This summer has been so much fun! I’m posting a few pictures from my Independence Day weekend a few weeks ago, which I loved. So many sights and sounds to behold! We did our traditional ceremony I learned from Dennis Prager, sharing it for the first time with my parents and mother-in-law. I feel blessed to have a carefree, summer full of extended family, much more so than last year. Last year I was dealing with the lockdown and my husband’s unemployment.

In fact, it was a year ago today that my husband got the call offering him a new job.The new job involved a move out of state. So then the summer turned into house looking, packing, and moving. Whew! We survived 8 months of unemployment without going into debt, and then packing and moving.

We declared our independence from debt a year before and weren’t about to get into it again. You can read about that here.

Speaking of debt, that makes me think of bondage, and that makes me think of my recent discovery about freedom from bondage in the scriptures. In addition to my Come, Follow Me reading every week of the Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I enjoy reading randomly from the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ every day for a few minutes. Here’s what I noticed in the past few days.

Mosiah 21:36 says the people made it their study to get out from bondage.

“And now all the study of Ammon and his people, and king Limhi and his people, was to deliver themselves out of the hands of the Lamanites and from bondage.”These were the people of Ammon and King Limhi who got captured by the Lamanites and were severly taxed. They determined to get out of bondage. Then we find out in Mosiah 22:23 that “…they were brought into bondage and none could deliver them but the Lord their God, yea, even the God of Abrahahm, and Isaac, and of Jacob.” They did eventually get out of bondage. See Mosiah 22-23. Could it be because they made their study a study of God and His ways? I think so. If we want to study getting out of bondage, we need to study God and His ways. God wants us to enjoy the sweet fruits of liberty, but we have to put in the work. That involves study and action.