Seminary comes to an end for the year.....

So what does a high school production of Don Quixote have to do with seminary?

Well the lead was Kenny Chilton, one of my students-

So Alice and Quentin and I went to watch the final showing

of the award winning production. It was great, I had no idea I had been

in the presence of such great talent. The Lighting Guy, (not pictured) was Brody Stotts, another student, and apparently he's famous in the area for his excellent skills.

Not knowing much about lighting I told him if the lighting had been bad, I would have noticed, but it seemed "spot" on to me.

The whole cast was awesome and I could stay out late, since I only had one class left.

I am not so good at the whole holding the camera out and taking a photo.

So today's class was fun and a little bittersweet, I'll miss Brody he's going to BYU in the fall but I'll still have Kenny and Brandon and hopefully three other students, and of course three months of sleeping in will be good too --- to say the least.

For class we had a breakfast party and I gave them each a dvd of "How rare a Posession" which talks about how precious the Book of Mormon is. IT's good and not cheesy, like some church videos can be.

Then we read the final "sermons" of the Book of Mormon Prophets. This was suggested by my CES supervisor, Brother Pomeroy and I thought it was a wonderful suggestion so we did, Here are the References if you are interested. In Alma and Helaman, several prophets write, but it was hard to find a "farewell" speech, so we just kind of skipped them- I hope they are not offended.

Lehi- 2 Nephi 1:21-24

Nephi- 2 Nephi 33:10-15

Jacob- Jacob 7:26-27

Enos- Enos 1:25-27

Jarom- Jarom 1:13-15

Omni- Omni 1:1-3

Amaron - Omni 1:6-8

Chemish-Omni 1:9

Abinadom Omni 1:11

The above Omni Prophets, really didn't give much info, but rather recorded that they were doing what they were old, and in the case of Chemish he was tattling that his brother only wrote what he wrote the same day he gave it to him, it's kind of funny-

Amaleki- Omni 1:25-26

King Benjamin- Mosiah 3:41, Mosiah 5:14

Basically Mosiah 2-5 is his farewell address, but in the interst of time, i focused on my two favorite scriptures.

Abinadi- Mosiah 17:10

The whole story of Abinadi is worth reviewing, but we had done just that on Monday.

Alma- He is giving instruction to different children

Alma 37:46-47

Alma 38:15

Alma 42:30-31

Samuel, a Lamanite- Helaman 15:17

Jesus Christ 3 nephi 27:30-33

Nephi 4 Nepho 15-18

Mormon -Moroni 7:48, 9: 25-26

Mornoni - Moroni 10:31-34

I'm so grateful for the three months I taught this class and I look forward to next term when I can teach Church History and Gospel Doctrine, It's going to be fun.

This summer I get to do a home study program for New Testament and Old Testament for some students that missed out on their freshman years, I'm glad to keep up the studying. We'll meet once a week and they'll do work at home, but I'll be keeping up with them.

Below is a video of a talk we studied this year from Elder Holland. I was moved to tears because of it's divinity. I hope you enjoy it, I add my testimony to his that the Book of Mormon is true and that we can obtain happiness in this life and an eternal reward in the next life by obedience to the gospel and teachings found within it.

Is it wrong to enjoy Alice being sick?

Look how sweet she looks, just sprawled out on my bed, clinging to her blankie and watching early morning nick jr cartoons, to sick to even protest the annoying baby cartoons- ADORABLE

She hasn't been feeling well for two days and this morning was especially bad. I myself was pretty tired from Seminary and restless sleep with her fever the night before, so I cuddled up with her and dozed off and on all morning with her in the crook of my arm.

Joely kept busy playing "my dot com" She loves to play Nick Jr on the computer now.

She would wake us up now and again to ask for "passion fruit juice" or if she could use the bathroom, but for the most part she was content to just play her "dot com" and watch her shows. What a sweetheart.

It is fun to have Alice all to myself. She's seven now and seems so independent. She does occasionally need "snuggle time" but mostly she just wants to do her own thing.

It's been a nice couple of days.

I think tomorrow she'll be ok to get back to school, and I'll miss her.

Looking forward to June third almost as much as the kids are.

Facebook- Amazing, Evil or somewhere in between

If you've wondered why I haven't been so dedicated with my "deep thoughts" here is because I've been sidetracked by sound bytes on Facebook.

I was slow to love Facebook, but for about 10 months now, I've been too involved in it.

At first I was just excited to reconnect with my cousins but then it grew into reading about and getting sucked into the everyday drama of people. Sometimes it was like watching reality TV starring people I was "friends" with.

So is it an Amazing Tool or is it Evil? Or is it somewhere in between...

Facebook has been amazing because of reconnecting with my cousins, I love them and miss them dearly. I spent every summer of my life until I turned 14 with them. Some of my cousins are much older than I am and so I "grew" up with their kids. Some of them are my age, and some cousins I had not seen since they were infants, but through the miracle of facebook, I can "watch" them grow into the people they've become.

I get real weepy when I see some of the pictures, happy for the memories I have of them, and weepy for the memories we don't share. I remember our grandparents and the uncles (and one of my dear aunts) who have passed away, I think of how they would love my husband and children and I miss them.
Then I get all joyful thinking about how we are all sealed together through our grandparents and one day we will meet on the other side and we will embrace and have those tears of joy again.

I thank facebook for bringing my cousins back into my life.
I love to read what they are thinking and I LOVE to see the pictures.

One cousins, Nedra, posted a ton of pictures of us all when we were much younger. They looked like pictures my Grandma Bowden had in her photo albums. Some of the cousins, were frozen in time, and those pictures are how I remember them.

It's hard to grasp my head around the fact that they, like me, have grown into adults with children of their own.

My cousin Jamie posted family pictures. Realistically I knew she was the adult in the picture, but her daughter looked just like the Jamie I "knew" when I last saw her, and again I wept tears of happiness. My cousin shawna had two children when I spent one summer with her, they were Oriana and "baby" Rhett, Rhett was one that summer, he was adorable and Oriana reminded me of snow white, now Oriana posted pictures of their entire family, I couldn't get over how grown up they all were and how many more there are ---yet Shawna looked the same to me, maybe just a little more snow on top- My cousin Duane was always teasing me, just a few years older than me made me a target of his good natured fun. I always adored him and looked forward to his teasing me. He married a wonderful girl named Kelly. I knew she was wonderful because she married Duane, and my mom and aunts always had nice things to say about her. Thanks to facebook I've been able to see her positive attitude in action and look at their beautiful children and rejoice that we are all part of the same family.

So many stories I could go on forever.

So to sum up that, I am so grateful for the cousins I didn't know, cousins that came into the family through marriage or were born after my summers in Idaho were over and because of facebook I can know them.

I have a wonderful legacy and I'm grateful to be a part of it and I'm grateful to the facebook for helping me to get in and stay in touch with my family.

On the other hand, I found a lot of time wasted reading mindless drivel. I was recently "yelled" at by an old acquaintance because I was offended by her choice of language, I realized then that I don't need to add grief into my life by reading things that are not going to uplift, so I won't be "living" on facebook as much, If it wasn't for staying in touch with my family, I'd probably just shut the whole thing off, for now I will use facebook as a tool for doing good and to uplift and ignore the unpleasantness of the "global community"

And that also means, I will stop neglecting my old friend, the blog.

So to answer my question, Facebook can be very good, if used to bring about good and uplift others and it can be a source of Evil if it's used to demean, profane and belittle. Based on my teaching of Seminary last week and this, I agree with Mormon in Moroni Chapter 7 and that is we can judge what is right and wrong as easy as we can judge day from night, things are either good and bring you closer to God or bad and carry you away from Him.

I choose Good.