intellectual tie...it is when our spirit cries to another spirit reaching out for the innermost thoughts and intents of our hearts to be joined into one union, one purpose, a oneness with our Maker.  


      

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart...has a new meaning for me today.

I have always loved this scripture-in God's infinite wisdom He's taught me to trust Him, in the plan He's prepared for me, and endlessly placing me at the right place in the right time. Countlessly in my heart righteous desires have been granted to me in His time and definitely in His way. Man's thinking continues in paths contrary to the way of Father in Heaven and his will for our lives.

The semester wrapped up for my most challenging group of students today. I was sick and almost numb in feeling as they left the classroom this morning. I love them, but not as much as I could have, unconditionally, or inasmuch as the Lord warms us with His embrace. I am on the list for full-time teaching next year, which was a goal I set out to achieve. I should be ecstatic and filled with joy! I am and yet the fear of my inadequacy to love them resides deep within the most solemn confines of my soul. I need to love them with my whole heart and not a partial or conditional love which I've based on many aspects of their challenging teenage lives (sleep deprivation, broken homes, AP classes, college application, peer pressure, rampant pornography, drug and alcohol addition.) They are in continual pull and distraction from the principles and doctrines of Godliness which they have been sent to earth, to search out, analyze, and apply through personal achievement.

I'd been home from the mission less than a month, out with a spank'n new greenie on exchanges, and she asks me what's the greatest thing I learned as a missionary. Almost impulsively I answer, "It's all about the love, it's always been about the love, it's still about the love, and it will always be about the love-there is no greater power in the universe!" In retrospect of the last year of my life I've lost sight of this knowledge and gift the good Lord has bestowed upon me! In October it began to cycle back into my life as I rekindled damaged relationships after a friend came home from his mission. A dear friend of mine has struggled in living her life the past few months, but is greatly rebounding as she serves those around her. I see Him in her and I recognize the incredible power of His love in our lives if we merely just let in His light to shine through our actions.

As a missionary, and now as a teacher, I am asked questions where the spirit refrains me from answering anything other than, "Follow your heart, it won't lead you astray!" Yet this is conditional with almost the unsaid clause; if you trust in the Lord with all thine heart, then it won't lead you astray. In the past twenty-four hours I've had a pretty harsh reality check, making my mind mill around in memories of the past year. I had a distinct impression to judge not and to follow my heart in June. Due to my own misperceptions I let some of my most valued relationships go awry through the allowance of pride, arrogance, and doubt, all of which continue to get in the way of my personal happiness.

Whenever I am sick, the Lord takes the time to teach me as I lay in bed trying to rest my body. Over the past few days each afternoon I've come home to take a nap. Today all I could do is lay and reminisce how if I would just TRULY TRUST in the LORD with ALL thine HEART, I wouldn't question, I wouldn't wallow, I would merely move forward to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Everyone deserves second semesters in life! I'm ever grateful for His loving Atonement that make this all possible.

The Only Synonym for Covenants is Love Story

The Director of Seminaries and Institutes spoke at a fireside last night. I love this man and his ability to listen to the brethren, teach by the Spirit and follow His promptings no matter where or what audience he is about to teach.

Last evening he spoke of keeping covenants. This has been something that has stood out in my mind maybe about the past 9 months or so...How serious is it that we keep our covenants? What is our accountability level on the covenants we make in this life? What if someone else severely compromises a covenant made that we too have been blessed to partake in?

About two years ago while working at the Family History Library I had a co-worker who was married within the everlasting covenant. She's had children and her marriage ended in divorce due to her husbands chance in sexual preference. This woman is a saint and someday when I grow-up I want to be just like her, she's grateful for ever hardship she's received in this life and they come to her on a weekly if not daily basis. She so kindly pointed out to me as we've talked about marriage and the covenants made there in aren't just merely made between you and your spouse, but with the Lord Jesus Christ. She asked me a profound question, it has brought me much hope in the prospects of marriage even though I tread very leery on the concepts of being with someone forever, she asked when spouses go through a session together, where do they sit in the session? From here on out she let the Spirit teach me and I take great application in what Chad Webb was striving to teach last night.

I worked as a contracted employee last year and when it ended, both parties were very clear that it was over. No second thoughts, tears, hard feelings, or forms of reconciliation. Whereas when we make covenants with the Lord there are always second chances, in fact His mercy extends into 3rds, 4ths, and through seven times seven (Hebrew translation is infinitely many). God didn't design a plan he thought we'd fail in pursuing, on the contrary the best engineers make plans that are fool-proof. What kind of plan do you think our Loving Father in Heaven has made for us? I'm not a parent, but when I am, I want my kids to love home so much they feel comfortable coming home for summer vacations, holidays, sunny afternoons, just to play, talk or share, and most importantly when they feel like there is no where else to go, home will always be a place of refuge from the storms of life.

In teaching seminary we talk a lot about being covenant people, we still to this day may receive the blessings of the Abraham, for we are of the house of Israel. Covenants are a key part of who we were, what we act like now, and the blessings we have in-store and those of a noble birthright. In last conference Elder Russell M. Nelsen told us what the greatest compliment we could be called in this life. I'll let you feel and find it out for yourself:

Be a Covenant Keeper

This is indeed the greatest love story of all time. Everything the Father does for His children is out of Love-the grandest power in the universe! No matter how often we forsake Him and His plan, His Son, and the promptings of The Holy Ghost; they will never forsake and will always forgive us.

Recreational Therapy and the Light of the Lord

So this will be my second week working as a Site Manager for the YMCA's after school program in Taylorsville. I love working with the kids-they are wonderful and I love watching their lives brighten as they feel loved, encouraged, and validated. It is so rewarding to be with them! They are so brilliant and I know the Lord indeed has saved them for these latter-days! They are definitely wiser and more adept than I was in the second grade. Amazing and I love them so much! It's also an awesome opportunity to work with their parents and see the countless family dynamics and interactions of how various cultures interact and respect each other.

In just the past few days I've learned so very much! My colleagues are incredible and the love they too exhibit their passion for the kids we work to improve their quality of life. It's incredible and I love it-I can't remember the last job, not only did the time fly, but I not only knew I was benefiting the lives of those whom I was serving, but could feel it. I leave there recharged, thrilled about life and have a greater desire to do good in the world in which we live.

It is true they have so much energy and zeal for life, but I feel as though this energy is transferred inadvertently to me and I benefit greatly all in the same. Everyone is a team, working together for the common good of mankind and the last time I worked in such a capacity was the summer I came home from the mission. I loved it then and have always healed the fondest memories of that first summer home. Funny as we allow the world to influence the way we think we feel about things, the further we get from what REALLY brings us true happiness!

Seminary was also phenomenal today! I had a realization of something I learned in college course year before last. This generation in which we live is that of technology, television, and video games. I have realized in spending time with younger children, the best way to help my students is by getting them out of their seats and moving forward into their futures, by actively participating in what will help them pull out the principles and ordinances in their lives, thus in the years to come, they will be pulling out the principles as they immerse themselves in the scriptures. Which has brought me to a new way of getting them to do their journals for next semester. Principles and Doctrines-it all comes back to these-in every aspect of our lives.

Rolling waters cannot remain impure

I have found new meaning in the phrase, "Keeping on Your Toes." The way the Lord purifies our hearts and hands is the process by which we progress through righteous acts of our individual agency. Oft times I find myself, in the higher mountains and I can't help myself longing to drink from the mountain streams. Now many say it may not be the wisest thing, but my father taught me if you take from the top where the water is continually moving there is little to now chance of the rolling waters to become stagnant and infected with the numerous hosts of bacteria found in the outdoors.

Much like these top waters our lives are mixed with currents, runoff, and changing temperatures. These trials, challenges, and changes in our lives are the very opportunity the Savior uses to beckon us to come unto Him. When we really fully in our faith in Him no challenge is to great, trial to hard to work through, and and change to drastic to find peace within the solace of His care. How often do we minimize the profound affect the Atonement make take place in our lives as we cast our burdens upon the Lord? Do we believe in His great sacrifice, to stand firm in the faith on a daily basis? When do open our mouths enough to share the good news of His gospel with those around us? When we fully appreciate what it is we have been given we pass it along to those who could benefit from His message-the whole of mankind.

How long can rolling waters remain impure? The next time you think of the tide and how hard it seems at time to stay afloat, remember He is there willing to lift you to safety and in the process purify your heart and hands that you may more readily serve Him who is mighty to save!