Serving others makes me HAPPY!

One of my favorite scriptures from this weeks reading is found in Mosiah 2: 17 it reads:

"And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

The part that I underlined is what I am going to focus on in this post. I love the opportunity to serve. I have had many neat experiences from doing so. 

I remember when I was in the sixth grade there was an older couple in our ward that lived in assisted living. My mother, being the perfect example of  service was the Sister's visiting teacher. My mom mentioned to the sister that she had daughters that would love to come help clean once a week. Mom came home from her visit and told us the great news. Only we didn't think that it was so great. Until mom told us that we would be paid. We jump all over it. Our first day on the job we were already thinking about what we were going to save up for. We got to the couples apartment and started working. We did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed. That was all we had to do and with 2 sometime 3 of us girls working together it was a breeze. Now was for our payment. The sister walked to her freezer and gave us each a Popsicle and thanked us for all we had done to make her day easier. I don't remember the look on my face when receiving the Popsicle. I knew that my shopping spree wasn't going to happen. We went home and told our mother that we didn't want to do this for Popsicle's. My mother with tears in her eyes taught me my first real lesson in serving others. My payment....blessings for seeing this elderly couple not having to do the work that was hard and sometimes painful. The next time we went over to their house we talked about what flavor we were going to choose. (Root-beer and Banana were my favorites!)

 

This happened in my neighborhood this week. What was so great about this tree falling was seeing neighbors instantly walking out to help each other get it out of the road. I don't think that it was more then an hour after it falling that it was all cleaned up and out of the way. Now just waiting for the maintenance guys to do their part.

Service has always been one of my favorite topics to talk about. I have seen it in my life for as long as I can remember. I have had it done for me since I was a kid. Seeing sister's help our family when my mom was so sick and not able to cook or clean and our dad working 2-3 jobs. We had great examples and I love being able to give back at every opportunity.
Our Savior Jesus Christ was the very best example of giving service. He healed people, he fed them, he taught them, he blessed them. Not only are we helping others, our brothers and sisters, we are helping our Father in Heaven by lifting the burdens and lightening their loads. Showing love, kindness, compassion, charity and so much more. It helps us each day to become more like Him and closer to Him.

When have you been served? How have you seen the blessings come from someone serving you?

Happy Thanksgiving

Compassion and Pumpkin Pie

During this semester in my Book of Mormon class we all had to choose a Christlike attribute that we would work on. Each week we set certain goals, find scriptures, pray, and work on this attribute. Become more Christlike. So my "Becoming Project" has been on Compassion. At first I started thinking that I needed to exercise more compassion toward my family, but as I started applying it more into my daily life I found that I should be showing Compassion everywhere. I found the Definition  of Compassion: to feel deep sympathy for another who is stricken with misfortune, accompanied by the desire to alleviate the suffering.

A lot of the synonyms stuck out to me: Warmth, Love, Tenderness, Mercy, Kindness, Caring, Humanity, Charity.  All of the Christlike attributes in one. So I have been working on all of them. Trying to serve others more, serve my family in a more loving way, AND also showing love and compassion to myself. I was questioned on this one..How does one show Compassion to self? Well, I feel that I can be hard on myself. If I don't have a  spotless house 24/7 (which I don't), and if I don't always have a perfect home-cooked meal (again lucky if we have 2-3 a week then leftovers on the other days), My kids aren't the perfect well-behaved and sparkling from head to toed kids. Trying to be the perfect mom in all things is not doable. So I need to take each day and live it to the fullest with my family. Learn and grow together and not fret the small stuff. 

Something that I did this last week was make pumpkin pies. Not the canned stuff either! Fresh from the pumpkin itself. My mother in law has this recipe that she got from an old restaurant cookbook. It just gives us the general idea and we adapt it along the way so I don't have a perfect recipe to share. But you could find some on the internet i'm sure. We start off by cleaning and roasting the pumpkins and then puree them in our blenders and then mix and cook away. We used 2 pumpkins this year and we were able to make 23 pumpkin pies!!!

It was an all day affair. To do something like this you need to be very committed!

Our family moved into the neighborhood that we are in almost two years ago. So I thought it would be nice to share with the neighbors. The First of November we went as a family each with a pie or 2 in hands and took them to each of our wonderful neighbors. (we delivered 8 out of the 23...My mother in law took the rest to other family members and her neighbors and friends as well)

During one of my assignments I mentioned this to my instructor and in his feedback he asked if I would show him compassion by explaining to him how it can be done....Well Bro Nixon, Here is proof it can be done! I will have to email you a recipe later...hope you have smell-a-vision because my house smelled yummy for a solid week after all the pies we made.

How are ways you show Compassion toward others?