The Forty Day Fast

  Helaman 3:35    Nevertheless they did ^afast and ^bpray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their ^chumility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the ^dpurifying and the ^esanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their ^fyielding their hearts unto God.

This is the scripture theme of the 40 day fast, which we will talk more about.  
Na and I were talking recently my trek experience and her mission.  For both of us these experiences were extreme spiritual highs for us.  We both felt closer to God after these experiences.  We talked about while you are affected by these spiritual highs you have an increased hunger for knowledge and to share your knowledge of the gospel.  We change and become better.  But it is not always easy to stay this way.  As we go through daily life, we realized, that sometimes we seek heaven to obliquely.  This negatively affects us spiritually and causes us to lose the desire to seek knowledge which causes us to lose more of the spirit. A damning cycle that we must not get into, but we all do. thankfully for all of us an atonement was made so we don't have to stay in this cycle, we can get out. The Lord has given us many ways to help us keep the spirit and progress on His path, one of these ways is through fasting and prayer.  In this life all of us are striving to over come the appetites of the natural man, fasting gives us the opportunity to develope self-mastery.  In fasting we put our spirits before our bodies, in doing this we are learning to "yield our hearts unto God".  The Savior set his example of fasting with His forty day fast.  We can do the same, but of course we cannot go that long without eating but we can do this in our own mortal way here is how it will work.
     It begins with prayer even before you start the fast. In Alma 46, Moroni prayed to know where to sanctify his cities. As we humbly come to The Lord and seek to know what is keeping us from truly being close to Him, He will surely guide us.(examples: negative thinking towards your self or others, being quick to anger, rude speech, and many others) We will be inspired to know what we need to change and how we can apply His Atonement to make this change. Write it down. This will be the spiritual focus for your fast.
You will also need to decide what you will fast from physically. This can be anything. (Examples:going without chocolate or sugar in General, waking up earlier and studying more going without worldly media, really anything the spirit guides you to do).
You begin the fast by actually fasting (two consecutive meals),such as on fast sunday. Each morning during this fast pray about the things on your lists and ask The Lord for help. Each evening report to The Lord on how you have done. Give thanks and repent where needed. Continue for forty days and then end with a fast just as you began.
We invite all of you cuties to experience your own forty day fast. We know that as you do this you will feel an increased measure of the spirit. You will come even closer to Christ. We know that He desires to be close to us but we must make the choice every day to be close to Him. We know the changes we experiences are only possible through the Atoning sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We love Him and we love you all.
Love, Cheeseman and Miss Na
Just a note to say... By small and simple things are great things brought to pass .  But by striving prayerfully to improve each day we show The Lord that we want Him in our lives. Which brings us an increase in the spirit which always brings an increased desire for knowledge which brings us to more repentance and increase in spirit. A cycle we want to be in and because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can be in.

It's a jolly holiday with Mary

Just thought I would post these pictures of Mary because well isn't she just delightful? If this doesn't put a little extra joy into your season I'm not sure what will.

Almost every time I turn she's showing off her superman pose. We're not sure if she's doing her daily workout or if her belly's just way too big for her to lay normally.

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Also here is the link to the neighborhood kids choir that Grace and Anna formed for their Christmas service. They went and sang at a Senior living place acroos the street. It was adorable! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC0hfIUV7ts&feature=youtu.be

And here's another if you want to see their Sat. morning dance concert they came up with. If you'll notice Anna is wearing the leotard we bought her like 5 years ago when Brielle Emily taught her dance in the basement. But I think the real treat is watching Emilyne.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlxI0PnZMpo

Acting and Faith

I have started to read Elder Bednar's book Increase in learning.  And in it he talks a lot about action and faith. It made me realize that that is why I love this blog so much.  As I have posted I never knew what I was going to write in advanced, I simply acted on faith. As I wrote I learned, writing gave the Holy Ghost the opportunity to teach me.  I feel we all had this same experience when wrote on the blog.  So I got this idea. What if each week or so we all read a conference talk or had a subject assigned to read about, and then we post what we learn from it and questions we found.  I feel that this will give us increased opportunity to act because we will have an assignment to do.  I realized from Bednar that we truly increase in learning when it becomes ours.  Take math for an example.  Has anyone noticed that you can't learn math until you actually do it.  You can see you teacher do all the problems it the world. But it is not until you act and do the  hours of homework, that you actually learn it.  This is because when you do the math homework it becomes yours.  From doing those seemingly ridiculos hours of algebra it has become mine.  Its not something someone made up, it is something that I did, that is apart of me.  I feel this same principle will apply to us if we start unitedly reading the conference talk or studying whatever, the words of the prophets will become our words as we strive to teach it to each other and question it with each other.  In the comment section of the blog I have learned a lot as others have added to what I or others have said, because it builds on the principle and helps me to act, by seeking to understand better, thus fore making the words mine.

So I hope you all consider this and give me some feed back on it.  If you want to do it or not or how you want to do it and then we can go from there.  Make sure you comment because we're expecting everyone to participate so we are expecting everyone to comment on how they want to do it.  So we can best do this to make the most out of this blog we can.
-fo cheesial my nizzle