Wrong Road/Teaching my Children

Yesterday was a crazy day.  Here is a text I sent my family:

Hello family, each of you asked to be kept up to date about our new car adventure.  We have another part of our story . . . Today I was driving Elizabeth to her volleyball tryouts when a block away from the school the car made a huge clanking sound and I lost steering power.  We were so blessed to be in easy walking distance of the school and just pulled the car right over into a parallel parking spot just for me.  We called Derek who dropped everything to come to my rescue and Elizabeth walked to her tryouts.

With AAA on their way Derek arrived and discovered my fan belt broken and the fan itself falling apart with metal everywhere.

I then mentioned it was a good thing that the mini van we are wanting can be picked up in the next couple of days.  At this Derek frowned and said that the car transporter broke down again and the car won't be here until Tuesday evening.  HaHa.

I am so grateful that the Lord has taken my frustration away.  I have been laughing and happy all morning as this has played out.  I am so grateful wee were close enough to Elizabeth's school so that she could make her tryouts on time.  I am blessed that this happened today and not while I was driving back and forth from the lake last week.  I am grateful that we have already been looking for a car and are educated and will find what we need.  I am grateful my for my father suggesting I get a new car before I travelled so that this did not happen on our way to Utah.  I am grateful we had to put off the trip 3 days for tryouts and we could spend all week last week with family.  We are truly blessed and have faith and hope that all will work together for our good.

At this point we are still trying to figure out what the Lord is trying to teach us and what we should do.  We'll let you kn ow as we move forward.

The car is on it's way to the mechanic and I am siting at the school for Elizabeth with Derek's truck.

We love you all and are grateful for your prayers.  We can feel them and they bring us great comfort.  God Bless You All!!"

Sunday we had the missionaries over and they showed the Mormon Message Wrong Roads a story about a father and son who come to a fork in the road and pray about which road to take home.  They both feel they should go right but when they do within 400 feet the road dead ends.  Turning around and going left they discuss why the Lord led them down the wrong road.  Elder Holland replies:

 “The Lord has taught us an important lesson today.Because we were prompted to take the road to the left, we quickly discovered which one was the right one. When we turned around and got on the right road, I was able to travel along its many unfamiliar twists and turnoffs perfectly confident I was headed in the right direction.

“If we had started on the right road, we might have driven for 30 minutes or so, become uneasy with the unfamiliar surroundings,and been tempted to turn back. If we had done that, we would have discovered the dead-end so late that it would have been too dark to find our way back in totally unfamiliar territory.”

After our fiasco Derek  and I have been pondering what to do and felt that we were on the wrong road.  We wondered which one was right.  We then felt that we should go to a local car dealer and look at a 2013 model they had.  While there it was made available to us a way to get a new 2016 minivan.  We left that dealer prayed in gratitude for our blessings and understanding contacted a dealer we had worked with a few weeks ago and are moving forward to get the car that will be good for our family and will help us travel to Utah in safety.  We are truly blessed by our Heavenly Father and will continue to have faith and trust in Him.

This morning as I got up to pray and read I felt the need to focus on Samantha's anxiety.  Here are some passages I read and some things I leaned:

Upon the Top of the Waters

"“Faithfully pursue the time-tested devotional practices that bring the Spirit of the Lord into your life."

I feel like I need to encourage Samantha to begin having her own devotionals. That she needs the strength of her Heavenly Father as she faces these new challenges in middle school.

Nurturing Testimonies by Nurturing Readers

"In addition, listening to audio recordings of scriptures or conference talks offers some readers focused support as they follow along in the printed text. Listening to a fluent reader can increase a struggling reader’s ability to comprehend unfamiliar texts and vocabulary. Church resources, such as LDS.org, offer scriptures and conference addresses as downloadable audio files that facilitate these kinds of reading experiences."

Start having the kids bring their scriptures to scripture study and to follow along. Maybe have a piece of candy available and when I stop reading whoever can tell me the next word gets a piece of candy.

Nurturing Testimonies by Nurturing Readers

"Helping our children and class members see their struggles as challenges to overcome rather than as limits that define them is essential to helping them understand their true potential as God’s children."

How do I teach this to JD and Sam?

Nurturing Testimonies by Nurturing Readers

"4. Seek the Lord’s help. Stan is a 27-year-old graduate student who now has read numerous books, but he struggled with reading throughout elementary and middle school. For years his mother came to his elementary school and tutored him individually. Before they started their work, they would read Ether 12:23–28, where Moroni talks about his weakness in writing and the Lord promises Moroni that His grace will be sufficient to make up for Moroni’s weaknesses. Reading these scriptures helped Stan and his mother realize that his weaknesses with reading could become strengths and that as he humbled himself and asked Heavenly Father for help, the Lord would support his efforts. He explained, “If the Lord will do it for Moroni, He can do it for us when we ask for and seek His help.”

This would be a great way to talk to Sam and JD.