one year ago

i feel like i blinked in this picture and now i am here. one year ago, today i returned home from serving a full time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the New York, New York, South Mission. 

i honestly can't believe how fast a year has gone and how much that has happened since i got home. 

but i am eternally grateful for the experience i had in New York, how it has shaped me to who i am today and for all that God has blessed me with since then. a day doesn't go by where i don't think about someone i met there, my mission president and his family, the city, the island, the food, or my companions. my mission gave me a new perspective on life. i learned things there that i never would have at home. 

i am #foreverchanged because of the great calling i held as a full time missionary. some days i wish i was back there serving the wonderful people there who i call my family. but i also remember how i need to continue to be a missionary, continue to be forever changed, and continue to create my own family and teach them what i learned and what i will continue to learn. 

pondering on the temple

Hunter & I have had the opportunity to go and attend 2 sealings in the past week. One for my little sister, and one for our best friends. It has been such a good reminder, although we haven't been married long, of the covenants we made together and the promises that were sealed upon us. During one of the sealings i whispered to Hunter that we need to make a goal to attend the temple at least twice a month. We both agreed with the desire to do better, together. Living out of Utah where there isn't multiple temples within 30 minutes of us is much different. Not impossible, but i see now how life can become such a distraction when we need to make time for the most important opportunities. 

I love this quote, that is such a powerful promise. There are so many blessings awaiting us. We must always make God the center of our marriages and our lives. We just need to make the time and effort to accept them into our lives. We have been told to go OFTEN and go REGULARLY. Its for our benefit and happiness. I truly believe that. 

I love the comparison of the temple and our bodies. How we treat the temple should reflect how we treat our bodies. With respect and cleanliness. We should feel the same feelings we feel in the temple within our spirits. Just as the temple is a place we go for answers and peace, so should our bodies and souls be a place we can go for pondering and peace. The spirit cannot dwell in unholy temples, so we must strive to be worthy and ready to receive the spirit within our own spirits. 

This is something that the sealer said and hunter reminded us of when he bore his testimony the following sunday -- if we keep the covenants and promises we made at the alter when we were sealed...we WILL be exalted.  

 The promises we are given really are PRICELESS. I hope Hunter & I can be better and make more of an effort to remember the covenants we have made and attend the temple more often.

Luke 8:32

this morning i was reading in the New Testament and as i came to this verse its like the words were jumping to me out of the page. I'm always so grateful when i remember how blessed i am to know the truth, when so many people around us may not. it makes me want to share it more because it makes me HAPPY and it makes me FREE. spiritually free and free to know i'm not stuck in anything and i can overcome anything with Christ. i love how he says, "ye shall". its saying that it is available to each of us, we just have to grasp it and LIVE it so that we shall be made free through the truth. 

i'm grateful for the knowledge i have of the truthfulness of the gospel. everything around me proves that it is true and that there is a god who has infinite love for every single one of us. #sharegoodness