July 12, 2023

Oh my sweet baby girl-. I hope all is well for you. I hope your heart is happy. I hope you feel the spirit. I hope you feel how happy the Lord is with your Gifts to him. I hope you feel the joy of descending below very hard things to conquer your own soul, and give to Jesus whatever he would ask of you. I am convinced that complete surrender to Him inherently, including profound suffering, and soul wrenching change is the only way to be truly happy. I’m not saying that I’m truly happy all the time but I know when I surrender to Him when I let Him prevail when I turn my life over to Him, that is when my joy is present and I feel complete and full and at peace. I love how we talk a lot about this and how don’t think the deepest hunger of the human heart is for a lack of suffering but rather for a purpose and meaning. You and I think we can go through anything as long as it has Meaning. I think we would rather suffer, bleed, and even die, and know that what we’re doing matters, then live a life that doesn’t have meaning doesn’t matter, but also doesn’t have any suffering in it just a life of casual, floating pleasure with no challenge and no growth. I know you already know all this, but maybe I’m just saying it for me. What I’m trying to say is I’m proud of you. You could stay home in your cozy little bed , but instead you are suffering and you were suffering for the Savior and your suffering to succor. You are increasing your ability to succor and I love you for it. You’re a great example to me. Thank you for not giving up. It is exquisite isn’t it. Meaning, deeper and more profound and harder and bigger, and more invasive than I ever thought to try to be a Christian disciple. The blessings for me have been so profound, but so different. I never thought deliverance would smell like compost and sound like the chaos of children’s theater, and That it would just barely sustain us with a little bit of savings. In my mind I had planned a deliverance that would be so profound and make me so rich and it just is not the case. it’s just so amazing how he keeps sculpting , and I’m grateful for it. Sometimes I feel like he is sculpting my very inner organs, scraping and shaping to help me try to learn to be a Christian disciple. How are you doing really? I have so many stories to tell. I want to tell you more about Hannah. She was around 30 years old and weighed 300 pounds. she was hit in a head on collision by a man who was coming home from trek and fell asleep. That is a tragic story however, it has a beautiful side. I talked to Vilate a few days ago and she had just gotten home from meeting with the man who killed her sister. They went to him and told him that they felt like it was her time to go and felt he was used as God’s tool and they didn’t want him to feel one bit of bad about it. She had believed that the polygamist group was true, and had enough of those beliefs that she never wanted to leave it, but she had beliefs that it was not true, and had enough of those beliefs that she never wanted to marry in it, and in a lot of ways in her life, she was kind of stuck. I just love that they had the power and love in their souls to go meet with them and try to remove his guilt and they had the faith to see that it may have been God’s timing and to let Hannah go. That’s one of my Jesus stories for the week for you. I’m dying to talk to you! . I’m not sure we’ll even hear from you this week! I’ve thought a lot about what you were saying the other day, how you want all of your cousins to serve a mission and there’s part of you that doesn’t want any of your cousins to serve a mission because it breaks your soul into 1 million pieces. Of course you want them to go but it’s the organ scraping Right? It’s the soul shaping and it can hurt. We’re not in this business of discipleship to be comfortable evidently. . Middle of last theater camp today, last for the summer. It’s been a helter-skelter crazy chaotic, amazing wonderful challenging, marathon March from today. I think our Compost orders have doubled this year and after five shows in the spring showcase and five summer camps I have lost weight got very little sleep and slacked off on so many things. I’m sorry about that and how it has affected you. This week we’re going to give it all we’ve got, and then I have a month to pray and clean and try to do everything in my power to hear the voice of the Lord on every detail in my life so that I can be doing exactly what he wants me to do I want to talk more about that very profound, profound inspiration. And all the chaos and all the busyness am I have not been feeling the spirit as much as I would love to enjoy his companionship. A lot of that is because those holy habits and righteous routines have taken a back burner to more urgent matters. Which is stupid because I know those practices help everything go better, but I found myself reading a quick chapter before I fell asleep, and, anyway I prayed hard and I had a very profound and clear answer. Heavenly Father told me to say 3 10 minute prayers during the day and have 9 1/2 minutes of those prayers be gratitude and in the last 30 seconds to plead for what I really needed. That’s not for his benefit it’s definitely for mine. I had fallen into a habit of opening a prayer and then dumping all of my worries and garbage, and imagining that I didn’t have time to thank him in a meaningful way. The perspective, the focus, the effort it takes to express gratitude for 9 1/2 minutes completely does a 180 for my soul , and I think gratitude is the answer to feeling the spirit. When I have to look that hard and search that long for how he has been there for me, for every blessing has given me it completely changes me, and opens my soul to feel that the Lord does love me has been there will continue to be there and that , we have a beautiful working relationship and that he is aware of me and the desperate feelings of panic and fear regarding Dad’s health and money and my businesses and the challenges I face there, and all of the things seem to quiet instead of take over my soul. I just wanted to pass that on in case it was helpful. I have found a Deep water savior. Ships are safe in the harbor but harbors are not what ships are built for. My testimony now looks like a beat up old ship with barnacles and stains and crashes and smashes and scratches because I’ve been through a little bit of heck. I don’t claim to have suffered a lot, but Having Dad get sick and all the consequences have definitely given us some deep water experience. Is that fair? I’m not sure that’s even fair because we’ve been so blessed but what I’m trying to say is I am grateful to know things now that I only believe before, and I learned those in the deep water, and in the storms of my life. I know things now I never would’ve known had I stayed in the sunshine and in the safety of a tethered harbor and dock. He invited me to that deep water because he wanted me to learn some things and I am grateful. He wanted me to find Him there. The knowledge is worth the price. At home: Oh my gravy in the sauce Marcus is cute. I was riding up and down the street last night on Jello's double bike with him in the seat next to me. Corby Campbell is coming to camp today and I'm very excited for that. We get Griffin AND Marcus here for the next few days while Lydia is at Girl's camp. Seth is just absolutely awesome, he's not feeling super great this week and I REALLY RELY ON HIS ENERGY FOR SUMMER CAMPS TO BE AWESOME. Rebekah has an ob appointment this morning. It has been so fun to have all of the cousins at camp. We're doing crazy stuff. I love you Annie. I’m so proud of you. Your real adventure begins. You will come home having a deep water Savior experience too and I’m so excited for you and SO PROUD OF YOU!