#Hallelujah - Happy Easter

#Hallelujah

Memory Jogger Monday - March 21

Matthew and Emma 2011, Our family's first 5K race

List five significant events or experiences in your life, and explain what effects they have had on you.

Marriage

I was 29 years old and Scott was 30 years old when we got married. I worried a lot in my younger adult years as to if or when I would marry. I met Scott online in July 2000. We were engaged the next month and married in November 2000. Best decision of my life!

Miscarriage

We lost our first child in 2002 at 13 weeks. It was a tough blow as we had been struggling to get pregnant. We had waited to tell our family and friends and lost the baby within the week of telling everyone. Good news travels fast ... bad news doesn't travel. Months later someone mentioned how good I looked for being so pregnant. Yeah ... just fat. Wanting a baby and losing a baby was so hard.

Infertility

Five more years of wanting and waiting for a baby was excruciating. Lots of different fertility treatments and doctor visits. An emotional roller coaster. We looked at in vitro and adoption. Everyone in our ward and families were praying for us. And then without fertility treatments we conceived and told everyone immediately (6 weeks). A miracle! Even our doctor said that it was because of prayer.

Birth of Emma

4 pounds and 14 ounces and healthy! Emma was born in 2008 and was the answer to much prayer. Everyone was praying for us for the entire pregnancy and there were multiple times that we almost lost her. We know prayer saved her and protected her. She was so alert, that in the hospital she would lift her newborn head and watch the nurses as they walked around the room. She is still so attentive. We love her! 

Birth of Matthew

8 pounds of pure boy! We thought that the road to having a second child would be as long as the first. We were surprised in 2010 when Matthew joined our family. He was big (compared to his sister) and healthy. Then when he was a few months old he got RSV and we lived at the hospital for 9 days. We know that through the power of God's Priesthood that he was healed. He is a healthy rambunctious boy. We love him!

See this post for more information about "Memory Jogger Monday": 

Writing a Personal History or Keeping a Journal

Under Necessity of Trusting in Their Children

Oquirrh Mountain Temple - © Stuart Gardner

“We want to sacrifice enough to do the will of God in preparing to bring up those who have not had the privilege of hearing the Gospel while in the flesh, for the simple reason that, in the spirit world, they cannot officiate in the ordinances of the house of God. They have passed the ordeals, and are beyond the possibility of personally officiating for the remission of their sins and for their exaltation, consequently they are under the necessity of trusting in their friends, their children and their children’s children to officiate for them, that they may be brought up into the celestial kingdom of God.

– Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, 406

Memory Jogger Monday - March 14

What were some of the jobs you had throughout your life? 

Past:
Pulling weeds for my dad (stuffed them in old grain sacks and got 5 cents for each pound)
Babysitting
Mowing lawn and feeding chickens for my grandparents
Washing glass gallon bottles at the local dairy (3 mornings a week, rode bike 2 miles each day)
Avon Sales Representative (twice)
Customer Service - Fabric Shop
Wal-mart new store setup
Bank Teller - Security Pacific - Sacramento
Nutrition Coordinator Assistant - Head Start
Secretary - Southern Utah UniversitySchool Relations
Textbook Buyer - Follett Higher Education, Missouri Book Company, and Nebraska Book Company
Textbook Buyer - University of Utah
Curriculum Materials Manager/Consultant - Utah State University
Category Manager, Data Specialist - Deseret Book Company
Bookstore Manager/Consultant - LDSBC - moved the store to a new college location
Textbook Manager - Weber State University

Current:
Sewing Contractor - Simusuit 
Small Business Owner - Dennis' Horseshoes

See this post for more information about "Memory Jogger Monday": 

Writing a Personal History or Keeping a Journal

Memory Jogger Monday - March 7

What did you do for a career? Why did you choose that career?

Textbooks ... Textbook ... Textbooks

I grew up in the college store industry as my father was a college bookstore director when I was born. I helped him after school on many days. Some days I would help unload the textbooks from their shipping boxes and use a charcoal stamp to print the price in the inside cover. Other times I would help erase those stamps and prepare shipments to return to publishers.

One year when I was in college, my father and some of his staff had to be out of the store during the quarterly textbook sell back period. I was able to fill in for him for a few days. One of the national used textbook wholesale companies learned that I was helping buy back textbooks and offered me the opportunity to conduct buybacks for them at other colleges and universities. Throughout the remainder of my college years I conducted these buybacks in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and California and I worked for three different wholesale companies.

After I graduated from Southern Utah University with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration /Accounting and I was looking for a job, I was at the University of Utah helping with a textbook buyback and while there found out about a job in their textbook department. I applied and was interviewed and hired before the week was over.

At the University of Utah I worked as an Order Expediter and then as a Textbook Buyer. I worked there for two years and then went to Utah State University in Logan, Utah and worked there for three years as the Curriculum Materials Manager. I got married while working there and my husband lived in Bountiful and worked in Salt Lake City, so I left my job. Though I didn't really leave it, because for the next two years I continued to work as a Consultant for the bookstore in helping with business plans and resolving aging accounting issues.

I worked for a few years for Deseret Book Company in a few roles: Data Specialist and Category Manager. Then I had an opportunity to work for a computer company for a few months helping them rewrite their textbook ordering system documentation. I wanted to get back into the college store industry and had that opportunity when I was hired as the Bookstore Manager for LDS Business College. I worked for the college for two years and then my 1st child was born and I planned to quit. However, they didn't have my replacement so I kept working for nearly 6 more months. Then I worked as a Consultant again in helping my replacement for a few more months.

My plan was to stay home with my daughter and be a full-time mom. That idea didn't last very long when we were quickly running out of money trying to pay our regular bills. So, I applied at Weber State University and was offered the job of Textbook Manager. I worked there for six years and through the birth of our 2nd child. 

The stress of trying to run a university textbook department with all the pressures of excessively high textbook prices and demands and pressures from every angle at work, and lack of support and communication from my supervisors finally took a toll on me physically and mentally. I wanted to be a good wife and mother and my home life was suffering and at work I was exhausted and burned out. So I quit my job to focus on my family and some hobbies.

So, textbooks and the college store industry have been my "career" and that stage of my life is over. Even though I'm not at retirement age, I have "retired" from that line of work.

Now I'm enjoying doing family history, blogging and speaking, sewing, baking bread, and figuring out how to run a small business to help make ends meet. 

See this post for more information about "Memory Jogger Monday": 

Writing a Personal History or Keeping a Journal

Circumstances A Thousand Times More Favorable

Photo From LDS Media Library

"Here {spirit world} those who did not have an opportunity in mortality to receive the gospel and those who had a partial opportunity but rejected it will be taught.

“In 1893, President Lorenzo Snow, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve, declared in general conference his strong belief “that when the Gospel is preached to the spirits in prison, the success of that preaching will be far greater than that of the preaching of our Elders in this life. I believe there will be very few indeed of those spirits who will not gladly receive the Gospel when it is carried to them. The circumstances there will be a thousand times more favorable.” (Millennial Star 56:50.)”

– Dale C. Mouritsen, “The Spirit World, Our Next Home,” Ensign, January 1977.

A Place To Await Their Resurrection

“According to Latter-day Saint doctrine, the spirit world is the place of residence for all those who have died and are awaiting the resurrection and the inseparable connection of their spirits and bodies. Thus, it is not the place where God the Father, the resurrected Lord, and other resurrected beings dwell. Rather, it is an intermediate condition or state where people await the resurrection—a sphere where disembodied spirits live in one of several conditions according to what their mortal lives have merited.” 

– Dale C. Mouritsen, “The Spirit World, Our Next Home,” Ensign, January 1977.

? Why is it important that we understand this doctrine?