Prayer

I gave a talk on prayer in church today. It was a good experience for me and I thought I'd share a little excerpt with you.

"Prayer is the doorway through which we commence our discipleship to things heavenly and eternal. We will never be alone so long as we know how to pray. Let me say that again: We will never be alone so long as we know how to pray.

In Revelations 3:20 the Savior tells us, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”.

I have read this verse numerous times, but as I was preparing for this talk, it hit me in an entirely new way. You’ve seen the picture of the Savior standing at the door knocking. There is no knob on the outside, so we have to open the door and let him in. But then what happens? The scripture says, “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. To sup is to have supper. Is Jesus knocking at the door because he’s hungry and wants some food? No. But we are hungry. We need spiritual food and Jesus is the bread of life. Now why is Jesus going to sit down and eat with us instead of just handing us some bread? What does one do while they eat supper together? They talk. They chat. They tell about their day. The Lord wants us to talk with him. Jesus is our mediator and our advocate with the Father. As we pray to our Heavenly Father in the name of Christ, we should share with him our hopes and our dreams. We explain to Him the trials we are facing. We talk to him about our everyday struggles. We let Him know about the challenges in our life and ask Him if the decisions we are making are right for us. As we approach our Heavenly Father in this way, we open the windows of heaven. We can receive from Him truth, light, and knowledge. And as we continue in this pattern the eyes of our understanding are open to us and we can see clearly the path we should take before us. "

Easter pictures

I love these Easter dresses that we got for the girls. I was all ready to take them to get pictures done--with their new white shoes and matching hairbows that Melody helped me make. Then Bella biffed it on the concrete in the backyard and scraped her nose and forehead. These pictures will have to do!

Julie

I have a stepsister named Julie who is 5 years older than me, almost to the day. When I was in middle school and she was in high school she was my idol. She was beautiful with blond hair and blue eyes. She drove a red '86 Ford Tempo that I thought was so cool. She had gone to France with her class at school and came home with a game called Pente that we loved to play and a recipe for crepes that we loved to make. She would let me sit on her bed while she told me about her dates or the boys she liked. Amidst Wham! posters on the wall, we would sing George Michael together at the top of our lungs. I loved my big sister! I was so sad when she went away to college--Gonzaga University. I moved too and shortly after that I moved in with my aunt and uncle who later adopted my siblings and I. Julie and I lost touch. Fast forward 20 years and enter Facebook. I found Julie! When I was buying our plane tickets to Hawaii in February, I found a flight that had a 4 hour layover in Seattle. I booked it and asked Julie if Richard and I could come visit!
This picture is in at the airport--luckily Julie's son Malcolm was off school that day so we got to see him too. And yes, he is giving his mom rabbit ears in the picture :) Julie doesn't live too far from the airport so we went to her house and hung out for a while. It was so good to see her again! She is such a great person, just like always. She is a great mom--PTA president, soccer mom, you name it. You could really tell in the way she interacted with Malcolm. What a great kid--I was so impressed with him! He wants to be an inventor when he grows up. Thanks, Sis for a great visit!!

Volcanoes and waterfalls

Okay, I'm finally finishing up with blogging about Hawaii. The panoramic pictures are small on here, but if you click on them, you can see the larger version.

This was taken in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park--the Kilauea Crater. Pretty amazing.


This is the Thurston Lava Tube- a huge cave made from the lava flow.


The steam vents in the park were cool. It was raining pretty hard and we got soaked to get this picture, but it was fun!!

A panoramic of Punulu'u beach.

The forest where we went ziplining.

Spencer Beach. My family went to Hawaii years ago while I was on my mission and this is the beach they camped on. This beach was actually closed to swimmers because of jellyfish. I saw 3 little jellyfish when we were out snorkling and I hightailed it out of the water. We met a lady who looked like she had chicken pox all over her legs because she had a run-in with the jellyfish. Yikes!

Rainbow Falls

Akaka Falls

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach

I just love turtles.

And sand on my toes.

And crashing waves.

And Richard. Most of all.

The Kona Hawaii Temple

We had no idea that there was an LDS temple on the big island! As we were driving from the airport to our resort we saw this on the side of the highway!

It was dedicated 10 years ago! No wonder I don't remember an announcement of a second temple in Hawaii--I had only been off my mission for a year when it was announced. It felt so good to walk around the temple grounds and I fell in love with the orchids and other flowers:

Zipline

So our second day on vacation we went ziplining! I took this picture in the car on the way up the coast. A full rainbow where it reflected in the ocean. Who knew that all this time that the pot o' gold was underwater!

Our guides drove us in a Hummer on all these dirt roads back through a bunch of private property, farms, guava fields, and locked gates. You can't see a lot of this area of the island unless you are on a guided tour.

There were 8 different ziplines to go on. The longest being over 1000 feet.

This picture is a bit blurry because I took it as I was zipping by. So fun!

The suspension bridge was really cool too :)