These are the days of my life, and they are flying by! The miracles of the past week have been many!
Cub Shooting Sports included bbgun shooting and archery and was held on five seperate days with two sessions of each activity each day. The sessions were on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday last week and then Monday and Tuesday of this week. We had to be in the car by 6:30 every one of those mornings for the first session that started at 7:00 a.m.. Over the course of the activity we helped more than 200 cubs enjoy these shooting sports. We purchased twelve new bbguns and three new bows and more than 100 arrows to add to the equipment now part of the shooting sports park for use by anyone who wishes to use them. I feel great about that part! Cubs can't hold these activities except as part of a "District Activity" but if their family wanted to go out to the park, the equipment is there for them to use. I think that is much better than storing that equipment in a shed here in town to have the rats run over all year. The wonderful Range Officers out at the Shooting sports park are fabulous, they wish to have others see the fun in these sports, and having the equipment available for the public to use will help them to introduce more people to the fun of those sports. I am certain they will take better care of the equipment than simply storing them in the BSA storage facility, and I believe they will be safer too.
This week C is at Timberline as a Troop Guide. B was supposed to be the scoutmaster on this course, but due to very low registration, they combined his course with another district's and so C is up there with leaders from Cedar. This concerns me a bit because C has always had his Dad near. He has only been on a couple of campouts where B wasn't there, and those were with other leaders that he knew. His first campout when he was 11 he had a melt down in the middle of the night, crying. Finally he asked for a priesthood blessing, and was able to make it through the night. I am praying that he will not have a problem this week! He is a great leader and is looking forward to teaching the NYLS principles this week to his assigned troop.
J has been playing basketball everyday in LV for the Hoops 24/7 team. He isn't sure what he really wants, isn't that nice to just trust our Heavenly Father to guide us where He wants us to be. This is a recruiting team to place them in colleges with scholarships on basketball. They tell us that the scholarship offers will come over the next month, and that some come as late as September, even after school has started. J has always been interested in politics and has a good friend we joke will someday be president, with J his vice-president. They would be awesome leaders. We note that for several of the business men that we respect, the contacts they have in business now years later came from contacts they gained in college years. Positive fraternity groups build strong bonds of friendship, and years later these men are still helping, boosting each other. B wasn't in a fraternity, he married me, and was then too busy working, supporting our family anyway. If J needs to make those connections, now is the time! So we have considered the possibility of him attending school someplace on the east coast. I have also encouraged him to live in our home in Sandy and attend UVU or BYU. I know that the application deadline for BYU was in March, and we were in the middle of basketball season then, and didn't even consider sending in the application for fall semester. It could happen if they recruited him to play ball. B went with him on Thursday, and walked in with J. As J left his side, a coach came over and asked who he was. He stayed and watched his whole game. I testify that prayers are answered! Ask and ye shall receive can be literally if we have faith. We don't know what we should ask for, and so we have determined to pray that the right people will be guided to watch him, to recruit him to where he should be.
The very night we were discussing all these possibilities, I was guided to open the Ensign to this article - this page opened before me:
"We know that nothing is more perplexing than not knowing what to do with your future, but nothing is more personally rewarding than discovering your own abilities. Read your patriarchal blessing, consider your natural aptitudes and talents, and go forward. Take the first step, and doors will open. For example, when Sister Oaks set out in English literature, she never dreamed it would take her to a publishing house in Boston. When Elder Oaks studied accounting, he never supposed it would take him to legal education, to Brigham Young University, and then to the Utah Supreme Court. With the Lord, “all things work together for [our] good” (Romans 8:28), and the education we receive comes in incremental steps as our lives unfold before us.
We must choose our learning with care because learning has an eternal shelf life, and whatever useful knowledge or wisdom or “principle of intelligence” we acquire in this life “will rise with us in the resurrection” (D&C 130:18)."Dallin H. Oaks and Kristen M. Oaks, “Learning and Latter-day Saints,” Ensign, Apr 2009, 22–27
Cub Shooting Sports included bbgun shooting and archery and was held on five seperate days with two sessions of each activity each day. The sessions were on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday last week and then Monday and Tuesday of this week. We had to be in the car by 6:30 every one of those mornings for the first session that started at 7:00 a.m.. Over the course of the activity we helped more than 200 cubs enjoy these shooting sports. We purchased twelve new bbguns and three new bows and more than 100 arrows to add to the equipment now part of the shooting sports park for use by anyone who wishes to use them. I feel great about that part! Cubs can't hold these activities except as part of a "District Activity" but if their family wanted to go out to the park, the equipment is there for them to use. I think that is much better than storing that equipment in a shed here in town to have the rats run over all year. The wonderful Range Officers out at the Shooting sports park are fabulous, they wish to have others see the fun in these sports, and having the equipment available for the public to use will help them to introduce more people to the fun of those sports. I am certain they will take better care of the equipment than simply storing them in the BSA storage facility, and I believe they will be safer too.
This week C is at Timberline as a Troop Guide. B was supposed to be the scoutmaster on this course, but due to very low registration, they combined his course with another district's and so C is up there with leaders from Cedar. This concerns me a bit because C has always had his Dad near. He has only been on a couple of campouts where B wasn't there, and those were with other leaders that he knew. His first campout when he was 11 he had a melt down in the middle of the night, crying. Finally he asked for a priesthood blessing, and was able to make it through the night. I am praying that he will not have a problem this week! He is a great leader and is looking forward to teaching the NYLS principles this week to his assigned troop.
J has been playing basketball everyday in LV for the Hoops 24/7 team. He isn't sure what he really wants, isn't that nice to just trust our Heavenly Father to guide us where He wants us to be. This is a recruiting team to place them in colleges with scholarships on basketball. They tell us that the scholarship offers will come over the next month, and that some come as late as September, even after school has started. J has always been interested in politics and has a good friend we joke will someday be president, with J his vice-president. They would be awesome leaders. We note that for several of the business men that we respect, the contacts they have in business now years later came from contacts they gained in college years. Positive fraternity groups build strong bonds of friendship, and years later these men are still helping, boosting each other. B wasn't in a fraternity, he married me, and was then too busy working, supporting our family anyway. If J needs to make those connections, now is the time! So we have considered the possibility of him attending school someplace on the east coast. I have also encouraged him to live in our home in Sandy and attend UVU or BYU. I know that the application deadline for BYU was in March, and we were in the middle of basketball season then, and didn't even consider sending in the application for fall semester. It could happen if they recruited him to play ball. B went with him on Thursday, and walked in with J. As J left his side, a coach came over and asked who he was. He stayed and watched his whole game. I testify that prayers are answered! Ask and ye shall receive can be literally if we have faith. We don't know what we should ask for, and so we have determined to pray that the right people will be guided to watch him, to recruit him to where he should be.
The very night we were discussing all these possibilities, I was guided to open the Ensign to this article - this page opened before me:
"We know that nothing is more perplexing than not knowing what to do with your future, but nothing is more personally rewarding than discovering your own abilities. Read your patriarchal blessing, consider your natural aptitudes and talents, and go forward. Take the first step, and doors will open. For example, when Sister Oaks set out in English literature, she never dreamed it would take her to a publishing house in Boston. When Elder Oaks studied accounting, he never supposed it would take him to legal education, to Brigham Young University, and then to the Utah Supreme Court. With the Lord, “all things work together for [our] good” (Romans 8:28), and the education we receive comes in incremental steps as our lives unfold before us.
We must choose our learning with care because learning has an eternal shelf life, and whatever useful knowledge or wisdom or “principle of intelligence” we acquire in this life “will rise with us in the resurrection” (D&C 130:18)."Dallin H. Oaks and Kristen M. Oaks, “Learning and Latter-day Saints,” Ensign, Apr 2009, 22–27