The better part

Today is my day off. And I have lists and lists of things to do before I leave Europe and come back to a bustling school schedule.

• Plan and buy things for my trip to Europe next week
• Organize my student advocacy group for the fall
• Visiting teaching calls
• shopping
• exercise/biking/climbing
• searching for a house that I should be buying in the next week

and so many other things that should fill any free second from now until the second I depart. But this morning and today, instead, is for the better part. I, as Martha, am careful and troubled about many things, but only one thing is needful. And today I have chosen that better part.

First, I want to express sorrow for the loss of my camera. Let us all observe a moment of silence...











For the emptiness of space that would be consumed by pictures of kayaking in Kamis for 4th of July, Havasupi Arizona backpacking trip, Yellowstone camping trip, and the Jackson Hole Rodeo. But instead, there is only empty space.....





















Rest in peace little pink camera. Somewhere in the bottom of a lake in kamis Utah. You served me well. :(


Second I want to write about some of the precious things I've been learning the last few weeks.
I've been feeling impressed to write in my journal lately. I've been having so many fun adventures and have been so busy planning and going and doing. And having so many neat insights. The more there are, the more I feel I should write in my blog/journal, but the less time there is! A bit of a paradox. I need to schedule regular time I think. For now, today will do. It's my last absolute free day for quite some time I'm sure.

Next week I'll be working full time and be in a mad frenzy trying to get things in order for school, work, and a house, and the general ending of summer, before I leave for Europe. So today, on my last free day, I want to pontificate on the beauties of life.

In short form, here are a few:

• My new friend Alisa. Who she is continues to impress and change me on a deeper and deeper level and I just don't think I can express it well enough. She is a true disciple of Jesus Christ. She is so pure, and good, grounded in the gospel. She helps me because of who she is. On a camping trip to Moab, she's always eager to help, to sacrifice, to volunteer to do whatever needs to be done, to laugh, to poke fun at herself while lifting others up. I become annoyed with little things, scheduling, taking care of, being careful and troubled about many things. She, always a good attitude, helps and uplifts, laughs and brings life. Teaches and shares with humility and meekness the undue heart ache she's endured. She is an angel.
  
• On any given trip, there are those who are prepared and those who are less prepared. And there are those who have to take care of the less prepared, begrudgingly (me). As we sat in the rain and one of the girls complained yet again about something wrong, I thought of how bothersome it is when others aren't self sufficient. How they don't realize the un-due burden they place on others, and how ignorant they are to the burden that it is on others. Absorbed in myself, Alisa instead, as a disciple of Christ should do, willingly offers to bear that burden. Time and time again. Consistently. And offered a solution and genuine care. Here, take my sleeping back. Who cares if it gets soaked and dirty. Your comfort is more important than my stuff. Selfless act 101.
  
• As it rained on us we had 2 ponchos and umbrellas to share. I felt so proud for being so prepared. We huddled together under our umbrellas and Becky, another angel much purer than me, sees a mom and son who shivered in the cold with no cover. She immediately speaks of how she feels bad for them and suggests we should give them the umbrella, more talking out loud about what would happen than asking for permission. I'm glad she didn't actually ask me because she would have seen that was the LAST thing in the world I wanted to do. Of course we should give them the umbrella. Did I want to? NO! That was craziness. It was rainy and cold and that's the whole reason to be prepared in the first place, so you don't have to be one of those shivering, cold miserable people.That's the difference between a Sunday Mormon and a true word and deed Latter-day Saint.
• I'm glad I was sitting by another Alisa, who also listened to the better angel of her nature. It didn't take me long to feel shamed for my selfishness and grudgingly offer up our shared umbrella as well to another couple that sat in front of us, cold, shivering and miserable.
  
• Again, I watched in awe, as Alisa, without a single thought for her own comfort or self, (as usual) walked away with our umbrella and handed it to a cold mother and son. I'm glad I was sitting by her and that one of the two of us has learned to think of others first and conquer selfishness. Talk about a better half. I've never felt so ashamed of my self-centeredness, and so committed to changing it. Thank you for your silent example and goodness Alisa.

Church in the Wilderness
I've been going on lots of trips lately and have been out of town a lot. I'm keenly aware that my glutinous and recreational lifestyle has taken me out of my ward and temple, and I feel guilty about it not infrequently. Of course there's lots of justifiable reasons to be out of town. I tell them to myself all the time. But the truth is, caring for people means being present in their lives. That's one of the most important parts of our worship in the church I think, communing with others, those specifically whom we have a stewardship over, to love and care for and progress with.

I was pondering this on the hike out of Havasupi falls with Jamie, my dear old mission companion, on a Sunday. Sometimes I see in her that recreation is a priority in her life, and at times, at the expense of what is a priority in mine. Although I truly appreciate the trip being organized in such a way that we could attend church in the Indian village of Havasu before hiking out on Sunday.

I brought a cotton skirt and light blouse, as a meager token of acknowledgment of the Sabbath day, despite my obvious and hypocritical recreational pursuits of the day. I packed up my bag and we hiked the 2 miles into town. Amid the frenzy of arranging the helicopter out and being surrounded by a complete absence of reverence and inundated with recreation, I felt remorsefully that my Sunday worship might not be very effective and that I was not honoring the Sabbath.

As I stepped into the little white chapel building, I was pleased and amused to see so many hikers that had come to pay their respect to the Lord on his Sabbath and partake of the sacrament. We filled the whole room! The room was full of sunburned, chaco wearing backpackers. Only 2 suits in the whole place. Again, while amused, I also felt apologetic to my Father in Heaven for the lack of reverence in my attire and activity that day and my absence in my home ward. But I was glad I was in church.

After his wife spoke, the High Councilman for the branch stood up and began to talk. He spoke with tremendous awareness of this little branch, of how few locals were attending, how he felt there were many that were not in the room that should have been. He spoke of his rough upbringing in a rough neighborhood, of violence and brushes with death threats for protecting loved ones, of visiting prison inmates who had found the gospel in their lowest times, of his conversion.

As he spoke, everything around me was transformed. The red dirt on the floors didn't matter. My dirty clothes and hat didn't matter. The fact that I was in a little branch in Arizona far far away from my ward family didn't matter. The Spirit of the Lord was there and was pleased with me and my meager efforts to honor him.

But more than that, the greatness of the spirit of this man conquered the all of the obstacles we presented him- challenging venue, dirty audience, recreators and transient participants and lack of typical and appropriate Sabbath circumstances for him to speak in. He spoke of missionaries that came to his house to teach his wife, a non-member, while he sat at the table with a cigarette and can of beer, less active for 20 years. He slowed as he choked over the story about how these 19 year old boys walked in, with the majesty of kings, and taught him about Priesthood authority and duty. He said he never felt more ashamed. And was determined from that day on to never feel the shame of neglecting his duty again.

He spoke of going to the temple with his wife and children after he had prepared himself to be sealed to his wife and children. He worried about his children, about whether they would be able to appreciate what was going on, or if their irreverence would ruin the ordinance for him. As the temple workers walked in with them, his first reaction was concern. He started at his children and wondered what the temple workers had done to make them glow. He wondered if it was talcum powder or glitter. He stared at disbelief and wonder. As he approached a temple worker to ask, "how are the glowing?" they helped him understand it was their spirits he was seeing.

He described another story of teaching in the state penitentiary on a Sunday, and one of the inmates on the row started getting wrest less and looking around. He thought he should wrap up his talk because he was probably bored. But the inmate kept looking around and finally wrote something in his notebook and showed it to another inmate. Before he could finish his talk, the inmate stood up and showed him what was on the notebook. He had scribbled, "Do you see him glowing too?" He stood up and turned around and asked the other inmates if anyone else saw it. And slowly other inmates began to stand up and acknowledge the same.

The Lord truly can come to us in any circumstance, prison or temple.

The Spirit was so strong as this man testified of the truth of the gospel and everything became oriented to that moment and that little room, and the Spirit testifying of the truth, even in those dusty desert chairs, even in the most dingy, irreverent circumstances imaginable, in temples or in prisons. Truly this little dusty chapel became a sacred temple to me that day.