MAYLIN2007

We were in St George for Spring Break over Easter. I posted about our Easter Egg hunt, but I wanted to share what we did to celebrate the true meaning. We had a traditional Middle Eastern Dinner and we ate it by candle light. After dinner we read in the Book of Mormon about what the people on the American continent experienced when the Lord was crucified and then resurrected. We read in the dark to show the kids what the people might have experienced that lived in darkness for three days, but they couldn't even have fire as the darkness was so thick. Okay, their's was much, much more, but it gave the kids a taste. It was wonderful to read the testimonies of the people on the other side of the world who had been taught the prophecies of the Savior's resurrection and they knew what to look for. It was a great opportunity for us to share what we all felt about the resurrection and about how lucky we are to have prophecy to help us in our lives. While in St. George, I also to...

At the end of the school year, Alex's grade (all 48 of them), put together a devotional showing what they had learned and felt during the year. The acted out short parts from each of the books they had read as a class - Les Miserables, Man Search for Meaning, The Screw Tape Letters, The Chosen and many, many more. Several of the students also spoke about personal experiences they had had during the year. One boy, Max, spoke about how he had been severely burned over the fourth of July and spent most of the year have surgeries, in and out of the hospital, dealing with missing school, realizing how much his classmates loved him, and realizing he needed to love what he looked like now. Another spoke about how they felt after they had lost their classmate that year in a car accident and what they had learned from the experience and how their class had grown closer. One girl spoke about her year of healing. She was adopted from Ghana and had witnessed many beatings, murders and had lost...

On our final two days of Spring Break, Jay came down to stay with my parents and take my dad to the temple, while Alex and I drove to Bryce Canyon and Escalante. We had never been there and decided since we were two hours away we ought to add to our hiking totals. We decided to camp out in the park. That is a big deal for me. I don't like tents and camping. People, it was so cold. It got down to 14 degrees. Our tent had frost on it and there was snow in our camp site. Alex made a fire and we cooked dinner and then sat by it until it was time to go to bed. We snuggled in his two man tent and read Les Miserables to each other. Such a good book.  During the night, I froze and broke my old back on the ground. He slept perfectly fine. To be young again. We were going to cook breakfast, but it was so cold in the morning we drove to a lodge and ate in a restaurant. The day we got to Bryce's we combined about 4 hikes into one and ended up going 8 miles. It wasn't too bad until ...