A great Sunday!

Today in Sacrament meeting our Bishop and his wife gave wonderful talks. Bonus: J&R were pretty well behaved so I heard almost everything!  :)

Holly's talk focused a lot on her experiences as a 17 year-old girl in June 1976 when the Teton Dam flooded southeastern Idaho. I have heard many other stories about what happened after this disaster, since my mom was still living at home then also in Blackfoot, ID, but Holly's perspective was really intriguing today for some reason. She talked about what she learned in the months of cleanup that followed the flooding: that people are more important than things, that hard work produces a sense of accomplishment even and maybe especially in the wake of tragedy, and that people coming together to serve others in need is a wonderful thing to witness. Holly likened this experience to how we can learn and grow as we raise our children and strengthen our families and it really was great.

The bishop talked about the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 in Montana (somehow I'd never heard of this before, whoops) and how most of the men sent to help stop a fire in the gulch died. Two men's lives were spared when they raced to the top of a ridge to out-run the fire as it spread, and the other man who survived created what is known as an escape fire that he encouraged others to jump into in a split-second decision. His life was spared when he chose to be in that ring of fire. There are all sorts of spiritual implications to go along with this story, but I liked that Bishop Harris talked about how we need to trust the Lord, or our spouse, or someone else when the time comes for us to jump into a trial of faith or some other kind of "fire" that requires us to do something that seems ineffective at the time but that will preserve us in the end.  I leaned over to Jeff and said, "Hey, I've got a Garth Brooks song in my head right now..."  So here's the chorus of the song:

Standing outside the fire 
Standing outside the fire 
Life is not tried, it is merely survived 
If you're standing outside the fire 

I just thought I'd put some of my thoughts here so I could remember what I learned/felt today as I listened to their talks.