Mindless meanderings

I have child in India. Who would have thunk. I often talk about what she's up to in her life, because it's always a ton more than other people I know of her age. Where does she get that from? What motivates her? I think mainly it's a love for her Savior and a desire to do what she knows she needs to do in order to be obedient.

My kids are becoming parents themselves and I wonder what they will or won't keep that they learned from Kris and me. How will the discipline? Will they insist on dinner together every night? What about Family Home Evening? Will they continue to go to church on General Conference Sundays as we still do? Will they let their kids dunk their cookies in their milk? Will they use table clothes and think of granny and her gentle reminders of presentation?

We had a lesson on forgiveness today and it talked about how we should forgive everyone. Ev-er-y one! I thought about that and wondered about Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe and what he has done to my country and its people. The man is the epitome of evil, in my opinion, and will get his judgment, but do I forgive him of his inhumanity to man? Do I have to say out loud (because I shall never see him face to face) that I forgive him of his horrible, murderous deeds? For starving his nation? For cheating others out of what is rightly theirs by law? I shall have to ponder this for quite a while. The women in church talked about not being able to move on when you don't forgive. Maybe I just don't understand people like Mugabe and it's not a matter of forgiving him but not judging him. I don't know ...

I went to the hospital to visit a friend who has been in and out for the past year or more. Her life hasn't been hunky-dory, that's for sure. When others are suffering with trials I wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for me. Trials are there to help us grow, become better, take another step on the strait and narrow towards being back with Heavenly Father. I know I've had trials in my life, but I sometimes, well, most times, feel like they are nothing compared to what others have endured. Are the biggies yet to come? I look at what my folks and Kris's have endured in their life times and when it comes to pain from physical trials, I don't know that I could do what they have done and continue to do. I'm just not a toughie when it comes to pain. I wasn't a pioneer for a reason!

Which makes me think of trek. I'm going on a three day trek with the youth and other adult leaders from our Stake in July. I've started at the gym, a little later than I should have, but I didn't want to spend the money for the membership and then be gone for two months with my girls and their newborns. I have to say that it's literally a pain, but I do feel so much better after doing it. I'm surprised at how quickly the time goes by, but that's probably because we have 12 TV channels to choose from to watch as we pound away on the treadmill. I still think I may die on trek. I told the ward choir that I want them to sing "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing" at my funeral. They all laughed ... at me? at singing at my funeral? at me hiking on trek?

Despite all of that, I'm excited to go and experience in a very small way, what the pioneers did as they trekked across the country. I'm thinking of my own actual pioneer ancestors too, the ones that trekked across southern Africa from the south up through to what was then Southern Rhodesia. I won an art contest when I was nine years old with a picture I painted of the voortrekkers. I admire pioneers, but I'm definitely not one in the traditional sense. I pioneered my family's way to the United States of America. That's pretty much it.

The pioneering lead me to think of the diversity of where I live. On Friday night we went to a Greek Festival. We have people at church from all over the world; Jamaica, Peru, Colombia, Argentina (well when Hector was alive), Chile, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Canada and so on. There are a lot of Italians, Polish, Swedish and Jewish people with ancestry from Russia to Spain here. It's a beautiful thing. I would like to go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island this summer. We shall see when that comes to pass.

Now I'm back to thinking of my kids because some of them are coming to visit in August and maybe they will want to go and see Lady Liberty and Ellis Island. Josh used to call it "Statue of the Little Birdies". How cute is that? My kids rock. I like them all a lot, and I'm talking about the sons-in-law and daughter-in-law too. they are all so talented and they are good people. I love spending time with them. They make me laugh, they laugh with and at me (which I'm good with, I mean I do stuff ...)and we enjoy each other a whole bunch.

I'm done meandering. It's therapeutic for me and probably boring for others. Doesn't matter. The end.