Prune and Groom, that's what our Master does best.

Jacob 5

The longest chapter in the Book of Mormon.

A great one.

It was my night in charge of FHE (family home evening),

and I choose to dive into this chapter. I began with these verses. 

3For behold, thus saith the Lord, I will liken thee, O house of ^aIsrael, like unto a tame ^bolive tree, which a man took and nourished in his ^cvineyard; and it grew, and waxed old, and began to ^ddecay.

 4And it came to pass that the master of the vineyard went forth, and he saw that his olive tree began to decay; and he said: I will ^aprune it, and dig about it, and nourish it, that perhaps it may shoot forth young and tender branches, and it perish not.

 5And it came to pass that he ^apruned it, and digged about it, and nourished it according to his word.

This parable can be interpreted in a few ways.

First,

as the house of Isreal,

there are many great, righteous people,

and there also are many lost, unrighteous people.

Those unrighteous people will be cut off from the olive tree,

allowing stronger, younger branches to grow.

We must all be striving to live a righteous life,

worthy to grow on our Master's tree.

Second,

we individually are the olive tree.

We all have weaknesses and flaws,

we all have decaying branches and sins that hinder our growth.

Only through the Savior can we be pruned.

We must constantly turn to him for help, 

and through Him,

we will be nourished.

I think had a little demonstration.

I sat Curt down in a chair, 

in the middle of our bathroom,

got out the clippers and started to prune his hair.

It was time to cut away the overgrowth,

and let new baby hairs grow back.

Pruning,

especially for Curt,

is a constant necessity.

But all in all,

our Savior is the ultimate groomer.

It is Him who shapes us into what and who we are.

Through his words,

we will be nourished and will bring forth ripe fruit.

Welcome heat waves.

I thought once summer arrived, life would return to a lax, peaceful pace. Quite the contrary. Life doesn't stop at all. It just keeps throwing things at you. Left, then right. The Monday after my last final (Spanish...I don't want to talk about it or ever think about it again) I started full time at my internship. 8 to 5 e'ry day. I'm tellin you, no rest for the weary.

But last week was definitely a good one. We had some special visitors! Sarah, JC, and Trin came for a weekend. Then Lisa was here! And then Ashley, Bwaden, and Addie! Ahhhh. So great. I tried to come over as much as possible...My man Braden and I tried to fly our awesome kites, but for some reason the wind stop right when we stepped outside. Not cool. We also played Fireball Island the last night Ashley and Litha (Lisa with a lisp) were here. 

You know how crazy that gets. 

Curt was yelling, 

I was arguing, 

Litha was making up rules, 

and Ashley was throwing down some fireballs.

It was so fun. I'm sad to say, Litha won. BUT I did find out that there is no such rule as a "Valiant push" when throwing down some nasty fireballs (also known as little red marbles). This one time my little finger slipped when trying to knock down the fireball. Litha  tried to pull that I didn't have another chance...and that it was in the rule book. BUT IT WASN'T. I just want to clarify that for any questions in the future. 

Also, SUMMER IS FINALLY HERE. My plants are growing and I am sweating like crazy. Yesterday I ran 1.5 miles, played soccer with my boy (our favorite activity), and then played some awesome volleyball until the wee hours of the night. THIS is what summer is all about. Sports and sun and food. Gosh I am so excited. Winter was too long. I am itching to play all day and all night.

My lil teensy weensy brother...at prom

IMG_3481bw, a photo by vjisenbarger on Flickr.

These two are so adorable and I love them. I was so excited to take pictures of them for their prom. They are too cute.