{"id":17295,"date":"2019-02-17T07:25:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T07:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abeandlily.com\/?p=17295"},"modified":"2019-02-18T07:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T07:30:18","slug":"standing-immobile-puzzle-fake-fire-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/17\/standing-immobile-puzzle-fake-fire-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing Immobile. Puzzle. Fake Fire. Testimony."},"content":{"rendered":"
Today was a wonderful day. We all woke up late, and I was feeling tired from my long run yesterday, but we made it to church in time for the sacrament. \u00a0After sacrament meeting, we took Clarissa to her very first day of nursery. We were the first ones in her classroom, and I snapped this picture of her.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0I was nervous that she would cry and not assimilate and that Lily or I would be staying with her, but to our great delight, she did perfectly fine when we left her in class. It was actually quite hilarious. Once the teacher engaged with her, I slipped out unnoticed. \u00a0Then Lily and I spied on her from the peep hole, and she literally just stood there, motionless and very shy. She barely flinched. We left after a few minutes to help Mary with her talk in primary and go to Sunday school. After church, when I picked her up, she was happily eating snacks. One of the teachers told me that she stood there, motionless for twenty to twenty-five minutes before she started moving around, but she did not cry. Poor girl must have been in some kind of shock in her new environment, but it seems she made it through OK.<\/div>\n
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Sunday school was absolutely amazing. We got to see four different families model how the do family scripture study. They were all so different and seeing such beautiful families discuss and study the teachings of Jesus with such diversity was absolutely amazing. I came away with a greater desire to have an open mind, and discuss and explore topics openly as a family.<\/div>\n
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After church, everyone ate and then Lily and I napped. After that, we ate dinner (during which we studied John 3 together). Following dinner, we had family home evening which consisted of reading books while the little kid were up, and then a puzzle and Lydia\u2019s cute lesson when the kids went down. The puzzle was so peaceful and fun. We used our new puzzle board and turned a fake fire on the TV. The girls and I made jokes about not burning our hands on the TV fire. Lily said the puzzle calmed her because of how beautiful it was. Lydia\u2019s lesson was very darling. She wrote out a bunch of different emotions and had everyone act them out. After the kids all went to sleep, Lily and I read and blogged.<\/div>\n
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Here again, is a bit of Sunday testimony, this time it is a beautiful entry from Georgia:<\/div>\n
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I was awakened at 5 AM last Monday, February 11, by a call from Vince telling me that he was in the Los Angeles jail in Carson. He spoke so fast that I could not understand the details but I understood that he needed help – he needed my help.\u00a0 I was in fact the only one whose phone number he could remember.\u00a0 I did not want this problem.\u00a0 I did not want this disturbance to the beautiful, sweet time I have been enjoying with Clark and Swathi and Soren and Meera, this short interlude of drawing close to them and feeling the love in their home.\u00a0 But the crisis was upon me and I could not refuse it.\u00a0 I fell upon my knees and begged for wisdom and courage.\u00a0 I confessed my own weakness and my own folly.\u00a0 And I sought to know what Heavenly Father would have me do.\u00a0\u00a0 From that moment on, I know that He did guide me.\u00a0 He spoke to me through the conversations I had with so many people \u2013 my family members, Vince\u2019s bishop, Dyke Huish (a criminal defense attorney), and even Vince himself.\u00a0 He spoke to me through scriptures that came to my remembrance or to my eyes as I searched the scriptures for wisdom.\u00a0 And He spoke to me by whisperings of the Holy Spirit, small increments of understanding that came quietly and gently to my mind.\u00a0 There was much drama to my week as the unfolding of events took me up and down as if on a roller coaster.\u00a0 I spent much of my week on my knees.\u00a0 Some of the scriptures that came to my mind to guide me were: the story of the Good Samaritan; the story of the young man who would not follow Christ because he was unwilling to sell all he had; the story of the Widow\u2019s Mite; Mosiah 4: 19 \u201cFor behold, are we not all beggars?\u00a0 Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God for all the substance which we have . . ?\u201d I felt my Savior close at hand and in my spirit I saw Him as the Good Samaritan, showing me personally how to minister to the wounded traveler, even when the traveler was in his delirium resisting. I felt my Savior\u2019s mercy and forgiveness, his compassion and his love.\u00a0 I also learned more of what it means to exercise faith in Jesus Christ. \u00a0We must keep our focus on Him and doubt not.\u00a0 We must be courageous and put aside fear and know that He has all power.\u00a0 We must trust that He will exercise His power for us, even though we are imperfect and unworthy.\u00a0 We must be willing to accept His will, whatever the outcome may be.<\/p>\n

The following is my journal entry written at 6 AM on Friday, February 15, following Vince\u2019s release from prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy soul is rejoicing in the knowledge I have gained in this past week as I have struggled to gain wisdom and to help Vince in the way Heavenly Father would help.\u00a0 More than ever I know without a doubt that Jesus Christ lives!\u00a0 He is real!\u00a0 He is full of mercy, forgiveness and love.\u00a0 We are all beggars before Him and he is eager to bless us.\u00a0 He will fight our battles for us and He will be victorious for us.\u00a0 He has all power.\u00a0 He is the Creator of the universe and Redeemer of all.\u00a0 He will perform miracles for us if we have faith in Him, if we trust Him, if we do not fear.\u00a0 He will walk with us into the fire.\u00a0 He will uphold us as we walk on water.\u00a0 We must keep our focus on Him and never look down at the water lapping at our feet, and never doubt \u2013 just have faith in Him, just trust Him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shall strive to live with this knowledge alive within me and never doubt His love and His power of deliverance.\u00a0 I may need this knowledge for what lies ahead.\u00a0 I have appointments today to determine why I have had blood in my urine.\u00a0 I shall await the verdict and rejoice whatever the verdict is \u2013 because I know Jesus Christ walks with me and He will carry me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Today was a wonderful day. We all woke up late, and I was feeling tired from my long run yesterday, but we made it to church in time for the sacrament. \u00a0After sacrament meeting, we took Clarissa to her very first day of nursery. We were the first ones in her classroom, and I snapped … Continue reading Standing Immobile. Puzzle. Fake Fire. Testimony.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17300,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17295\/revisions\/17300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abeandlily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}