Taking My Own Advice

Last Sunday I taught my Mia Maid class the lesson on keeping a journal. I'm feeling a little guilty right now. Funny, I taught the same lesson last year and thought, hey, I'm blogging that's my journal. Somehow I had child number three and I'm lucky if I can find the time to go to the bathroom during the day, let alone blog. So, I encouraged my young women to take time once a week to write about their lives and the events in their lives. Today I am going to take the challenge and write for a few minutes. To start off, today was our stake conference. It was awesome! I hate going to the tabernacle, so we went to our church building where it was broadcast. The camerawork was pretty bad and it was blurry the whole time, but that didn't matter. The theme was "Come take your place". That is also the theme for our youth conference/pioneer trek this summer. I was very impressed with all of the talks, but especially by the youth they had speak. One young woman was from the Ukraine and was adopted by a family in our stake not long ago. She talked about a school teacher she had who taught her about Jesus Christ and how to pray. Soon after she was adopted and later received the missionary discussions and joined the church. She talked about the meaning of the word pioneer, meaning to go before and prepare the way. She had a sweet testimony. The next youth who spoke told about his trek experience 4 years ago. He talked about not wanting to go at first and thought it would be lame. He had a change of heart and had a great experience. He talked about my ancestor Margaret Campbell Kirkwood (my fourth great-grandmother) She came here from Scotland with the Willie handcart company. She was a widow who had 4 sons. She lost her husband and 2 daughters to the flu several years earlier. She had a 19 year old son, Robert, who helped her pull their handcart. They had to pull her 16 year old son Thomas who was crippled and she had two sons, James and Joseph. James was 11 and Joseph was 4. They had many hardships along the way. The temperature was so low one night that Margaret's eye froze and broke. In the picture I have of her, you can see where she is missing her eye. While crossing Rocky Ridge, James and Joseph fell behind. Joseph was too tired to go any further so his brother James carried him over Rocky Ridge. When James reached the camp he set Joseph down and he died. I have always felt close to Margaret and love her story. I was so pleased to hear this young man speak of her and how much faith he gained from learning about her and her trials. The rest of the talks were all great and I truly felt the spirit. Every speaker said something that I needed to hear. It was truly a spiritual feast.