Don't Forget His Message

   

    Last week I held my breath as our beloved Prophet struggled to finish his address in the General Conference for our church. I was worried about him. I, along with everyone, wished I could hold him up. I wanted to help him. I was sad that he may be leaving us soon. And with all of this worry and speculation about his health, I forgot to listen to what he had to say. I didn't hear his message because I was so concerned for him.
    This week I saw a lot of posts and participated in a lot of conversations discussing his health. There were posts of what was going on behind the scenes: how President Uchtdorf was right there as soon as he finished his message. However, I haven't read any posts about his message and that makes me sad. A friend pointed this out to me and it really hit me.
    Instead of talking about his health, we need to remember his message (President Monson's Address). We need to always strive to be a light to the world. We need to use clean language. Speaking kindly and uplifting others will never make us feel bad. We need to serve others and do things that will help lift other's spirits. He said we need to "strive to have in our lives kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, and goodwill." We need to always have the undeniable light of Christ in our eyes. We must have faith: faith in our Lord and Savior, faith in the prophet, faith that our lives will workout. We have to treat our bodies right. They are special gifts from God. He taught us that the world is moving farther and farther from Heavenly Father's ideal and that we must stay close to our Father. We've got to be different from the world. Even when it seems hard to do these things, we have to try. We have to give our best effort every single day to stay close to the Lord. We have to grip tightly to the iron rod. He finished his message with a poem that sums up how we should live our lives:

I met a stranger in the night

Whose lamp had ceased to shine.

I paused and let him light

His lamp from mine.

A tempest sprang up later on

And shook the world about.

And when the wind was gone

My lamp was out!

But back to me the stranger came--

His lamp was glowing fine!

He held the precious flame

And lighted mine! 

    Yes, we can acknowledge that President Monson looks a little sick. We can be applauded for our desire to serve him as he struggled. But we need to sustain him by remembering what he had to say. He stood there weak but determined to finish his message because his message is of such importance. For all of us he finished instead of giving up because what he had to say were the words of the Lord for all of us today. Don't forget his message. 

    I wanted lastly to testify that when we stand with the prophet, President Monson, we stand with God. And when we stand with God we are on the winning side. When we stand with Heavenly Father we will become the heavenly beings that He knows we can become. We will not be led from our Father when we stand with the Prophets of His church. We have to stand with them. We have to sustain and support them and by doing so, we're showing our Father that we stand with Him. I know we're led by a living Prophet. I know that Heavenly Father is mindful of us and that is why He sends His words to us through His servants. I testify these things are true in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

If We All Were a Little More Like Her

We all have good role models. Some of us are lucky to have multiple role models. I'm fortunate to be one of the lucky ones who has many people viewing me as a model... haha. Just kidding. I'm lucky because I have a lot of wonderful people I can look up to. I'll name a few:

1. My Mother
2. My Father
3. My Sisters
4. My Brothers
5. The Prophets and Apostles of God
6. My Roommates 
7. My Teachers

...and the list goes on. But there's one in particular that's not on this list that I have been looking up to a lot lately. Her name is Anne Shirley. Anne is a young girl, about 10 or so. Her young life was spent as an orphan until she got adopted by Matthew and his Old Maid Sister Marilla. Her best bosom friend in the whole wide world is Diana Barry. She's got beautiful bright red hair and freckles. 

She can imagine anything, anywhere, whenever. Anne's smart--she's the top in her class. She is mostly obedient and she's extremely loyal. Anne likes to have a good time and having her around always seems to stir the pot just a little. She can make you smile when you're not expecting it. She says the most hilarious things! Anne is one of my role models. She's said a lot of things that have inspired me to do better. Here are some of my favorite Anne Shirley quotes:

"What a splendid day! Isn't it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren't born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. And it's splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn't it?"

This is how I feel when I think about Olivia sometimes: "I love Diana so, Marilla. I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall I do? I hate her husband--I just hate him furiously. I've been imagining it all out--the wedding and everything--Diana dressed in snowy garments, with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana goodbye-e-e--."

When Anne got a dress with "puffed sleeves" for Christmas: "I don't see how I'm going to eat breakfast. Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I'd rather feast my eyes on that dress. It's at times like this I'm sorry I'm not a model little girl; and I always resolve that I will be in the future."

"Oh, Marilla! I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill--several thrills?"

The thing I like most about Anne is how she can love people and love life so deeply. She has a knack for seeing God's creations how we all should see them. If I could go through my life seeing things and people as Anne does, I think I'd be one step closer to becoming like my Heavenly Father. He created all things for us to find joy in, for us to notice and love. He is the Father of all the people on earth. He loves them like Fathers do and more. And that's what Anne does. She's amazing and I hope I can grow up to be more like her.  

Love MY Sister-in-Law :)

You guys!! Check out my new blog design!!

Obviously, if you're reading this, you can see it.. But did you know that my
SUPER AMAZINGLY TALENTED 
sister-in-law Michelle did it for me?!?!

She's the best. If I didn't have two sister in laws, I'd say she's my favorite!! ;)

Pretty much, I love her.  && I LOVE my "new" blog.
That about sums it up.

THANKS MICHELLE!!! You're the bestest EVER!! :)

Behind Social Media

Olivia and I have a lot of fun. It seems like all we do is have fun! At least that's what everyone sees and comments on. People say to us a lot, do you do anything but play? And the answer is yes. Playing is actually a fairly small part of our lives. We do a lot of things, but things that nobody really cares to see. Here are some of the things that we do, that we don't show on social media.

We...
   Both are enrolled in 16 credit hours of school.
   Read, Study and do Homework for all 16 credits.
   Work about 16 hours a week.
   Wake up every morning at 5:50 to work-out.
   Wake up at 5:20 every Thursday to go to the Temple.
   Donate Plasma twice a week.
   Are on 3-4 intramural teams.
   Go to bed between 10:00 and 10:30 every school night.
   Grocery shop and cook meals together.
   Do laundry.
   Work all summer to pay for our own school.
   Apply for scholarships year after year to help pay for our education.
   Sometimes feel like we can't do it.
   Almost crack somedays.
   Read our scriptures every morning before school/work.
   Attend FHE each week.
   Make our beds every day.
 

And we play. We work so we can play. We get everything that has to get done, done before we play. We balance our lives so that we can play without feeling guilty. We like to show people the fun things that we do, because the rest of this is kind of boring to everyone else. To us it's real life and we are doing it and enjoying it. Playing is how we reward ourselves for the many hours of hard work and dedication that we put in every day to becoming better people. And playing makes us better people as well. So the next time you see a picture of us and think, Do they ever do anything but play? The answer is yes, but we make time and means to do the fun stuff too.
 

2 Funnies and a Serious

The first week back to school was a big success. I was a little overwhelmed on Monday when I had to go from one building to another building on the other side of campus. I had 10 minutes to get to my next class... My first class was chuck full, and I didn't get out of that classroom until my other class had already started. That's a lot of kids in a classroom. It's been hard when I try and make eye contact with people to say hi and they make a point to look the other way. Nobody says, Hi! How ya doing? They don't even wave. And there are stop lights that I have to stop at and I can't run down the middle of the street. It's an adjustment, but it'll get better. So you're wondering how was this a success? My classes were awesome! For the first time I'm excited about all my classes. There's not one that I'm dreading. I think some of my classes will be a challenge for me, but I'm excited for them all. And that's a wonderful feeling. I also love living with my sister. It's a good life. Now for my stories.

1st funny:
    Monday night we were sitting in our living room waiting for someone to come and fix our plumbing. When the guy showed up, he had his girlfriend with her and she came in and was immediately friendly. She asked what all of our names were and she looked at me. Without even thinking, or realizing, I said, "I'm Olivia." I shocked myself so badly! I looked at Livi and she's looking at me like I lost my mind. Then I just started to laugh and our roommates all bust up laughing and then I said, "No I'm not. I'm Tessa!" It was seriously so funny! Now I can't give my parents a hard time when they can't remember my name! I can't even remember it. Olivia and I have become so similar that I can't tell myself apart from her.

2nd funny:
    Wednesday Olivia and I saw each other at 7:45a.m. before work and school and then we didn't see each other again until the afternoon. I got to our beginner tennis class at about the same time as Olivia. We looked at each other and just said, "Oh my heck. We match!" Without any coordination or seeing each other all day, our telepathic minds put us in the same outfit. It's incredible how often that happens! We're horrible at tennis, but we had a good time in that first class. I think that the people in our class think we're wacko! And Wednesday night we both signed up for weight lifting together, so we get to do that together too! It's going to be a great last year together!

And my Serious:
    I was struggling a little with going back to school. I have had a wonderful summer. So I started praying that I would have a good attitude about going to school. On Wednesday I was sitting in my chronic disease prevention class, talking about diabetes and cancer and good diets, and things like that, and my teacher shared a talk by President Ezra Taft Benson called "In His Steps." While I was listening to a Prophet speak about good health and about the things I'm going to school about, I really felt the Spirit so strong tell me that I need to be at school. I need to be learning what I'm learning. What I'm doing is important to Heavenly Father. It was an answer to my prayers. And I was so touched that I was feeling the Spirit in a Chronic Disease Prevention class of all the classes. I feel so blessed to go to a school where our curriculum can be faith based. That I'm not just learning the secular things, but what Prophets say, what the Lord thinks and feels about my schooling. I am blessed to go to school where I go.

So although I'm going to miss home and Cokeville and all the things and people that I love there, I really feel like I'm bettering myself and doing what I need to be doing right now. It's always nice to feel reassurance. Heavenly Father cares about little things.

An Adventure for Me and My Sis!

Folks--Heavenly Father blesses us in such little ways sometimes that we don't realize it. Last week my sis and I had an experience that made us recognize some of the little blessings.

It was a beautiful, Wednesday evening. We were done with work and mowing lawns; I had eaten a delicious PB&J sandwich. Our Camelbacks were full and our chacos were on. We headed out on a hike. We left our house around 5:30. Hobble Creek was the destination. Earlier this summer we had done a part of this hike, but didn't have time to go all the way down the ridge. We hadn't mapped out our plan, we didn't know how long it was, and we didn't even think about it. We were just headed to Hobble Creek.

It started out great. We were talking and hiking along this fence line on a little two-track. The trail was nice and dirt, like most trails in the mountain are. And as we're hiking along, enjoying our time in nature, Olivia's phone rings. We were surprised that we had service in the boonies! She answered it and hung up fairly fast... It was a dang recording for this guy named Gordon. She's been getting calls for this Gordon for about 2 years now. It's annoying. We were annoyed. We forgot about our annoyance though and kept hiking along. Then the trail turned... It turned away from the edge and what we were hoping was going to be a view of Hobble Creek. We got off the trail and stayed on the ridge. Without a path to follow, we felt like real trail blazers! We were just making our own way across the mountain! Then it started taking a long time. I was getting a little worried that we weren't going to make it to Hobble Creek in time to get back before the sun set. Livi kept saying, "It's gotta be over the next ridge... Well, the next ridge... The next one... Okay, for sure the next one." Finally I said, "Liv. The sun's gonna go down really soon and we've got a LONG hike back. We need to just take our picture and go." She said, "Just to the top of this ridge and I swear we'll go. I would hate to come all this way, get this close, and not get the view." So I agreed to go to the next ridge and thankfully it was the ridge with the view!

We got our pictures (the amateur selfiers that we are) and headed back. Deciding that we needed to find a trail back, we went away from the ridge and found the way back. The sun was getting close to setting and we needed to haul cheeks to get back before the sun set. We started to jog. After a while we came to this beautiful setting with some dead pine trees, set against live ones, with the sun just shining like a spotlight on them. The trail we were on curved away from the scene, so having not learned our lesson, we got off the trail. No sooner had we done that, we found ourselves walking through a bit of a swamp with some rain spitting on us. But how could we just run away without taking a picture? I mean if we're there, we've gotta capture it! 

We got our picture and took off on a jog again. When we stopped for a second, we looked behind us and saw a sheet of rain. In the distance too, there were lightening strikes, and ever since Livi and I came close to getting struck by lightening on a hike, I've been about terrified of lightening unless I'm in my house watching out the window. It was a beautiful sunset though, and with the rain... again we had to stop and photograph the scene. 

Isn't that the beauty of the earth? It is. But also notice the placement of the sun. It's set and we aren't even half way back to the truck... I started to get a little bit panicky. Another tid-bit of information: before almost every hike my mom gets really nervous about us going out without a plan or a gun to a place where we can't call for help... I don't know why that would get her nerved up. It must be a mom thing. So, at this point we knew Mom was getting nervous at the house. We remembered the call for Gordon... We had cell service on that ridge! So we set to jogging again. It was 9:00-ish when we made it to the ridge and called Mom. When we got through to her at the house, she informed us that we had called with perfect timing because she and Dad had called Trevor and were coming on a search party for us. Trevor had just gotten to the house. Here's where we start to see blessings from the Lord. If Livi hadn't gotten that call for Gordon, we would have never known that we had service. We would not have called Mom. We would not have stopped Dad and Trevor from coming. And we later learned that they were going to search for us in a different place than we were... So they would have gotten lost as well. Thanks be to Heavenly Father for 2 years of phone calls for Gordon.

Mom wanted to know how long until we would be home... We were still probably 2-3 miles from the truck and although the sun was set, we still had okay lighting. We told her we were about a mile from the truck and we'd be fine. (Don't lie to your mother, unless it's going to keep her from having a nervous breakdown... even then, choose little stretches of truth, not flat lies.) After the phone call, we felt better. We were on the path. The sun was going down, but all we had to do was follow the path. After a little while longer we thought we were at the point we had hiked to earlier in the season that turned down the mountain to the truck. On that earlier hike, we took a picture of the view from the top, and where we were looked just like it. We confidently stepped off the path. We left the fence line. We walked down this somewhat path for a little and then decided it was wrong. We went running across the mountain around this little grove of trees, looking for another path or a vantage point. We didn't find a path, but Livi saw a bend in the road where we parked the truck... It was still a ways away. We went back to the somewhat path and took a few steps down it when Livi, being in tune with the Spirit, suggested we prayed. We stopped right there and petitioned the Lord for help. We knew immediately that where we were was wrong and we needed to go back to the fence line. When we got back to the fence where we turned off, just to be sure, Livi looked at our picture from the time we hiked there before and held it up to the view... We were not in the same place.

Onward we went. By this point it was close to 9:30. It was getting quite dark. But, you know how eyes adjust to the dark... We felt like we still had pretty good vision. Finally we reached the point that we were sure went down to the truck. Livi looked at her picture and it looked the same. We again stepped off the well worn path, to a little, not so often travelled two-track. Then we came to a fork in the road. Livi stayed calm while I cried a little. I was scared of the lightening. I was scared of getting soaked. I was scared of some animal coming out and attacking two little girls. I was just scared. We took a few steps down one path and Livi suggested we pray again. I said it this time and immediately knew that we were on the wrong path. When we ended the prayer, we both turned and back tracked to the other path. We knew then, because of the assurance of answered prayers, that we were on the right path. We went across a little meadow and then we dropped down into the trees right above the truck. By then it was dark. I couldn't see well at all. But I know that it was another blessing from the Lord that I could see so well up until that point. It had been dark for a while, but our eyes were able to adjust really well.

After being scared and hiking and lost (Livi hates that word. She says, "We weren't lost. We just weren't sure all the time where the end was.") the truck was the most welcome sight I'd seen in a long time. We got in the truck and drove home. The whole way down into town, we talked about how much the Lord had blessed us. From a phone call for Gordon, to immediate answer to prayers, He was with us. We felt that because we're striving to do what's right, He was willing to bless us. Heavenly Father was mindful of us and helped us out of what I felt was a very stressful and scary situation. We also decided that next time we probably won't be so lucky, because Heavenly Father blessed us with brains to make better decisions than we did that night. But, I'm so thankful now for the experience. My testimony in prayer and in faith grew tremendously. I know that Heavenly Father loves His children and wants to see us all happy and safe. He blessed us. He will bless you.

Family Reunions

"Family: Where life begins and love never ends."

I'm so thankful for Family and especially for Family Reunions! I've been lucky to have 2 reunions in the last 2 weeks! The first was with just my parents and siblings and nieces and nephews. And this last week was with my Grandma Teichert and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I honestly feel like I have the best family that anyone can ask for! I wouldn't change them for the world! We're a little strange and can be a little overwhelming, but that's just how I like it! I'll share just a few pictures taken during the reunions and tell some highlights.

First--the Briant Teichert Family Reunion:

We all gathered at Jo-Gee Fish and Stay in Ft. Bridger, Wy (a little cabin and a pond that Tony and Taffy own) on a Friday afternoon. We got camp set up and then headed to the Lyman swimming pool! It was a blast! Friday night Mom and Dad told stories to all of us! It was a good time. This picture is us getting ready to listen.

Saturday we just did more hanging out and visiting. But we also played some super fun games! Taffy planned some really great games for all ages! Here we've got Tel and Kimball sitting with shower caps covered in shaving cream while we threw Cheeto Puff balls at their head. The team with the most puffs won!

Tony built a floating dock for our enjoyment. It was meant to be stable and flat but ended up being a lot more fun because it was super tippy! Saturday morning after the games we were putting 5 adults on the dock and trying to balance our weight so we wouldn't tip. But, when one person shifted their weight, it was Titanic! The whole dock would tip and you had to jump or grab hold! It was so much fun! We had a blast, but Tony thought he should make some changes to the dock. So we unhooked it and drug it in. I'm not sure how we got in the situation that we did, but Sulli, Michelle and I swam it back in while Olivia stood on the top holding the chains! She looked like a slave driver while we did all her work. That's what this picture is, Olivia with her Iron Chains, driving us to shore. 

It was a great reunion! We missed Tyson and Candace and hope they can come next year. It was a blast and I love my family even more!

Second: The Herman and Buhla Teichert Family Reunion

It started at Bear Lake on Friday. Olivia and I thought it would be a fun idea to hike to the Lake. We left around 7 a.m. and had fun for about the first 10 miles. Then it started getting really un-fun. We have been doing a hike-a-week, but only about 2 miles each time and the only walking training we've been doing is to the end of Dayton Drive and back on Sundays. But we thought it would be fun. We did make it to the lake and we are alive with just a few aches and pains. If you ever want to do it, think again. But now we can say that we've walked 24 miles to the lake! And if my kids ever ask to use the car to get to the lake, I'll just say, please. When I was a kid, we walked! 

Saturday morning Olivia and I did a Questival activity for the family and it was a BIG hit! I'm going to make a blog about that when I get some pictures from that. After Questival was over, the whole family went to Grandma's to do a service project. Here's Dad, Mom, Livi and I with Grandma.

After the service project, everyone got an Otter-Pop. My grandma is 96 years olds and this was her first ever Otter-Pop. This picture is her and a few of her Great-Grandkids.

I have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for my Grandma and Grandpa. They started such a legacy. They had 10 children and 65 grandchildren and 100+ great-grandchildren. My family is amazing! I told Grandma how I was thankful that she started this family and that I feel like it's the best family ever. I love family and am so grateful for the blessings of the Temple that seal us all together for eternity as we strive to do what's right. It's going to be a great forever being tagged with these people! 

Families are Forever