Jesus Christ Reaches out to the Lost, Answers to Prayers when feeling Sickish, and a Growing Family Scripture Study Streak

Kirsten told Sarah that David was very happy with my work on the three pieces: Gethsemane, Works of God, and Seest Thou this Woman. This makes me feel so happy and appreciated by someone for my artistic creation. And not only that, but we were paid handsomely for having rendered these 3 choral arrangements. Just recently, I read the scripture in Psalms 121, which talks about where we can get our help from. The scripture says we can get our help from the Lord, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and this scripture touched me so much that I wanted to create a choir piece for it. So, last week I worked on it for several hours, and it went really well. Hopefully I can continue in the next three days to work on it some more. I'm wondering if I should make if a capella or if it should be with piano. Right now I think it would be good without piano.

I also spent Wednesday of last week and Thursday looking over the new Spring 2025 ASC music. Mostly to familiarize myself with the pieces and to prepare for the Gilbert rehearsal. I mentioned this to my therapist, but besides some rhythmic things that I kept on messing up on for two of the songs I led outside of sectionals, and trying too hard in my mind to impress a new girl so that she keeps coming and doesn't leave the choir, which I shouldn't worry too hard about, I feel like the rehearsal went by pretty well.

This last Monday, I was not feeling good enough to go to work. The reason being was because I had eaten a ton of banana bread from the night before and I woke up practically choking on my acid reflux of my heart burn. It was not fun at all. That next morning, I told Sarah that I wasn't feeling too hot. She listened and told me to pray. I did and I got the answer to look in the Daily Reflections book by President Nelson for February 10th (the day in question), and it was a quote about doing impossible things with the Lord's help. Even after that swift answer I was quick to say no, I still don't want to go to work. But Sarah did some tapping on me, helped me prioritize my waning time left at home. The priorities before I left were to eat, shower, get dressed and get my lunch ready. Which I did. Then Sarah reminded me to read scriptures on the way to work, and I read the scripture in Mosiah about Zeniff going before his enemies in the Strength of the Lord, and it further confirmed to me how much the Lord was behind me. I then prayed that my Monday wouldn't be too hard and that the time would go by quickly. Then an hour into work, I had 4 no shows in a row, and because of it my breaks went from 1 hr to an hour and a half. So, Heavenly Father was really merciful with me on Monday. And Tuesday wasn't too bad either.

Another miracle and answer to prayer, is that I have been tearing my hair out when it comes to my younger group piano students, not to mention sometimes my older group piano class. There were only four kids in that class and two of them were moving along in the book, and the other two needed extra help. Well, as of last week, two of the students had moved out of the class to go and try for private piano lessons with other instructors, leaving only two in the class. Well, the minimum amount of student's that Gilbert School of Music has for Group classes is four, so when both of those girls moved out, it wasn't expedient of them to keep the younger group piano class going. Therefore, Augustina texted me and said to me that they were thinking about canceling the class and moving the remainder two girls to another group piano class that isn't mine. You'd think I'd be devastated, but this was really an answer to prayers. I told Augustina after this that I would teach individual lessons during that time to make up for that and minimize one of my two breaks. Kinda like a normal schedule. So this last Monday they told me that the class was officially canceled as of March. So I only have two more weeks left with the two remaining students. It is a bit sad but I am happy nonetheless.

I wanted to say before I forget that Bishop Higley gave me warm praise about sending out the letters for those people that have talks. And honestly, the talks this week were next level great. We had Emma and Amelia, young women, (one a Higley, which is how Bishop new). And I appreciated both their talks, because one shared a simple but profound testimony of Jesus Christ, and the other shared a great talk about repentance and challenged all the congregation to learn about repentance and to repent, if and when needed. Then we had the Hausladen's talk, and boy oh boy was I not expecting such beauty about a returning to church story and Jesus reaching out to their souls which had been lost. I was very touched.

This last week has been good, in that, Sarah had been having troubling feelings of individuals in our ward that judged of her her opinion. She had been stewing over what they might think of her and she wrote them a long letter talking about different things. At first, it seems they didn't understand still, but then Sarah gave them a call and chatted with them until there was resolution between them and an understanding there that wasn't there before. In the process, our friend Jessica, Temple Laundry Assistant at the temple, was very helpful in hearing Sarah's feelings and even read part of Sarah's letter to this family. We love Jessica and her listening and caring ear. She is very patient with us and very appreciative of us.

I have a 25 day streak on the Gospel Library app, and for good reason. I have been making sure to bring up the importance of reading Scriptures in our family with Sarah and we have been on a role reading Come, Follow Me and the Doctrine and Covenants every night together, and it has been such a pleasure doing so. I also have been reading from Mosiah recently, but taking into consideration the words from our Stake President's talk, to not just read, but to study out the scriptures in my mind, for greater understanding and for my own testimony building. I am inching closer to my record for longest streak in the Gospel Library app, which is currently at 31 days. I can't wait until I surpass it. Another proponent for me wanting to do this, is I saw Cami Clausen once post her streak on Instagram, which was well over a year in days. And I told myself I want to be like that.

Sarah and I have been doing a better job at eating the food that we have in our house (all courtesy of the Bishop Storehouse, mostly), and of keeping our house clean. We bought those pipe hair remover and we used it on our bathroom sink and on our bathtub drain. Both were super helpful, seeing as how the bathroom sink drain was never really draining (just very slowly), and the bathtub drain was almost the same. Sarah removed a lot of the gunk. I also washed most of the dishes last week and plan to do so this week. It was very helpful for our tea party a couple weeks ago.

For our Friday, we went to Skies Bar and Grill, which is surprisingly very close to where we live and well hidden. We went to go dancing and we did get some sodas. They had live music and there were a bunch of men with cowboy hats on. We definitely have to try again and sometime soon.

I've been telling everybody that Sarah's mom is coming to visit at the end of February, for a March 1st wedding. Helen's cousin Barbie is getting married and that is the wedding. We're very excited to see Helen and spend time with her, even if the initial reason is not to see us. However, she will be out here a week, so we have a lot of time to spend with her. And she is coming on a Wednesday. We even made a slack channel devoted to ideas of stuff we can do with her entitled “When Mommy Comes.”