Work in Progress

So today the blog is actually a present to my(Brendan) parents. After being through so many things with me throughout my life they have never given up and I have realized that we are all works in progress in this grand scheme of things. I have throughout the last month and a half been spending alot of time sitting at my table here at my apartment working on a gift for my parents to show my appreciation. When I was young my mom taught me how to cross stitch and through the years I have done many projects, but when I was in high school I begged my mom to buy a kit for me of a picture by Greg Olsen titled Lost No More. I worked on it for a short time before I gave up and put it aside because I think I ran out of some of the thread that I needed. I always told myself that I would get back to it. When I got home from my mission two years ago I bought a new kit online and it has sat around due to lack of time, patience and motivation. I decided though, that during this time of struggles in my life working on a picture of Christ would be the extra thing that I was needing. So here is my Work in Progress(I've spent a couple hundred hours on it so far)...

I still have a long way to go, but I figured that a couple hundred hours of work was worth a christmas present... we'll see how much birthdays and such are worth... I wish you all a Merry Christmas!!!

Trials

When I was still in Young Woman's at a Night of Excellence the leaders had the Grandmothers or however was close to the new beehives right them a letter of love and guidance. I wasn't a new beehive but I was new to the ward so I received this letter from my Grandma Joy. There was something written in this letter that has always stayed with me through out my life. Every time a trial comes my way I think back to this letter. my Grandma Joy wrote.

" You have also been blessed with trials. You have watched your family struggle and have experience great heartaches in your young life. Use these heartaches and trials as stepping stones to eternal exaltation! They will become your greatest strength as you learn how to overcome the pain and still love those who make unwise choices."

The past two weeks have tried my faith to the max it feels like. I feel as if I have gone through so much heartache and pain that I can't go on. But then I remember my Grandmas words and I keep going. I take every trial and every heartache and I learn from it.

I know that my Heavenly Father lives. I know that he loves me and that he knows who I am. I know that he sends his angels to watch over me and protect me from things that I cannot handle on my own. I know that the words that my Grandma wrote to me all those years ago are true and if I listen to her words and live by that then I will have eternal life with the one I love. I know that my elder brother Jesus Christ suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane for me. He did it for me so when I am going through a trial I have someone who I can turn to in faith and he will have been there and can help me through it. I know that Christ died on a cross to take away my sins. He died there to save me. I am forever in debt to him. I know that trials are given to us to make us stronger and that there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel and all though it may be hard to take that first step into the darkness it will all be worth it in the end.  I know that there is a lesson to be learn from every trial that I have recently been through, am going through, and will go through. I may not know what the answer is now or what the answer will be later, but I know that there is one. I walk by faith. I wake up every morning and I live by faith.  Faith that I will make it thought the day, faith that my wrong doings  will be washed away. I love the Lord with all my heart. and I know that he is there for me always if I just stretch out my arm to his. I say these things in the name of my Savior Jesus Christ Amen.

Drawn for me by one of my best friends Jodee at a time when I needed it most