Happy Easter/Feliz Pascua

What a wonderful Sabbath day! The weather was gorgeous (sun was shining, sky was blue, and there wasn't a wind)...just the way Easter weather should be. It felt like "renewal" to me.

I really felt the Spirit so strongly in Sacrament meeting where we had some fabulous Easter talks. And then in my Young Women's lesson, I ended with the last 5 minutes of the Church's video The Lamb of God...right from where Christ dies on the cross to the end where the tomb is empty. I bore my testimony that the tomb was empty, Jesus lives, and this is His Church. I thought it went well.

Then I rushed off to the Spanish branch where I was to give a talk. I chose to use Elder Holland's talk "None Were With Him" from last Sunday morning's General Conference session. It is a wonderful, thought-provoking talk about the Atonement and how the Savior was slowly abandoned by those around him, including when the Holy Spirit withdrew from Him. Elder Holland begs us not to abandon Him and tells us that we will not be left alone. Here is a link to the text, if you are interested in his talk:

http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1032-27,00.html

I used that for the first half of my talk. For the second half, I used an article from the Liahona magazine that I had kept since the beginning of my mission. The article is called "The Light Never Moves" by Spencer J. Condie (now of the Seventy). It starts off explaining a psycological experiment where a light is turned on and off in a dark room. The light appears to move due to a scientific effect (the autokinetic effect), even though it really hasn't moved. I'll skip the details that are given in the article and just say that the conclusion drawn from this experiment is that, "As we associate with others whose opinions differ from our own, their judgments often influence how we view things, and we, in turn, influence their view of the world." I thought it was really fascinating. The link to the article is:

http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=399647f765adb010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1

I was pleased with how well the words flowed from my mouth...since I don't speak Spanish often, sometimes I have difficulty talking smoothly. But, for the most part, I don't think I sounded stilted and I think my accent was pretty decent. So I'm happy about that.

I'm not so happy about when I bore my testimony at the end...I hadn't written it out and I was having trouble finding the words I wanted and I was afraid I would make mistakes and wind up saying something wrong (like in John Groberg's story of talking about being an "outhouse" instead of a missionary... and my nephew in Brazil telling the story of the tortoise and the "poptart" instead of the story of the tortoise and the hare...or my missionary companion using the word for a part of the male anatomy instead of using the word for comb...). So I don't think my testimony was what I would have wished it to be.

But, all in all, I was glad for the opportunity and I hope the congregation got something out of it.

I rushed home after the meeting to work on Easter dinner...Glen had already put things in the oven for me, but I had a few last-minute details to take care of. I had invited a friend, Melissa, over to eat with us (the rest of her family is out of town). Now, Glen and I aren't the entertaining type...but it was really fun. Maybe it's because our kids are older now and it's less of a stress to have company that made it less frightening. We just may have to do that again real soon!