San Francisco

For McKenzie's twelfth birthday, Brian and I gave her A Trip To San Francisco with just the three of us because we felt like it would solidify her impression of us being the Most Awesome. An impression I would like to have strengthened as she preps herself to enter into this land of teenagers who are too cool, ya know?  We hired a young couple to come stay in our house and take care of the boys under simple instructions: As long as everyone is happy and alive when we get back, anything goes.

Brian had to see a few patients at his clinic on Saturday morning before our plane took off, so McKenzie and I tagged along.  I know Brian so well... I know what kind of a doctor he is, I know how he treats his patients, I know how much they love him.  But seeing it?  That was a pretty cool thing.  McKenzie and I waited in the waiting room for the most part and listened to the patients tell us how much they loved Dr. Alder.  Of course you do, I wanted to to say.  He's Brian.  But I didn't say that because that would have been awkward and presumptuous.  So I just nodded along and agreed that he's a pretty great guy.

Also, his name is on the side of a building.  I'm pretty sure that makes him some kind of famous.

Brian rushed through the patients that morning so we wouldn't miss our flight, but he needn't have.  Turns out our plane was (and so we were) delayed for s.e.v.e.r.a.l. hours (3) before we finally got the idea to ask if we could fly out on a different plane. Yes?  Hm. Wish we had done that earlier...

But no biggie. We entertained ourselves by walking around to look at the butterflies hanging from the ceiling.  

Or, I should say McKenzie and I walked around... Brian suddenly crashed with a fever and spent the three hours sleeping on a bench.  Terrible timing, really.

Finally we were off!

We landed at the perfect time to stroll to our hotel through the sunset.  Poor Brian was about to die, so we stopped in at a CVS and bought some Tylenol.  He and McKenzie each had some because by this point, McKenzie had started to feel extra lethargic as well.  Terrible timing, really.

But she was happy to jump on the bed for a minute anyway.

McKenzie and I almost left Brian back in the hotel room to rest while we went in search of food, but at the last minute he decided he wanted to join us.  I was so impressed by his will to Be Present during this special vacation - even though he felt so awful.  During the dinner, McKenzie fell further into her own slump of sickness.  But, aside from feeling bad for the two of them, I had a delightful time.  The Caramel Pizza was the cutest little pizza place with delicious (to Brian and me) and disgusting (to McKenzie) wood fired pizza.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped in at Ghiradelli Square to get ourselves some chocolate.  Brian decided it would be best for him to walk back to the hotel instead of to stop in for chocolate, and after he left McKenzie and I had some great girl talks about being twelve and the situations she might find herself in.  We talked (a lot) about friends and (a little) about boys before Brian showed up again.  "It gets a little dark on the way back," he informed us in his feverish state.  "I didn't like the idea of you guys walking back alone."

Love him.

Hello to Brian and his double sized head!  

The next day Brian was feeling better and McKenzie was feeling worse. Darn.  So we took our our itinerary ideas and whittled them down into the things McKenzie most wanted to do.  Alcatraz topped the list (whew, because we had already spent a lot of money on those tickets!) so we spent most of the day slowly exploring The Rock.

It was fantastic.  I'd been a couple of times before, but taking McKenzie through it was the best.  She was so intrigued and such a sponge... at the end she even bought a book written by a woman who was a resident teenager on the island during one of the most famous escape attempts.  It was this that she wrote about and, as luck would have it, she was sitting in the bookstore signing copies.  We talked to her for a few minutes and had her sign Kenzie's book.

After the tour we sat and chilled for a while - talking (Brian and me), reading (Kenzie), and waiting for our name to be called for dinner.

The Fog Harbor Fish House had the most incredible crab sandwich I have ever eaten.  Which isn't actually saying much because I'd never actually eaten one before.

McKenzie had a few bites of her salad and was done.

But even so, it was such a beautiful setting and I was with such beautiful people and eating such a deliciously beautiful crab sandwich that all was well.

McKenzie reeeeeeeeeally enjoyed the bubbles in her soda.

After dinner we decided to hop on one of those double decker tour buses that I always make fun of.  It seemed like a good option that would allow Kenz to be able to sit, but still see the city.  So just like eager little tourists, we climbed up the stairs with our cameras in hand and found a spot on the top of the bus.

Turns out it was actually a terrible idea because it was freezing on top of the bus, and down inside the bus she felt nauseous and car sick.  So, darn.

But the bus did take us to this incredible spot where we could see the skyline and the bay bridge.  Beautiful.

And being on top of the bus was pretty cool as I got to see things from a vantage point that isn't all that common.

I hope McKenzie will have great memories of this vacation even though she was sick.  I think she'll remember Alcatraz, and I think she'll remember our crazy bus driver (who for some reason was obsessed with talking about nude people) who kept shouting "Happy Valentimmme's Day!" to everyone passing along on the street, and I think she'll remember the random 3D interactive adventure ride we did where our purpose was to shoot crazy people in cars (?), and I think she'll remember the hours of playing scum and nertz in our hotel room, and on the ferry to Alcatraz, and in airports, and I think she'll remember chocolate at Ghiradelli's, and that she does not care for wood fired pizza.

But I hope, most of all, that she remembers the happiness.  I hope she remembers the love.  I hope she remembers the beauty.

Twelve

My McKenzie.

I've embarrassed myself recently with how much I talk about this girl.  I can't help it though.  She's just so amazing.

So amazing.

The other night as Brian and I were getting ready for bed, the topic of McKenzie came floating into our conversations.  (Side note: Now that I know just how much parents talk to each other about their kids, I would be fascinated to be able to go back and listen to some of the conversations my own parents had about me throughout the years.  Wouldn't that be interesting?)

"I am so impressed with McKenzie lately," I said. "I don't even know how to put it into words, but... she's... she's... ..."

"She's a good kid," Brian helped.

"Well, yes... but it's more than that," I said, still searching.  "She's... an Amazing... Person."

Brian was silent for a couple of seconds, and then started nodding his head in agreement as the weight of that subtle change of words sunk into his heart.

She is.  She is an amazing person.  You know how when you hold an unlit firework in your hands and you can't believe that something so small can create such a big and powerful explosion?  That's how I feel about McKenzie.  She is packed with so much potential that I believe she really could do anything.  (Except maybe map her way through jungles and deserts, or towns and cities, or home from her piano lessons that are less than a mile away. She has a terrible sense of direction.)

She turned 12, you know.  Twelve years old.  It's a big age for us because this is the age that she steps from the children's organization of our church into the youth organization... this transition provides for me a measure of tangible evidence that she is, indeed, growing up and entering into the wonderful and confusing world of adolescence. For so many years she has been traveling along Child Road, learning along the way the whos and whats of life: who God is, what she is doing here, what kindness feels like, who she is, what sharing is, and caring is, and honesty, and faith, humility, service, punctuality, trust, love...

She has traveled well and has learned much.

But now she finds herself at a bend in her road, standing beneath an old road sign with one wooden stake pointing the direction from which she came and the other pointing the direction to which she faces. One marked CHILD, one marked YOUTH.  Along this new road she will find that her lessons are much more focused on the whys and hows of life: how to be faithful, why one must have charity, how to be compassionate, why she should strive for honesty and humility, how to deal with disappointments, why one should be hopeful and grateful and prayerful...

She will travel this one well, I'm sure, and will learn much.

She has a lot of helpers to lovingly guide her along.

The night before her birthday, she and Grandma snuggled up on the couch and Grandma told her all about the memories she had of McKenzie's first few hours and days and weeks and months of life.  It was a truly beautiful moment.

Brian and I, on the other hand, decided to go the fun route, and decorated the outside of her door once she was asleep.

The next morning (on the special day of February 4th) she came down to a table full of love... actually, she came down to two tables full of love. The one pictured above with love in the form of gifts and decorations, and the one in the dining room with love in the form of a delicious breakfast and seven happy people, pumped and prepped and ready to celebrate her life.

Once she was off to school, I set to work making her delicious mint ice cream and Oreo cake which took me a few hours what with the shopping and the crushing Oreos into fine crumbs and all.  But soon it was finished and ready to be put into the freezer.

Somehow this happened.  The entire blasted thing toppled from my hands and landed face first onto the mat in front of the freezer.  I almost cried - but then I remembered that it was just a cake and that I had nothing better to do than to spend a few hours re-buying all of the ingredients and making it all over again (ahem).  I took this picture to show my mother-in-law (who was feeling quite sick on the couch but was reading to Timothy anyway), and when she saw it she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Just put it all back in the pan. I won't tell anyone, you won't tell anyone, so no big deal," and when she saw the horrified look on my face added, "well, that's what I would do anyway, but if you'd like to make it all over again, you go right ahead."

Actually, I didn't want to make it all over again...

Everyone said the cake was delicious, and I would like to point out, completely unrelated, that no one got sick in the week after McKenzie's birthday.

The evening was lovely.

In the last few slivers of sunlight, Grandpa gave the boys a few basketball pointers,

and McKenzie closed them out reading.

We had a delicious birthday dinner of home grilled steak, baked potatoes and corn (McKenzie knows how to pick them), and then we sat down around the breakfast table to open presents.  We sat, and sat and sat, waiting for McKenzie who was behaving far too much like a teenager for my own liking:

Feet up in the air, talking on the phone.  Thankfully it was to her Aunt Michelle and Uncle Jake and not to her boyfriend (to be clear, she doesn't have a boyfriend), but still... feet up in the air?!

After talking to Michelle and Jake, she got another phone call from Uncle Brian.  So we waited some more.

Eventually she joined us and the unwrapping was a success.  She's getting good these days.

Brian and I gave her a trip to San Francisco, just the three of us.  One of her favorite gifts ifIdosaysomyself.

Following the presents, we all hopped into the van and drove to the gym where we watched her play a great game of basketball.

Some of our party was bored, but they were all good sports.

The following day we finished off her celebrations by inviting twelve girls over for pizza, minute to win it games, and cake.

It was nuts.

With the dining room full of girls (and Timothy), the boys were shoved to another area to eat their pizza.

Happy twelfth, beautiful!  

Skiing - it begins here

It's weird to me that I don't remember the first time I went skiing.  I must have been (a little bit) older than McKenzie, and I must have been with my dad...

I don't remember what it felt like the first time I snapped my boots into place, or what my first thoughts were about the sound that my skis made as they cut into the snow (which I love, by the way).  I don't remember the lessons or the direction that I undoubtedly received from my dad, and I don't remember picking myself up from that first fall.

I do remember some of those early feelings, though.  The thrill of riding a ski lift (wait... there's no seat belt on this thing?! Freeeeeeedom! Also, wait... I'm safe up here, right?), the anxiety of approaching the end of the ski lift (I can do this, I can do this, ski tips up, please don't roll down the hill, pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease...), the panic each time I reached the end of my zig and had to turn my skis downhill momentarily to get to my zag, the thrill of acceleration that came when I finally got brave enough to un-plow my stance and ride with my skis parallel to each other.

I loved remembering all those feelings as I took my own kids up on the slopes for their very first time last weekend.

"My only goal," I told a friend the night before we drove up the mountain, "is to leave the mountain with smiles on all the faces."

You see, something had possessed me into believing that I could take four kids, (none of whom had so much as breathed on a pair of skis before, all of whom had wildly different ages and temperaments), strap some slicked up pieces of plastic to their feet, place them on top of a mountain, and then get them all down without dying, without breaking, and without unhappy faces.

A goal that, I realized about an hour into the morning, was lofty and ambitious at best.  Impossible and spasm inducing at worst.  Just renting the skis and getting outside took monumental effort.  "Um," I said to Brian before we even touched our skis to the snow, "this is much harder than I thought it was going to be."

Most of the Hard came from the fact that Timothy was grumpy.  Grumpy three-year-olds have a super power of infecting everyone around them.

He had been so excited the previous day.  He'd followed at my heels happily chanting and singing an original song that he most likely would have titled Snow Party (if he were in to naming his original pieces) since the lyrics went, in a catchy rhythm, something like this: 'snow par-ty! snow par-ty! snow par-ty!' and I found myself singing along as I loaded the suitcases with coats and sweaters, wool socks and cotton gloves, hats and ski goggles, ski pants and coats, snow gloves and boots...

But now, listening to the fifth tantrum of the morning, it was apparent that all the excitement from the previous day had died.  Now he was just plain grumpy.  He was layered from head to toe in snow clothes designed to keep him warm, but they only served two purposes in his mind: to restrict his movement, and to make him sweaty and hot.

Of course, being hot is no fun for anyone but most of us have learned how to solve our own discomforts or, at least, to express them in coherent words. Timothy is getting better at this, let's be clear, but he'd forgotten all of those newly acquired skills and spent most of that first hour standing in line to purchase tickets, standing in line for skis, and wailing.

Actually, it was hot.

I was hot.

Even outside.

So, before we even snapped our boots into our skis, we started taking off layers.  Off with the hats, off with the goggles, off with the coats, off with the gloves (it was so warm I even skied some of the afternoon in just my short sleeved shirt tucked into my ski pants).  Once the layers were off, things started to improve... and once we were on our way up the Magic Carpet for the first time (a fantastic conveyor-belt-for-humans thing that took us just 20 feet up the smallest slope and let us off to snail crawl back down), the smiles started for him - - - and they didn't stop until he was buckled back into his car seat at the end of the day, five minutes down the mountain, snoozing peacefully.

Though I tried to split my attention evenly among all of the kids that morning, what ended up happening was that Timothy took 97% (since, when I wasn't paying attention to him, he was incapable of standing still and never actually grasped the concept of how to go, or how to stop, or how to turn, or how to function at all on a pair of skis), Miles took 2.5%, and McKenzie and Carson got a quarter of a percent each.

Despite my lack of attention, McKenzie and Carson caught on quickly and were soon ready for bigger and better things, ie, the bigger magic carpet which took us about 50 feet up the mountain, then they were ready to brave the real ski lift and ride to the very top of the bunny hill.  

But Miles progressed a little slower (probably something about only getting 2.5% of my attention), and was struggling and trying his best to keep his skis with the front together and the back wide apart  in the 'pizza' position I had taught him during that 2.5%.  He was not ready to go up the bunny hill when McKenzie and Carson were, but Brian excitedly said 'sure he's ready! Let's go!' and I knew that if we waited until I thought he was ready we probably never would have gone up.

Side note: this illustrates one of the major differences in the way that Brian and I view the world.  His philosophy is Just Do It, and mine is If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Well.  We're so cute and balance-y.

Just Do It won out on this one before I really even got a chance to voice my opinion, and I suddenly found myself swooped into the line for the ski lift, barking instructions to the kids. "McKenzie and Carson, listen very closely to me and I will tell you what to expect..." You see, I needed to ride with Timothy, Brian needed to go with Miles... and that exhausted our supply of adults - which left Carson and McKenzie on their own.  I prepped them as best as I could and then looked to Brian with a rather panicked expression.  "They're going to do great!" he pepped.  Okay.  Hopefully they won't need therapy later in their lives as they recall the time their parents left them to fend for themselves for their first time ever on a ski lift.

And wouldn't you know, not one of us fell getting of that ski lift at the top of the hill.  What's more, Carson and McKenzie looked like they had done it a hundred times.  I can prove it - I got it on video. But the video is super boring... I was hoping for at least a tense little wobble.  That was pretty much the last time I saw McKenzie and Carson until lunchtime.  They took off down the hill and caught the next ride up seamlessly.  Well, I suppose. I guess I have no idea how seamless it was as I never actually saw them.  

Anyway, after Kenz and Carson took off, Timothy and I started down the hill at a rather slower pace and it was quite clear that he had no idea what was going on, and had no idea that he was supposed to be concentrating on learning something new.  He was happy to hold my hand and was clueless to the lifeline it was to him.  He'd look around, skis going every which way (even backwards sometimes), and only stopped to think when his skis would cross and I'd stop, point to them and say, "Uh oh - your feet are like a puzzle.  Can you solve that puzzle?" (He's quite into puzzles these days and was thrilled each time his skis provided an opportunity for him to solve one... which was harder than you might think.  The top ski has to be identified first, you see, and then you have to figure out which way it needs to move in order to get untangled.)

I found that it was much harder to stop when you're stopping two people instead of just yourself. There were several awkward stances and a few times where I just had to pick him up and position his skis the way I wanted them.  "Do pizza," I coached.  He'd look down at his skies and, without moving them an inch exclaim, "I'm doing it!"  He was so excited and so cute that I just simply could not correct him.  "Okay, let's go!" and down we went.

Halfway down that first run, I turned around to see how Brian and Miles were getting along.  Miles was sitting on the slope, obviously unhappy, taking off his skis in a huff.  I watched Brian pick them up and slowly ski down to me as Miles stomped angrily down the hill towards us.

"So, he's done," Brian explained.  "He's not going to put his skis back on."

"Uh, no way," I retorted.  "He most definitely is going to put his skis back on and he's going to ski down the rest of this hill."

"Linds, I just don't know what I'm doing... I can't help him."

"That's fine... do you think you can take TK?"

Blank stare.

"Well," he finally said, "yeah.  I can probably just carry him down the mountain..."

Side note: that is one super handsome man on those skis there...

Brian and TK left just as Miles was approaching.  I put his skis down in the snow and heard him say, "I am not going to put those on ever, Ever, EVER again!"

"Yes, you are.  Quitting right here is most definitely not an option, Miles.  We are not quitters in this family.  You will put the skis on, and I will teach you how to get down the rest of this mountain.  After we reach the bottom we can discuss whether or not you want to go back up, but we are not discussing that here.  Now, let me help you get your skis back on your boots."

He complied grumpily and I started teaching.  I watched his demeanor change slightly for the better with each word of praise and when we finally reached the bottom I asked, "Now, how do you feel about going up one more time?"

"One more time?!?!" he said with a smile as big as his face.  "Not one more time... I'm going to go up one more time and one more time and one more and one more and one more, and I'm not ever, Ever, EVER going to stop!"

Parenting success.

That was the end of the struggle for the day.  Everything after that point was beautiful.  Every. Single. Thing. Miles and I hung out together for the rest of the morning, and he was thrilled with how awesome he was.  Which thrilled me.  "Oh, ye-ah," he'd fist pump and head nod to himself when he reached the end of a steep section without falling.  He mastered Pizza Skis and was soon turning down those hills at a clip of .004 miles per hour.  I did a lot of encouraging, 'try to do French Fry Skis now!  I think you're ready!' but he was too terrified to put them parallel, so, remembering my goal of happy faces, I clipped right along with him.

We eventually did have to stop, but just for pizza.

And to take off our boots for a little while.  And to try on other people's boots, just for fun.

After lunch, I brought my phone out of my pocket to capture a few moments... I'd been a little too busy focusing so intently on keeping all of my children alive during the morning to be fumbling around with my phone, but after lunch I only had to worry about keeping TK alive. The other three were doing a fine job of it themselves.

I soon found, however, that keeping TK alive required almost all of my attention (remember the 97%?) so you can see that mostly the pictures were limited to the times we were trapped on the ski lift. 'Trapped' is a relative term, of course. 

I couldn't figure out how to get the depth in this picture without being able to move... but it was a view that stirred fear in my heart... it was striking to me just how much air was between the bottom of Teek's skis and the top of mine... and then again how. much. air was between the bottom of my skis and the top of the packed snow beneath.  He's such a little person.  And that is such a long fall... I would have liked him to be a little more 'trapped'.

If I would have been able to devote more attention to my camera, I would have loved to have captured McKenzie's face as she sped as fast as she dared - eyes literally sparkling with exhilaration and pride, chin up, mouth halfway open in a beautiful crescent smile, hair whipping along behind her.
I would have loved to have captured the way Carson's unzipped coat flapped in the wind behind and out to the sides of him, his arms outstretched like wings, his hunched over form putting all his strength into skis that were pointed downhill (to go fast) in pizza position (but not too fast), smiling from the courage he'd dug deep to find.

Miles, his perfect ski hair bouncing along to the beat in his own head, traveling at .004 miles per hour, never, ever diverting from the comfort that the Pizza had become, punching the air and feeling like the world was his.

And Timothy, hanging on to my hand, skis pointed in all the wrong directions, smiling, and laughing, and chatting away unceasingly.  Stopping to touch the snow his skis shaved up, and looking so. darn. cute.

"Mom! Watch!"
"Hey, Mom!  Did you see that?!"
"Mom! Mom! Mom! Watch me!"

Over and over and over I watched.  And then I'd ski down to a better vantage point and watch again.  I watched, and I watched, and I watched.  I clapped and I cheered and I pumped my fist as the kids went soaring past me, and I delighted in seeing them feel proud of themselves.

This picture was taken at the top of the hill just before our last run down.  I didn't even have to ask for the smiles on those faces.  They were simply there, just waiting to be captured.

And at the end of the day, I realized that I hadn't even thought once about skiing myself.  I had never wished to leave the bunny hill in search of jumps or narrow passageways surrounded by pine trees. All those winters skiing... all those Saturdays when I felt like nothing could be better than having the cold wind biting my cheeks while listening to the sound of my skis as they cut back and forth propelling my body rhythmically, comfortably, down a steep slope.

All those Saturdays that felt as if nothing could be better than that moment...

How could I have known that none of those moments would compare to this one?  This one of standing still with my face pointed towards the top of the hill, waiting to catch a glimpse of my own child coming down.  This one of traveling at a snails pace, or of holding the tiny hand of my own child and leading him, laughing, down the snowy slope.

So, in addition to those beautiful smiles up there, mine shined all the way from my heart.  Because I now know something that they can't quite yet...

I know what it feels like to share one of your own treasured moments from the past with your children. And to watch them start making it their own.  

Keep on keepin' on

Not many things can pull me out of bed at 4:30 in the morning, you know.  But last Saturday you could have found me hiking up a desert mountain in the darkness of 5AM with an incredible bunch of young women, their parents, and their leaders.

It was New Beginnings... a yearly event for the young women in the church (aged 12-18) aimed to help kick off the new theme of the year and to welcome all the new girls who will be turning 12 and aging into this awesome, inspired organization we call Young Women.  And since McKenzie is going to be turning 12 this year (this week! (what?!)) she was one of the special guests of honor.

The theme this year for the youth of our church throughout the whole world is 'Press Forward'.  And some of the older girls in our own ward, along with the leaders, thought that a perfect way to introduce that theme would be to Press Forward up a steep mountain as we watched the sun rise to symbolize our own New Beginning.  And what a beautiful beginning it was!

Along the way we stopped to talk about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and about how important it is to Press Forward in Christ throughout our whole lives.  The whole morning was filled with beautiful moments, both inside my heart and outside all around me.

This is kind of an accident picture that came about because I was telling someone about the cool feature on my phone where I just have to say the word 'cheese' and it will take a picture.

"Wait," she said. "Hold it up. Let me try... Cheese."

And voila... the awesome picture above was captured.  This feature came in totally handy since my freezing fingers were layered in gloves - and even though I didn't look at this picture before or even after I took it, I was happy to find this surprise once I uploaded everything onto my computer.  I'm in love with the paths leading down the mountain to the city below.  Also the sunrise. And the pink clouds. I'm in love with the pink clouds, too.  Too bad it's not a little more straight... but perhaps that's part of the charm?

If you look closely along the rim, you can see four bighorn sheep standing around on that bump.  Sheep all over (always in the distance) would pop their heads in and out from behind rocks, watching our group traverse up the mountain, laughing, I'm sure, at the clunkiness of our way.  Those sheep know how to move on those mountain slopes!  I took a picture of another group of sheep along a different ridge and pointed them out to my new friend standing beside me.

"Look!" I said just before I pointed my camera in their direction.  "Do you see those sheep?!" *click, click*

"Uh... well... I hate to break it to you," she said back, "but that is a trail sign and a couple of park benches."

Oh.  Cool.  I knew that.  And, also, I'm new around here.

But those guys up there in that picture?  Those are sheep. I promise. Unless park benches have started grazing and moving around recently.

Eventually the sun did make it all the way over the mountain ridge in the distance.  So that was cool. 

We all stopped to watch it (and the sheep (and to listen to another great devotional)) before continuing on our way.

And shortly after that, at around 7AM, we made it to the top.  Freezing, tired, and happy to smell the sausage and hash browns in the air.

I am SO excited for McKenzie to start this new chapter of her life.  I almost wish I could be a Young Woman again.  They will help me teach her so many great things about how to live a life closer to Christ.  About how to be kind, and how to find a love for the scriptures. About how to build faith, and testimony, and charity.  About who Christ is, what He has done for us, what He continues to do for us, and how we can serve Him.  About the powerful power of prayer.  About recognizing the promptings of the spirit, about the importance of courage to follow those promptings.  

The scripture that inspired the the youth theme this year is found in 2 Nephi 31:20: "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men.  Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

Can you imagine how beautiful the world would be if everyone spent an entire year with this as their focus? 

Kenz, you're going to love this...