January Reflections

This is dedicated to the Fergy Family Adventures 103 readers that never leave any comments (What is up with that?!?!)

My two best friends Joy & Brooke on my 18th B-day... yes, I had a perm back then.

Here it is January again which always makes me reflect on previous Januaries. January means that it is a new year again, a fresh start, and most importantly my birthday (JANUARY 26th). The following are a couple of my most favorite January memories:

1. The birthday on my mission that I paid $22 for a hamburger, that was the cheapest item on the menu (that is Switzerland for ya) and we had an Serbian man tell us that America was the greatest place on earth, "Just look at your Bill Clinton, he's sexy man with all those women." Ah that a foreigner's point of view made us laugh for days. That year my companion also baked me a cake in a glass mixing bowl (it was all she could find in the church kitchen), which turned out to be a disaster. She lined the bowl with parchment paper that caught on fire (at the church), because she forgot we used Celsius and not Fahrenheit and turned the oven to about 300 C even after cooking at about 600 F and a fire, the bottom of the bowl was still all runny batter.

2. The January I was released from my mission and was asked to give a talk in three separate wards. The two later talks were the normal homecoming talks, but first talk I was asked to give wasn't even in my own ward, but the Bp was an old friend of mine and it was in a singles ward that met in the same building so I agreed. The topic he assigned me: The Evilness of Sin Justification. Yep, that was some talk and subject to tackle. I decided to go the shockingly bold route, which if you really know me isn't that far of a stretch for me. That talk produced two outcomes, One: The Bp of that ward told me he had 4 different people come to his office right after sacrament mtg and confess previous sins. Two, I lived in infamy throughout all the Singles wards in that building until I finally left two years later; there were several requests for revivals of the infamous Chasity section of the talk.

Okay, enough of the reflecting it's time to look towards the bright and shiny new year. This year we started like the rest of the world with our resolutions. This year however we chose to tweak our style of resolution. For one we always make too lofty of goals that never have a prayer of being accomplished and two a year is too long to work on a goal, so this year we lowered the bar and we have made our resolutions only monthly/quarterly ones which are as follows.

1. We will have family prayers in the morning and night, this is in addition to our normal meal and bed prayers.
2. We will read the scriptures or other church literature as a couple at least once a week. We will also renew our subscription to the Ensign (we haven't had it for the past year)...good news, I did this one yesterday!
3. We will have a Nursery lesson FHE for Phoebe once a month and then work on really teaching that principle to her through out the rest of the month.
4. I will read all the books for my ward book club this year (a book a month-six weeks)
5. I will make a renewed effort to visit the other two sisters on my VT list (there are 3 total), one is Lexy so obviously she is checked off every month since I see/talk her at least 4x a week.
6. Cory will finish his painting as well and begin and finish another painting this year.
7. We will revisit our family/personal goals monthly in a FHE lesson.

I know our resolutions may sound a bit like weak sauce to many of you, but if I am being honest they are the most basic things we need improve on first before we can begin to make loftier goals. What can I say the first step to solving any problem is to admit that you have one.

Well to the many of you reading this have a Happy New Year & the best January ever!