Talks

Boy, I've felt lately like I was on an LDS speaking tour- a week ago I spoke in Sacrament meeting about virtue and temples, then last Saturday I spoke in the evening session of Stake Conference about being faithful. Then the following day, after the Sunday morning session of Stake Conference, I was videotaped while I relayed my feelings and some experiences having to do with temples. Our stake RS has started a tradition of putting out a video of the sisters in the stake relaying their testimonies, we watch it in our units before the RS broadcast in October. They do an accompanying book too, it's all very sweet and well done. 2008's video was related to the Relief Society's theme, this year's was related to service. 2010's (That is so scary to type! Where has time gone??) video will be related to temples and my virtue talk got me a gig doing that.

Overall, I think my speaking engagements went pretty well. I got hugs from people after my talk on Saturday, so I was happy. It's so nervewracking to be videotaped...do I look alright? How do I sound? Was I stiff as a board? I guess we'll see in October how I did!

Throw in a 3 hour stake leadership meeting last Saturday before conference and that was a lot of church last weekend! It was all good though. I got something out of the training meeting, and I'm working on being better as YW leader. Both sessions of stake conference were really wonderful, the spirit was very strong. It's funny, but one of the things I liked best about last weekend was being able to sing in a large congregation and being accompanied by an organ. Everyone sounded really great. You see, the vast majority of the time I am in small meetings- my small branch, small YSA meetings, a handful of us singing at Young Womens...I rarely get to hear an organ or sing with a large group, so I was appreciative last weekend. I like my branch, but there are things I miss.

I thought I'd share some of my favorite quotes from my talks. I actually like doing talks because I get a lot out of writing them and studying the gospel. It inspires me too, and I needed these messages as much as anybody.

Elaine S. Dalton:
"Virtue is a prerequisite to entering the Lord’s holy temples and to receiving the Spirit’s guidance. Virtue “is a pattern of thought and behavior based on high moral standards.” It encompasses chastity and moral purity. Virtue begins in the heart and in the mind. It is nurtured in the home. It is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions and actions. Virtuous women and men possess a quiet dignity and inner strength. They are confident because they are worthy to receive and be guided by the Holy Ghost."

Ann M. Dibb:
"The small and simple things you choose to do today will be magnified into great and glorious blessings tomorrow. Living each day as “an example of the believers” will help you to be happy and more confident. It will strengthen your testimony, help you to keep your baptismal covenants, and prepare you to receive the blessings of the temple so that eventually you can return to your Heavenly Father."

Kevin W. Pearson:
"If we desire more faith, we must be more obedient. When we teach our children by example or precept to be casual or situational in obeying God’s commandments, we prevent them from receiving this vital spiritual gift. Faith requires an attitude of exact obedience, even in the small, simple things."

Thomas S. Monson:
"May I leave with you today a simple yet far-reaching formula to guide you in the choices of life:

Fill your minds with truth.
Fill your hearts with love.
Fill your lives with service.

Such are foundation stones in building one’s personal temple. As the Apostle Paul counseled, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

By doing so, may we one day hear the plaudit from our Lord and Savior, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

James E. Faust:

"None of us knows the wisdom of the Lord. We do not know in advance exactly how He would get us from where we are to where we need to be, but He does offer us broad outlines in our patriarchal blessings. We encounter many bumps, bends, and forks in the road of life that leads to the eternities. There is so much teaching and correction as we travel on that road. Said the Lord, “He that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom.” “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

Making a wrong choice early may limit making the right choice later.

So where should each of us make our stand? As we demonstrate our devotion to God by our daily acts of righteousness, He can know where we stand. For all of us this life is a time of sifting and refining. We all face trials. Individual members in the early days of the Church were tested and refined when they had to decide if they had the faith, like Brother Giles, to put their belongings in a wagon or a pioneer handcart and travel across the American plains. Some did not have the faith. Those who did traveled “with faith in every footstep.” In our time we are going through an increasingly difficult time of refining and testing. The tests are more subtle because the lines between good and evil are being eroded. Very little seems to be sacred in any of our public communication. In this environment we will need to make sure where we stand all of the time in our commitment to eternal truths and covenants."

President David O. McKay counseled: “ ‘The greatest battle of life is fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.’ … It is a good thing to sit down and commune with yourself, to come to an understanding with yourself and decide in that silent moment what your duty is to your family, to your Church, to your country, and … to your fellowmen.”


Gordon B Hinckley: Faith is the basis of testimony. Faith underlies loyalty to the Church. Faith represents sacrifice, gladly given in moving forward the work of the Lord.



I feel edified reading these again, hope you do too.

Spooky

Well, it's getting to be that time of year. The leaves have turned and are falling. The air is getting crisper and crisper. So long as it doesn't snow in October like the 8 inches we got before Halloween last year, I'll be ok. We did get a bit of snow earlier in the month, it was weird to see colored trees covered in snow! We've decorated a bit. Laura and I carved pumpkins at fhe a week ago (gotta love being a big kid!) and put them on the porch.

Zebby wishes you all a Happy Halloween:

Our porch (we grew our own cornstalks!):


Last Saturday we had a spooky incident...there were hundreds of crows in the trees and flying around right by our house...they were quite loud as well. It was something right out of The Birds! They've never done that before! I took some spooky pics which turned out ok considering the trees were quite tall. The pics don't even show how many were out, it was crazy!

I'm off to a YSA conference this weekend near Gettysburg, gonna do Halloween right! It's been awhile since I've done that! Stay tuned for more pics!

Painting

I waited until I had enough work to show what I'd been doing in painting class- each painting takes several classes (the last one took three weeks!) to do. Overall I really like what I'm learning-I've never worked with oil paints before and I really like the medium. It's very forgiving and you can get such great color. It's also great that it takes awhile to dry- you can take your sweet time to get stuff right.

I need to keep a mirror in my tacklebox, I keep roaming about in public like this:

Nice warpaint, eh? Yesterday I was in public with red paint on my nose!

The first real thing I did was a b&w study of a bell pepper using a palette knife (instead of a paintbrush) but it turned out rather hideous so I won't post it here.

Then we moved on to a color study done with a palette knife, I improved:

(It's oranges on a green plate with a red cloth. My dad loves the colors)

Then we moved on to a color study and learned how to use brushes and solvent:
That one hung up on the display wall and someone even asked me if I was a painting major...no, but thanks! Made me feel good!


Then the latest still life:

It looks better in person. I was pleased with it, though I'm not crazy about Owl's head. When you put a face in an artwork, you eye goes right to it (your brain is wired that way) and the best stuff in my painting is down below Owl's face so it takes your eye away from that. I was pleased with the reflective tea pot on the right, that was hard!

Here is what other people did in class on this assignment, I took pics of the ones I liked:

Dreamy oranges:

Nice contrast, really nice reflections, though the tea kettle's a bit wonky and the orange is flat:

Nice composition, wish there was more contrast to make it more visually interesting:

Very nice drapery:

This one cracked me up- it's done well but it looks like the teapot at the bottom is talking to the above objects! It's so funny how inanimate objects take on personality.

I was really impressed by this one, done very well:

What now? Painting creepy baby dolls in an attempt to learn how to mix skin tones (it's proving to be hard!)...so stay tuned!

Crazy

History class was insane on Friday. Things were going fine, until....

This girl interrupted the teacher mid-sentence to ask what she had just said...and when teacher didn't answer her right away (this girl does this often), Student A got majorly mad. She started yelling and accused the teacher of playing favorites, of answering everyone's questions except hers. Well you know what? They raise their hands and wait to get called on! My teacher didn't yell back, but kept trying to tell her to see her in her office, stuff like that. Then there was some majorly awkward silence and finally my teacher went back to her lecture, on all things, the Revolutionary War.

But it kept on snowballing...

A little while later, my teacher used what had just happened as an example for her lecture...the girl had tried to embarrass her just like the colonists had tried to embarrass the king. Well what do you think happened??? Of course the girl got all mad and mouthy again. Kept on yelling. I don't think the teacher should have used her as an example, but you can be more grown up about the whole thing.


My teacher doesn't have her phone with her, she then leaves at this point to call the campus police from her office. It's just down the hall but it took forever.

Somewhere in there while the teacher is gone, this girl starts barking at the class, asking us (there's like 50 people stuffed in this little room) if we were bothered by all this....everyone was pretty silent but a few of us, including myself answered "yes". I said it very calmly. I was proud of myself that I had stated my opinion, as I am usually chicken with bullies.

Well another girl said "yes" with way too much gusto, practically hissing with anger. And this hissing girl is a Major History Nerd. Now I'm a geek and I enjoy history and all, but I don't show up to class wearing a Northern side Civil War soldiers hat almost every class. I kid you not! She sits front and center every class, and it really didn't help that day that she had brought in replica colony money to show the class, majorly upping the nerd factor that day. Well Angry Girl tore into Civil War Girl with all kinds of insults and swearing and this seemed to continue on for what seemed like forever. Civil War Girl pretty much just took it, didn't talk back.

My teacher walks back in to see Angry Girl still up in front, cussing out Civil War Girl...and just lets it keep happening. Angry Girl finally leaves...and just when you think it's all done, she walks back in to keep yelling and cussing some more at this girl (who I think might be a little autistic). Finally she left for good.

A few minutes later, campus police finally showed up (took too long in my opinion...the station is pretty close, they should have been here sooner), saw that the girl had left and then left. This does not instill much confidence in our campus police...they should have come running as this could have turned into something really nasty.


Anyhow, I had a good weekend, but couldn't help but stew a bit over all of this. I'm hoping to take some lessons away from all this and thought they could help others, too, especially if you are trying to be a teacher like I am.

1) My teacher probably should have just repeated what she said to shut this girl up, thereby avoiding all of this whole mess.

2) If someone doesn't like what you did, you need to explain why you acted that way. If my teacher wasn't intending to single her out but instead didn't like her interrupting, then she needed to state that before this girl took it personally.

3) Teacher, please have your phone in class...I really didn't like being left alone in that situation while you called the police.

4) When you come back and one student is cursing out another, make her stop! It's your classroom, for crying out loud!

5) Don't be stupid and then use her as an example while she is sitting right there! Of course she's going to get all mad again!! Hello!?

6) Don't let things snowball, get control and nip it in the bud.

7) You get more respect if you do not become a tasmanian devil when you do not get your way...stay calm! Be a grown up!

Clearly this girl isn't used to not getting things her way, and I assume she feels the world should revolve around her. I couldn't help but note the irony that as she yelled and cussed over not getting any respect, that she in turn was disrespecting our teacher and the rest of us way worse then what she was dealt. Somebody really really needs to grow up. I really do feel sorry for anyone who had to help her in retail...lol. Does she think she is ever going to get a job with those people skills???

I don't know if I would have called the campus police if I had been the teacher, I probably would have just made her leave the class...and not let her come back. You're gonna explode and treat people like this? Well you can just flunk this class! Who needs that crap?


The biggest irony of all? Our teacher is fairly repetitive (and it's been 6 weeks, we know this by now!) so all she would have had to do was listen for another minute and her issue would have been resolved. Sigh!

I was pretty irritated at having at least half my classtime consumed with all of this. Was I super excited to have a history lesson? No, but I didn't haul my butt out of bed for that! It was really unpleasant to have to listen to. I really wanted to say something to her but I didn't, since I'll probably see her again here at some point. I really didn't feel like getting yelled at myself, even though I'm really not scared of this girl. I was glad she didn't show up for class today, who needs more of this?

Who was the biggest idiot in all this? Angry Girl, by far.

Don't let Angry Girl happen to you!

Update

It's been a little while since I blogged last, thought I'd give an update as to what's been happening. During Conference weekend, Mom's sites where she was stung started getting red and purple and swollen (she could hardly bend her elbow) and icky. She went to the Dr on Monday and was told she had staph infections, we don't know if it was from the bees themselves or if she scratched something into her sores, but pretty much all the places she was stung was affected. She got put on antibiotics and is doing much better a couple of days later. Her arms are healing faster then her legs, I guess that's because you have less blood supply there. She and Laura have been canning lately, peaches and pears, yum! Our pickles turned out well too.


On to Dad...yesterday he had surgery in Erie on his other knee, to clean it out after tearing stuff. When he was in China, he injured his good knee (already ripped up his other knee on the job and uses a cane) when the boards he was walking on in the engine room came loose (not secured well) and my dad fell. Now this knee is as bad if not worse than the other one! I tease him about getting him a Rascal scooter and having him paint flames on it and soup it up. He did fine with the anesthesia and it looks like the surgery went well. We tease him about having matching scars on his knees..how "Monk"! He's all bandaged and swollen and whatnot. I can't help but wonder if GE is going to want to retire him now that both his knees are bad (Oh and they make my dad walk up and down stairs all day since his office is on the 2nd floor and there's no elevator! How do you get away with that in this day and age?), there's been retiring talk since he injured the first one. If they retire him (and keep in mind both knees were hurt on the job) they'll be paying him less, so we don't want that.



My sister Laura is preparing for cabin fever this winter by stocking up on yarn and projects to do. I have the car at school so she and Mom are stuck home in the winter when they can't use the truck in the snow. Laura's puppy Grant is now 6 months old if not closer to 7, and I totally spoke too soon in my other post about him...he is a terrible dog. I have not had much peace these last six months because I'm either angry about how the dog is behaving (he is noisy too) or I'm angry at Laura for not working with him enough. For years I've been lectured as to what not to do with these dogs in training, so it drives me batty seeing Laura let him get away with stuff. Grant is a hardheaded dog as it is (chocolate labs have that reputation) and Laura's training styles don't help. I'm not mean to this dog but I make sure it knows I'm boss and that he's not getting away with anything. And it shows- when I walk Grant, he behaves when he comes in the house. When Laura walks him, he's a bucking bronco! Laura gets upset if I work with him (I got him to learn how to lay down but he's forgotten it since Laura doesn't reinforce it) but the only reason I do is because I never see her working with him. He's not my project and I don't want to overstep, but hey I put up with a lot! I think I should get some say. And these dogs have to be especially obedient- they're helping blind people! How's the blind person going to know if they did it or not? They have to trust the dog will do what they say. Enough of that rant.



As for me, school has been chugging along. I think it's been like 6 weeks now. My classes are going fine, for the most part I don't have that much homework. Painting is going well, my first brush color study is going up on the display wall (makes one feel like a gradeschooler!). I'm now working on another larger still life that is starting to go somewhere, though my drapery looks more like water! Maybe later if I try to paint water it will look like drapery, ha ha. I like my Art Ed class, we've been presenting lesson plans and it's fun to think of what I did in classes and what I would do with a class. I had to present a lesson plan to the class yesterday and it went quite well. I'm thankful for all the teaching experience that I've had through church...Primary, mission, Relief Society, Young Womens...I've got 10 years of teaching compared to my fellow students who are squirmy when up in front of the class.


Fall is getting to be a busy time. There are a lot of activities going on. Two of my good friends from here, Rene and Ame are each getting married very soon (Rene just before Christmas and Ame a week later in January) and when they come home I'll be throwing each of them a bridal shower. It's looking like Rene around Thanksgiving and Ame in early December. They are marrying out west so I won't be able to be there for that, so I'm helping out best I can out here. They both thought they wouldn't be getting a shower at all, how sad is that? I haven't used my Martha Stewart party planning skills much since my fab 25th birthday party so it'll be fun. Adding to the craziness is the fact that Ame is marrying Rene's brother Dennis, that's two weddings in a very short amount of time for that family! Yikes! Their engagements have been short as well (both couples got engaged in September), so it is all very crazy.

I'm off to go have some fun in Erie...running errands, doing some crafty shopping (hooray!)and then going to an artist's reception at the Erie Art Museum for my metals teacher. She's a really great teacher and my casting class was mega fun. I'm excited to go see her and her work.

Toodles! Sorry no pics, that's very unlike me. I'll post some soon.