Zion???

     Latter Day Saints and non- LDS members have mixed feelings about Utah. I remember when we were going to move here in the mid-90's we were warned by several members in upstate NY that we would find problems in Utah. Despite the impact of having so many church members, there are aspects of Utah society that Jesus Christ would definitely not approve of. Don't get me wrong. I think there are some really great things about a community where the majority of people are law-abiding (except maybe in obeying the speed limit or using turn signals). My favorite part of being in Utah is the whole-hearted support of families/children. On the other hand, I find it almost repulsive that there is such an emphasis on vanity. There are countless orthodontists offering teeth straightening so your teeth can be beautiful and you can also make sure they are sparkling white. There are WAY too many cosmetic surgeons for those who feel their bodies aren't as perfect as they ought to be. Homes and yards go beyond neat and clean to being ostentatious in size, quality, and decoration.
     As Russ and I went for a walk this morning, we noticed that Starbucks was doing a fairly brisk business despite the counsel from church leaders to avoid caffeine. A woman at a crosswalk near us was smoking despite admonitions to not indulge in alcohol, drugs, or smoking. I'm not saying these are indications of evil. For the most part, they're signs of independence to the point of rebellion. All church leaders will freely admit that we each have a God-given opportunity to make our own choices, no matter what anybody advises. It occurred to me that conversion is a totally independent process not a group process. It doesn't matter where you live, when you live, who your family is, what your job is. Conversion is going to happen if and when you choose it. Conversion is a change of heart- to no longer prefer what YOU want when YOU want it, but to want what God wants because you know it's better- for you and everybody else. You may not always understand it. You may even not agree or like it at the moment. But turning your cheek for that other slap or bending your knees and bowing your head rather than proudly jutting out your jaw and defiantly declaring you will do what you want, that's conversion. Having a sincere desire to learn from God through His prophets and the Holy Ghost rather than through trial and error according to your own schedule, that's conversion. We all get to choose for ourselves.

Just so you know

     On the drive from Arizona to Utah, we stopped in Flagstaff for food and fuel. When leaving the gas station, I asked Russ which way he thought we should go. We knew we were on the right road. It was just a question of which direction to take to get to Route 89 north. In view of my last post and my confession of a "weakness" I have, you would think I was probably going to guess wrong. Well, that's what I thought. Russ and I didn't agree on which way to go and I figured with a 50-50 chance of being wrong on a direction, I was likely to be wrong. We asked a local and, to the amazement of both Russ and me, I WAS RIGHT!! I just had to let you know. Miracles do happen.

This problem I have................

     I am really dreading getting older. I have dealt with a variety of physical ailments and accidents in my life and have done okay with pain, although I certainly don't LIKE it! I have some unsurprising issues due to my age that I am also dealing okay with. One aspect of aging that kind of scares me is the mental deterioration. It's okay to make jokes about forgetting things but I have always loved to learn. I get a "high" from inputting new data into my brain. I have had one problem throughout my life with my brain that is likely to get worse and that scares me. I get lost. Whatever that internal GPS is that my husband and my older daughter have that allows them to figure out where they are, how they need to go to get where they want to be, and where they parked their car- I don't have that.
Friday morning Russ was taking a friend to a hospital for a procedure so I went on a walk by myself. The plan was to just take the circuit we have been taking daily for a couple of weeks now. Things didn't go according to plan. To give myself some credit, we have only lived in this neighborhood for a month or so and Sun City planners included a multitude of golf courses necessitating lots of dead ends, circles, and streets that don't go straight. I was walking along and suddenly realized things up ahead didn't look familiar. So I thought, I must have missed my turn and I turned. Awhile later I recognized that I was at the same intersection I had been in before. I had walked in a circle! The end result was that my 45 minute walk turned into an hour and 45 minutes before I finally managed to find my way home. I had taken my cell phone but between the brightness of the sun reflected on the screen, my lack of familiarity with my new "smart phone" , and not having my reading glasses (one of the older-age issues), I couldn't see it well enough nor could I manage to figure out how to use the GPS feature or to call someone who might be able to help me figure out where I was. So I just kept walking. I am truly grateful for the health and strength I enjoy so walking on and on was not a problem. The good people we are currently living with while awaiting our departure time for our mission had gotten concerned about me and called my phone just as I was finally safely within sight of the house. I propped up my feet for a few minutes before leaving for my doctor's appointment.
     It would take WAY more time and space to describe how frustrating our doctor visits have been since we started final preparations for our upcoming mission. Suffice it to say, when we first started going to our current doctor's office, it wasn't like this. So I got to the office at 8:15 for an 8:30 appointment only to find the door locked with a sign saying they were moving their office. I knocked because I could see a girl sitting in the office doing paperwork. She let me in and I could see everything had been taken off the walls and the place was pretty well empty except for some chairs and her computer, phones, and stacks of files. Between incoming calls, she explained that she had called me 3 times and asked if I had checked my messages. At first I thought it was my fault due to my not yet knowing how to use my new phone. Then I found out she had been calling the house phone that had been disconnected last November. I had made it a point to go in person to the doctor's office (because of all the complications we had already gone through) with our new contact information, clearly written out on a piece of paper. Apparently no one had logged it into the computer. So, the doctor wasn't there and wasn't going to be there so I wasn't going to be seeing him. I asked for a copy of my most recent lab work so I could know if the medications were doing what they were supposed to do. Because I was at Angela's in Louisiana when my synthroid ran out and the doctor would not extend the prescription without seeing me, I had been without it for a month before I saw him in February. He wanted blood work done again before we leave for our mission then was going to see me to make any necessary adjustments. I had the blood drawn a week ago but the lab had not yet sent over the results so she called and got the results faxed over and gave me a copy. The most "out-of-whack" element, highlighted by the lab, in my blood chemistry was my thyroid level. My TSH level which according to the lab should be between 0.45-4.50 was 46.52. I went home and looked up on the internet information to understand what that meant. Apparently TSH is a measurement of the requests sent out by the pituitary gland for the thyroid to put out more thyroxin. In 1974, I had "97%" of my thyroid removed due to overactivity. I have now been on a supplement since about 1980 or so, except for the time I was at Angela's in January. The blood work was a month after re-starting the supplement. There was also a test for T4 free molecules which are actual thyroid hormone. The normal range is .8-1.7 because it's usually not very much. Mine is .9 so it's not really as bad as it could be. I'm planning to see a doctor when we get to Nauvoo.
     All in all, I'm glad we ended up going to see the movie "Do You Believe?" in the afternoon because my day didn't start out all that well. The movie was so uplifting. It really comes down to simply keeping on keeping on. There are ups and downs, sometimes more extreme than others. We might as well trudge on and it's awesome to be loved. As it says in Ecclesiastes, "To everything there is a season.." - a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to fly and a time to grit your teeth and just keep putting one foot in front of another. The very best part is, we aren't ever alone in the good times or the bad. Friends, family, loved ones all around are just the greatest blessing we have. I am greatly blessed. I am thankful.

Choosing our weapons

In case you weren't aware, there is currently a very large war being waged. Individual battles are going on in various countries, neighborhoods, homes, and especially in hearts. We can see the outward displays of beheading, murder, hatred, riots, infidelity, deception, theft, and countless other forms of attacks on all that is good and right on the earth. Every day there are adjustments being made in the size and participants of each army. As someone sees pain and reaches out to provide aid, the army of good and right grows. As someone gives in to anger, vengeance, greed, or lust, the army of evil grows. Some of us will change sides millions of times in our lifespan. There are weapons available to each of us that enable us to choose the side of good and right and STAY there.
Desire: the very first weapon is totally up to us to choose. We need to DESIRE that good and right overcome evil. We need to recognize that evil exists and ignoring it won't make it go away.
Prayer: individually we are often weak and subject to temptations. Temptations are not simply urges for drugs, sex, or other obvious "sins". Temptations come in the form of fear, doubt, anxiety, panic, anger, greed, and similar subtle but effective distractions from feeling happy and worthwhile. Because our weakness is so inherent, we often need a little help. The help can come in the form of spiritual promptings or more material human assistance. But first, we need to acknowledge we need help and ask for it.
Words of prophets: We have been given words to read and listen to which are more easily accessible to us than the still, small whisperings of the Holy Ghost. Prophets in the past have written down advice and recorded experiences in what we have as scriptures. There are also living prophets with one at the head- President Thomas S. Monson. In just a couple of weeks, these prophets will be speaking directly to the world during the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Easter weekend. These words can guide us and comfort us and reassure us.
Guns will not silence guns. Hatred and violence will not stop hatred and violence. We need to utilize more effective weapons if we are to gain any advantage in this war. I pray that we will be able to find comrades in arms who can help us stand for what is right and good. I pray that we can each choose heroes to follow in staying on the side of right and good. I pray that we can see the difference between good and evil and not be deceived by clever disguises or propaganda. The winning side has already been determined. The only thing left to be determined is which side each individual will be on at the end of the war.

What is a guilty conscience?

     In the early 70's Russ and I were immersed in the hippy culture. I wouldn't say we were into the "drug culture" because all we did was smoke pot/marijuana/weed, and maybe occasionally hashish. We even grew our own marijuana because we had a nice garden space and it was cheaper to grow our own than to buy. It was illegal, of course, and our parents knew but didn't approve. We justified it to ourselves (and each other) by comparing being stoned to being drunk. We figured it was actually a superior way to seek an altered state in order to "have more fun" by escaping reality. Alcohol had all kinds of problems like angry drunks who caused destruction, drunk driving, addiction, liver and other physical ailments, etc. Pot just made you "mellow", albeit a bit irresponsible. So when we would toke up before gathering with our family at our parents' homes or go out in public, we thought it was pretty funny that, unlike being drunk, our "high" wasn't detectable by most people. Then in 1974, we began to wonder about being more adult and responsible and what to teach our children, especially about religious things. In that search for greater knowledge, we ended up studying with LDS missionaries: two young guys just about our age. One time they dropped by, unexpectedly, when we had been indulging and were feeling pretty good. We were surprised at our feeling of shame. We had always thought ourselves pretty clever when we were stoned around straight people and might even chuckle about how the minister, cop, parent, or other "authority" figure might not even have a clue as to what we had been doing. It was different with these two pleasant young men. Somehow we had a gut feeling that they were pure and really wanted to help guide us in our spiritual search. We felt guilty for being stoned enough to not be quite capable of fully comprehending or appreciating whatever they might try to teach us. Why?
     Recently we were talking about the looser moral standards to be found in many other countries, especially European countries. Many of them are quite tolerant of prostitution, nudity, adultery, drugs, and alcohol. All of it seems to go pretty much hand in hand. If you accept one sin, you accept another. If you go over one limit, why stop at any limit? I would not suggest going to the extreme of societies that claim outward restrictions of moral standards while ignoring them behind closed doors. I have no use for the hypocrisy of nations who decry immodest dress while men are expected to be free to have sex with unwilling young girls. I have no respect for people who claim to not want to promote gambling so it's illegal where they live but they happily travel across state or national borders to try for a big win. I believe that when people justify any surrender to urges that are not in the best interest of society in general, they want to insist that it's okay for themselves to do just about anything. Sometimes they even take hypocrisy to an extreme and are violently opposed to the open acts of sin by others when they commit equally wrong acts themselves. A prophet once explained, "the light of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil." Just as Russ and I had the light of Christ which caused us to feel guilt in the presence of young men we hardly knew- LDS missionaries, every man and woman on the planet Earth has the light of Christ. Some call it "conscience". We can choose to ignore it but when we ignore it repeatedly, we soon become numb to it. We begin to justify ourselves more and more in doing wrong things, including calling evil good and good evil. "The light of Christ will lead the honest soul who hearkeneth to the voice to find the true gospel and the true Church and thereby receive the Holy Ghost" then "by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

Continuing to learn

It's just a little over a week before we will leave Sun City, AZ. As wonderful as the people here are, we are getting anxious to get on to this next phase of our life. I have wanted to serve a mission for many years and, although I don't regret any of the time we have spent helping members of our family, I am excited to finally be able to serve a full-time mission for my Lord. I can't express enough how grateful I am for the good people in my life and for the wonderful opportunities we have had to travel, build relationships, and experience things that have broadened our understanding of the purpose of life.I sometimes wish I could be witty and entertaining to be able to make people laugh. I'm just not. But I am genuine in wanting to love people and make them feel good. My greatest hope is that no-one will ever be relieved to have me gone. I don't ever want to be an obstacle to someone's progress. That doesn't mean I expect to always be of assistance in the way people want. I am slowly learning the wisdom of knowing when to pick up and carry and when to stand by and cheer on. It's hard to watch anyone suffer in any way. However, I am learning that it is part of our existence. We each get to feel pain and sorrow. We each get to watch others we care about feel pain and sorrow. Sometimes the only thing we can do is hold a hand or provide a listening ear or shoulder to cry on. But we can't make it all better. It's the same for our Heavenly Father. He loves us enough that He wants us to gain strength and wisdom. We don't do that by having Him step in and make it all better every time. Learning to trust His wisdom is a long, difficult process. When we can do that, we will feel His peace. He has promised us that. But it's like learning patience- it takes time.

What I will miss most

As our anticipation to leave Sun City and go on to the next chapter of our life heightens, I have been reflecting on what I will miss about having lived here. We came here to Arizona primarily to care for my parents. I don't know that we would ever have chosen this area on our own. It is simply too hot and dry for our taste. We understand that the winter has been torturous in much of the nation so we feel like we really shouldn't complain. The daytime temperature here in March is already reaching 90 degrees and going outside any time from mid-morning to sundown is bordering on uncomfortable for us. There are plenty of people who love the weather here and lots of people who come just for the break from cold winters up north. As for what I will miss here- people I have gotten to know. We have become acquainted with some very nice people but I am convinced there are nice people everywhere. I must say that our relationship with members of the LDS Church is generally deeper than that with other people. It's not that non-members are in any way not as "good". There are people inside and outside the church who are good and not so good. But among those who are diligently striving to follow Jesus Christ, there is a genuine spirit of love, compassion, and desire to serve others that simply isn't a part of the make-up of the general population of the world. And among those who are active in the LDS Church, there is a higher percentage of people following that description than anywhere else. There is something about having made a covenant to always remember Jesus and keep His commandments that says something about a person. It's not simply an expression of belief in the existence of God and Jesus Christ. There is a level of commitment among active Latter Day Saints that is meaningful in determining what kind of character that person will have. There are businesses and government departments who actually seek out active Latter Day Saints because it is recognized even outside the Church that there is something "different" about Mormons.
As I looked around the congregation at church today, I realized that, along with getting antsy to get on down the road, I will miss these good people. At a casual glance, you might just see a group of grey-haired people who move slowly and stiffly, many with walkers, hearing aids, glasses, and bandages covering spots where possible melanomas have been removed. But when you get to know them, these are wonderful people all with stories worth listening to. There are simple people who have just worked hard all their lives and now take joy in a phone call or visit from posterity. There are people who seem fairly confident who have done amazing things in their lives, if you take the time to find out about them. There are so many who will lend a hand to do just about anything they can for others despite having fixed low incomes and crippled bodies. These are saintly people who are determined to endure to the end of their lives in keeping their covenants with God to serve Him and His children. They are genuine in their love and concern for others. They are what I will miss most when we leave here.