Happy Memorial Day!

Thanks to those who have come before us and fought for the freedom that we hold so dear to our hearts now.

Glen Jensen





Jeramy Jensen





Lawrence Jensen



Perennial

per·en·ni·al

[puh-ren-ee-uhl]

–adjective

1.

lasting for an indefinitely long time; enduring:

2.

(of plants) having a life cycle lasting more than two years.

3.

lasting or continuing throughout the entire year, as a stream.

Now I have decided that if I am ever going to have a garden I will most likely have a ton of perennial flowers because they come back every year. I kind of like that because then you don't have to worry about replanting every year; you plant them and they grow and then come back each year. Also they are just pretty to look at. While they do come back each year you still have to water them and weed them and fertilize them.

Now gospel time. Our testimony should be perennial testimonies, lasting for an indefinitely long time; enduring; lasting and continuing throughout the entire year. How much easier would that be? We wouldn't have to redevelop our testimonies or re-find them each year. All we would have to do is tend them. Some might say that tending our testimonies takes to much time and effort. While yes you do have to continually be working at it, reading, praying, keeping the commandments, going to church it is so much easier to keep it alive and strong then having to redevelop or regrow it each year. Also another blessing about keeping our testimonies in the perennial section is that instead of having to start over fresh you can just keep building on it and making it stronger.

So keep taking care of your perennial bulbs so you don't have to replant them every year.

I Am a Child of God

I really love this clip and how it really shows that we are all children of God our Heavenly Father. Take time today and think how it makes you feel to be a child of God and write your own verse to this song.

Brands and Trust

This past week we went and helped a member in one of our wards brand his calves. We were pretty excited to do it because I feel like that is a Montanan experience that you can't pass up. It was a very interesting experience and something that wouldn't bother me again.

One thing that I thought was interesting was the different ways the calves responded to being poked, prodded, and branded. Most would squirm and cry out and let us all know they didn't appreciate what we were doing to them. Some would try to get out of the contraption; most didn't succeed. One calf did though and I would say that I was pretty shocked and kind of happy for him. Then there were a couple of calves that didn't even move or cry out.

As Sister Williams and I were observing these different reactions we tried to decide what kind of calf we would be. Would I be normal and squirm and cry, would I try my hardest to get out of it, would I get out of it, or would I not do anything at all and just lay there? For a while I was saying that I would be like the one calf who broke his way out of the calving table and got loose. I don't know now if I would want to be that calf because he just was dragging it out even longer because he had to go back through the whole process again.

Now I don't want to be one that just tries to go around trials or just avoid them because they don't go away they just get bigger. I think of us as those calves here on earth and God and Jesus as those men that branded the calves. Sometimes we go through hard things but they won't give us anything that we can't handle. Those calves that put their trust in the men had the branding go by so much faster than those who kicked and fought against it. The same works with God. The prophet Alma teaches his son Helaman this exact concept and he says to him,"that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day."(Alma 36:3) 

Life isn't easy nor was it meant to be easy but I do know that as we put our trust in the Lord, especially during in our trials, life is so much better.

Uniqueness

"Every star is different and so is every child."

One thing that really does make me happy is being unique. I like doing things, saying things, wearing thing others don't. In high school I used to get the biggest urges to wear things that were just weird that carried on to college and even now. I picked to play the french horn because I knew no one else  in my area played it. Then of course, I say things that most people don't.

There has always been something deep inside of me that tells me I have to be different, It makes me think my mom was inspired than to name me what she did--Crikette. I have yet to meet someone with their first name as Crikette; regardless of the spelling.

The wonderful thing is I know that God love me the way I am; in fact, He created me. In Jeremiah 31:3 the Lord speaks of how much He loves us: "...yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee."

God loves us with all our quircks and differences. He loves us even when we are 5'1" with red hair. He loves us just the way we are because He has created us just the way we are. Look at all the variety in nature. To me that testifies that He loves diversity.

So celebrate your uniqueness! Celebrate that you are a beloved child of God with your own personality. Celebrate individuality.

Language

So... I make up a lot of words and so does my family. We use words like skonk, potlicker, scrounger, gooby, blackhinder,etc. Why we use these words I don't know. What I do know is that people are always getting after me because they don't understand these words. Usually I just tell them to figure it out and just take the word in the context that it is in. It helps when I am around to help them understand a meaning of a word but if I am not there then they can either try to guess what it means and possibly be wrong or they can just stay confused.
This reminds me of what happened when the priesthood authortiy was taken off the earth. Without that authority people didn't truly understand what God's plan for them was because they didn't have that person to explain things they didn't understand. They, like some of my friends, ended up guessing on certain meanings or just gave up. But just like I eventually explain what one of my weird words mean, God brought back His priesthood authority so that we wouldn't be confused and we could know how to return and live with Him again.
http://mormon.org/restoration/