Devonotional

I watched the movie Julie and Julia tonight, which then prompted me to start cooking at 10pm. So now I'm waiting for some brownies (from a box, but I added a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter) to cook in the oven. I've sorted my recipe box (I don't have a place to put sandwich recipes!) and set lots of recipes aside to try the next few days. Mexican soup, chicken sorrento, orzo with dried cranberries, applesauce oatmeal muffins, and a page of ingredients to add to basic microwave popcorn. I can't wait to try all of these and many more recipes.

For my friends religion class they are conducting a survey. I have volunteered to answer a few questions to help her out. Missionary Opportunity!! Most likely it wont be, but I can still try to teach by the spirit. Here are the questions for her survey. 

1. How were you raised religiously?
2. What do you believe today?
3. How did you come to that belief?
4. Have you ever had an experience that you consider religious or spiritual? Please describe it.
5. What value does religion play on your daily life, or why do you feel that you do not need religious beliefs?

Where do I even begin? If I tried to explain my patriarchal blessing as an experience she would be utterly confused. And most people don't understand the value of the church. How does it play on my daily life? Well, let me begin with.... I am still being blown away by the things I learn in Institute classes, so trying to explain it to someone who really doesn't have a clue is nearly impossible. I'm getting better at teaching the basics because of helping the sister missionaries. A few weeks ago we had an Enrichment night with the elders and sisters. They asked us how we could improve in sharing the gospel, what we were most afraid of, and what has made it difficult in the past. "Follow the prophet" never seems to be good enough to the world's view of things. I have to try and explain the word of wisdom, which leads to the whole agency concept and somehow that leads to the atonement, which then leads to "more than one heaven" and then that leads to three hours of church, water and bread. In my Understanding Church Government class we read all the church policies, and I was amazed at 1.) how many there are, 2.) that some were more strict than I thought, or more lenient, and 3.) how easily they can all be tied back into the gospel and the plan of salvation. Trying to explain that there is a legitimate and very real reason for all those "rules" is a major challenge. So that was my long winded spiel about the religious survey. 

My friend wrote an interesting paragraph in his blog that I wanted to share. 

I also spent time with Google Translate and some Iranan blogs.  A friend of mine had once told me to get to know a country, read it's blogs. After hearing about Iran again in the news, I realized I knew absolutely nothing about the country. So I checked out some blogs. Some were pretty anti-establishment such as The Rotten Gods, and some were educational, The Land of Persia, and some were pretty normal Adventures of Mr. Behi (these are ones I found in English). Overall, I saw a country with certainly more pressing issues than ours, but in general, people lived a similar life. In one blog, a college student was venting his frustration that he hadn't got his essay's done yet. I can relate.