Today marks the 217th birthday of the Prophet Joseph Smith. My family and I visited the historic Carthage Jail and took our kids on the tour for the first time. I enjoyed watching their inquisitive faces as they explored the rooms and listened to the captivating stories. This year has been a whirlwind of change:…
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This past week marked the 200th birthday of my great granduncle Robert. Reading his autobiography changed my life and inspired me to start this blog! To commemorate his birthday we traveled to the small town where he lived after immigrating from Scotland. The town was then known as “Ramus” or “Macedonia” and it is now…
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This week I learned about an early Latter-day Saint named Theodore Turley. It turns out we are distantly related! In his autobiography he wrote, “I came to Nauvoo with Joseph Smith the Prophet and built the first house that was built by a Mormon in Nauvoo.”1 I was intrigued by the phrase “first house” because…
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The other day I had a peculiar experience. I saw a caterpillar climbing a single strand of silk high up into the trees. Because the silk strand was nearly invisible, at first it looked as if he was floating, frozen in mid-air. Upon closer examination I could see how the little guy was using his…
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Joseph wrote to Emma: “My heart is entwined around yours forever and ever.” I can imagine what he meant when he wrote that. We give our heart away when we love someone. It’s terrifying. We give our heart away and hope the person we love will give us their heart in return. Thus, two hearts…
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“You want to postpone the wedding?” I asked my fiancée. “We need more time,” he said. “We need to get to know each other better. We need time to plan and prepare.” We had set a date for the end of February, but now he wanted to move the wedding all the way to the…
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I have been thinking about the meaning of home. What makes a home? A house? A person? A family? A neighborhood? A community? A church? A country? A language? A culture? This question is important to me because my family and I recently moved from Germany to America. Ever since we got married my husband…
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I have been thinking a lot about siblings. I knew in the month of March four of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s brothers had birthdays and coincidentally three of them even share the same birthday (see below). I myself have two sisters and one brother. We were also born one year after another, so we are…
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When I was deciding whether or not I should serve a mission, the biggest question on my mind was: will my mom be alive when I get back? She had been diagnosed with breast cancer. We didn’t know how long she had. We did know, however, that we needed to have faith. Together my mom…
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My mother always used to quote the thirteenth Article of Faith to me. “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”1 She even sent me the quote to hang above my desk on my mission. The words are beautiful, but in reality, it isn’t always easy…
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