Finance

With Jake working at this intern, I have learned so much about finances. Whether I wanted to or not! I want Jake to summarize what we heard today from a lecture on finance that his boss gave during Sunday school. I love how he correlated it to the gospel and made me want to know more about our finances and where they should go and what we are doing with them. 

Matt Tucker is the financial Advisor that I work for and he discussed how owning your finances and being in charge of where you put your money correlates with how God wants us to increase our agency in every aspect of our life and how he'll empower us to do so.  If we get in debt we are losing agency!  If we don't even worry about our situation with money that's also losing agency. This is similar to not acting at all which lets others act for you.  Also if you don't save money you are not only hurting future road bumps along the way but you are hurting others who could benefit.  Maybe one of the reasons you save is so the Lord has one more avenue to bless others life through your efforts.  For example Heather has an amazing uncle who was smart with his money and offered to pay for Heathers schooling which helps us immensely. Another example is when Heather went through her sickness. Her parents received money anonymously during this period of her life. I'm sure that helped with a lot of things. Food storage is another example. The gospel is in every fabric of our life, not just in church settings.  We can use similar principles of the gospel to help us in other challenges we face.

I can't wait to learn more and more as Jake goes further with this company. He is really teaching me a lot.

Weekend activities

What a weekend! I know Thursday isn't really part of the weekend but that day was important too. UVU's institute has the opportunity to provide a choir for Aprils Sunday morning session of General Conference! They had auditions Thursday night which went on really late into the night. There were soooo many people there auditioning. They only have room for 365 singers and......

I am one of those 365! I am so excited to be able to take part in this wonderful experience, and to share my love of music with others. So look for me Sunday morning! Friday we had the privilege of being able to hear from L. Tom Perry, also at UVU's institute. What a funny man. His talk was on living a well balanced life. To summarize his talk, he gave us four tips.

1. Realize who we are
2. Value truth, and be truth seekers
3. Be a trusted generation, and live by good standards
4. Seek learning from the scriptures

There was a lot more that he went into but that was the gist. Such an amazing apostle and boy is he tall! Friday was also a fun date snowshoeing and a night of games. Life is amazing right now.

Saturday morning was spend celebrating my dear roommates 20th birthday! Man we are all getting old. We stuffed our faces at Los for lunch and it was amazing. She had to wear a dorky "Happy Birthday" hat too! After that, I journeyed up to Salt Lake to spend the weekend with an old roommate who is pretty much my adopted sister and I consider her family to be my adopted family. I love them all! We were able to catch up, and make wonderful cookies n' cream cupcakes with the most amazing frosting ever. We had a girls night which included the face masks, and a good episode of Saved by the Bell. Next morning, we both got up fairly early and went to Music and the Spoken Word. It was awesome! Lots of good songs were sung. After that I raced home and made it just in time to listen to my cousin speak at his homecoming. If you know our family, you would know that we are all really close. It was so good to see him and other family members, and to hear stories from his mission as well as to see how much his testimony has grown. Like I said....what a weekend.

And can I just say how much I love Monday holidays?!

Speaker

It's talks like his that make me realize that I can be so much better. You know I thought I was doing pretty good until he gave his talk. We were privileged to have Neil L. Anderson come and speak to us at our stake conference up here in Ogden. One of the boys came and sat down next to us with a big grin on his face as he told us that he just shook Elder Neil L. Anderson's hand! Haha! But really to have him there in person was so cool! You could just feel the power of this newly called apostle as he spoke to us. Here are some things I got from the meeting. I was trying to write them down as fast as I could so hopefully I will be able to read them.

• Brent C. Nelson talked about the theme of Conference which was "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." He talked about a boy who was a great example to everyone. While in sports, he made sure that he always put the Lord first and knew that if he put his faith in the Lord, they could whip anyone. (age 15) He liked everyone and everyone liked him. He was used as an example for other missionaries while he served. He was dedicated to his church, his family, friends, and work. On his way to a work meeting on a plane, sometime went wrong and the plane crashed killing everyone. Brent C. Nelson then asked us this question. "Are you prepared?" Then I asked myself, am I striving to be a good example to others? Am I striving to be the best that I can be?
  
• Brother Simpson - Ogden Temple president talked about the scripture Mosiah 2:5 and how we all need to face the temple. We need our families to face the temple. He told of story of a primary teacher that took her kids to the temple and asked each of them to go up one at a time, to touch the temple. After each one had touched the temple she said to them, "Now you've touched the temple. When you grow up, let the temple touch you." I thought that was so cool. It made me aware of how grateful I am for a temple that is not even ten minutes from where I live and that I can go there and partake of the blessings it gives each and every one of us as we do temple work.
  

• Didn't catch her name but she is in the Presidency of the stake Relief Society. She also talked about being prepared and compared it to Noah and the ark and gave us seven things to help us. 1:Don't miss the boat - take advantage of what we have (prophets, temples, scriptures) 2: We are all in the same boat - We need to help each other. 3: Plan ahead - continue your education. Be prepared. 4: Don't listen to critics - Man's opinion doesn't matter. 5: Travel in pairs - Marriage. Lean on each other, move forward together in faith, and for those that haven't found the one, be that person you are looking for. 6: The ark was built by amateurs. Titanic was built by professionals. You know what happened to both - Joseph Smith was a little boy when he prayed to our Heavenly Father. In some way we are all amateurs in our callings, but as long as we do them faithfully we will be blessed. 7: No matter the storm, when with Heavenly Father, there is always a rainbow at the end - It will all work out. Do not fear.
• Neil L. Anderson started talking about how we need to be clay in Heavenly Father's hands. We need to learn to grow into the mantle that we have been given. Be mold able. Be Changeable. Then he talked about youth. "Joseph Smith was young, the Savior was young. Don't let your youth be an excuse. We have to account for what we are in our lives." Also talked about how we need to keep Christ as our center. He quoted Thomas S. Monson from this last general conference, "Some would like to keep one foot in Babylon, and one foot in Zion. This is not possible." Mentioned D&C 45:57 (speaking as for us in our days) Then he went on to talk about how the power of the Savior is real. Accept it. We must remember Him always that His spirit may abide with us always (sacrament prayer) This next part is my favorite part of his whole talk. He talked about how when he was a little boy he used to catch butterflies. He would gently catch them in his hand, then put it into a bottle expecting the butterfly to still fly around, but instead it couldn't fly and fell to the bottom of the jar. He then said the spirit of the Lord is like unto a butterflies wing. It is delicate and refined. When we do something to harm it, it does not return immediately. We can't go to a bad movie one night, then expect the spirit to be there the next day to help us.
  

What a blessing it was to hear from this newly called apostle. His love for our Saviour is great. His love for each of us is great. I'm so grateful to have a living prophet and apostles on the earth today to help and guide us through hard times. I am so grateful to have a loving Heavenly Father and a loving brother, Jesus Christ. We are never alone.

What an awesome way to start the week. This is what I needed.