Trials and Blessings

We're friends with a wonderful family in our ward, the Mortensens. They moved in a couple of years after we did and never missed a beat. Parties were had at their house - everyone was invited over to play games or eat or visit. They became family immediately. Jeff got to work with Joey in the Young Men's program and learned to really love him as a great scouter and an amazing advocate of the boys in Teacher's quorum.

Joey home from the Mountain Man Rendezvous feeling sick. He went in only to find that he had Pancreatic Cancer. This was around the 20th of March. Well, Joey passed away on Friday morning. Less than 2 months after his diagnosis. Jeff and I were able to visit Joey and Vanessa a couple of times during the whirlwind sickness and both were gracious and strong in what they were facing, even though I can't imagine going through anything harder. I can relate a bit to Joey's kids as I lost my dad almost a year ago, but I have a hard time imagining Vanessa's pain right now.

We were talking in Relief Society today about gifts of the Spirit - healing, tongues, prophecy, and discernment. The focus was on discernment and the gift of tongues, but a scripture came to my mind that was a comfort to me about the gift of healing. My dad had shared this scripture with my cousin Ron when my Uncle Jed passed away a few years ago. It is in D&C section 42 (I don't have the verse right now) and talks about how if we have faith to be healed it will happen unless it is our appointed time to die. I don't remember it being super important to me when Uncle Jed died, and I didn't even think of it when my Dad died, but today in Relief Society I remembered it and looked it up and felt great comfort from that scripture.

We've been having a lot of health issues in our ward lately. I just sang at our back door neighbor's funeral last Saturday and now Joey's gone. My next door neighbor has been in the hospital for at least 6 weeks fighting leukemia and we have 2 other ward members fighting cancer right now, and that scripture helps me remember it's all in Heavenly Father's hands. As Elder Bednar reminded us when he came to our stake conference - sometimes we need to have the faith not to be healed.

I know I felt the comforting power of the Holy Ghost so much through good friends, neighbors and family members after my dad passed away, and I hope I can be an instrument in His hands to bring blessings of peace and comfort to those around me who are struggling.

This is what we get for trying to be Spontaneous

I'm not an X-men fan. In fact, I saw the first movie and didn't like it much, so I don't think I ever even saw the 2nd one. It was kind of exciting that the premier of Wolverine was going to be just down the street however. There was a lot of hoopla about it on all of the radio stations, so Monday afternoon, I decided "what the heck". It was showing on all 16 theatres at Tempe Marketplace, so I thought we might have a chance. Besides, Hugh Jackman was going to be there and he ain't bad to look at, so we packed up in the car and even found a good parking spot, only to find out that all of the tickets (3000 of them) had been given out days earlier. We thought we might just catch a glimpse of some of the stars, but were sorely disappointed there too. Anyway, we joined the throngs and here are the pictures we have to show for it. It was a new adventure for Family Home Evening though.