I love Timeout for Women!!! Have I said that before?!!! I KNOW I have! Nowhere else, do I feel so much love from and for my Savior, time and time again! Yes, I know I feel it at church, but at church there are always people climbing on me/asking for snacks, callings do be done, and way too many distractions! Timeout for Women is the one time a year, when none of those things happen! This year was no exception! Although the original 5 tickets I bought, were sold and resold and resold, the group that I ended up with was exactly right this year, although there were a few faces that I really missed having with us! I ended up with a group of NON shoppers!!! Can you believe that?!!! It was good though, my spirit was fed, and I didn't really feel the need or desire to shop after anyways.
Things I loved this year:
*We were asked the question at the very beginning, "What do you hope for?". Just like last year, I was a little stumped. But in the end, the top 3 things on my list were peace, love, and guidance.
*Ardeth Kapp was a favorite of mine this year. Her faith is so evident just by looking at her face. She said,"We must have hope to had down to our children. We do not want to pass fear of or other things down to them." Since I struggle a lot with fear, and also have one little one that is following in my fear/anxiety footsteps, this was something I needed to hear. I have to quit thinking that trying to control every situation because I have so much fear of what could happen, is actually going to change anything! I know I am not in control, my Heavenly Father is, at yet I still try to control. So I am working on giving that up and having more trust in the Man that actually has control. This will be hard, but I am praying every single day for faith and trust and to lose my fears.
* She also said, "You can't go back and make a brand new start, my friend. But you can start right now and make a brand new end." I love that!
*John Bytheway, talked about being delightful. He asked how our husband/loved ones would describe us, and then asked if delightful would be the word?!! We all laughed, but inside the answer was definitely no!! I am not delightful! I am hard to live with, want everything my way, and think I am the boss! This is not new, I have been like this since I was a small child, but that is not the way I want my family, ultimately, to remember there life growing up. So again, I am working on it!!! It may take a while for me to be described as delightful! :)
*Next were Lynda and Shawni Eyre, and they talked about secrets to being a better mother.
#1 Be your own kind of best mom. Don't think that you need to be what others are, because we are not other people. Just try and do things that work for you and make you and your children happy instead of trying to compare and do what others do.
#2 Have an infrastructure, things that bind your family together. Some ideas: Have a family mission statement, and display it in your home
#3 Give your children ownership of choices. Money, things that are their own, help then set up goals for themselves, also, let them figure out there arguments themselves( I would love to take myself out of that one!)
#4 Formalize your family traditions. Set up family traditions that your kids can count on and that you love. One that I would love to try because we struggle in the area, is have family testimony meeting after testimony meeting on the first Sunday of every month. We have a hard time bearing your testimonies to our kids, so maybe if we do it at home it will become more of a habit. We will see.
#5 Teach your kids to work! Sharing the burden of the home is important to your kids! They need to feel needed and that they are important to they family. We need to be patient, persistent and follow through with them! They are counting on us!
*Jill Manning talked on Pornography. I must admit that I was tempted to go sleep in the car when I heard she was speaking again( I heard her last year). She took a far more enjoyable approach this year. She talked about elephants, and how they protect their young from
predators. How they make a circle around them and nothing or no one is able to break through and get to these baby elephants. She liked this to how we need to be with our own children. How we have to be cautious and realistic when it comes to what our children know and where they learn about things from. She stated some statistics that are scary. Most children encounter
porographic images for the first time between the ages of 7 and 13. She also said that between 79 and 83% off these images are viewed in the home. She gave us all a pledge to have all of our family
members sign, you can find it at
deseretbook.com/mediapledge. We spent a family council signing ours and talking about how important it is to keep our minds and spirits clean of things that can damage us. I was glad I stayed. I have to be vigilant and not ignore things that are hard to talk to my children about.
*Kris Belcher was next. I love to listen to this woman, and she literally had the entire audience crying because we were laughing so hard by the end. This woman has had trials far beyond what I can comprehend. She was born with tumors on her optic nerves, lost sight in 1 eye by the age of 9, and became completely blind a few years ago. Not only is she not bitter, she is amazingly strong. Not that she didn't have times when she was bitter, and angry and thought she had "lost her personality with her eyesight". She decided to overcome all of this and be grateful for the things that she can do. I love the way she describes LIGHT.
L-Love. Christ is a God of love
I-Intelligence. Christ is a God of intelligence.
G-Grace. Of course God will give us things we can't handle, that is why we have a Savior. I never really thought of this before. We need His help to get through somethings. But we also have to ask for help to get it!
H-Hope. Christ is a God of hope.
T-Truth. He never will lie to us. He only wants good and only speaks of good!
I loved my time at Time Out for Women. Now, if I can just internalize 1/10 of what I learned, I will be doing good! I think TOFW needs to be a monthly thing! It would sure benefit my family if I could be spiritually fed like that once a month!
"It is tremendously important for the women of the church to stand strong and immovable for that which is correct and proper...."-Gordon B. Hinkley
It was very hard for us to leave the hotel by 8AM since we stayed up until 2:30! Bad Val!!! :)
We were lucky enough to get to help assemble Hope kits for the women in homeless shelters in Vegas.
I had such a blast with these girls! It is fun to be in company that can understand things about you that most people can't! These girls ALL understand!
Yes! I am the geek that got a picture and my CD signed by Mercy River! They were amazing!
Val even got us special needs, I mean, special seats! We were lucky enough that a good friend of hers was the MC, so we didn't even have to wait in line Saturday for seats! Yeah!
Val and her friend, Angela!
These yummy Kisses actually tasted like candy corn! I think Teresa and I ate more than the kids!
Candy corn Jell-O!
Yummy cupcakes! We also had Mummy Dogs, which were little sausages wrapped up in creasant rolls. I missed getting a picture of those!
Not sure what was going on here! Or why, instead of stopping this, I was snapping a picture of it!
They had the most fun playing Red Rover! Who needed all of my crafts or cupcake walks! I told you! They made their own fun!
Daxton and his little buddy, pretty much stayed out of the action! They knew they would get hurt playing with all of those big kids!
We ended up with quite the crew! I told the kids that they could each invite 3 friends, they seemed to think it was fun, even if the kids there spanned from 3 to 10 years old!
