Family History

Well Elder Bednar's talk in the most recent General Conference inspired me to try doing family history!! I recently learned to index and have loved doing that, but I decided I should venture deeper in the world of family history.  I logged into new.familysearch.org and started checking out my family tree.  I have an awesome family and most everything is pretty much known for the first branches...but then I got to the 1600's and there were blank spots and I got excited! I started searching familysearch.org to find missing spouses.  I was a little discouraged because I just couldn't find anything.  So decided to try a different one. AND I FOUND HER! Ja. Gow was missing his wife and Margaret Gow was missing a mom...and I found her! I was pretty excited. So I added her on my family tree! As I linked up to her family tree, I discovered like 5 more children we didn't know Ja. Gow had. Pretty sweet. (and then I noticed someone had entered that Janet married a James Gow in the 1800's...since she was born in the 1600's, I was doubtful.  So, I posted a discussion to correct it (since I couldn't delete the link since I didn't add it) and found a cute little button that will email me if anyone responds.  Isn't that awesome! I'm an official family history doer! Who knew it could be so fun? I feel like I am Nancy Drew solving family history mysteries.  (Yes I read every Nancy Drew book ever written when I was young and still own most of them. classic.)  Just wanted to share my intense excitement with the world!!

Things as they really are

enjoyed this video tonight!

weirdness and love

saw this quote today:

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."
- Dr. Seuss

LOVED IT :)

gratitude

my sister's blog post this morning (The Boster Family: Heritage) expressed my own feelings of gratitude better than i have been able to put into words. granted, i am not a young mother as she is...yet i feel the same way about the heritage my parents have left me (and are still creating for me). i find as i go through this busy time of life, it is easy to get caught up in the "thick of thin things". as i read emails from my parents in siberia and josh in mexico, all doing the work of our Savior, it lifts me from my world of selfishness. their stories remind me of what's most important: lifting the hands that hang down and strengthening the feeble knees. even though i'm not on the other side of the world, i too can do His work HERE. and as we all follow the small daily promptings of His Holy Spirit, we follow His master plan to prepare us and shape us into who He knows we can become.

the Lord knows us!

Well I just had to share this cool story.  Yesterday I was searching for a specific email in my inbox. A random one came up that wasn't relevant, but I ended up reading it anyway.  Turned out to be an email I had sent a missionary friend a long time ago.  I always included random uplifting quotes from general conference or ensign talks.  The one in this email was:

 "I testify of God's love and the Savior's power to calm the storm.  Always remember in that biblical story that He was out there on the water also . . . Only one who has fought against those ominous waves is justified in telling us - as well as the sea - to "be still" (Mark 4:39).  Only one who has taken the full brunt of such adversity could ever be justified in telling us in such times to "be of good cheer" (John 16:33)."


(Jeffrey R. Holland, "An High Priest of Good Things to Come," Ensign, Nov. 1999, 37)

Randomly after I read it, I had the thought, "I should post this on facebook!" and didn't think much of it.  Then as I was posting it, I almost just put "Jeffrey R. Holland" at the end instead of the whole reference...but I had a strong feeling I should leave it.  So that was a few days ago and I'd entirely forgotten about it.  Then today, I had a message in my facebook inbox from an acquaintance I don't know that well. It said:

 "Hi, I don't get on facebook that often, but I did today and saw your post of Elder Hollands talk from 1999, it caught my eye.  I looked it up and read it, you have no idea how much I NEEDED that today.  You were an answer to a prayer - so I just wanted to say Thank you."

I know this is just a little thing, but it hit me really hard.  It was just another witness of how the Lord knows each of us.  He knows exactly what we're going through and what we need to get through it!  To think that the all-powerful God of the universe had the time to prompt little Liz to post a random quote on facebook because He knew His daughter needed it.  He has been there for me so many times!  I was also grateful that He let me be a part of this small tender mercy. I have been so busy lately that I'm afraid I haven't taken as much time to be still and listen for the spirit.  This experience has made me want to be as close to the spirit as possible so I can be the Lord's hands more.  We can all be a part of His work.  And it doesn't have to be big things, it can be things that only take up 30 seconds of our time.

Just wanted to share my testimony that the Lord knows and loves us all!!

today i am grateful not to be a rat!

so today in my physiology class, i learned that female rats cycle every 4 days compared to 28(ish) days for humans. enough said. never again will i complain.  I'm so glad I'm not a rat! life is good :)