* The past few weeks have flown by like a blur! It's been filled with football (and more football!), sicknesses (boo!), Spiritual HIGHS, and family!!
* Ben has had football games each Thursday night (2 here at Nampa and 1 away at Middleton <-- which was actually a super cute little town not too far from here!) They won both of their Home Games and lost (in Overtime) at Middleton. It was super fun going with the whole family (including August and McKendra!) to the Home game vs Emmett - and the girls especially loved it since she did their hair and face paint! The regular season is now over (although there's one last post-season game next Wednesday) and then football is officially over for Ben. He's worked hard, played hard and made some good friends while being on the team. We'll see what next year brings...
* There's also been weekly BOISE STATE football games! We've made our way over to Bill's house for the Away games and then Aubrie and Lexi were able to go to their first HOME game with dad (to the game vs. Colorado State, which they won 56-21).
* We made a trip down to Utah for GENERAL CONFERENCE!! It was the first time any of us had ever been and it was amazing (see more under Spiritually Speaking)... It was triple the fun because we met up with August and McKendra (who then came home with us for another week!) and Ben was able to meet up with Ashley (who was there with her family for Conference) and had a fun date to the Trampoline Park and Golden Corral. It was seriously such a fun weekend!
* So the week with August and McKendra was gone in a flash! Some of the highlights from the week were: August went to the work with Seth on Monday, McKendra spoiled the girls and pampered them on a "Spa Day" and gave them (Portrait) drawing lessons, we all went to Ben's football game, went to Bill's house for the BSU away game, went Shooting with Dad and Seth, they had a special date up to Table Rock and also went out to the farm to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Vogt. They brought in an extra fun element of the whole family being together and I personally enjoyed all of the talks and down time we were able to have together. All 4 of the boys slept in the same room together (with Ben and Nay demoted to an air mattress on the floor! haha) but I'm sure they just had a blast being all together! Then all too quickly, it was time to take them to the airport :(
* And then our time (these past few weeks) were also filled with: Dad and Nay going to the movies together (to see Ant Man and Wasp), Co-op classes each Monday (where mom is now the history teacher for the 10-12 kids), Mom had a Girls Night out with some friends from the Ward, weekly church activities, Ben and Nathan had a YM Campout (where they both got super cold!), Homeschooling, baking, and having a BBQ out at the farm where we also celebrated Dad and Nathan's birthdays!
GENERAL CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 2018 - UTAH
Amazing! Wonderful! Spiritual! Inspiring! Beautiful!
These are all words that I would use to describe Conference Weekend! We have talked for YEARS about making a trip to Utah to actually attend one of the conference sessions and this year those plans came to fruition! We were able to secure NINE tickets from our Stake to the Sunday Morning Session. That meant that our entire family (including August & McKendra Dinkle - who drove out from Nebraska and met us in Utah) could be together and bask in the spirit of Conference!
We drove down on Friday evening after dad and Seth got off of work and arrived at Aunt Janice's house (Janice is grandma Greats 2nd husband, Orville Burt's, daughter) that night around 10pm. After a night of rest, we got up the next morning to Janice spoiling us with a homemade breakfast of quiche, bacon, biscuits and juice. We then settled in for the Saturday morning session of conference where it started off with a bang!
We learned that Sunday services will now only be 2 hours long (vs. 3 hours) and that the curriculum of the church is turning towards a more HOME CENTERED AND CHURCH ASSISTED program. I am so excited about this! I had attended a Stake Sunday School meeting the week prior where we discussed the new Come Follow Me curriculum that will be implemented in Primary and the Spirit witnessed to me that this was Heavenly Father's plan to lovingly guide his children to take more responsibility in teaching their children. We have been counseled that it is not only our responsibility to teach our children the gospel BUT that we will be held accountable for that divine calling. Heavenly Father wants us all to be able to answer him (at Judgement Day) that we fulfilled that calling in a pleasing way and I feel that this new Home Centered and Church Assisted approach will definitely help! I'm excited to study the gospel principles with the kids each week to prepare them for Primary, Sunday School and Young Men/Young Women's during our daily Enrichment Lessons. It will now be the church leaders asking "What did you learn at home this week?" vs the current traditional question around the dinner table on a Sunday evening of "What did everyone learn at church today?"
On Sunday morning, we awoke early and were on our way to Salt Lake (Janice lives in Ogden) by 7am! We arrived and found parking not too far from Temple Square. While it was a little bit hard getting up and out the door so early, it was nice to arrive before the hoards of crowds made their way there! We were able to take pictures in front of the Temple and not get in people's way (or have too many people get in our way! haha). We eventually made it over to the Conference Centered and were in our seats by about 8:45am. It was at this time that Lexi leaned over with tears in her eyes totally distraught that she had forgotten her glasses in the truck! Dad came to the rescue and said he'd go back and get them - which ended up taking him 45 minutes (due to the lines of people that had since showed up, how far away we had parked and him not seeing the text I had sent telling him exactly where he could find the glasses). Nevertheless, he was her HERO and she felt so loved and happy the rest of the time to have her glasses! Dad made it back with just moments to spare before the Prophet made his way into the Conference Center. It was amazing to have a hush spread through that huge center with 20,000+ people! And the quiet reverence stayed the rest of the time! The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square then started their program - The Music and The Spoken Word (which is produced and played 30 minutes before Conference starts). We were blessed then to have a half hour of uplifting, spirit-filled music performed for us! It was truly an amazing experience and their singing was so powerful and brought the Spirit so strongly!
The next two hours were just as awesome and being able to be there was so neat! I asked each of the kids what they thought of attending Conference in person this year and this is what they said:
Lexi: I liked hearing President Nelson talk and it was really fun to be there and I felt like nothing bad could happen!
Aubrie: One of the things I liked best was when the Prophet got up and he told us how instead of calling ourselves "Mormons" we should actually put Jesus' name back in like it's supposed to. That's one of the things that stood out to me the most. And actually being in Conference was AWESOME! And the Spirit was so strong in there and it was cool and I'm glad I got to go!
Nathan: First of all, the chair were comfy! It was a really spiritual time and amazing and I could really feel the Spirit. Also hearing everyone talk was amazing!
Ben: So what I felt is that it was definitely a holy place and I felt like a really reverent silence there. It was really cool seeing all of the Apostles and watching the Prophet speak to us. It was just a really neat experience! The talk that stood out to me the most was Elder Oaks! He said things that just needed to be heard in these days. I also enjoyed Elder Uchtdorf's talk and I loved President Nelson's talk.
Seth: I thought it was a really neat experience to be able to go and see conference in person. It was such a cool spirit to be able to hear from our prophet and apostles in person. There was just a good happy feel about it all, and you could really feel the love. And it was also great running into a few mission buddies there. As well as Ben and I meeting our "People Spotting" quota.
Mom: Where to start! There was a definite excitement in the air as we walked through the Temple Grounds and over to the Conference Center. Seeing THOUSANDS of Members of the church all dressed up nicely and beautiful families everywhere you turned. I'm so happy that we were one of those "beautiful families". Happiness and Joy filled me as I looked at everyone around me! The music was soooo inspiring and powerful! I think that all of the music was probably my favorite thing about Conference (especially when the choir and congregation sang "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet" for the intermediate hymn and the Prophet was right there as we sang! That was really powerful to me!)
Dad: It was such a wonderful and spiritually uplifting experience to attend a session of General Conference in person. This is an experience I would like to repeat with the family as often as possible. I'm not sure how the allocations for our stake work but if we could make it there every other year or so, it sure would be cool. I loved having our whole family together again. It was the first time in over two years that we were all together. My heart was full. It was great hearing from our Prophet and from the other assigned speakers. There was definitely a strong spirit in the conference center and we loved being on such holy and hallowed grounds. I marvel at the foresight and inspiration that Brigham Young had in designing the city and the church buildings. It is truly a wonderful place.
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During the Women's Session, the Prophet issued an Invitation (well, a 4 part Invitation) to "Shape the Future and Gather Israel" and when the Prophet issues such invitations - you'd better believe that I'm going to accept it! So here are the 4 parts he issued:
1. Participate in a 10 day fast from Social Media and from any other media that bring negative and impure thoughts to your mind
2. Read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year
3. Establish a pattern of regular Temple attendance
4. Participate fully in Relief Society
Well, my 10 day fast from Social Media has come and gone! As I reflect back on it, I realize that there is not one thing that I feel like I "missed out" on. In fact, I feel more productive, more engaged and less bombarded from the world. I've had a habit of using Facebook as my "down time" and since part 2 of the invitation is to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year, I made a very conscious effort that during times that I would have clicked on FB, I clicked open the scriptures and read them... I read in the morning upon waking, throughout the day when I found myself with a few spare moments (waiting in line or in the car - I even had an hour long wait at the Honda dealership where I was able to read!) and then in bed before falling asleep. I have really liked how I'm changing my habit to that of turning the Lord and uplift my Spirits in (sometimes small) increments throughout the day. I have liked this so much that I have decided to take the 10 day Social Media Fast and extend it into a 10 Week Fast! I know that I will continue to have positive changes and blessings as I do this.
The 3rd invitation didn't take me long to figure out what I was going to do... I have 20 Family names (women) that need their Endowment work done and so I have decided to do Two sessions a week from now until the end of the year (or at least until Dec 14th when we leave for Nebraska for Christmas!). Doing so will keep me actively engaged in Temple Work and blessing my ancestors! It has been 2 weeks and I have looked forward to each session with eagerness and joy! I love that we have 2 Temples that are so close! On one of my recent trips, I had some revelation that I needed to get a little notebook (of course I'll have to get a super cute one! haha) and that I needed to write down all of the thoughts, inspiration and revelation that I gain as I attend the Temple each week.
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Ben is one who is constantly standing up for truth! He had another experience at football (I wanted him to write it, but he wanted me to just re-tell it) so here I go... During Football practice there was a teammate who was speaking ill about and degrading Joseph Smith. Ben couldn't stand for it so (in traditional Ben fashion) he approached the guy and the following dialogue transpired:
Ben: Yo! Why you hatin' on Joseph Smith?
Teammate: Because he made up that book!
Ben: Yo! He didn't make it up.. he TRANSLATED it! It's the word of God - just like the Bible. You know we totally believe the Bible, as long as it is translated correctly, and the Book of Mormon is just another testament of Jesus Christ. You know how in the Bible, it says that God has "other sheep" -- well, that's what the Book of Mormon is, the teachings of the people in America. So don't be hatin'...
Teammate: oh really, I didn't know that...
and then Ben said if he (or anyone else) had any questions to "just come to your boi, Benny Vogt!" and he'd gladly answer them. Ben has a gift to be able to say truth in a way that doesn't make it weird or awkward or condescending and I'm always amazed how he follows the Spirit and has gospel moments and Missionary experiences because of it.
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Heavenly Father has still been mindful of us in our financial situation and our desire to BE DEBT FREE!!! We knew we were going to have a $1,000 Van Maintenance bill (when we did the 100,000 mile tune up a few months back we knew we'd have to replace the Timing Belt, Flush the Transmission, replace the Water Pump and few other minor maintenance items - and were told it'd be close to $1K so we've been saving up for that - since we didn't want to use our emergency fund. Well... over the past couple of months there's been some other issues that have arose (and since we're planning on driving to Nebraska for Christmas, we felt we needed to have the van in tip top condition!) The biggest of these issues is that when reaching a speed of about 65 mph, the steering wheel would shake. If you let off the gas, it would stop - and at lower speeds it wouldn't happen (so we knew it wasn't necessarily a tire issue) and when dad looked up these "symptoms" on the internet, it indicated it was a costly repair with the steering column (upwards of $2K). Also, we'd noticed a "knocking" when making tight turns and so we figured we'd better take it in before it got worse and caused more problems! At this point, we were thinking we might be facing a $3K repair bill Anyway, we got it in and later that day, dad called me and said "How much can we afford to pay? We might have to prioritize what we want to fix now and do some later..." After thinking of what we could Cashflow (and not put anything extra to debt this month and how much of the emergency fund we could use and how much we'd saved for this purpose) I answered that we could do about $3,000. He said "Can we do $3,200?" My heart sank. I was sad that the repair was going to be so costly. Then he quickly piped up and said - "Just Kidding! It was ready to be picked up and only came to $900 for EVERYTHING!" What?! Apparently the issues we were having were quick fixes and they didn't charge us for them and so it was just the Maintenance items that we'd been budgeting for! The shop owner had told us that as long as we had the maintenance done by 120,000 that we should be OK, so we'd just been putting aside $100/month and were only at $400. BUT the day we took the van in, dad got a Bonus! It wasn't very large like previous ones were, BUT it was the additional $500 we needed to pay for the replacements! He (the owner of the shop) also said that he would fix the leak in Josephina for FREE - which we are super excited and grateful for! So we felt sooo blessed and happy how this turned out and thanked Heavenly Father!
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John -
We have spent a lot of time lately at the temple completing ordinances for our ancestors. Last week, everything came to fruition as we were finally able to do sealings for my grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents on both sides. The Spirit was very strong in the sealing room and it felt so good to finally unite the families of my fathers and mothers with their children. We still have quite a bit to do but we have gotten a nice start! I am so thankful for the restored gospel and that we can have forever families!
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