October Newsletter

Spiritual Goal:  Establish some fun traditions around General Conference weekend. Making it a celebration atmosphere. Read ‘Conference Reverence Tent’ in 2008 Friend if you have small children.

Physical Goal: Continue good habits/Prevent cold and flu. The lowering of the body's core temperature suppresses immunity, which allows viruses to thrive; dress in warm layers. Wash hands frequently. Don’t touch your face especially your nose. Use a neti pot and eyecup. Get adequate sleep. Get fresh air, exercise, and sunshine. Be positive. Drink plenty of water. Stay away from refined and processed foods. Use a humidifier. Clean doorknobs, light switches, bathrooms, and kitchens with 50/50 vinegar/water solution. Don't share drinking glasses, utensils, toothbrushes, etc. Stay home if you are infected. 

Financial Goal: Awareness is success. Track your expenses for 30 days to find any leaks in your budget. Plug leaks and stomp out bad habits. “Some argue that some men prosper financially who do not seek the kingdom first. This is true. But the Lord is not promising us just material wealth if we seek first the kingdom. From my own experience I know this is not the case. In the words of Henrik Ibsen: ‘Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.’ …Pay an honest tithing… Live on less than you earn… Learn to distinguish between needs and wants… Develop and live within a budget… Be honest in all your financial affairs.” N. Eldon Tanner, October 1979

Provident Living Goal: Consider home production in the form of a cottage business, doing work from home involving the whole family. Cottage industries bring fresh life to communities, strengthen families, establish a wonderful work ethic, teach the true value of time and money, develop confidence and cooperation, and instill a strong sense of self-worth. “Let us be wise stewards. Let us ponder the lessons of history and profit from the experiences of those who have not heeded the prophets. Gibbons, Toynbee, Durant, and other noted historians have analyzed the reasons for the fall of the mighty civilizations. The repetition is monotonous. In summarizing cause and effect…six common reasons why each civilization fell: They lost their religious convictions and flouted basic morality. They became obsessed with sex. They debased their money of its intrinsic value and let inflation run rampant. Honest work ceased to be a virtue. Respect for law disintegrated and violence became an accepted method of achieving individual and group desires. Finally, citizens were no longer willing to be soldiers and fight for the defense of their nation and their heritage.” J. Richard Clark, October 1980

Storage Goal: 50 cans soup, stew, chili per person, 10+ pounds sprouting seeds per person, Shaving supplies, Dish Soap “When people are able but unwilling to take care of themselves, we are responsible to employ the dictum of the Lord that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer…” Boyd K. Packer

Emergency Kit & Pantry Box Goals: Rotate over conference weekend. Since you are using your box and kit for several meals this month, it is perfectly acceptable to use your grocery funds to replenish your box and kit. Don’t put it off!!!

Increasing Self-Sufficiency: Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Bowditch, Abigail Adams, Steve Jobs, and many others were self-educated people that positively impacted the world. President Hinckley spoke often of the love of learning he developed in his childhood home, where he and his siblings read Harvard classics around the kitchen table. Speaking fondly of the little library room with comfortable chairs and walls lined with bookshelves crammed with hundreds of classic and technical books, magazines, atlases, scriptures, and dictionaries, he showed how his parents made it clear through action and priority that learning was desired and valued. President Hinckley urged parents to read to their children and all people to budget their time to allow a daily pattern of study in addition to scripture study. Although President Hinckley went to college, many people for one reason or another do not. However, this need not end a person’s education. Like Mr. Franklin and all the Hinckley children, anyone who can read a bit can learn anything.

“We have lived to see the second death of ancient learning. In our time something which was once the possession of all educated men has shrunk to being the technical accomplishment of a few specialists…If one were looking for a man who could not read Virgil though his father could, he might be found more easily in the twentieth century than in the fifth,” C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 4.

“…to produce the good man and the good citizen, though it must be remembered that we are not here using the word ‘good’ in any narrowly ethical sense. The ‘good’ man’ here remains the man of good taste and good feeling, the interesting and interested man, and almost the happy man…Vocational training, on the other hand prepares the pupil not for leisure, but for work; it aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician, a good scavenger, or a good surgeon,” C.S. Lewis, Rehabilitations and Other Essays (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1939), 81-5.

Why not begin a program of self-education in the same place President Hinckley began by reading Fifteen Minutes a Day with The Harvard Classics? http://www.mensetmanus.net/inspiration/fifteen_minutes_a_day/

Helmets are Cooler Than Coffins

The time between July 18 and September 11 is quite difficult for me each year. I've relived the last months of my daughter's life for the past several years. Although the sadness has lessened somewhat, I miss her. Even though I know she is with God and that families are forever, I miss her dreadfully.

Katie turned 9 on July 18, 1997. Budding into young womanhood, she began to cross her long legs and fix her long brown hair. She was growing out her bangs. I began to feel that this girl needed extra time with mom, so we went shopping or driving, just the two of us. It was delightful. Ever since her birth, she seemed to be a gift from God directly to me (Of course, I love all my children, but each is unique as is my relationship with each one.) To see her stomp her little foot and say, "Leave my mommy alone," when the big girls were back-talking, would make anyone smile. It melted my heart.

No, she wasn't perfect, but to me she was my little punkin. A math genius, voracious reader, poet, artist, budding piano prodigy and a bubbly, smiley, happy girl, she left our home too soon, leaving an unfilled void. On one of our shopping trips, we bought her a new bike helmet with a pony tail port. She loved to braid her long hair in one braid hanging down her back, making helmet wearing difficult. The ponytail port was a great answer. Where we lived in the Pacific NW, helmets were required by law for every rider. If our children wanted to own a bike, they were required to wear helmets. They complied, but what I didn't know is that they didn't buckle the things, rendering them useless.

That terrible morning September 5, 1997, my friend rang the doorbell at 8:30 in the morning. She looked really funny. I quickly found out why. She had witnessed a terrible tragedy. Our Katie was lying in the street after being bumped by a truck. It didn't hit her but glanced her rear tire. She slid into the curb, hitting her temple. On impact her unbuckled helmet flew off her head.

Airlifted to the closest trauma center, she underwent brain surgery to stop the hemorrhage in her brain. They shaved off her beautiful hair, leaving a huge C-shaped incision. Her sweet little brain swelled and swelled. Little by little daily MRIs showed her brain dying. She never woke-up. She lived 6 days in the ICU, before we removed her off life support.

 Her coffin was sweetly lined with white satin. She was dressed in white with a white veil covering her huge, bald head. Delicate white roses draped the coffin. The funeral was lovely, but these things should have been for her wedding. When rain clouds burst just as we left the cemetery, I knew that Katie, my gift from God, cried for our family.

 In this ward most remember a dear young man, who had a similar accident on a skateboard. He lived, but struggled mightily for a very long time. The week of his accident a group of young men from our ward including his little brother came to ask my son to join them for nightgames. Not one of them was wearing a helmet. When I inquired why, they told me that it was safe around our neighborhood. They didn't need helmets. Yet my the young man in our ward was only a couple blocks from home in our neighborhood, when he suffered his injury. My little Katie was in view of our front door. The fact is that 75 percent of deaths among children could be prevented with a bicycle helmet.

Please, while you're buying school binders, paper, pencils, markers, and books or new Christmas bicycles and skates, buy helmets as well. Parents, require your children to wear a helmet every time he or she rides a bike, skateboard, scooter or skates! Whenever they "wheel" around, they should be safe. Tell your children the story of our beautiful Katie. When they talk about helmets being sweaty or stupid, remind them that helmets are cooler than coffins.