 |
| CE and the hike |
 |
| Sleeping like a baby |
 |
| Are we there yet?! |
 |
| Mini golfing with a very tired baby |
 |
| The baby was DH's "handicap" but he still beat the rest of us. Even with the baby on the green half the time. |
 |
| Even though the kids have weird expressions in this picture, I still love it. It somehow captures the mixture of happiness and fiesty annoyance that is the experience of road tripping with kids. |
 |
| AJ on our hike up Powderhorn |
 |
| I love these baby legs and baby feet and baby feathery hairdos in the sunlight |
 |
| Hope DH paints this some day. He can do it if he finds the time. |
 |
| This is AJ and CE at Il Ristorante Italiano in Downtown Grand Junction |
Something we noticed about Grand Junction was that there were SO many churches!
I have never seen a city with more churches than I saw in Grand Junction, Colorado. As we drove, searching for the Dinosaur Museum and the Downtown Art and our hotel -- WOW. Denomination after denomination: Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, some Baptist churches, and legions of different Christian churches. But we never saw a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church --not one! I am hoping there must have been a few somewhere.
That was so different from at home in Utah, where we see our churches on every corner, with a very few other denominations on a few rare corners. It made me not want to take the church for granted and to absolutely cherish the knowledge of life and the afterlife that honestly, no other church comes close to explaining fully.
"there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are ablinded by the subtle bcraftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to cdeceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they dknow not where to find it— " (Doc. & Cov. 123:12) People don't know where to look to find the well of truth.
I put myself in the shoes of someone outside the church; how would I ever filter through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different denominations, most of whom claim to teach about Jesus Christ? How would I ever find the only true church, that held His authority, from Him directly? With truth pouring out in a never-ending stream from real, live holy prophets and apostles, with working temples and pure truth from the Savior Himself?
How would I ever find it or believe it, if my parents hadn't found it when I was a child?
Even asking the question, I believe that if I really sincerely asked God to help me figure it out, He would help me get there.
Even as a 9 year old child, as I was in a Baptist school when my parents began to listen to LDS missionaries, I was aware of this avalanche of additional truth. I got it, that there was more to the gospel than the Baptists had taught me.
I am grateful to the Baptists at that Calvary Christian School in East Hebron, New Hampshire for what they gave me-- Bible stories, hymns, a wonderful love for Jesus. But I am more grateful to the LDS missionaries for what they gave me and my family-- living prophets and apostles, a true priesthood, a real baptism, not made up by humans; eternal marriage (not till death do you part) and family sealing in the holy temples, and the huge joy of the knowledge that my un-baptized dead ancestors were being taught the truth in the spirit world, also, by missionaries as we were.
These things were the tip of the most wonderful of all icebergs. It really is true church.
I realized, driving through that "Bible Belt" in Grand Junction, that lots and lots and lots of people simply do not know. Maybe they don't want to know. But what if they do.
