Wilderness Survival

Friday night and there are few places that i’d rather be than in the middle of the desert with my boy scouts. we are working on the wilderness survival meritbadge and that has required that all the kids essentially make forts and sleep in them. as I was working on I amanda called and I told her I couldn’t talk because I was making a fort. she laughed at me and for the first moment I realized I was truly enjoying the time out here with the scouts. they are a random bjnch of kids but together they are a good time. to end the night we all sat around a camp fire and listened to stories about not being alone in the world. at the end of that meeting all 100 of us knelt down and prayed in the middle of this desert. really humbling and it gave me a sense of the sacred. it has made the whole time worth while. hopefully ill wake up tomorrow with out a migrane so I can enjoy the rest of the activity.

McB

Seperation of Church and State?


So I found myself in my Management Dynamics class where all the exams were recently moved to internet. Last week about 7 of us showed up for class, and this week was even a tad different than that. I got to the school a half hour early and got into my homework that I needed to get done, and before I knew it the music I was listening to and my homework had lulled me to 1:30. Realizing that I was still the only one in the class it became slightly awkward when my Professor entered the room. She looked at me and just laughed. I really enjoy her teaching style, and figured since I had a class to come down for anyway that I might as well just go to all my classes for the review. (Also if i remove myself from my home and other distractions I am more apt to actually do my homework… hehe) We took the next hour of so just informally talking about the chapter and then she gave me the test verbally. Turned out well as I’ve become closer to the “A” / “B” line that i’d like to be. After the formal class came to an end, I made a joke about being Mormon (which she had known from a previous class). She then began to ask me questions, and for the first time in about a year I had actively engaged in a Gospel discussion outside of everything else that had been initiated all because of just me doing my thing. It felt really good being able to just talk about the Church normally without any stress or worries.

McB

Just a walk in the park…

Amanda has started to feel a little better from her surgery. She wanted to get out of the house for a little while so we decided to go to Freestone Park. While walking around we were able to relieve a little tension that had begun to arrise over the last few days. The lack of stability of anything in our lives right now has gotten us a little on edge. While the nessicities of life are taken care of, and our day to day is alright there is just so many things that are unsure. The future is what weighs most right now, and the need for some kind of rock, some stability is lacking. The Gospel of course is there, and we strive to remain true always to that, but we find ourselves on sandy ground when it comes to other aspects of life. With some closure beginning to creep forward within the next few weeks we will be able to make some important decisions, and regain that rock that we are looking for.

It was so great to just walk around the park, and see everyone enjoying the weekend. As we passed the mini-carnival filled with kids on the merry-go-round we paused at the bridge that passed over a pond filled with ducks. It was there that we reflected on that past week or so, and were able to just “let it go”. We remembered the last time we had walked around a lake in Tempe and had befriended a one-legged duck. Poor guys kept swimming in circles. That little walk helped me gain perspective again for my life, and some of the goals that we seemed to lose sight of out of frusteration.

McB