So what learned about decide in my study's this week is you are constantly deciding to choose good or bad. If we choose good we can be happy :) but if we choose bad thand we have to go back and try again.   

The Lincoln Hypothesis

Here is my blog post on the Lincoln Hypothesis! If you guys didn't read that book for master, I recommend making it a summer read. :) 

Love you all! Have a great day!

PS. Also, that blog is the blog I use for all my A-Ha's as well. 

My VG Inspirement

Hey everyone (again! Am I getting annoying at all? :p)!

I'm not feeling extra creative this week. :p It's been a really long one!

So I just wrote another blog post! Here it is! :)

BTW, this is my blog for pretty much any Ah-hahs I get, or blog posts I do for Inspirements, so if you would like to subscribe to it, go ahead!

Love you all!!!

~ Gracious

My thoughts on Decide

Making decisions is kinda like making a choice except you can make decisions that make it so that you don't have to make choices later like deciding never to smoke or drink. You can also make decisions that will make you have to do bad things later. We should not make these kind of decisions it makes the spirit leave us and that is extremely bad. I hope that we can all make the right decisions this week concerning our school our media and our everyday life

Jared

Small choices can make a big difference

hmm how do I start this?

Decisions decisions......

when I first read the topic, I immediately thought to the talk entitled: A Matter of a Few Degrees by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. In this address he emphasizes the point of careful and well thought out decisions with a story where an airline is off by 2 degrees and consequently crashes into a volcano. Those 2 degrees made a world of difference in the end.

I like to compare this to our daily decisions, while some of our choices are black and white (very defined) others may not seem to make an impact and be kind of grayish. These grayish choices can greatly effect us in the end, just like the 2 degrees! In the moment it makes little or no difference but if you make that gray decision you have just brought yourself closer to another a little bit darker decision. And soon you are way off course! This can be illustrated with a decision tree:

Fred is at the beginning (the star), Fred is new in a group and he is introducing himself to them. lets say he has the choice of:

A: telling a little white lie to make him look better.

B: telling the plain old truth

now lets evaluate:

If he made choice A:

since he told something that is not true, he now has to lie whenever the story comes into question if he wants to keep the false status.

So now he has another choice:

1: keep the false status
2: tell the truth

now chances are he is going to choose 1 because he doesn't want to look bad and it is an easy choice. Telling the truth is hard and he has to back out of whatever lies he has told and he most assuredly is going to look bad. So he's probably going to end up telling another lie.

If Fred made choice B:

since he didn't lie he has no need to keep up any false status. And he has increased his self-esteem and character by saying no to lying.

Later on Fred is faced with another decision, this time more serious. Fred sees something in the lost and found that he really wants! But he knows it is not his. He also knows he can have it if he just lies to the clerk saying it was his.

Fred can make choice + or choice - which will he choose?

Well if we are talking about Fred A then he is going to know that he can pull it off and since he has been lying all the time it makes it easier. But really he is just conditioning himself to be okay with lying and stealing. And next time it will be easier to make the wrong choice.

However if we are talking about Fred B he is going to know that he turned down a lie once, so he can do it again. And he will know that the next time he is faced with a choice!

Do you see where this would lead? One decision, just like 2 degrees can make a huge difference.

So now your wondering How do we avoid this?

• Check Yourself! Whenever you are faced with a decision big or small make sure it is in line with your goal (whatever it might be)

• Counsel with God in all your doings (Alma 37:37)

• Be Humble and ready to receive Gods advice

if you make a wrong decision. Don't worry, that is what the atonement is for. Make a point not to make the same mistake and carry on.

God knows you better then you do, he knows whats best for you! I cant stress this enough. Always counsel with god in every decision. I bear my testimony that I know this to be true.

Decide to Want it!

So the reason I really like is Quote is because it's saying you NEED to DECIDE!

Decide to Want to Love!
Decide to Want to Never drink!
Decide to Want to be Happy!
Decide to Want to Always go to Church!
Decide to Want to live the Word of Wisdom!
Decide to Want to Never smoke!
Decide to Want to go to the Temple!
Decide to Want to Always be Honest!
Decide to Want to Serve!
Decide to Want to be an Example of Christ!
Decide to Want to...

BE LIKE CHRIST!

We can't be Afraid to...
-Love!
-Say, "No!" to a drink!
-Put a Smile:) on when we're down!
-Tell your friends you going to go to Church!
-Say, "No!" to things that aren't good for your  body!
-Say, "No!" to a cigarette!
-Say, "I'm going to the Temple!"
-Be Honest!
-Serve!
-Act Like Christ!
-And we can't be afraid to WALK IN HIS FOOT  STEPS!

Be PROUD of all of this! Be Proud that YOU can say, "NO!" to the Bad! And, "YES!!!!!!!!!!" to the Good!

Personally, I want to Walk in the Foot Steps of Christ! Do I have some work to do? HECK YES!!!!!! We all do! But, You CAN do it! If you DECIDE that you WANT to!

Thanks Everyone!

Love you ALL!
Ashley!:D

The Great Decision

Last night, I had a really amazing experience.

I posted last week about my horrible week. I was really not having an amazing time!

But last night... something happened, and I realized that the decision to follow really is the greatest decision anyone could make in their entire life.

Without God, what are we? Really, nothing!

I was imagining my life without God. And really, I do believe that is the dark tunnel!

I felt last week that I was following God, but, really, was I?

God never abandons us, and really, we only can find true happiness if we come unto Him! It is absolutely impossible to ever find happiness without Him! I think, this is what it was, I decided!

I chose not to see the light.

I felt that I was in a dark tunnel, and I did not know what to do, but I chose to not look at everything! That's why my week was so dreadful! I was refusing to see the good around me!

There were tone of lanterns floating all around, there was SO much that I chose not to see!



We have to look around with God's eyes. I realized last night that I really didn't want to be mine, I wanted to be completely His!

And that is what brings happiness!!!!

Everyone thinks that following "your passion" will bring you happiness.

But I have noticed that unless your passion is God, that happiness never comes!

It is not possible to be happy or perfect without Him. And I noticed that my unhappiness was all me!

Unhappiness doesn't come because I don't get everything that I want. Happiness comes from being grateful!

There is absolutely no way to be happy unless you are continually following God.

God will lead you to your passion. God will lead you to your happiness. God will lead you to where you need to be! You may think that is not where you want to be, but it is the path of true happiness!

I love you all, and I really, sincerely hope that you will remember to trust Him, for true happiness will never come if you don't.

Love,
Gracious

P.S. Sorry there aren't lots of pictures! :p I even think my own post is boring! :p There were just too many thoughts to put into pictures! ;)

Decisions Determine Destiny

President Monson said "Decisions Determine Destiny"
I loved the video of Tet for Hebrew we were supposed to watch and I think it went so well with this quote by President Monson and I love how Jim Staley said that "...(Tet) is the letter of decision, when you come to a decision point, a brick wall not a speed bump a brick wall, you need to make a choice, Hebraiclly  your in the letter Tet it is the most incredible most exciting and scariest place to be on the Hebrew alphabet because it hinges on good and evil..."  its at that point when we are in Tet that we have to decide what we are going to do when its our choice our decision and that's why its the most exciting and the most scary because it will either be one of the hardest choices or one of the easiest and that's why our church leaders always say to decide before although i agree you cant decide everything before like Megan said but we can make some and those decisions will determine your destiny whether they are big or small.

On Sunday we had an amazing 5th Sunday lesson about the honest challenges we face so not like drugs and such more like not fitting in and not having confidence, anyway so we made an honest list of how we felt were our actual challenges and we also made a list of things we hope, know, want, or believe we have a testimony of.
And then we talked about how those things we want or have a testimony of can help us with those trials and thats why its so important to get testimonies of those things because that's what will help us and how those trials will help us be stronger... my bishop taught us something really cool, In Ether 2: 17 it talks about the vessels and how they have to be "tight like unto a dish" and how hard it was to write back then but they wrote that chapter anyway and what was the point about talking about how they needed to be tight like unto a dish :D it just didn't make sense and then he told us to think about what if the vessels were US doesn't that change your point of view of why they wrote that scripture?

 17 And they were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the sides thereof were tight like unto a dish; and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like unto a dish.

And then think about verses 24-25

 24 For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth.

 25 And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?

That is how he prepares and pushes us for the promised land (which was where they were going) was those winds and waves... You cant get to the promised land/Celestial Kingdom without those waves and winds/trials.  You cant get to the promised land in calm waters!

I knew that trials shaped us and that's why we were here on this earth but i never thought of it before! 

That was my amazing Ah-ha for the week! 

I hope you got as much out of it as i did!

Thanks!

Rachel

One Decision Away

This week was pretty dang hard for me, but really what I've realized is it's my fault. Sometimes you really can't control your circumstances or what happens to you. That's just life. But one thing you can do is decide to be happy. Decide to enjoy life. That is one of the biggest decisions we can make, and it's a daily decision. Men are that they might have joy. We won't just have joy if we're sitting around getting mad and blaming others for bad things that happen. We have to make that decision ourselves to have joy. 

Good decisions lead to freedom to make more decisions. Bad decisions lead to slavery of limited decisions. This week I finished the Lincoln Hypothesis, and instead of ending the book with Lincoln, Timothy Ballard used the last chapter (not to spoil it for anybody :D) to apply it to us. The American Covenant is still very intact, and we will only prosper if we decide to keep our side of the covenant. Right now, America really isn't choosing that. We're choosing to be lazy, reliant, and ignorant. In the past, America has just become greater and greater. We've been given more and more freedom, and right now, there is great freedom for Americans. That is diminishing though, because we are using our freedom to make bad decisions. Bad decisions lead to slavery. If we use our freedom right, then we will continue to gain more and more freedom and stewardship. If we decide to use our freedom in the wrong way, though, our freedom will be taken away. And that is what is going to happen if we continue to abuse our freedom. 

So, decide today to be happy. And decide today just to make good decisions with the freedom that you have, because that will bring more freedom, and the alternative will bring slavery.