Attitude of Gratitude

This year Adam and I did our very own 24 Days of Gratitude, an idea I took from my friend Whitney.  She also does 25 Days of Christ during Christmas-time which we will be doing also, but it's not time for that just yet!  So for our 24 Days of Gratitude, every day from November 1st to Thanksgiving Day we told each other one thing we were grateful for.  And we even wrote them on a poster:

I must have written this in a frenzy - misspelled gratitude!

Here's our 2011 Gratitude list (in no order of importance):

• two working vehicles
• Kami
• pretty & fun music
• cold weather
• a job
• the Gospel!
• a body
• sports
• dance
• relaxing
• talents/skills
• technology
• family
• temple
• scriptures
• knowledge
• the Savior
• back-scratches
• Adam!
• water
• a home
• the right to bear arms
• freedom
• electric tools
• blankets
• the weekend
• money
• good food
• hot chocolate
• the Holy Ghost
• medicine
• leaders
• the prophet
• Pepsi
• a warm & comfy bed
• sleep
• to live in the USA
• revelation
• electricity
• good friends
• massages
• accessibility of things
• the plan of salvation
• happiness
• the earth
• life
• the ability to have children
• and all our many other blessings!

I hope this season of thanksgiving has inspired more thankfulness in us.  We have been given everything we have by God's hand.  He has created everything, and inspired all good things to come about.  He created us!  Both us as spirits and our bodies.  The only thing we have that is truly ours to give is our will.  I hope we can choose to be thankful to Him and happy for what we have.

Happy people aren't necessarily thankful, but thankful people are happy!

"Gratitude is a Spirit-filled principle. It opens our minds to a universe permeated with the richness of a living God. Through it, we become spiritually aware of the wonder of the smallest things, which gladden our hearts with their messages of God's love. This grateful awareness heightens our sensitivity to diving direction. When we communicate gratitude, we can be filled with the Spirit and connected to those around us and the Lord. Gratitude inspires happiness and carries divine influence."
Bonnie D. Parkin, "Gratitude: A Path to Happiness," Ensign, May 2007

13 True Things About Mormons

1.  Mormons are Christians.

2.  We believe in and worship Jesus the Christ spoken of in the Holy Bible and that He is the Son of God.

3.  The name "Mormon" is a nickname because of our belief in the Book of Mormon as additional scripture.

4.  The name of the church Mormons belong to is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

5.  We absolutely believe the Bible to be true and the word of God, as long as it is translated correctly.

6.  We believe that the Book of Mormon is also the word of God and is additional scripture written by Christ's people in the Americas and is a second witness of Jesus that He is the Christ.

7.  Joseph Smith was the first prophet of God in this last dispensation, or these latter-days, or this time when the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not ever again be taken away from the earth.

8.  God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith as he was praying in a grove of trees about which church he should join.  They instructed him to join none of them and told him that the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be restored through him.

9.  We revere and respect and look up to Joseph Smith because of everything he has done and endured for the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

10.  We make sacred covenants in holy temples, and we perform these ordinances by proxy for those who have died without receiving them -- and they then have the opportunity to accept them or decline.

11.  We believe life does not end at the grave but that because of Jesus Christ and His Resurrection we are able to be resurrected (spirit and body reunited in a perfected form) and to live eternally.

12.  We believe that Jesus Christ suffered and atoned for our sins and that because of this we have the ability to repent and to come closer to God and to be able to be granted into His presence after this life.

13.  We believe families can be together forever, but only by being sealed together by someone who has God's authority on earth (the priesthood) in His holy temples.

Learn more here.

Does God have time for me?

I hear this certain commercial on the radio every once in a while and it just kills me every time I hear it.  The girl is asking things like, "Doesn't God have more important things to worry about my life and my worries?"  I really wish people wouldn't think this way, but there are so many who do.  The thing that makes me the most sad is that if someone has to ask that question, they don't understand what the whole point of life is.  God is the Father of our spirits, and His work and glory is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."  His whole purpose is to help us make it back to Him to live with him and our loved ones forever.  He isn't up in the sky somewhere making the tides roll in and the wind blow and just watching us live our lives for entertainment.  He is listening to us and trying to prod us in the right directions and answering our pleadings.  We are His first priority!  And He provided a Savior for us, His Only Begotten Son in the flesh, even Jesus Christ, to come to the earth and show us the way to be able to return to our Father in heaven, and He suffered on our behalf so we would be able to do so.  Because if He did not, we would have no way to repent and be washed clean of and turn away from our sins, and since no unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God we would be cast out forever, for eternity.  But He DID suffer and die and was resurrected for US, so we could have a way to overcome the natural man or evil in us and become saints and be able to be permitted into God's presence after this life.

God hears our prayers.  And He answers them.  Most often He answers in ways we don't expect.  He knows us, and He loves us.  He has provided this beautiful and resourceful earth to live on.  He has created these magnificent bodies of flesh and blood for our spirits to be housed in while we live our earthly lives.  He wants us all to make ourselves worthy so we can return to live with Him after this life on earth.  He has provided the way -- Jesus Christ.  We have to give the only thing we have to give, since everything we have been given has been by the hand of God -- and that is our will.  He has given us the ability to choose; and to be the most happy and to gain the most blessings and to be closest to God, we must choose Him and live His way.

So, does God have time for you?  The answer is yes.  His hand is always extended to you; He is just waiting for you to reach back to Him. 

Learn more.