Alohar! 😁
Happy almost Temple Tuesday! 🥳
(by the time I finish this post, I think it actually will be Temple Tuesday 🙃).
Yes, I’m late for bed, but that’s because instead of stopping at mule Creek junction like I usually do, I drove all the way to a parking area on the side of I-25 just southeast of Douglas, Wyoming. That means I’ll only have just over an hour drive from where I am now to the temple in the morning. 😊
I think that’s going to be easier on my spine than spending 6 hours driving in one day. 🤞
Everyday is a good day: It’s just good in different ways, and today was mostly a comfortable blessing day. 😊
I got up, did my morning routine, and then I made some really great progress organizing my most precious spiritual experiences. It’s going to be really nice to have those better organized instead of in one huge document. I split out a pretty significant number of them back in 2020, but only those that seemed relevant to a particular part of my life.
This time I’m splitting them all out, which will make them easier to refer to and remember, I think?
Then I’m going to record myself reading each one, so I can ponder them along with all the scriptures and quotes, I’m pondering and memorizing.
I’ve had some recorded for years, and periodically, I record more, but this time, I’m going to record them all.
🥳
Had run out of soy milk yesterday and didn’t want to open up my bag of powdered soy milk yet, so I just grabbed myself a can of hot chili beans, some cheese out of the fridge, and melted the cheese onto the chili beans.
Not a typical breakfast, but it works. 🙃
Spend some time chatting with our neighbor Darren, mostly just getting to know him a bit. He’s been a godsend in multiple ways helping here on the homefront trying to get the house built and everything.
Super great guy. Heather and Hans have wonderful neighbors around them. 🥰
That’s one of the things that I’ve noticed living in the country, I tend to have even better neighbor relationships even with people living further apart. In my experience, living in the country, it’s almost like neighbors are family. I love that. 😊
After I finished talking to Darren, I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on the septic stuff. It took me a while to move the gravel pile that was in the way of working on cutting in the new septic hole, but I got that done.
Then I got back going on cutting the exploratory trench, hoping not to hit rock. I was hoping to bring the whole thing a fair bit closer to the house, and in one sense I did, and in another sense, I didn’t.
The septic is now further away from the house out front, and closer to the house on the side, so to speak; but the total distance from the house to the septic, by pipe, is about the same as it was with the other one.
I think the other trench was about 8 ft wide, 7 to 10 ft deep (depending on which end), and about 50 to 60 ft long, I think.
Big trench. 🙃
Anyway, unfortunately, I hit rock pretty quickly after beginning to extend the exploratory trench, and it wasn’t just a quick layer of rock: it was the thick stuff again, so I backed off, dug down, and found what I felt like was going to be a good digging point.
I began by widening the exploratory trench on one side, and then on the other side, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t hit rock. I had already verified that I could get far enough down to put the tank in, at least in the portion of the exploratory trench that got deep enough, but I didn’t know if the entire excavated area that needed to be excavated would be free from Rock, and before I begin filling in the previous three trench sections that made up that one massive excavation point, I wanted to make sure that I was pretty confident the new spot was going to work.
After a fair bit of digging, I was satisfied that it was going to work, not 100% confident but pretty satisfied, so I set to filling in that massive excavation site.
I spent the rest of the day feeling that in, digging new trench lines for the septic from the house out further in front, and then marking off the 45° angle toward the septic, and then beginning to dig that trench as well.
Hans got home about that time, so we swapped, he jumped on the little Kubota because that’s a better trenching machine for shallower trenches, and I headed back over to the big one that I was cutting in as the new site for the septic tank.
It was another long hard day of work. Fairly physically taxing at some points, but not anywhere near as much as Saturday was.
Probably worked on everything for another hour and a half or so after Hans got back from work, and then we went inside and ate dinner with Heather and Hans (lovely did 😋), and together listened to Born of God, an address given by LDS church president as Ezra Taft Benson in 1985 (my thought for the day comes from that address 😊).
Headed out about 8:30ish? First stop, Cascade Falls for a dip and bath, which was, as per usual, wonderful and refreshing.
I love that place. It’s just and perfect. Same temperature year-round. Not super super cold snow melt. Just a tad colder than you can stay in constantly, unless you’re moving around regularly like treading water or swimming, then you can stay in it pretty much constantly, but warm enough that you can probably stay in it for 20 or 30 minutes before the body starts to get a little cold.
I love it. 🥰
From there, I headed on down the road, chatting with Corey for just shy of a half an hour as I drove, got gas in Lusk, and spent all the rest of my driving time listening to Hymns on the LDS app. I love the new hymns that have been added as the church slowly creates a worldwide hymn book.
Beautiful day, capped off by a wonderful conversation with Cory and a truly joy-filled drive. Both Cory and I are experiencing an explosion of spiritual light and love and truth and joy, and it’s filling both our souls to overflowing.
I’m grateful. 🙏
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful to have been able to make so much progress today on the septic effort. I did all I dared to do with the big backhoe. I think most of the rest of what we’re going to do will be done with the little Kubota tractor, hopefully, at least. It sprung a leak today, I think because of a rusty hydraulic line. I guess we’ll see what happens.
- I’m grateful to be able to have this synergistic spiritual relationship with my friend Cory. Means so much to me. So rewarding and so filling, and just… wonderful. 🥰
- I’m grateful to be… happy. Truly happy. 😊 And that’s… actually an understatement: I’m… joyful. 😁 And it’s so nice!
- I’m grateful that Cory is able to record our conversations, since my phone won’t let me do it.
- I’m grateful to be able to go to the temple again. I’ve been watching the schedule, and somebody canceled their endowment session for tomorrow, so I get to do an endowment session for the first time in I think six yearsish? Yay!!! Tomorrow will be an endowment session, baptismal session, and an initiatory session. I might see if they need help with sealings just to round everything out. 🙃
- I’m grateful to be free of all of the things that used to occupy so much of my time! Sports news, TV and movies, YouTube Channels, etc. It’s so nice to be filled with Spiritual things and to hunger and thirst after them.
Success:
- Kind of a funny little one, but I had this strong craving for carbonation, generally soda of some kind, and I withstood it and just took a big long drink of water. #workingonselfdiscipline❤️
- I’ll do two today. 🙃 I did pretty well at just letting Little things go, not allowing anything to build up strong negative emotions, not even weak negative emotions. Pretty much if anything negative popped in, I managed to kick it back out in a hurry. 🥳
Improvement:
- Ummm… there’s gotta be something… 🙃
Well, I’m off to bed. Almost a quarter to 1:00 a.m. 😬
Thought of the Day:
“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature…”
“…May we be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, choose to follow Him, be changed for Him, captained by Him, consumed in Him, and born again.”
~ Ezra Taft Benson
💚
…Loves 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 