Another Call To FHE with the Smith's

As we learned in one of my posts, FHE can be kind of a challenge here. Well tonight was a mix of that and just good ole laughs.

Brandon


has been working on earning his religious badge for scouts and trying to complete his

Faith In God (hereafter referred to as FIG). He asked me last week if he could be in charge of FHE this week. Of course I said yes because who wouldn't?

So it is with great bewilderment that halfway through the lesson tonight, I still had not pinpointed the exact topic he had chosen. So far we had covered the sacrament and why it is important to renew you baptismal covenants each week, The First Vision, and how our prayers are answered when we ask in sincerity. Here are a few highlights of each topic:

The first vision: We learned that Joseph Smith wrote a lengthy but excellent account of The First vision that takes about 30 minutes to read when taking turns with EVERYONE in the family.

Our Prayers Are Answered When We Ask In Sincerity: This important lesson was taught by the account of the first vision. Jordan was brave enough to admit that at times she is saying her prayers and finds herself with spiritual ADD because she can't remember if she finished the prayer or not and has to start all over. We all laughed a nervous laugh as if we could relate.

She also told a story of a man (she couldn't remember who but he was a youth speaker, she thinks it was Thoreau Baily but can't quite remember) who was praying to know if the church was true and he thought for sure when his prayer was over he was going to see angels all around him. When he opened his eyes, he saw a light fill his room. He fell to the floor in astonishment. At that same moment he realized it was just the lights of a car passing by.

This funny story of God's humor reminded me of a time when I was laying in bed. I think depression had sent me there and I was pleading with God to give me a desire to get up and take care of my family. I was laying there holding Baby Boo and really had no desire to climb out of bed. After a couple of half hearted prayers, I decided I needed a little more sincerity. As I was once again pleading for help, Boo threw up all over me. It was everywhere! I jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom and quickly realized that my prayer was answered! I laughed and laughed until I could not laugh any more. I love His sense of humor!

The Sacrament: Brandon had a revelation as he taught us how the sacrament works. His favorite part must have been the understanding that taking the sacrament is like getting baptized all over again because he said that when he dies he hopes it is on a Sunday right after he partakes of the sacrament...

Well I must have forgot to give him a time limit on his FHE because 1 1/2 hours later (or so it seemed), we finished and he brought me his FIG book and proudly showed me how he passed off 5 different requirements in that FHE! Go figure!

I loved his humor!

There are so many things I loved about President Hinckley, but I am going to take just a moment to tell about one of my favorite things about him.

He. was. so. funny!

He could say the simplest thing and have the whole conference center/world rolling with laughter. It was good. clean. humor. I loved it.

I believe that humor is good for people. Yesterday I was the recipient of God's Humor. I will expound:

We were in Gospel Doctrine class (which I usually don't go to due to my calling) and the teacher said something that caught my attention and I had to write it down. I wanted to put the quote on my blog because I loved it. She said, "follow the prophet to where he is going. Who doesn't want to be there?" Hmmmmmm. I want to laugh now at how literal that statement became in less than a day.

Yes we do want to be there! But not right now.

I am a better person for knowing President Hinckley. He is truly a man of God.

Oh and I do believe the national news has its own humor that is not so funny. Get this headline:

"Mormon church president mourned in Utah..."

Didn't they mean he will be mourned worldwide? By millions of people?

Got Google Reader?

Ok I am going to introduce to those of you who have never heard about Google Reader, to Google Reader. This is such a helpful tool that saves you time and energy in blogland so that you can spend it more wisely (in blogland).

SO... Google reader.

Why do you want Google Reader? It is similar to your email. It will alert you to any new posts from any blogs you have subscribed to. You don't have to go from post to post looking to see who has posted in the last 10 minutes. Instead you only have one page to go to every 10 minutes. For instance Amber just posted last night and she spent a lot of precious time alerting everyone to this fact when she could have spent that time telling us all that she loves us and misses us and can't wait to come and see us all, but alas...

How do you use Google Reader? This question must be answered as I have spent countless hours for a few of you setting up your Reader accounts and find out you have not used them...

1. Log to in to Google and then do a search for Google Reader. (There may already be an option on your account page but I never saw it when I looked. When you find it, it will ask you if you want a tutorial. You may want to say yes as I am not good at giving directions.

2. When you are ready to set it up you will want to have all of your most favorite blog addresses available as you will need to input these one at a time. I have an excellent list that I just emailed to Paul. Once you get them loaded into Google Reader, you can organize them into folders and rename them. You will want to check the box "mark all as read" so that you can start fresh.

3. Once you have Google Reader set up (Uh ummm, [is that how you clear your throat in writing?] Shellbell, Wow and Sharebear), you just have to be logged into your Google account and open up Google Reader and there it is. I suggest you bookmark your Google Reader page and make sure before you do that, you have my page highlighted so that you will always be welcomed to Google Reader with my lovely page.

4. For anything I didn't cover you can ask Shauna or I as we are both experts at using this great tool!

And last but not least. Do not make the same mistake that I often do. Google Reader has made it so easy to read blogs that I think I will read them all first and then go back and comment later. This is a mistake for the obvious reason that I just don't do it!

Enjoy and let me know what you think! If you already use it I would love to have your praises to help convince the strays that they really do want to use it. No I am not getting paid by Google to do this post, though I should be!