Another week has gone by. I am sorry, but I really probably wont post something more than once or so a week. Going and building houses for 10 hours a day makes life all together kind of uneventful. Usually over the course of a week I can work up enough to write about.
We just got back from Island Park. We spent the weekend up there for general conference. We thought that the water supply pipes for the cabin that froze over the winter would have been thawed out by now, but they weren't. We thawed out snow over the range to fill the toilet with 1.6 gallons for every flush. We learned a couple of things from the experience though.
1-A 5 gallon bucket of snow sitting at room temperature still takes well over 24 hours to melt.
2-It takes just about 5 gallons of old snow to come up approximately 1.6 gallons of water.
3-Just because snow is white doesn't mean that it is not full of dirt, pine needles, and other unknown matter.
4-Though the toilet says it uses 1.6 gallons per flush you can usually get away with around 1.4, no less though. If you try less than that you will have melt 1.4 gallons all over again.
By about 4:00 on Saturday we decided that we really wanted showers, so we grabbed our soap and shampoo and headed to island park village. We went swimming and then took "prolonged" showers to clean off all of that chlorine.
We had a great time and really enjoyed conference.
Tiff is having a pretty tough time, she is really tough though. Over the course of the past couple of weeks she has had 1 good day followed by 2 bad ones. We really appreciate mom and dad coming up and spending Tuesday evening with us. They brought up dinner so we could have a good meal. Tiff hasn't felt well enough to cook and if it gets left to me we have mac and cheese or burritos. The time spent together doing really nothing but just being together was great. Sometimes the time spent together doing social things doesn't allow you to really spend time together. We are so busy running from one thing to the next that when all is said and done, we were just there together. No bond was strengthened and no relationship built upon. Even though my job can be frustrating at times and I don't think it will be a permanent place for me, I am so glad we are close to family so we can spend those unplanned and uneventful times together.
We appreciate your thoughts and prayers for Tiff. Hopefully she will get to feeling better within a month or so.
The past week at work was pretty good. My manager was out of town. I really enjoy it when he is gone. The way they have he and I set up is frustrating to me. He does the same exact thing as me in the same exact area except he does all of the meetings with the customers. Because he is the delegator, I end up doing a lot of leg work to make him look good. But hey, isn't that what management is all about. The most frustrating thing to me is that when I say we do the exact same thing in the exact same area, I really mean it. I will make phone calls to get things done and find out that he already made the phone call. But I can't assume he is always going to make that phone call because a majority of the time he does not. I really like working with him and I think he is a good manager, I just feel like the structure that the company is making him work under is a little flawed. (sorry about all of my abhorrent sentence structure)
Sorry to complain to you all for a minute. Just like any job, mine has its flaws, but I am so grateful to have it. I am grateful that Tiff and I are best friends and that we have a wonderful marriage. I am grateful that I am able to be in a home, I am grateful that we have the means whereby Tiff can be here with Josie. I would be glad to deal with a lot worse at work if I could still enjoy many of the blessings that I have.
As an update on the house project. We were going to put in a sprinkler system before we did our lawn and other landscaping but we found out that it will cost us just under a thousand dollars just for the supplies for the system. For some reason we were anticipation something more in the range of 500-700 dollars. After that news a sprinkler and a hose sounds really quite appealing. We are really nervous about the canal right in our back yard, so we might be putting that money towards a fence rather than a sprinkler system. We were able to track down 12 railroad ties to surround our 500 SQ FT garden. John, Tiff's dad found some old ones down on the farm for us. That saved us the 150 dollars that it would have cost to put those in. We are looking forward to a garden this year. Tiff really enjoys gardening. I am excited that she will have a hobby to work on through the summer. We will post some pictures as the yard starts coming together.
One last little tidbit.
On Tuesday night while mom and dad were here, they passed along a comment that Lynn had made during a religious discussion that they had. I don't exactly remember the context under which the comment was made but she said something to the effect that "Mormons are so busy doing church that they forget Christ. They are so busy preparing lessons and handouts for those lessons that we forget what we are doing it for." and here is the best part. "It is like the church isn't there to bring them closer to Christ, the church is Christ to them."
That put into words something that has weighed heavily on my mind lately. I am an active member of this church. I have been for my whole life. After all of the sacrament meetings and all of the Sunday school classes, how well do I know Christ. I am grateful that I have come to the realization that I don't know him very well at all. I am grateful that I am just catching on to the fact that just because I attend my meetings and magnify my callings, I do not by means of those things know Christ. Knowing Christ is a very personal thing that cannot be given to us. We have to Create that relationship on our own. Lets all beware of the false sense of security that good standing in the church can give us. The fact that we can give a great Sunday school lesson will not save us. It has no power to do so. Only a deep personal relationship with the one who has power to save can help gain salvation.
No time to proofread, hope it all makes sense.
Have a great week.
No comments:
Post a Comment