Repetition

Two weeks ago I taught primary for the first time in probably 10 years--so probably before the 9-10 year olds I was teaching were born. But it was fun. I don't know if I had enough material for the time, or if I didn't prepare well enough, but it turned out okay. They were pretty good kids.

The lesson was interesting--included some stories I didn't remember or may not have heard before. It was about the Saints moving to Ohio because of the prayers of Brother Whitney. This story was familiar--when Joseph arrived in Kirtland, he went into Brother Newel Whitney's story and said to him: "Newel K. Whitney! Thou art the man! . . . I am Joseph the Prophet. . . . You've prayed me here; now what do you want of me?"

So why did the Lord choose to answer Bro. Whitney's prayers by bringing the prophet to him? Well, as the lesson went on, it was because the saints in Ohio, mostly recent converts from missionary efforts, needed some training in the running and operations of the Church, so they needed the prophet to teach them. One of the object lessons that I chose to use for this was to bring some yarn and needles to the class, hand it to a child and tell them to knit something for me. So I handed it to the poor 9-year-old boy and told him to knit me a scarf. He looked at the yarn and needles a little dumbstruck, as expected. So I took it back. Yes, even though you know that yarn and needles can knit a scarf, doesn't mean you know how to do it. So the Saints, though converted, didn't necessarily know how to make everything work.

King of cool story, and neat object lesson. The boys weren't actually too interested in learning to knit, but in the spare time we had after the lesson materials were covered, I showed the four girls how to knit, and they generally really enjoyed it.

Then, last week, I taught Relief Society, as it was my Sunday to do so. This lesson was about a different migration of the Saints, from Missouri to Illinois, because of persecution. The title of it was "Responding to Persecution with Faith and Courage." The last lesson I taught in R.S., the month previous was, "Valiant in the Cause of Christ" and the lesson the previous week, when I was in primary, had been, ""God Shall Be with You Forever and Ever": The Prophet in Liberty Jail." Basically, slightly different approaches, but all three lessons about handling persecution.

I do appreciate lessons about that. It's always helpful to remember, and it did come at an interesting time in my life, as well. I also think, in general, I have some fears about missionary work because of some slight persecution I've felt when trying before--nothing as serious as the early saints in this dispensation experienced, but some negativity and verbal abuse anyway. So, being reminded that it's not my fault--that I'm not doing something wrong and even will be blessed for my righteous efforts to promote the truth, does help give me faith and courage and help me to be valiant.

Still, although it's a good topic, I was still struggling with how to make this lesson unique from the previous two. Sure, the historical pieces were different and the quotes were different, but I wasn't sure how to extract the significant points from the quotes in such a way as to make the lesson feel different. And particulary when it came to class participation, I was having a hard time coming up with questions for discussion that would yield fresh comments from those already shared last month.

Well, I gave the lesson, and we had some participation, and some of it was indeed the same stories from class members that they shared last month. Fortunately, they didn't seem to mind. And there were some new ones too, which was nice.

So moving on. Yesterday was a stake activity, a picnic with some outdoor games, mostly for kids, though there was a "Pace N Race"--walking race, for everyone. I didn't do that, mostly hung out with the other families from my ward who came. One of those families was a family that I'd babysat for back in December, and from which one of their little girls had been in my primary class. She had seemed particularly interested in learning to knit because she was into other yarn crafts. So I asked if she'd done any more knitting. She said she'd tried to do it again, but it was hard to remember everything so it came apart. That was actually really understandable because, since there were four girls and not a lot of time, none of them got a lot of one-on-one time to engrain the lessons, and I explained that to her, understanding.

While I was in the temple later yesterday afternoon, watching the same video I've seen hundreds of times, since I've been endowed since 1995 and, with the exception of my mission, been to the temple pretty much monthly at least since then. Of course, sometimes I don't do an endowment when I go, but anyway--I've still seen it a lot. Other people have seen it more, however, and yet for them as for me (most of the time), I still feel the Spirit and am glad to do it again and again. I even learn new things a lot of the time. But as I was sitting there yesterday, remembering what I'd told my little would-be-knitter and the lesson that prompted my teaching her to knit in the first place, and my frustration about teaching a similar lesson in R.S., things started to come together. We're preparing to be gods. We know it can be done because God has told us so, but we don't know how to do it, so we need lessons, and yes, we need the same lesson over and over, hundreds of times, particularly with a bit of one-on-one time. And sometimes, it's even better if those lessons are close together because they sink in a little better that way. So, yes, I'm glad I had a little of that one-on-one time as I feel when preparing a lesson, as well as some group time, with the class.

Thesis Complete!

Let's see, after how many years? It's kind of an interesting story, so I'll tell it to you, even if I have before. I mean, some of it is interesting, and some might bore you, but I'll write it anyway for history's sake:

Having had wonderful experiences at Monticello apartments just off BYU campus, during my undergraduate years, I had some "meeting scenarios" in my head--some romantic, some more humorous and some even awkward, I guess, for many years--probably since I lived there. Some of these were scenarios that I hoped would work for me, to be "my story." Some were real, some imaginary and would make good stories. But obviously, none of the real ones ever amounted to anything, they just stuck in my head as beginnings only.

Well, driving home from work one fall evening in 2005, after my first summer at Hollins, I was thinking about what I could write about, knowing that I needed to start whetting my whistle to creative writing again, I had an internal conversation that went something like this: "No! I will not write a romance novel. I have not had any success in romance. I don't think I have enough experience to capture romance successfully." I think things like that were repeated to myself several times, for effect. But as I pulled up in front of my house, I finally told myself, "Maybe I'm having these thoughts because the Spirit is prompting me. I don't know, but fine, I'll try writing a romance novel." So I wrote a few pages. Then stopped.

Those few pages sat in my computer untouched after that night --until the following summer. In my first creative writing class at Hollins, the professor, Hillary Homzie, assigned us to bring 10 pages to class every week. Well, I was going to write picture books, so I brought a few attempts of that type. But it just wasn't flowing like I'd hoped. So on the third or fourth week, I think, of the 6 weeks, I was scouring my computer for ideas and things I could work on and happened upon those few pages. What the heck, I told myself, what can it hurt? I flushed those few out into 10 pages, thinking that would be that, and I'd try something else for the rest of the time.

Well, lo and behold, my peers and my professor actually liked it. I mean, it needed a lot of work. I'm not sure anything remains of those first few pages, actually--which I think I have written about before. But anyway, the concept was interesting to them--even though none of them were members of the Church and this was a story clearly about members in the height and depth of our own culture.

So I wrote ten more for the next week, and ten more for the following week. And before I knew it, I had motivated myself to keep writing during the normal year, away from Hollins, so that by the time I returned the following summer, I had over 100 pages of working text. I'm not remembering well all of the sequences of events, but it had some work in the motivation of my choosing to switch from the MA to the MFA, although I didn't know for sure that this would be my thesis. I wasn't sure it was "young" enough for children's literature, nor that I could successfully finish it.

Well, I had the same professor again for my creative writing seminar that summer, and this time, because it was a more advanced class, we had to write 20 pages per week. I was kind of set, with those 100 pages. Actually, of course, what I'd written required reworking, and although we didn't bring in rewrites through the term, the suggestions for changes based on class discussions did translate into changes into the following pages as well as the pages discussed. And for six weeks, I needed also the last 20 pages, which might have come in the middle. In short, I made progress.

At the same time, however, I had an idea for a much younger book, about a duck with some magic, and a little boy. It flowed out pretty well and I submitted it piece by piece for my other class that term. One of my fellow students was in both classes and she much preferred Dave the Duck. I liked it too. But I also knew it would be shorter, so I'd have to come up with additional stories to get it to thesis length. But it was definitely under the rubric of "children's" literature. So, I talked to Hillary about it, showing her that manuscript, and her opinion was very firm that my BYU story was the better fit for the thesis. Wow. So there you have it! I registered it with her as my advisor shortly after that.

Then continued working at it for the next several months and finally mailed a complete ms to her in the late winter/early spring of 08. She had it back to me with lots of revision suggestions just in time for me to work on it at Hollins last summer, then I mailed it back to her again by September, a deadline she'd given me, which was actually really good for me, to push me. She had a few more suggestions, but otherwise said she trusted me to make the changes and said it was good to go!

And that was the easy part. Well, not entirely. But to some extent. It was definitely not over though.

When I started at Hollins, students in their last term had to take a comprehensive exam, so you had to buy all of these books in case there might be questions involving them, covering the major critical approaches and significant books in the history of children's literature. So I had bought many of them, but then last year they got rid of the comps and replaced it with an essay. Those who had been in the program for a couple years, like myself, were given the option of still doing the comps. But having time to look over what I write and with it only being 10-15 pages, I thought it not a huge deal to write a paper comparing my book to others in the field.

Still, it was a little tricky, particularly since I was not all that familiar with other LDS works. I mean, I knew some, and I regretted knowing more than those that I liked. But it was a good opportunity for me to familiarize myself with the genre, so over the past year I bought a few books (I think I read up to 10? t's still not a huge genre--somewhere around there) and eventually pumped out a first draft and emailed it to my second reader by November 30.

I didn't get it back until February, which was a little disheartening, and discouraging, particularly since the comments weren't making a whole lot of sense to me. I discussed them a bit with the reader and eventually found that an entirely LDS approach would probably work better than what I had done, so almost completely re-wrote and submitted near the end of March.

Well, he liked this version much better, though he still had a few reservations, but he finally said if my director accepted it, he'd be fine. Well, Hillary said it was fine with her, so by mid-April, just a month before "graduation" I'm officially good to go! What a relief.

April Birthdays

I have been very negligent about acknowledging my siblings with April birthdays. David's was the 5th and Susie Q (no longer Q, actually) had hers the 16th.

I'll start with David, since he's older and his birthday was first. David is my one and only big brother. At only a few years older than me, when we were growing up, we had an interesting love-hate relationship. Sometimes I idolized him, and sometimes I fought with him. Maybe I fought with him because he didn't (and who could?) live up to my idol standards. But time and prayers have worn away the scars and now I think he's a great man. Some of my favorite memories with David include some nice gifts he made for me at Christmas exchanges. One was a little wagon that I kept on my dresser until it fell into complete direpair, and the other was a doll's bed for a baby doll I coveted and got for Christmas maybe the same year, maybe the year before. I still have that bed, though it might be at my parents' house. Another fond memory would be driving to Greeley for some youth leadership meeting in his dinged up, old yellow truck. Greeley being about 20-30 miles away, across mostly bare open highway at that time (though there's been a lot built there since that time), we probably had the road pretty much to ourselves so he showed off for me by taking the truck faster than the speedometer could record. Probably not the best thing to be doing on our way to a Church thing, but I enjoyed laughing with him.

Now, he's a mature father of two baby girls and fathering two of his wife's children--all of them adorable. He loves hunting and fishing and pampering his dog, and weren't we surprised when he first told us about Sariah, shortly after they met, that she loves hunting too! It was a match made in heaven.

Now for Susie Q. She's kind of my middle child. I mean, not really, but since I'm third and she's 6th, she's in the middle of the five children younger than me. While I was growing up, she was just a kid, so I had fun babysitting her and passing on my hand-me-downs to her. But before too long, she seemed to catch up to me and we even worked at the same place for awhile, her just after high school, and me just after college. She was actually the one who got me the job, even, at Kids' Harbor. After that, she moved to Provo to go to college and a year or so after that, I returned to Provo, too, for a graduate program that I didn't finish, so we were adults there and hung out sometimes. We had some good memories there, making sock monkeys Mom gave us kits for so we could do something together, and she was good about remembering the holidays and giving me cute gifts.

After awhile there together, I moved out East, but she stayed there and got to know Mike, got married and now they're the proud parents of three cute little girls with a fourth on the way. But not only do they have children to tend, they're also now helping Mike's parents with some sheep farming! I love hearing about their adventures with the sheep and little girls on the farm on our myfamily site.

So, although I'm a little bit late, I hope you both had wonderful birthdays!
(Pictures coming soon)

Spring Pics

I finally used my camera for the purposes for which I had it kept in my car....
Tuesday and Wednesday I took walks around Old Town Alexandria during my lunch hour and was able to take some spring pics. Enjoy!