Virginia & Philadelphia!

I had such a wonderful visit with my beautiful and lovely daughters back east! Kristi's home is so lovely, she just remodeled her kitchen, put in sod in the backyard and had her deck painted! I got aquainted with her dog again. Acadia is a beautiful 80 lb and growing 10 month old! He is a very good dog and a wonderful companion to my darling daughter! I also got to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival with her! So great!

Then Julie and my little darling Aubrie came on Sunday and Kristi cooked a wonderful meal for us. The next day we were planning to see more D.C. sites, but it rained buckets! So, we just drove to Philly in the pouring rain and I got a cold and then gave it to Aurbrie. It was a really mean one too! We hung out in Julie's darling row house most of the week in Philadelphia because Grandma and baby were sick, but it was sooooo wonderful to cuddle with my little girl again! Jules is a wonderful cook and fed me wonderful meals every night! Brent is so considerate and kind. Wow, am I blessed or what? They did show me downtown and I got to attend church with them. I have to tell you everyone just loves Julie and she is the most amazing teacher ever! I was so very proud of her. She and Brent are doing so much good in their ward! The ward pretty much consists of very new members (mostly black) and students. They learn so much from those amazing young people. (Especially mine!)

When I was teaching seminary at West Jordan High School more than a decade ago, we were taught many wonderful things in our inservice meetings. One of them was that our study time was ours, but the lesson time was the Lord's, that it is His sacred time to teach His children. That puts a little different take on it, than if we view the class-time as belonging to the students (because they can sometimes take the class in a very weird direction and we were taught to have very good control of the discussions, making sure they were edifying!) Or that the time was our soapbox to share what we had studied.

We were taught in CES that because it is sacred time that we need to do what the Lord would have us do with this time. If He inspired us to lecture that day, then lecture we should, making sure that lecture were the words of the spirit to His children in the class. If we were to play in seminary that day then the Lord had a lesson to be learned from that. And, if the spirit took us in a totally different direction than our hours of preparation called for that day, then were to freely give away our study time and not try to impose it on the class, when the Lord would have us rather follow the spirit so that He could instruct His children. We were to learn to be the vessel!

I have to say that Jules absolutely teaches this way! She is awesome! I wish I could hear her every week! Way to go Jules!