Elder Bednar's Visit to St. Petersburg.

This Wednesday, Elder Bednar visitted the Saints in St. Petersburg and held a special fireside for them. It was so neat! I got to shake his hand! I'd just like to summarize his message for all those who may never get to hear it. I will also insert my viewpoints on it:

First, to the Non-Members:

Elder Bednar: You may be wondering why our members and our missionaries care to share with you the message of the gospel. I can best explain this desire with a story of 2 of my sons. When my sons were about 3 and 4 years old, my wife and I were watching them at the window as they played outside. The youngest son of the two, fell and hurt his elbow. Upon seeing him to be not badly hurt, we just watched to see what the older son would do. The elder boy took the younger by the shoulder and herded him inside, where he scooted a chair to the sink. He washed the blood and dirt from the wound on the elbow, all the while calming the wails and tears of the brother. The elder then took a brand new tube of ointment from the cupboard, and squeezed nearly the entire tube onto the younger brother's arm, from wrist to shoulder (despite the wound being on only the elbow). The elder then proceeded to put nearly an entire box of band-aids on the younger, again, from wrist to shoulder. After all was finished, the two boys happily went outside to play again, the younger carrying the rest of the unused ointment and band-aids with him. The younger then met his little friends and began to grease up and bandage their unhurt elbows, just as he had seen his older brother do. This little story illustrated to my wife and I exactly why we, as members of the Church, choose to share the gospel. We have had an elder brother, our Savior Jesus Christ, administer to our wounds and attend to our needs. And so we have decided to share the same message of comfort and the same remedy for life's pains. We know this is the true gospel, and want to share the joy of it with everyone.

To the Members of the Church

Elder Bednar: I believe there is one topic that many members of the Church do not understand regarding the Atonement of Jesus Christ. To Atonement entails two things: the repentance of sins, and the strengthening endure and to do what is right. The latter is what we often fail to understand. The Atonement can help give us the strength to get through our trials. Perhaps we are an ailing elderly person who prays for the pain to be lifted; despite the many fervent prayers, sometimes, the pain remains. What is then to be prayed for, is the strength to live through it. Nephi, a prophet of the Book of Mormon, was often put to the test by his 2 elder brothers, Laman and Lemuel. At one time, the brothers had Nephi bound. Nephi prayed to God not that God would send someone to strike his brothers, or release him from his bondage, but that Nephi himself would have the strength the break the bands. This is Bednar opinion, but I do not believe the ropes were magically weaker or just fell off of his wrists. I believe the power of the Atonement gave Nephi the strength to burst the bands that were about his wrists. God did not send an angel, or did not miraculously remove the bands himself, but gave Nephi the power to burst them. There is another story in which the people of Alma were in bondage by the Amalekites (?). Heavy burdens were put on their backs. In Mosiah 24:15 it says "...the Lord did strengthen them that they may bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit patiently and cheerfully to all the will of the Lord." The burden was not different, but the people were different. The Lord strengthened them that they could become stronger than normal and bear their burdens with ease. Our burdens may be trials, illness, or temptations. We cannot ask for a temptation or weakness to be removed, but we can ask that the Lord give us strength to overcome the temptation, and He will do it. Our prayers should be like that of the Savior's: "God, let this cup pass from me, but not as my will, but thine be done. Please give me the strength to bear it." And although the trial will still be there, we will be able to cheerfully overcome and endure.
There is another principle that goes hand in hand with this. It is that of agency. In our lives, we may act or we may be acted upon. If we pray that God will send someone to fix our problems, to help dig us out, then we are asking God to act upon us and we are not appropriately using our agency. But if we instead pray that God will sustain us and give us strength, then we are using our agency and choosing instead to act. This is how it should be done. We can be strengthened through our trials and temptations. We will be strengthened, if we just ask. Now, there are some of you who may be thinking: "This is all true for the elderly woman sick with age, or the young single adult in school, or the young married mother, but it couldn't work for me." I swear to you, to everyone who hears these words, this is for you. And if you think it's not, you are wrong. I promise that the power of the Atonement can strengthen ALL who seek it and ALL who need it. And everyone in this world does.

Just Some Thoughts From Coley:

First of all, I hope I remembered his talk correctly. That was the basic gist of it, although I'm positive he said it all more eloquently. I would just like to add what I believe this strengthening power is. At times, I have mistakenly had the attitude: The whole world is falling apart, what does it matter if the Church is true or not? But I have realized recently, that it is simply the exact opposite. There was a conference talk spoken some time ago with the title, "It's true, isn't it? Then what else matters." And that's the way it is. The Church is true. So what else matters?

I was also listening to the talk Elder Uchtdorf gave this October General Conference. He said, "But how does [the world's problems] affect us as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Are we living with apprehension, fear, and worry? Or have we, amidst all of our challenges, not reason to rejoice? ...Wherever you live on this earth and whatever your life’s situation may be, I testify to you that the gospel of Jesus Christ has the divine power to lift you to great heights from what appears at times to be an unbearable burden or weakness. The Lord knows your circumstances and your challenges. He said to Paul and to all of us, 'My grace is sufficient for thee.' And like Paul we can answer: 'My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.''' This goes along with Elder Bednar, that the gospel of Jesus Christ can lift us out of our weaknesses and trials. But is life simply just being strong and miserably bearing our problems? Elder Uchtdorf goes on to say, "...Therefore, enduring to the end is not just a matter of passively tolerating life’s difficult circumstances or 'hanging in there.' Ours is an active religion, helping God’s children along the strait and narrow path to develop their full potential during this life and return to Him one day. Viewed from this perspective, enduring to the end is exalting and glorious, not grim and gloomy. This is a joyful religion, one of hope, strength, and deliverance... there will be days and nights when you feel overwhelmed, when your hearts are heavy and your heads hang down. Then, please remember, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, is the Head of this Church. It is His gospel. He wants you to succeed. He gave His life for just this purpose. He is the Son of the living God.

"He has promised: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11:28).

"'For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee' (3 Nephi 22:10). 'I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer' (3 Nephi 22:8).

"My dear friends, the Savior heals the broken heart and binds up your wounds. Whatever your challenges may be, wherever you live on this earth, your faithful membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the divine powers of the gospel of Jesus Christ will bless you to endure joyfully to the end." So as I read this talk and listened to Elder Bednar, I learned something important. We have trials, yes. And I have spent so much time feeling sorry for myself because of my share of them. I have begged and pleaded with the Lord to remove the horrible pain of my trials. But I have forgotten that the Lord not only can strengthen me so that I will not be totally miserable, but He will lift me up so that I may be totally exultant, and may rejoice in His gospel. If we can just see how amazing His gospel is, and see things from "an elevated viewpoint", we can realize as Elder Uchtdorf said, that we have a big reason to rejoice. The Church is true, and we have that truth. That's a very big reason to not only hang in there while we bear the tumult of our storms of trials, but to also have total joy and happiness and rejoice in the life we live. Life is for joy, not misery. We can be happy as we endure. That's pretty cool to me.

9 Crazy Days on an ILP Vacation

Day 1 -"Random Riga"
On Friday night, Jenna, Trisha, Audrey and I hopped on the express train to Riga, Latvia. The 3 other girls, Shelley (aka "Pasha"), Meghan and Sarah had left 2 days earlier for Tallinn, Estonia and would meet us sometime in Latvia the next day. So the four of us boarded our train, super excited for the vacation ahead of us. The train wasn't a sleeping train, but we pulled down some fold up beds from the wall anyway and slept on them even though they were nasty and didn't have sheets. There wasn't enough of these beds so I slept on a hard shelf way on the top of our coupe. When we hit border control, some scary looking military guards searched the train and checked our passports. When we hit Riga, Latvia's capital city, we pretty much looked like trash but were ready to hit the town. We found our hostel and moved our junk into our room which we shared with about 6 grissly-looking 40 year-old men. We kind of realized that a good looking Russian man is pretty hard to come by. But wow, in the Baltics, the men were HOT. Anyhow, we then sloshed through the puddles and pressed against icy rain to explore the sites:
Occupation Museum of Latvia - Pretty much every country that was a former Soviet state has a museum dedicated to the years they were occupied by the Russians (and for most of them, the Nazis as well). Latvia had it pretty bad; from what I could tell in the museum, Latvia was invaded by the Reds sometime around the late '30s or something. The Soviets were pretty brutal--slaughtering many people in bloody demonstrations. During the war the Nazis took over and tried to establish themselves as "saviors" to the Latvians from the horrible Russians. They dug up the mass graves from the Commie demonstrations and blamed everything bad on the Soviets and of course, the Jews. The Nazis went nuts with the Jews there and the Jewish population in Latvia went from something like 75,000 to 1,000 by the end of the war. INSANE. The Soviets took over Latvia again and set up alot of internment camps. I missed alot of the details and stuff, but it was REALLY interesting.
Academy of Sociology (...or something) - We saw this cool tall building from the train station so we wandered into it for curiousity's sake. We were stopped by this crazy old guy with a ruffled beard and a wandering eye. We asked him to take us to the top of the building and he looked shiftily around and charged us each 1 Lat (about $2). We took some awesome pictures at the top, but we still were kind of suspicious of our strange old man friend. I tried to take his picture, but he refused and instead offered to take our pictures. But the guy didn't turn the camera around and took a picture of his own face. It was hilarious! He was pretty confused at why it flashed in HIS face, but I don't think he even knew what happened.
Cathedrals - There were a bunch of cathedrals in the area, but I was pretty cathedraled out, so we didn't really see any of them.

That night we bought tickets to the ballet "Cinderella". We were so excited! We sat down in a really pretty opera house, expecting a beautiful ballet, when the curtain rises and out dance about 12 Victoria's Secret strippers. We were pretty confused. It turned out it was a creepy modern twist on Cinderella, where the janitor girl at a whore house gets turned unknowingly into a prostitute when a rich man dresses her up and takes her to his son's birthday party (the "ball", I guess). It was weird. By intermission, Cinderella and "Prince Charming" had pretty much done it all (ballet-style) on stage. Needless to say we ran out of there at intermission.

Day 2
The other 3 girls came to our hostel that morning, shooting lazer beams out their eyes at us as we awkwardly ate our breakfast. Unfortunately, the day before we had missed meeting up with them at the ferry station because we were late in finding our hostel. They weren't happy with us. But we all enjoyed a trip to yet another cathedral. We parted soon after, since the four of us were moving on to Stockholm while the other 3 enjoyed more time in Riga. Our ferry ride was fantastic! Our room was nice and the beds were comfortable. We were pretty much the only single adults on the boat, so we attracted basically every weirdo there. We spent some time in a lounge, listening to a live band and watching crazy drunk people dance. We tried our hand at karaoke too, but had to leave because some drunk man tried to sit next to Audrey but missed and landed in her lap. He kept asking where she was from, but she would just say "I don't know." As we were walking away from him, he kept yelling "how can you not know??" It was way funny.

Day 3 - "Silly Stockholm"
Stockholm is GORGEOUS!! I don't think I've ever seen a prettier, cleaner city with such nice, good people. At the same time, it is SO expensive!! It was almost $4 per metro ride. Nuts! We hadn't done or booked anything in advance but we ended up staying in a little hostel on a boat on the river. We wandered around Old Town for a bit, but everything we wanted to see was closed. I've noticed that Europe doesn't like to take Sundays, or Saturdays off, but Mondays. It's strange. So we just basically wandered for a long time. We ran into a group of ILP girls from the Moscow groups. They had gone with a Russian tour bus and pretty much hated their whole trip. Sad. But it was nice because they gave us their all day city transport pass. It got dark super early -around 4pm, so we just rode the metro for a while for fun. The metro there is SO nice! It's nuts, because people don't freak out a push on like hooligans in Russia. They just walk on calmly, and the conductor will stick his head out the window to make sure everyone is on before he shuts the door. People are calm and courteous and there is a seat for everyone. The metro is also so clean and rides as smooth as if it were gliding on butter. It was so nice! So we just rode on it forever for fun. We went to Drottningham Palace, where the royal family lives, in the outskirts of Stockholm. The palace is right up against and large gate, and Jenna was about to shimmy around the iron gate near the water when a guard came marching towards us. It was cool...Afterwards we went to the city center and saw "Stardust" in English in a theater. Such a cute movie!
Day 4 -
In our 12 bed dorm on the boat, there were us 4, and 8 big, broad, attractive Swedish men. I woke up to them in their panties, or towels, combing their hair or putting on deoderant. It was awkward...so I pretended to sleep. We laughed later that they had WAY better hygiene than we do. They were way nice and gave us a ticket for a free ride on the metro.
Day 4 was so fun! We made it a museum day and went to "museum island". We went to Skansen, a Swedish version of Colonial Williamsburg or This is the Place Pioneer Village. It's actually the very first open air museum in the world. It was cool...there were some old buildings and thingers with native Swedish animals in them. Like Rappuglas (owls) and Vargs (Wolves). It was fun. We watched this guy blow glass. After that we went to the Vasa museum. The Vasa was a ship that sunk in 1628 and then was raised from the bottom of the harbour in the 1960s. It was pretty cool. The ship was sunk because it was too top heavy and sunk in a minor squall when it was still in the harbour. About 35 people died on it, and some of the analyzed skulls were there. It was so cool! After the Vasa we went to the Nobel museum, which had information about all the Nobel Prize winners. It was so inspiring!! There was a room with a little theater that would continuosly play 5 minute documentaries of different Nobel winners. There were ones like the Dalai Llama, Prakofiev, Einstien, and the guy who discovered the double helix. It was so inspiring. I bought a little photo of and fridge magnet with a quote by the Dalai Llama from the gift shop. The four of us, then later the other three, decided we would all someday share the Nobel Peace Prize. We decided that we would create an amazing organization in Europe and Africa helping refugees back into society. Pasha is the International Relations major, so she'll do the PR work, Raley and I will be the Psychologists for the counseling the refugees will need, Trisha will oversee the Health part, Jenna will research the areas, Meghan will do the Advertising and fundraising, Audrey and Sarah will oversee the education. These assignments were all based on our majors and life-goals. The funny thing is, is that I think some of the girls laugh about it, but some of us are dead serious. After the museum we ate Swedish meatballs at a little cafe for dinner. That night we showed up to the temple guesthouse and met the other 3 girls there.
Day 5-
The next morning we did baptisms for the dead. We got to meet the temple presidency. It was pretty neat. I don't think they get much traffic in the temple because they were pretty happy to see us. The font water was incredibly shallow and cold, but it was cool to hear the baptism and confirmation prayers in Norwegian and Swedish. It was a good day. I think at that point I started to feel the burn to go on a mission again.
After the temple, we all took a tour of the Royal Palace where we developed crushes on the good-looking prince, Karl Phillip. The palace was neato. I pretty much wanted to marry Karl Phillip and live in it. We got separated from eachother and the four of us got totally lost. We barely made it to the ferry in time to meet the other girls. But it worked out. The ferry was HUGE this time! We messed around in an empty bar/dance hall on the ferry for a while then just explored. When we came back to the dance hall, there was a live band playing and the dance floor had a little huddle of pre-teens. Despite the many onlooking eyes of our elders, we went out and danced crazy. When they played Shania Twain we did a line dance, which got a good applause. We went to do karaoke afterwards, which was a big mistake. The room was smokey and nasty and we were accosted by the weirdest kid in the whole world. He looked exactly like the giraffe on Madagascar, so we called him "the Giraffe-Man". He kept coming up and saying how much he liked making friends and how he was in a band and kept playing an air-guitar. He would put his hand on our backs then let it graze out butts as he took it off. Made us mad...he was weird. Later we were approached by almost an entire Swedish rowing team (yes, rowing, as in those long snooty boats with oars) begging us to teach them the line dance they saw us do. These guys were nice enough--very respectful, but smelled strongly of beer. They all wore little neckties and blazers with crests sewn on them. I was cornered by a bald rower with a dislocated shoulder for about 15 minutes while the other girls karaoked. Bah. We taught them the dance, then performed it with them in the dance hall. But then they wouldn't let us be and the Giraffe Man was following too, so we just went to bed.
Day 6- "Tasty Turku"
By the time day 6 rolled around, we were sick to death of museums and monuments. So even though there was a castle in Turku, Finland, we just crashed in a Hesburger for about 3 hours. Then we all splurged and bought over-priced clothes in the H&M. Then we walked around a bit and found ANOTHER H&M and bought MORE clothes. For lunch we had Subway and nearly peed our pants when we found Dr. Pepper. So we toasted our Dr. Pepper and swilled. After the meal we found this cute little shop stuffed full of the most gorgeous formal dresses in the world. So we all tried on a dress. I found the most gorgeous, perfectly fitting dress ever. I would have bought it for a wedding dress had I a wedding in site. It was stunning. It fit like a glove too. After that we went to the hostel and had eggs and french toast. So yeah, we basically spent the whole time in Turku eating and shopping.
Day 7 - "Fishy Finland" or "Horrible Helsinki" or "Hell-sucki"
I'm pretty sure Helsinki is an amazing place, but when our bus arrived there on day 7, it was not all that special to us. It was FREEZING, and blowing icy slush in our faces. We wandered, shopped at H&M AGAIN, ate ice cream and chatted in the mall. That night we stayed in a hostel that was part of the Olympic Stadium. It was pretty neat. We shared the room with a pretty scary lady though. In the morning she freaked out at us and slammed the doors and was mumbling and yelling at us. I walked in on her naked in the shower 3 times on accident, haha. She was freaky. We realized how careful we are here in Europe about us being American. One of the girls in the group cluelessly said the word "jihad" several times loudly in the lounge area while an Arab man sat in the room and we nearly tackled her to the floor.
Day 8 -
We raced that morning to the temple but found that there was no room for us because our Central Branch from St. Petersburg was in there for their Young Single Adults temple trip. So we waited and slept in a waiting room for 2 hours. The baptisms were so cool. They were in Finnish, and it sounded so amazing! The confirmation prayer was so long! The Finland temple is beautiful. The temple staff were awesome and we were invited to spend the night in the guesthouse. We never paid because we got there too late that night and left too early to talk to the staff. So we left contact information so they could get a credit card from us. After the temple we went to H&M again...we're pathetic. We went to really lame museum then a grocery store. But we ran into a stroke of luck though! We were told that if we ran to the Stockmann shopping center at 9am we could buy expensive opera tickets for only 10 euros. But we went to the temple instead. I told the girls that we'd probably be blessed for not going for the tickets and going to the temple instead. So by the time we got to Stockmanns to buy the tickets, even though it was 1:30pm, by a miracle we got front room $100 tickets for only $15. It was awesome! So that night we saw the opera "Carmen". It was AMAZING!!! What an incredibly performance!! It was the best ending to our trip. You have to look on youtube or something becuase doubtless you know at least 2 songs from the opera. It was soooo neat. Sitting on the front row, WOW!
Day 9 - Goodbye Vacation
Early that morning we booked it to the bus station, stalked up on Dr. Pepper and went home. It was so sad to go from beautiful Baltic and Scandinavian bliss to dirty, dismal Russia. We didn't feel ready to return to bitter, angry people. But when we drove through St. Petersburg something awoke in us and we remembered just how lucky we were and how beautiful this city is. It's so amazing! It had snowed while we were gone, so there was some pretty white all over and they had also decorated with lights and trees. Luckily for us, there was also a celebration waiting us. Zenit, the St. Petersburg soccer team, had won their last huge game and everyone was yelluing and waving soccer scarves all over. The metro was full of singing, chanting teenage boys. It was so fun! And that's the end. I'm going to sleep now.