Lessons in Venice

Samy and I are here in Venice, Italy as part of our anniversary and it's been a blast so far. Today we took a gondola ride along some canals with a young gandolier named Gianni.

Along our 40 minute ride I realized one of my all time romantic dreams. I spent a special moment with my best friend, who also happens to be the woman of my dreams, and enjoyed each other's company in Venice (it's the closing scene from the movie Italian Job). I realized bow fast time goes by and I realized that all we have IS time, so enjoy it with the ones you love. Samy and I have a long future ahead of us and I'm excited for the ordinary and for the extraordinary moments as well, because that is the stuff that eternity is made up of, and when you understand that, each moment becomes extraordinary.


-Joe G.

Elser Bednar Blows my Mind

Sunday morning here in Taipei, Taiwan and it's a special Stake Conference today with Elder Bednar as the guest speaker. He spoke simply and powerfully about he Restoration and why our church is named The Church of Jesus of Latter-Day Saints. He then focused on the strengthening power of the Atonement. First he shared from Mosiah 3:19 about how through he Atonement we can become clean from our sins and overcome the natural man. Then he read in the same verse how the Atonement is used to make us into Saints, converting us to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then he took us to Mosiah 24:13-16 where the Nephite people are enslaved by the people of Amulon. The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, does not simply take their burdens and suffering away, because from an eternal perspective there are eternal principles to realize through those experiences that can't be realized any other way. So, then what DID the Lord do? Did he just not answer their prayers? No. He (this us the important part) strengthened them.

Sometimes in our prayers we tell the Lord how we want our answers to come or how we want our blessings to be brought to us. We can have the faith to understand that the Lord is going to answer our prayer no matter what, and we can also have the eyes to see when and how that blessing comes without prescribing it'd method of realization.

Elder Bednar then invited us to buy a simple copy of the Book of Mormon and read through it looking for examples of how the Lord strengthens His people in affliction.

The Church is true and the Book is blue
Amen.

-Joe G.

Good ol' C.S. Lewis

"I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."
--The Horse and His Boy (The Chronicles of Narnia) C. S. Lewis.

And so it is with God. God is all around us, guiding us along our daily paths.



-Joe G.

Mormonism & Truth

"Mormonism, so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to 'Mormonism.'. The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this church. . . .All that is good, lovely, and praiseworthy belongs to this Church and Kingdom. 'Mormonism' includes all truth."
-Brigham Young, discourses p. 3


-Joe G.