Wow, I have had a full summer and it’s not even over. My kids have gone to various camps, we all went to a family reunion two weeks ago, I went to Idaho last week with my daughter, then we had my parents’ Golden Anniversary party last night, and now we have two more weddings of nieces, a mom’s retreat, and a week-long family reunion to go. So much for a lazy relaxing summer!
If you haven’t been having much fun yet this summer, here are some resources to liven it up!
The first is a web site for an online book called “Theology According to Calving and Hobbes.” Go here to access it.
Today I honor my pioneer ancestors! I am standing in the picture above by a real covered wagon that was left at the home of my ancestors at Pipe Springs National Monument, Arizona. My maternal grandmother’s great-grandfather, Anson Perry Winsor Sr. heeded the call by Brigham Young to go to Arizona after coming across the plains. I wonder what he thought about this dry hardscrabble desert as compared to his birthplace of lush, upstate New York. Yet he had faith that Brigham the prophet knew what he was doing. He built a fort over the spring there and managed a cattle ranch. His wife, Emmeline Zenetta Brower, made 60 lbs. of cheese and butter a day from the resulting milk. They used the spring to keep the food cold. No wonder I love dairy so much! They shipped these dairy products every day up to the workers of the St. George Temple. Yes, these hungry early Saints were fortified by dairy products to build a house of God out of the barren wasteland. I don’t think they could have survived on a vegan diet.
We went to Pipe Springs a few weeks ago and then to Zion Canyon for our family reunion. For a bedtime story one night while we there and all sleeping in the same room at the family reunion lodge, I read this picture book aloud, shown above. It’s called Grandfather’s Gold Watch by Louise Garff Hubbard. It was a great way to settle my little kids down after being highly stimulated by playing with cousins and having a theater room at the lodge with surround sound, stocked with lots of DVDs. We read the first half the first night and the second half the next night. I highly recommend this book with 5 stars! It’s all about a pioneer family coming to Utah. The little boy gets a watch from his grandfather along with two questions that help him get through all the ensuing trials. I used one of the sad scenarios in the book to point out a good and bad example of what a real man is all about. This book has some sad parts to it but has a very happy ending! I encourage you to get it from your library (if your library doesn’t have it, then ask for it through the interlibrary loan system) and read it to your kids. It will make you cry so have some tissues handy.
Here is a great series of downloads by the LDS church about the legacy of early saints. These would be great listening for car rides with your family when you have a captive audience! I also encourage you to watch these videos below with your family to remind your children about the sacrifice of the pioneers. As President Faust says in the last video, “What else would but a divine restoration prompt such a sacrifice?” After spending just a few hours in the hot Zion Canyon, walking, not even hiking, much, I agree!
So while I was in Idaho last week my daughter and I stayed at my dh’s cousin’s home. Cousin Karen had prepared a veggie/fruit tray for us. I decided to use the watermelon chunks and grapes from the tray to make a smoothie for breakfast. It turned out really good, not too sweet. I didn’t have to add any honey or other sweetener. Here’s the recipe, which serves 2.
Watermelon Grape Smoothie
Puree in blender the following:
2 to 4 bananas
1/2 c yogurt
1 c watermelon chunks
1 c grapes
add water or whey to make desired consistency
To really make the smoothie “stick to your ribs” so you can last until lunch without snacking, add 2 raw eggs and more yogurt or raw milk or cream. You can really use any fruit to replace the watermelon and grapes. The bananas are a staple for any smoothie to give it thickness.
After my great adventure in Idaho last week I was happy to come back home. (These pictures are of my trip to Idaho and then what happened on Saturday night after I got home). Reentry was painful though as I had to unpack, put away groceries I picked up on the way home, and do Saturday work with the kids after being gone for two days, on top of staying with my family until the bitter end at the ward swim party. Translation: we had a lot of work to do cleaning and putting away. A motivation for me to get all this done was to go on a date Saturday night with my husband to a meeting for homeschooling parents about Gospel-Centered Education, then to a wedding reception of my friend Amy’s son.
in Primary yesterday my friend Rebecca led singing time. She had us sing I Know My Father Lives. Every time there was a reference to “me, my, or I” she had us stand up and then sit down. We got some great exercise with all that standing up and sitting down! We realized that God really does know us and speaks to us through His Spirit.
So I have a story to tell about this. I feel God is watching over me and giving me personal guidance and blessings. A few weeks ago I got an email from a homeschooling friend inviting me to a meeting about Gospel-centered Education in West Haven UT, with a woman I met when we used to live in Provo UT, Jill Bigelow. After I read the email, I thought,”I already know what she is going to talk about. I don’t need to go. It’s just going to be about the Family School.” The Family School is a curriculum that American Heritage school in American Fork UT has published for homeschoolers. It was released at the conference last year at American Heritage school.
But I felt the Spirit telling me to go anyway. So I went. I felt that God spoke to me through Sister Bigelow telling me what was needed for our family to have increased blessings in our home and have a more “gospel-centered education” in our home.
Here is a bit of background about that:
Lately we have had a lot of arguing with two of my boys. We are still struggling financially. I have been wondering what we can do to solve these problems. In my Mothers Who Know class my great friend Becky has been a great example to me of the power of doing the PoWeR actions (Pray, Write in your journal, and Read your scriptures) first thing in the morning. And she was inspired by another mom, Tracey, who said she gets up when her alarm rings, sits up in bed, says her prayer, then starts reading her scriptures on her iPad.
Becky testified that doing the PoWeR actions in the morning gives her the “fruits of the Spirit” for the rest of the day. I was already good at doing the Power Actions every day, but not in the morning. I did my morning prayer every day but the others I did at night. I decided I would follow her example and do my reading and writing first thing after I say my morning prayer. I have gotten really good at saying my prayers in the morning but I like to blog and do computer stuff in the morning before people wake up and have family prayer.
So this was a sacrifice for me but I did it anyway. I have had an increase in peace and an ability to better recognize when satan is talking to me with his whisperings disguised as my voice and I have been better at casting him out of my head. While I was in Idaho I called home and found out something awful had happened at home. satan immediately started to do the chemical spills we talk about in Eternal Warriors/ Mothers Who Know (a course that Aneladee Milne wrote with Maurice Harker) where I was feeling stress and anger and frustration.
But because I had laid the foundation for the day with prayer, writing, and reading holy writ (even though I was on “vacation” in Rexburg, just hanging out while my daughter was going to different classes at BYUI), I was able to have the presence of mind to remember to pray and ask God to help me feel His love and forgive and feel peace and joy.
So back to the story about Sister Bigelow. She said that the biggest key that has been shown to keep children in the gospel with strong testimonies is that they develop personal worship habits. Aha, I thought, she is talking about PoWeR actions. I immediately knew it was true. I got my testimony when I was 12 when I finished reading the Book of Mormon and I asked God to know if it was true. Then I felt a burning witness inside of me telling me it was true. I continued the scripture reading habit, almost daily all through my youth, and have created a daily habit out of it. My testimony has stayed strong all these years.
But then Sister Bigelow went on to say that she knows a family who wakes up early before Church and they gather for Personal Family Worship. This provides a time and space for individuals to do their PoWeR actions personally. Then the family shares what they learned and then they do their Family Worship, or family prayer and family scripture study.
I immediately knew that this is what our family needs to do to have increased harmony and prosperity in our home. I have faith that by literally putting God first in our lives, by worshipping Him first thing in the day, through PoWeR actions, individually and as a family, we will have more peace and love and even money.
I proposed this to my family today at family dinner before they all headed off to Grammie’s. I am so glad I remembered to say something about it before they left. That was God guiding me as well. I was about to ask Honor about his week at Ballroom Dance camp and any kids showing flirtatious behavior but then I thought, wait, I don’t want to talk about people, I want to talk about great ideas. Hmmm, what is a great Idea? I know, the great idea God gave me about implementing Personal Family Worship before Family Worship time every day in our home. So I proposed to the family that we start doing this and they didn’t say anything negative so I take that as agreement and we will start tomorrow!
This actually fits in with a story that our high councilor shared with us yesterday in sacrament meeting for high council Sunday. Brother D said that he asked someone how she was doing at his work and she said, “Awful,” so he stopped to talk to listen to her. After a long time of listening to her problems, he asked her if she ever prays. She said no, I don’t do that “church stuff.” He said, “Praying doesn’t have to have anything to do with church. Praying is connecting with God. You can do it every day, whenever you want. You don’t have to be in church.” He then said he did the “missionary step” of asking someone “Will you pray?” only this time it wasn’t to pray about the Book of Mormon, it was for her to pray about her problem. She said she would and when he saw her two weeks later she was doing much better.
I know that great power comes by praying every day, and even more importantly, greater power from God comes by praying the first thing every day, and then combining that with reading the scriptures and then writing down our thoughts and feelings that come while we read the scriptures. To do this before I touch a computer to check email messages or exercise shows I am putting God first. This is the way we can lay the foundation every day to feel His direction even more, and feel the “fruits of the Spirit” even more for the whole day. Then at night after our evening prayer we can also write about how God directed us that day and acknowledge the hand of God in our lives, as President Eyring has instructed us. I have been doing more of that too and I am feeling that more peace and happiness are coming into my life.
Sister Bigelow quoted Elder Neal Maxwell who said, “Only the Highest One can lead us to the Highest Good.” By doing PoWeR actions first thing in the morning, we can better be in tune to the Highest One and get even more of the Highest Good for the whole day.
Last week my daughter got a bee in her bonnet go observe classes at BYU-Idaho. We had taken the whole family there last August on a tour to sell her on it for college, but it didn’t catch her fancy at the time. We had heard about the disruptive innovation going on there from my friend Aneladee, who gave a fireside about it at my home a few years ago. Basically, BYU-Idaho provides for celestial collegiate education, fulfilling the charge from President Hinckley to be the church’s collegiate educational model, based on Doctrine and Covenants 88. Much more so than BYU-Provo, I dare say. You can read my recap about that here.
I didn’t push it, but let her take a detour pursuing another college. That didn’t work out, so now she was ready to fall in love with BYU-I. Whew, I love having an idea and knowing it’s right for my child and then letting her come to it on her own accord. I guess that’s how God feels about getting us all into heaven. He never forces, just provides everything to allow it, sits back, and provides more help if we ask. She wanted to drive up there alone, but I insisted somebody go with her. That turned out to be me. Just like in the old days! When she was 1, just she and me traveled to Washington D.C. for a La Leche League Intl. Conference. Only she’s not 1 anymore, she’s ready to fly the coop.
She absolutely loved the classes she attended: ballet, math, Islam, and foundations of American civ. The educational model is leadership education based! Here’s a video about it. I love it that the students and the teacher all discuss the subjects in class, based on the scripture in the Book of Mormon, that “the teacher is no better than the learner.” This model is leadership education based! In our homeschooling we have focused on the liberal arts so this will be a great continuation. We both love that the Rexburg Temple is right across the street. She can walk there whenever she wants. It looks like she will be saying, “I do!” to BYU-Idaho soon. She talked to the admissions people and found out that with her ACT score she already qualifies for a scholarship. She has already started the application process.
I love this beautiful open field to the east of the temple. My kind of beauty! Maybe because both of my grandfathers were farmers!
We had the whole foods lunch we brought from home on this “porch” on one of the swings. It was really nice to stop and take time to make a memory, just her and me. I think the saying printed on the porch below sums up the whole atmosphere of BYU-I quite aptly. The whole college lacks the competitive feeling that is felt at BYU-Provo. I can safely say that because I graduated from BYU-Provo. My daughter noticed that the people don’t walk so quickly and frantically as at the Provo school.
BYU-Idaho is a great fit for most every LDS college bound student! The college even has an online program, called the Pathway Program, which is very affordable. Here’s the web site for the Pathway Program. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a goal to help provide a college education for every young Latter-day Saint, and this online program certainly makes a college education much more accessible and doable.
Next week, the college is hosting its own Campus Education Week. I like that the college invites children to attend, something BYU-Provo doesn’t allow. I would be going back for it but we have a family reunion in Arizona starting the same time! You can pay only $10 for the web cast version.
If you have college-bound students, come take a look at BYU-Idaho! I think you will love it!
For Sunday School today, here’s a great video about the beginning of the restored church of Jesus Christ with the gathering in Kirtland Ohio by one of my favorite speakers, Truman Madsen.
I caught wind of this on The Healthy Home Economist’s page. The CDC recently posted on its web site that the polio vaccine was tainted with a cancer-causing virus. Please click on the link to learn more. The photo above shows a doctor who was employed by Merck to develop vaccines. He admits that the vaccines had the monkey virus.
At the bottom of this blog post I have copied info about a video about this from the YouTube description. I love the quote at the end, “”vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th Century.” (Note: the video got pulled off YouTube. So I’m sorry about that!)
Did you catch that? Vaccines are “bargain basement technology” !!!! Americans have been duped into thinking that the protection of our health from dangerous diseases comes from bargain basement technology! These are the words of a leading physician who helped create vaccines!
So instead of relying on “bargain basement technology” to protect your health, here’s an old-fashioned alternative: mother’s milk for babies, good gut ecology, traditional foods including whole, sacred fats, and plants for healing. Eat eggs. Ditch all of your low-fat, fabricated foods. Eat a lot more saturated fat and go easy on the grains, soaking, sprouting, or souring them before you consume them. I love the Healthy Home Economist’s site because she teaches you all about that. I have put a lot of her videos on this site to teach all about these things.
If you want to learn more about the dangers of vaccines, a great place to start is this video above, called The Greater Good.
Here’s more about the first video I posted, from YouTube:
In this interview Dr. Maurice Hilleman reveals some astounding revelations. He admits that Merck drug company vaccines (Polio) had been deliberately contaminated with SV40, a cancer-causing monkey virus from 1953 – 63.
For years, researchers suggested that millions of vials of polio vaccine, contaminated with SV40, infected individuals which caused human tumors, and by 1999, molecular evidence of SV40 infections were showing up in children born after 1982. Some experts now suggest the virus may have remained in the polio vaccine until as late as 1999.
In 2002, the journal Lancet published compelling evidence that contaminated polio vaccine was responsible for up to half of the 55,000 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases that were occurring each year. And there is the likelihood that there was an importing and spreading of the AIDS virus in the same manner, as revealed in the video.
At first no one could fathom how the virus had been transmitted into the human population, but this shocking video proves that it was deliberately added to the vaccine by Dr. Maurice Hilleman, which was “good science” at that time.
Just Who is Dr. Maurice Hilleman?
Now, for those of you who may think Dr. Hilleman was just another crackpot (he passed away in 2005), think again. He was, and still is, the leading vaccine pioneer in the history of vaccines. He developed more than three dozen vaccines—more than any other scientist in history—and was the developer of Merck’s vaccine program.
He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and received a special lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization.
When he was chief of the Department of Respiratory Diseases with what’s now the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, he discovered the genetic changes that occur when the influenza virus mutates, known as shift and drift. He was also one of the early vaccine pioneers to warn about the possibility that simian viruses might contaminate vaccines.So Dr. Hilleman knew what he was talking about. And in his own words, “vaccines have to be considered the bargain basement technology for the 20th Century.”
Last week we took an all-day road trip, down to northern Arizona and then back into southern Utah. Whew, what a journey! The crew was me, dh, 6 kids ages 3 to 17, and grandma! As a veteran mom of many road trips, I pronounce it a success! Here are my 11 tips to having a healthy, happy road trip with kids, without even using a DVD player or tablet to entertain the munchkins.
This was our destination: water play in Zion Canyon with our cousins for a family reunion!
But before we got to play in the water, we had to do a lot of driving. Here are the tips for making road trips happy times:
1. Have a lot of yummy, portable, healthful foods. Balance the carb foods with some high fat foods. We left early in the morning, at 5:20 AM, and we wouldn’t get to our lodge destination on Zion’s East Ridge until dinner time, where my awesome sister-in-law who missed her calling in life as a chef had a gourmet grill night planned. So that meant I had to pack breakfast and lunch. I packed slices of my homemade sourdough bread that I toasted and lightly buttered before we left, fruit and homemade Larabars for our breakfast. For lunch we had carrot sticks, celery sticks, cheese cubes, more sourdough bread, and homemade beef jerky.
It was a great balance of fat, protein, and carbs. In my earlier days of a mom, for car trips, I used to pack granola bars, bagels from the grocery store with juice boxes and veggies. It was way too many carbs for me and left me feeling unstable with my blood sugar too high at the end of the trip. With my new food choices I felt a lot more grounded by trip’s end. Here are even more portable foods you can prepare before the trip.
2. Have plenty of water.
This one seems like a “duh” point, but it can be easily overlooked. Assign one of the kids to fill up a bunch of water bottles before you leave. It’s amazing how awful I can feel if I am thirsty!
Here are two of my boys at our favorite pit stop on the drive to southern Utah: Cove Fort. The public restrooms are the cleanest you will find anywhere! Yes, those pretty buildings with flowers on the sides are the restrooms!
3. Frequent Stops
I know it’s tempting to just drive straight there, but a stop every 2 to 3 hours is very much needed for kids, and drivers too, to relieve all that water you pack. Hydration is good for you!
4. Audio goodies. Within a week before you leave on your trip, grab some books on CD from your library. One year, on a road trip to Lake Tahoe, we listened to The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale on the way there and back. It made the trip on either side of the week were in Tahoe as fun as the stay. On another road trip to Palm Springs we listened to The Horse and His Boy. If you forget to go to the library before the trip, and you have a smartphone you can use audio files from the web. Librivox and Storynory are some great resources for classics and new stories, and both are free. You can even get all of the The Chronicles of Narnia over here on Ancient Faith Radio. You can also find some fun stuff on Youtube to listen to, like interviews with your favorite authors, like Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. I prefer books on audio instead of a DVD player because it’s better for the brain. It trains kids to listen better and doesn’t overstimulate the brain like quick-changing images on a screen do.
5. Pillows. They make sleeping upright in a car seat a lot more bearable.
6. Small toys and books in a bag. I like to pick up used Brainquest cards from my local thrift store for a buck and have a trivia game while we travel using the questions in the pack. Klutz sells some fun portable travel toys. This time around though I asked my 11 year old to pack a bunch of books and toys for the 3 year old and he just rounded up some books.
Here’s my daughter at Pipe Springs National Monument in Arizona. We walked in the footsteps of my maternal grandmother’s great-grandparents! I marvel that they were able to build this beautiful building and have a garden in the desert.
7. Have some diversion and culture along the way. Learning about the names of cities and where they come from, as you drive through them, adds color and meaning to the trip. We have been faithful members of AAA for all our married years, and I have enjoyed reading about the local towns we travel through in the AAA Tour Books. But with smartphones these days you can look up the names of cities and towns in wikipedia and learn all about them without getting a Trip Book. It’s fun to have mini-stops along the way of interesting things and not let the destination be the only interesting thing to focus on. In past years on our drive through southern Utah we have stopped at Cove Fort and taken the full tour. This year, we went into northern Arizona and visited Pipe Springs National Monument, as it was started by my ancestors, Anson Perry Winsor and his wife, Emmeline Brower. They were called by Brigham Young to build a fort over the spring that bubbled up there and manage a tithing cattle ranch. Emmeline made 60 lbs. of dairy products a day that was taken to the workers of the St. George temple. The spring provided cool water that they used to keep the products cold. No wonder I like cheese and butter so much!
8. Leave early with a plan and maps. In past years, when it came to road trips, I have not wanted to set an early time to leave, as I have not always been a morning person. I have reformed myself and see the value of getting up early and leaving as early as possible. It means the kids sleep for a lot of the time and you have more daylight left after you get to your destination. We used to eat breakfast at home before we left but then I was left with cleaning up after breakfast at the same time I am wanting to get out the door. Now I just pack a breakfast (see Tip #1) and we can leave sooner! As for the maps, a lot of people like to rely on their GPS, but just in case it doesn’t work, have a map as a back-up.
9. Use Gas Buddy to find gas stations with the cheapest prices.
This was the deck of our lodge where we stayed. The kids had fun dining here with their cousins.
10. Change drivers at every stop. If you don’t have another driver to share the load, take long enough breaks and listen to exciting stuff so you can stay awake.
11. Be sure to stick some empty grocery bags in your food box to use as garbage bags. There’s nothing grosser than banana peels lying around, not contained.
Happy traveling!
This was our comfy and spacious lodge we stayed in. We had five out my husband’s 8 siblings, most of the spouses, their mom, and lots of fun!
This recipe is for whole wheat sourdough bread done in the breadmachine. I make it almost every day. Last week I went on an 8 hour road trip. I took my sourdough bread with me, presliced. In my pre-Nourishing Traditions days I used to take bagels for us to munch on for road trips. I finally decided that the store-bought bagels tasted like play-doh. (OK, true confessions, yes I tasted play-doh as a child.) This sourdough bread tasted so much better and it’s much more nutritious for us than grocery store bagels! I don’t get the carby-overload feeling when I eat it. When I am home, frequently for lunch, I will toast this bread, slather the butter on, and then melt some cheese on it for a nutrient-dense grilled cheese sandwich. Doesn’t it look nummy? And the smell is so heavenly!!!!!
Over a month ago, I got to attend a class given by Melissa Richardson, coauthor of the following book:
I don’t have time to give a recap of the whole class here, but let’s just say that Melissa gave the best explanation of why whole grains should be soured, soaked, or sprouted before being eaten. It all has to do with phytic acid. She used a great, funny metaphor to explain it. That’s what you get when you have a writer who also is a baker. Melissa said she took a writing class from her coauthor, Caleb Warnock, and she paid him in bread when he started noticing that the treats of baked goods she brought to class were delicious and nutritious! Her bread made with natural yeast was so good for him that he was able to get off his medication for acid reflux that he had been using for over ten years! Amazingly enough, the lady who hosted the class said that her husband, who has been diagnosed with celiac disease by his doctor, can eat the bread that she makes using Melissa’s recipes.
Whole grains can be good for you if you prepare them the right way! If you don’t, then you are asking for digestive and other troubles, like tooth decay. All this talk about gluten intolerance and allergies could largely evaporate if we learned how to prepare our grains with fermenting (sourdough, aka natural yeast), soaking, or sprouting.
See how light and fluffy this bread looks? Yes, it’s whole wheat sourdough bread! This is just what Melissa’s samples looked like in the class. It was so great to see, or have a vision, of what sourdough bread can look like. It doesn’t have to be dense, solid slabs that could be used as bricks or paperweights! I came home and replicated her bread in the picture above. Her bread really did look just like this.
I already had her book but it was worth it go to her class to hear her explanation, which as far as I can tell, is not in the book, and to get a sourdough starter from her! She also had some more info not in her book but on the handout, so I am really glad I listened to the Spirit telling me to go to the class, even though my pride/or I guess it was the Enemy telling me, “You don’t need to go, you already have the book.”
I had been using a starter since last October but I learned a few things from going to Melissa’s class. Namely, that your starter should show bubbles that you can see in the dough. If your starter is not bubbly, you need to reduce the amount, not use the starter yet, and start over by feeding it again, as she says in her book. You can go to her Facebook page here and watch her videos. Seeing bubbles is a key! That is why it’s best to use a glass jar. Here is my starter nice and bubbly:
So I went home and fed my starter using her handout as an instruction. I am so happy to say that I kept the starter alive, or did not kill it, and here it is above, having survived several weeks. I went to her book and used the recipe for bread machine bread. It overflowed way too much! I had to spend some time scraping baked bread on the inside of the machine. I studied her recipe in the book and then I noticed it said “Makes two loaves.” Ahhh, no wonder I had Mt. Vesuvius action going on! But there was no other instruction in the recipe, like “Divide the dough in half.”
So I experimented with the recipe and found that if I cut down the amount of natural yeast (aka sourdough start), and kept all the remaining ingredients the same, the recipe worked perfectly.
So here is my modified recipe that works just right in my machine. Hopefully it will work in yours. Hint: if you don’t have a breadmachine, check your local thrift store. That’s where I got mine, really cheap, only $5! ebay might work too.
Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread from Breadmachine
Put the following wet ingredients in your breadmachine loaf pan:
2 T softened or melted butter
1 3/4 c water
2 T honey
1 c sourdough, aka natural yeast start
Then add the dry ingredients:
4 1/2 c whole wheat flour, I use white winter wheat
1 1/4 tsp salt
Install the pan properly so it is “seated” in your breadmachine.
Choose the longest setting for whole wheat bread. On my machine this is setting #2, which takes 4 hours and 10 minutes. When you hear the machine start mixing, which for my machine is 30 minutes into the cycle, take a rubber scraper and help the machine out by bringing up the sides of the dough mixtures. Watch the mixture form into a nice, smooth, clean ball. If it doesn’t form into a ball, add more flour until it does. If there’s too much flour add a little water.
Hint: If I don’t have time to wait for the 30 minutes into the cycle, I will choose the “Dough” setting on my machine. That allows the machine to start kneading the mixture right away. I will watch and make sure a ball forms. Then I will cancel the dough cycle and choose the “whole wheat bread” cycle and start it over. Ever since I have followed what I just wrote in these last two paragraphs I have had perfect bread every time!
When it’s done, smother with lots of butter and honey while it’s hot and enjoy!
Here is one video by Melissa about how to do sourdough:
I have included pictures today from our recent Independence Day celebration.
Our Sunday School lesson for today comes from Elder Mark E. Peterson, with a special message about America, in honor of celebrating Independence Day a few days ago. It comes from the July 1976 issue of the Friend magazine. I was five years old at the time and remember the nation’s excitement of the bicentennial year, complete with special Zingers that had red white and blue frosting…ok, sorry for the tangent. Here is the message from Elder Peterson.
Dear boys and girls,
During the bicentennial year of the United States I would like to talk to you about that great country. To begin, let’s go a long way back into history so you can understand why Heavenly Father has been so interested in it. You will then see that His interest in America is directly connected with the Church’s interest. The Church is Heavenly Father’s organization, His kingdom here on earth.
I hope you have all begun to read the Book of Mormon, for it tells us about this land. When you read 1 Nephi, you will learn about the marvelous vision given to that prophet. Nephi was a man who was taught by the Lord. He was given a view of what was to happen on the earth in the latter days. Now I suggest that you read or ask your parents to read the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of Nephi where you can learn what he saw pertaining to our times.
In a vision, Nephi saw the discovery of America and Christopher Columbus crossing the ocean and coming to this land that was inhabited by the sons and daughters of Nephi’s brothers, the Lamanites. He also saw the manner in which America was colonized. And then Nephi was shown that the colonists who had settled America were attacked by the mother country—England. In other words, he saw the Revolutionary War in this vision.
Nephi saw that blessings rested upon the Americans so that eventually with His help they obtained their independence. This was necessary so that the land would be prepared for Joseph Smith, under the direction of our Father in heaven, to later establish The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
When the Savior was among the Nephites, following His resurrection in Palestine, He spoke of the United States as recorded in the twenty-first chapter of 3 Nephi. The Savior then said that a great nation would occupy this area in our time and be set up as a free and independent country. It is a marvelous thing when you stop to think that this country and this government were set up under the inspiration of our Father in heaven.
The Savior said that the reason for doing this was to fulfill a covenant made with the House of Israel, that through the people occupying modern America, the teachings of the Book of Mormon—the teachings of the restored gospel—would be taken to the rest of the world. So we have the Savior’s own words to the effect that America is a very special nation, set up for the distinct purpose of providing conditions under which the gospel could be restored and then be taken to all the world.
The United States provided freedom of speech and religion so that our Church could be established there and so that missionaries of the Church can travel in other countries on American passports and preach the gospel to the world.
The Lord told Joseph Smith that the federal Constitution was written by men whom God inspired. He raised up these men and inspired them to write this great document. And then, by revelation, the Lord told the Prophet that the members of the Church are to protect and guard this Constitution and that He would help them.
I have always felt that the glorious flag called the Stars and Stripes is Heavenly Father’s own banner because it represents His country. This is the one nation in all the world that He acknowledges was set up by His own hand. I don’t know of any other country in any period of the world’s history that Heavenly Father set up as a nation and for which He actually raised up men to write its constitution.
Each of you boys and girls should remember, especially in this bicentennial year, that you represent the Church. And you should also try to appreciate the fact that God helped the United States to provide the means whereby the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored.
I pray that you will all remember your responsibilities and opportunities to represent the Church well, and, if you do, I can promise that you will then be greatly blessed.
Sincerely,
Mark E. Petersen
Here’s a great talk by then Elder Ezra Taft Benson that says similar things:
The first is a web site for an online book called “Theology According to Calving and Hobbes.” Go here to access it.
Tree of Life Mothering 