Called to the Work

I've been called to be a Ward Missionary. That means that I get to go out and look for opportunities to teach the gospel in my area. It is interesting that such a calling is needed in the church. You would think that if everyone were doing their duty (including myself), that a ward missionary calling wouldn't be needed. We should all be looking for opportunities to teach the gospel in our own areas.

Indeed, any of us who have desires to serve God are called to the work. (See Doctrine and Covenants 4:3)

So that is the real barrier that prevents us all from receiving this calling: we must not have a true desire to serve God. Sad as it is, too many mundane things get in the way every day.

Even worthy goals prevent us from going out to talk to our neighbors, and some of those goals might even be more important. For example, teaching the gospel in my own home is a very worthy goal. If I'm not teaching and living the gospel in my own home, I won't have a large measure of the Spirit with me if I go out and try to teach the gospel to my neighbors. However, that could easily be used as an excuse for not going out to do the work. Many of the early brethren were called to leave their wives and families to go and preach the gospel abroad. Surely their families were blessed greatly because of their service. Teaching others is one of the most excellent ways to show our own families the importance the gospel has in our lives.

What other obstacles do we have from being called to the work? Anything in our lives that lessens our desire to serve God prevents us from receiving the call. And yet, many are called. Many do have a desire to serve God. Many have covenanted to serve God every day of their lives, even to give up their lives in the service of God, if necessary. The desire is there, the spirit is willing.

But the flesh is weak, few are chosen. What is it that those who are called to serve are being chosen for by the Lord? Simply to do that for which they have been called.

There has been a day of calling, but the time has come for a day of choosing; and let those be chosen that are worthy. (D&C 105:35)

It is our worthiness that determines whether we are chosen to serve:

Behold, thou art Joseph, and thou wast chosen to do the work of the Lord, but because of transgression, if thou art not aware thou wilt fall.

But remember, God is merciful; therefore, repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to the work; (D&C 3:9-10)

That is why many are called, but few are chosen (D&C 121:34). Our hearts are set too much upon the things of this world. We also have the tendency to aspire to the honors of men, rather than seek for the honor of God by giving the honor to Him. Those who are chosen have the desire to do God's will, not their own. How many times do we worry what others may think. Isn't that one of the biggest excuses that we come up with for not doing missionary work? We are afraid of man, when we should fear God.

What do we do to be able to overcome the tendency of the natural man? God is willing and waiting to help us. He wants to bless His children. What is the over-encompassing reason that we are commanded to build temples and receive the ordinances thereof and why do we receive the priesthood? Their purpose is one: to enable God's children to be blessed and be able to once again return to His presence.

Yea, verily I say unto you, I gave unto you a commandment that you should build a house, in the which house I design to endow those whom I have chosen with power from on high; D&C 95:8

The marvelous thing about the temple and the sealing power of the priesthood is that it confirms that God is no respecter of persons. He wants all of His children to have the opportunity to choose for themselves and be able to return to His presence. Indeed, He wants to bless His children with all that He has. Those of us whe are parents that love our children get a good glimpse into understanding the nature of this love.

What is meant by the sealing power of the priesthood? Whenever the priesthood has been given to man in its fulness, God has promised that "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" (Matt 18:18, Hel. 10:7, D&C 124:93, 132:46). The power is referred to in conjunction with the "keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:19).

The sealing power of the priesthood has been restored on earth so that all of God's children can receive the choice whether to accept His plan for them. If we choose to follow His will for us, He asks us to make covenants with Him that we will keep His commandments and that He will bless us. These covenants are made when priesthood ordinances are bestowed. Baptism has its associated covenants. Men who receive the priesthood make covenants as they receive it. The other ordinances of the temple (endowments and sealings) also have their associated covenants.

We must prepare ourselves to keep the covenants that we enter into. That is why only worthy members of the church who are keeping the commandments can attend the temple.

God would not be just if he allowed some children the ability to receive exaltation and didn't give the oportunity to others. Those who don't have the opportunity to make these covenants in their lifetime are given the opportunity to accept the ordinances that are performed for them vicariously. In this way, God is completely fair to all of His children. He ensures that all of us will have our agency to choose whether we will accept His will and enter into a covenant with Him to do His will and thereby be blessed to return to His presence and receive all that He has. Someone who dies without receiving the gospel can receive it in the post-mortal spirit world. Once their temple ordinances are performed, they can choose to accept them.

Vicarious ordinances are not something new. We all have had the greatest vicarious sacrifice of all performed for us by our saviour Jesus Christ. It is when we accept His sacrifice through baptism that we are allowed to enter into the path that returns to our Father's presence.

What greater cause is there for motivation to share the restored gospel? When we consider that we are sinners and that we could never hope to amount to anything without the atonement of Jesus Christ, and when we consider that our Father sacrificed His son and that Jesus gave his life freely for us because of their unconditional love for each one of us, you realize how much love and desire they have for all of us. Recognizing our own reliance on God for all that we have, and for every blessing that we may receive, causes us to feel empathy for our brothers and sisters. We cannot accept the mercy given to us without recognizing the need for us to extend mercy to all those around us.

When we learn and remember that God's plan and purpose for us as His children is to have us grow to become like Him, that his commandments are the path laid down to help us receive this joyful outcome, and that His greatest commandments are to love the Lord thy God above all else, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, we realize that it is through sharing the gospel with our brothers and sisters that we can receive the greatest joy, the greatest opportunity for growth, and the most blessings- in this life and into eternity. (See Matt. 22: 36-40, Moses 1:39).

I pray that we may have the desire to be called and live worthy to be chosen to do God's work. It is all about love.

Kallise is born!

Michelle had a baby girl this afternoon (April 11th).
She will be named Kallise.



Michelle was induced today around 9:00am and had her easiest labor out of the four.
Kallise was 20 and a half inches, and seven pounds one ounce.
She scored a perfect 10 on her two Apgar scores, which means that she appears to be a healthy little girl.
What is Apgar?

Kallise is a different spelling, but the same pronunciation for her Grandma Marie's maiden name, which in Germany was spelled Kallis, but was changed to Colles at Ellis Island.

If all goes well, Michelle and Kallise will be coming home on Thursday.
Ethan, Hailee and Jaron are happy to have a baby sister and Mom and Dad are glad things turned out so well.

Zelda freaks - on the SNES!

When I was a kid, I always wished that I had the cool toys that the neighbors had. I especially wished that I had an Atari, and then a Nintendo, and then a Super NES, but I had to just go over to their house and watch them play. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would get a turn playing something.

Soon after I got married, we bought a stereo, a Super NES and some other electronics for like $100 from a friend who goes through new technology like water in a sieve.
That same game system has lasted us 7 years and we haven't gotten anything 'better'.

We started out with only Donkey Kong Country, Toy Story and Animaniacs. The system came with DK Country. Our friend bought Toy Story, which is an OK game to play, but it seems like it was cobbled together quickly before the release of the movie by 3 different development teams and one guy stuck it together without music between levels and NO ending music. It just basically says "Thanks for Playing!" Kinda lame.

We have occasionally went out and got 'new' games, which are really used games that work just fine. They end up being anywhere between one dollar and 10 dollars. Compare that with the price you normally pay: $20 if you are lucky to $60 plus.

For Christmas, we got a few 'new' games, and I was excited to see that my wife had found "Zelda, A Link to the Past", since it is one of the best games of all time.

My son wasn't all that excited at first because he didn't know what it was like, but soon we found ourselves stuck in Zelda's world. I wanted to conquer the game as fast as I could, and so did my son. Since there are three available save game slots, we had three players: me, my son, and my wife.

I soon discovered that it takes forever to get through some of the secrets of the game unless you get help. It sucks away enough time to just play it already knowing what you are doing. I can't imagine playing the game and not having help available online. Instead of calling the help 'Cheats', we just call it help, because we don't want to promote the fact that cheating is OK. Getting help from others is an important thing to learn in life, though... especially if you are doing something that you aren't that good at, you can get it done better and more quickly if you have help.

Anyway, a few sites became my lifeline, especially GameSpy and RPG Classics; then I help the rest of the family through all the dungeons and secrets. My son caught on quick. He soon was thinking about Zelda day and night. We took a break to go to my brother's house in Idaho, and luckily no-one had a problem with doing something else for a while. I guess we weren't SO addicted to the game that we couldn't take a 3-day break.

Anyway, after around a month of playing, and in 89 tries, I finally won the game.



My son completed his game a day later in 131 games; my wife is still working on hers about once every other week, so she should be done in about a year.

The Sun Shines on the World

I just made up this little song for my daughter when she requested the song: sunbeam.

The sun shines down on all the world.
It shines upon each boy and girl.
They play and run and jump and sing,
Because the sun lights everything.

It goes so slowly through the sky,
While all the clouds go floating by.
The birds fly way up high because
The sun shines on the world.

Here is the music for it:
The first note in each line is below Do, the rest is above Do.

So Do So Fa So Do So Fa
So Do So Fa Re Do So Fa
La Re La So Mi Re La So
So Do So Fa Re Do So Fa

So Do So Fa Re Do So Fa
So Do So Fa Re Do So Fa
La Re La So Me Re La So
So Do So Fa So Do

The rhythm goes:
fast-slow fast-slow fast-slow fast-slow in 6/8 time... kind of like you might think of a slow heart-beat.
In other words an eighth note (as a pickup note) and then a dotted quarter note and then the same thing over and over again.

This music and lyrics are copyright 2006 Daniel Gibby. I just wrote it tonight and have published this blog tonight on the night that I wrote it (February 4th, 2006). I also have four witnesses that I just wrote it ad lib for my daughter so I can prove it.
Nevertheless, even if you don't give me credit, you can sing it to put your kids to bed whenever you want. It seemed to really do the trick tonight. I just don't want anyone making money off it unless they contact me.

As I sang it very slowly and did some hand actions to show the sun, kids, clouds and birds, the very simple melody and slow beauty of singing about things in a kid's world seemed to make my kids really think about the beautiful world and had a very calming effect. I wouldn't sing it any faster than two beats per second.

Hope you like it!

If you are wondering where you can improve...

I just received this from LDS-Gems this morning. It left a strong impression on me that there is so much more to do in our quest to help one another.

"Now, my brethren and sisters, the time has come for us to stand a little taller, to lift our eyes and stretch our minds to a greater comprehension and understanding of the grand millennial mission of this The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is a season to be strong. It is a time to move forward without hesitation, knowing well the meaning, the breadth, and the importance of our mission. It is a time to do what is right regardless of the consequences that might follow. It is a time to be found keeping the commandments. It is a season to reach out with kindness and love to those in distress and to those who are wandering in darkness and pain. It is a time to be considerate and good, decent and courteous toward one another in all of our relationships. In other words, to become more Christlike."

( Gordon B. Hinckley, "This Is the Work of the Master," Ensign, May 1995, 71)

If you have any question as to whether God's prophet has any motivation in mind but to do God's will and do his best to help out God's children, I strongly recommend you re-read President Hinckley's words again and again until you change your mind. You might also want to read some of President Hinckley's other quotes.

Cookie Cat in Heat after surgery!

You would think that after living mostly in our basement for 6 months that a cat would figure out everything there is about its environment. Well, don't be so sure!

Here is some fantastic and incredible news! About one month after my cat went through surgery to be spayed, she was still able to go into heat!

Yes, I know it is incredible, but it is 100% true... from a certain point of view.

I recently cleaned up all my Star Wars boxes in the basement and piled them up in a corner of our storage room. A few days later we heard some noises that we thought were coming from a neighbors house. It sounded like someone was banging something so my wife and I was curious to know what was going on.

I walked around various locations in the house looking out windows and couldn't see anything outside. I continued hearing the noise from time to time and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Then I ventured outside to see if I could hear it. I could hear it very faintly inside of the garage, and that didn't make as much sense to me. I went out on the back porch and I couldn't hear it anymore, so I figured the neighbors had stopped. I went back inside and asked Michelle if she had heard it while I was out there... and she said it had been loud!

OK. Something was inside the house. I had also been downstairs lately and called Cookie but I went down into the basement and heard some more noise, but she hadn't come to me. That didn't surprise me, she sometimes hides out in strange places and goes to sleep. But now that I realized the sound was from inside the house AND that I hadn't seen Cookie lately, I ran downstairs and started looking for ways that the cat might have gotten into the heat vents. I just couldn't find any possible way. It didn't make sense.

Sense or no sense, soon our cat was at one of the upstairs heating vents. We pulled the cover out and she just sat in there for a little while. We weren't sure if she was stuck or not. Michelle thought she didn't want to come out because of a screw sticking out the side that might hurt her if she came out. I felt down inside and figured she was just scared of coming out because we don't usually let her come upstairs, and sometimes when she sneaks past us through the door to the stairs, we chase her and catch her to put her back down. So I played like I wanted her to come out and she soon did. She was pretty dusty and had some sawdust on her. Looks like the vents haven't been cleaned since the house was built... well I guess one line of the vents has now!

I still couldn't figure out how Cookie got in the heat vent. There aren't any possible vents that are open, or even within reach that she could have gotten into in the basement. Our 2-year-old had been down there playing with the cat and I thought that maybe he had done something to put her in there... like by putting her through the furnace! However, he knows not to go in the furnace room, and the door is somewhat child-proof, and the cover to the furnace is not the easiest thing to open. I kind of ruled that out. I thought that maybe the cat had went down through one of the vents upstairs when it was loose.

After putting Cookie downstairs and going away for an hour, I came back and started to hear the noise again! OK. How in the world did she get in there? I ran downstairs into 'her' room (the storage/furnace room). I quickly made noises as if I was going to feed the cat. That usually gets her running. Soon I saw her head poking out up on a wall above my office which is next door. The kids and Michelle were upstairs trying to coax her to the vent again, while I was trying to yell to them that I had found her. Eventually, I got her down.

She had jumped up on the boxes I had moved there a few days before and then up into the wall. I still don't know why there is access into the heating vent from up in that wall. It sounds like a horrible waste of energy to be heating the inside of my walls. I'm guessing that the former owner of the house who finished the basement didn't quite get that part right. So yeah! More remodeling (and money) for me later.

At least there was also a bunch of odd sized wood pieces left over from the previous owner as well, and so I stuck them up in the wall to prevent access to a kitty. We haven't had any problems in the last 4 days since I did that.

So there you go - cats can still go into heat even after being spayed.

I wonder if the Force is with me...

Ultimate? Garage Shelving

This last weekend our family drove to Boise to help my brother install shelving in his garage. We made it up there with a pretty good gas mileage for our minivan of around 23 mpg. It took us around 5 hours to get there since we stopped to get lunch at Jake's over the top and again to use the bathrooms at some Chevron. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins over the weekend and we got to finally see my brother's new house.


The shelving project itself went fairly well. My brother just bought a table saw and was planning on using it to cut through the 12 and 15 inch wide shelves. Unfortunately, that width was too big for the small table without additional cutting aids that we didn't have or have time to make. Luckily, I had brought along my new Ryobi tools. I already had a 14.4 volt Ryobi drill since around 1999, and when I asked my wife for a power tool of some kind for my birthday last year, she went and bought me the 18V circular saw thinking that the same battery I had would be interchangeable. Since the circular saw doesn't come with a battery, I went to go buy one, but found that the battery was around $30. The saw had cost about $60. So that would have been $90 for just the saw and one battery. I decided instead to buy the cordless circular saw, drill and flashlight combo because it comes with two 18V batteries and was priced at $110. So for about $20 more, I would end up with an extra drill and an extra battery, plus a flashlight and a sander by rebate for free. Pretty good deal.

My brother had a cordless screwdriver, but not as heavy duty as my cordless drills and his battery died kind of quickly for how many screws we needed to put in. It was great that I had two 18V batteries, plus my other 14.4V drill. That meant we could both have a good drill for driving screws and drilling pre-sink holes when needed. Plus we ended up cutting almost all the wood with my circular saw.

The project took us half of Saturday and most of Monday. Now he has a 6' shelf around his whole garage, plus 3', 4.5', and 7.5' shelves in certain spots and a 9' shelf in the back. He bought good brackets to mount to the wall that we could space every other stud (32") and they should hold a weight of 750 pounds for each pair. I'd say he could hang his cars from the shelves and they would just about hold.

We did pull ups from them and sat the kids on top to prove to ourselves that we are studs... I mean to prove that we screwed the shelves into the wall's studs.
I'll try and get a picture of that from my brother...

Car problems in a blizzard
Our only problem was that as we drove home through somewhat treacherous snow on Tuesday morning I noticed that the gas pedal was suddenly not doing anything, and intermitently the check engine light would come on. So I pulled the car over and opened the hood (the wind was terribly cold), and noticed that the water in the car was very low. I thought that maybe the air was cold enough to make the car not overheat, but that the water being low had caused some sort of computer in the car to trigger the car to not accelerate so that I wouldn't burn up some component. It was a guess, but not a good one. After a few more minutes, I got the car started again, and it worked intermitently again, but I was only able to get up to about 40 mph on a 75 mph freeway. I drove about three miles with my flashers on at the side of the road and then the check engine light came on steady. That's when we decided to not try to go on. We were in the middle of no-where. We were about 40 miles from Burley, Idaho and about 50 or 60 miles from Tremonton, Utah. Those were the only places around that would have a car repair shop. We called information and after a few tries got a hold of a tow company to come and get us. The said they'd pick us up in about 45 minutes.

It was somewhat difficult to stay positive with the kids in the car, but having them there made it a bit easier to put things in perspective and be glad that everything was OK, and that we were all together. The tow company was supposed to take us to the Dodge dealership and I was hoping they'd be able to fix our car by 5-o-clock so we could get home that night. We already figured we would miss our kid's singing lessons that day. The first lesson was at 4-o-clock, we still had a couple of hours to drive home and it was 2-o-clock when we broke down.

The tow truck didn't come in 45 minutes. I wondered why. Although it was snowy and windy, the road hadn't been very bad and I figured it should only take about 30 minutes to get to us. (After all, we had traveled the same 40 miles at 75 or 70mph and it didn't take too long.) An hour went by and Michelle called the company again. The driver said that he was almost to us, but he had stopped because there was an accident that happened right in front of him. Apparently the weather had gotten worse since we had stopped an hour before.

The tow truck driver finally got to us and we loaded all 5 of us into the dual bench cab and we started off. The weather was pretty bad and the driver had a problem with both of his windshield wipers because they kept getting covered by ice and not working. The driver would be talking on his radio or cellphone and roll down the window and thump the windshield wiper at the same time. I tried to stay calm and my wife did the same. I think the kids definitely were happy about going through this strange experience, although we had been happy that we would be home that day.

It turned out that it was 5:00 when we got to the repair shop. The Dodge dealership would have been closed by then, and so the guy took us to his own shop (they are probably cheaper anyway). They figured correctly that it was the fuel pump or fuel filter, but they would need to call around to get the parts. We waited an hour or so while someone took our car apart and since there was no-one around to take us to a hotel yet (the driver had left to pickup another of the many accidents that were happening because of the snow) we watched Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper with our kids. Then we watched part of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was glad to get out of the office when we finally were able to pack up some of our stuff onto another tow truck, but kind of wanted to see the rest of the movie.

We went to the Best Western and lugged all our luggage :P into the lobby and then found out we would have to repack it into the tow truck to go around to the other side of the complex for our room. At least we had a room. It was 8:00 at night, and we hadn't eaten dinner. The hotel restaurant was excellent, but more money than we would have hoped to pay for our next two or three meals.

The next morning we slept in a bit since we hadn't went to bed until past 10:00 and had breakfast about 10:00 or 11:00 and then checked out at noon. The hotel let us keep our stuff in a backroom since we had no car to put it in yet. Then we crossed the cold and windy streets and walked about a quarter mile to WalMart. Never have we spent so much time letting the kids look at all the toys and spending as much time as they wanted. We had hours to kill, and we spent about 2 and a half of them there. Michelle kicked back in the lawn chairs (which apparently are on a really good sale during the winter.) Finally we went back across the street to the hotel and waited around another 20 minutes or so for the tow truck to come pick us up.

$589 later we were on the road home. We got home just as it was getting dark (about 6:00) and I quickly shoveled the 2" of snow off the driveway that had fallen that day so that we could pull into the driveway. It has almost never felt so good to be home!

Sabrina, the Kid Jedi

Just two days later, my brother and family came down for my sister's surprise 18th birthday. My brother came over on Saturday and we ate dinner and played Scrabble. The kids also played and Ethan showed Sabrina how to play my Jedi Lightsaber game that plugs into the TV.
.

The funniest thing happened when Sabrina tried playing the game. She would try and hold the lightsaber with two hands with one hand on the handle and the other on the blade, and then just shake her hands like crazy. As she was doing that, and getting whooped in a training match by Anakin or Obi-Wan, she said: "I wonder if the Force is with me..." in her loud and animated way. That was probably the highlight of the evening since Scrabble is a pretty slow game. We were playing it to see if Michelle would be better at that sort of game where there is less strategy involved and more brain power. We all did well, but I ended up winning.