For your Sunday

 This was given last week at my school and it has an incredible power.  Listen if you get a minute.

https://byui-media.ldscdn.org/byui_ft/devo_audio/04_03_2014_Devo.mp3

This really got me. We have agency to choose who we are and how we define ourselves.  Denying ourselves our own decisions and letting others do so is not what was meant to be.

"There are also people who consider the defining fact of their existence that they are from Texas or that they were in the United States Marines. Or they are red-headed, or they are the best basketball player that ever played for such-and-such a high school. People can adopt a characteristic as the defining example of their existence and often those characteristics are physical.

We have the agency to choose which characteristics will define us; those choices are not thrust upon us.

The ultimate defining fact for all of us is that we are children of Heavenly Parents, born on this earth for a purpose, and born with a divine destiny. Whenever any of those other notions, whatever they may be, gets in the way of that ultimate defining fact, then it is destructive and it leads us down the wrong path." - Dallin H. Oaks

african stories

have you ever had a moment when you knew things with such exactness and precise knowledge that it moved you to your very core?  a knowledge so sure and so powerful that it seems as if every single thing in your life all connects to that point, because that one thing that you know is so strong, it must have everything to do with it all. have you ever felt that?

i distinctly remember feeling that one day. it overtook me like a wave of emotion and power mixed and sent clarity through my heart.

there was a girl in africa. she was young, probably in her early teens. and she was sick. very sick. one day as we closed the clinic for the day, turning away patients, her father dragged her in by her arms, and gently set her by us, not saying a word.

the rest all happened so quickly, its sometimes hard for me to remember it all.  but throughout seizure after seizure, and several episodes of passing out, our small little group of clinic helpers became very worried about this girl. we knew she must go to the hospital, because it was beyond our nurse's help. but making it there - even making it home - was what troubled us all. i thought it was sure she wouldn't make it back. she could barely stay conscious, let alone sit up straight on the back of a little moped scooter for more than 10 miles on the dirt road.

"can you go get the other men to give her a blessing?" the sweet nurse asked her husband, believing in a power far greater than what we had, putting aside religious prejudices (her family was not from the same church) and calling upon something she knew to be an answer.

and in the middle of that barren land in kenya, africa, she was given a blessing.  and just as simple as it was given, she left with her father again.

through the next few days as the nurse and her husband spent time with the girl at the hospital, they discovered malaria that had traveled to her brain, and treated it. and with more kindness, they decided to sponsor her education at the school we had worked at, and give her a better life there.

that moment comes to me time and again. the moment when i realized of the intricate plan we all have.  things have been set in motion for us, that we may not even comprehend. things that are hard and burdensome, that we would rather live without.  but then those things can bring us blessings that would have never come about without those hard things.  and to look back at all those things, i couldn't help but know with such preciseness that there is a God, and He is in our lives. and that moment - that powerful moment - was so simple, that it brought me the clarity that i know could have only come from Him.

This day deserves a story. Hamburg.

And I hope that at least a few of you stick around to read it.

Because this was a day that was altering and beautiful to me 

and I wish to share that with those that will listen.

this much i had always known of my family before me:

they were full blooded german (on my grandmother's side)

her father (my great grandfather Karl) had been involved in the wrong efforts by accident 

during WWII and was captured by Nazis, 

and eventually the entire family immigrated to America to stay.

I ama named after Karl's wife, my great grandma Elsa,

and that has always been of at least a small significance to me.

as i have grown older and learned more, i've had specific and spiritual moments 

in which i have felt my grandma Elsa.

and this day in particular is one in which i learned the great importance of her 

and my special responsibility of the name that i hold that is hers.

the purpose of this entire trip was to take my father's parents back 

to the countries that they had come from.

my grandpa to denmark, and my grandma to germany. 

neither had been and it was a big ordeal that almost all 

of their children and some of their grandchildren joined in on

and i heard of stories of my ancestors that i had never heard before.

this is as much as i know.

my great grandpa had worked in the government at the time of hitler's take over

and did not like the direction that he was taking the country in.

while he resisted, he was found and taken to a concentration camp.

he escaped and spent several months on the run.

i'm unsure as to the timing of the events, but i know that Elsa was left to her own with her children.

Hamburg was put under massive bombings because of its status as a port town,

and because of that the women and children were evacuated to live 

in an evacuated work camp on the outskirts of the city.

It was there that Elsa gave birth to my grandma during the middle of an air raid, in a bomb shelter.

there were so many stories, but the message was still the same to me.

they greatly sacrificed so that we could be here today.

so that i could carry a message as a namesake.

we spent that day trying to find where the work camp had been that my grandma was born in.

while it was a bit of a goose chase, we were surrounded and helped 

by the most wonderful germans that were so pleased to have been a part of it.

we finally found the street next to that which the camp had been

and a sweet old german man told us that he had lived there his whole life

 and we were in the right place.

with a few of the old bunkers left, we knew it too.

it was an incredible experience, and one that i am quite proud to have been a part of.

we spent the rest of the day at the harbor and saw in person 

what we had seen in paintings of my great grandfather so many times.

i was grateful for that day and the lesson it gave me of family and heritage

and of the strong witness of the importance of my name

and the person that bore it.

my great grandparents, grandmother, and great uncle in Salt Lake.

this is what i believe

i normally don't get too pushy with my beliefs or religion because I think that just as I am entitled to my own beliefs and opinions, so is everyone else. but this is what i believe today and always.