Talks on Faith and Back Up the Y

Hiking Y mountain last week was so fun I decided to hike it again. This time there was no one to take my picture so I took one of Lucy instead.

 

I found a website this week that has links to digitized language courses that are now in the public domain. There are extensive or basic resources for over 400 languages there. I now have over twenty two gigabytes of PDF and audio files for over 100 languages on my laptop. If bought originally from the publishers, the full length courses would have cost about $150 each. Since I will never get around to studying all of those languages I took advantage of being at the pulpit today and invited people at Church to approach me if they, or someone they knew, were interested in learning a language. To my surprise, three people have already approached me about Spanish, German and Korean.

Becca and I both spoke in Church today. We were asked to speak about increasing faith. Becca talk was very good. She shared that she has learned that increasing faith can be achieved by aligning our will with God's. She shared some scriptures and two quotes from a talk by Elder Bednar in addition to sharing her own testimony regarding the subject. You all would have been very proud of her I'm sure.

I spoke about how, in order to have faith in God, we need to have a correct understanding of who He is. I think many Christians profess a belief in His omniscience but don't really believe that He cares about what's going on in their lives; that He loves them but that He has favorites and perhaps we are not His favorites. It is difficult to have faith in a Heavenly Father who neglects us or does not think much of us. I spent a lot of time using stories from 1st Chronicles about David and his relationship with God. I really believe that one of the things that allowed David to become Israel's most successful king was his attitude towards God. He didn't believe in a distant, disinterested God who forsook His children when they misbehaved. I prepared too much material and had to cut some parts of my talk but Becca said she didn't notice at all.

We've been watching a canceled show on Hulu about a Russian chess master who solves crimes from a hotel in Toronto. There is a bit in one of the episodes about about the hotel's Macedonian head chef getting the traditional Slavic Easter dessert pashka wrong. Stick to baklava! shouts the Russian. The chef gets it right by the end of the show. As many of you know, Becca has a great-grandfather who came from Ukraine so she has an interest in Slavic things. She went to the store the next day, bought the ingredients and made us pashka. She's having some trouble getting the mold right but it is DELICIOUS! We both like the idea of making it an Easter tradition in our family.