A Very Important Reason for You to Come Visit Us: We Need a Photographer!

So often Karalee and I believe that nothing in our live is noteworthy--hence our reluctance to post a new blog. But now we have a "reason."

The most exciting thing recently is that Karalee and I spoke in church yesterday. To the astonishment of me, Karalee took up the bulk of our allotted time to speak (Karalee was a bit astonished too)! Karalee was very nervous and undesirous to speak and yet once she started speaking she was on a roll. Of course, she timed her talk the night before to estimate how long it would take to give it. She figured it would take her about 15 minutes to give the talk. She turned out to be correct.

Karalee spoke of the progression of faith, beginning with simply "exercising a particle of faith," (Alma 34) all the way up to having a sure knowledge. She cited her experience at girls camp--so many years ago--in which she took up the challenge given her there to know for herself that Joseph Smith was a prophet. She also cited frequently an emeritus member of the second quorum of the seventy, James O. Mason.

Since Karalee for most of the week alternated between promising she'd be sick on Sunday, making her unable to speak or insisting that if she did speak she would do so for five or six minutes, I weighed her many pronunciations of how her talk would end up. As she constantly spoke of either of the latter happening most frequently and only mentioned once that she thought her talk would last 15 minutes, I prepared as though I would have most or all of the allotted time to speak. So I very much over prepared my talk. I probably had enough content to speak for an hour! My problem then was preparing to speak for a much shorter period of time with all the content I had gathered.

I spoke of Moroni' desire in Ether 12:4 of a better world that we could live in through proper hope and faith. That better world will come in the form of the new millennium, but I postulated that the new millennium coming is dependent not on the wickedness of humankind but on righteousness. As parents-to-be I explained that one of the best ways to usher in the new millennium is to be good parents. I then cited M. Russell Ballard primarily for ways in which we can be a good (or better) parent.

Of course, we got the usual compliments from a few members of the ward, including the bishopric. The counselor in the bishopric that asked us to talk complimented Karalee particularly for not sounding nervous while speaking, even though Karalee admitted to being nervous and I could tell rather easily how nervous she was. Plus, Karalee did a little dance behind the podium throughout her discourse.

Karalee was so nervous, in fact, that when introducing us, mentioning that she was pregnant totally alluded her. I had to mention that we were pregnant, something that one of Karalee's visiting teachers found to be very cute.

So Karalee spoke for about 16 minutes, while I only spoke for 11 minutes. The ward choir also sang Grandpa B. Cecil Gates' song, "The Lord's Prayer." Karalee survived the ordeal of speaking, and I even managed to go to the restroom immediately before I spoke.

In other news, last week I finished up working 10 consecutive days. We'd gone so long without a day off, it felt funny having one. We'd also kind of forgotten what it was like to have a day off. Currently, I work the swing shift, and often the swing shift sees a lot of aliens and drug smugglers making their move north once the sun goes down.

Finally, in the madness of our schedule Karalee and I never manage to get pictures taken of us. She and I lament that we know of no photo containing either of our mothers while they were pregnant with us, and that demonstrably show a pregnant mommy. We don't want the same fate to fall on our children, but the time to take such photos is very slowly (and when I say slowly Karalee means very slowly) coming to a close. I suppose I could take pictures of Karalee by herself, but Karalee seems to prefer to have me in the photo as well. That's where all of you come in: please, don't compromise the future of our child: come to Sierra Vista and be our photographer. Our child, along with us, will be very appreciative.


Only you can replace this photo with one of Karalee and Curtis!