Richardson Report

July has been a tad bit crazy.  But oh-so-fun. First, I never introduced you all to Jaime from Spain.  He left yesterday.  He was awesome.  I don't know if we just got lucky or what, but his personality fit our family's personality so well.  With Jaime we had lots of teasing, lots of card games, and lots of rounds of golf.  It was pretty fun.  We will miss that kid.  Some of my favorite memories of him:  when I was dropping him off for a camping trip that he wasn't sure he wanted to go on I said, "well, at least it's a beautiful river to look at" and he looked at me with this incredulous face and said, "I'm fifteen!  I don't care how pretty a river is!" Or the time I found out he wasn't buckled up and slammed my brakes so I could scold him (we were just pulling into our neighborhood).  Couldn't have made a better object lesson if I had tried.  He flew into the seat in front of him and his face squished up hard against the headrest

I think when I read or hear those familiar verses in Alma 32 I somehow always correlated them with Moroni 3:4-5 where we are invited to find out for ourselves if the Gospel is true. This morning I read Alma 32:27 ..."awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise even a particle of faith, yea even if ye can no more than desire to believe , let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." I was thinking about the word experiment and what that means.  It doesn't mean solely praying to know if the Gospel is true, although that could certainly be a part of it.  I think it means our actions. Our choices of behavior.   Because Faith is a choice .  And so when we choose to go to church every Sunday, when we choose to dress modestly, when we choose to read our scriptures and listen to General Conference and try to be better - we are choosing to experiment, we are choosing to