Write It Down

Jess is away for Kelsey's wedding and the girls are with us this weekend.  What a glorious day.  This autumn has been a gift for enduring the COVID-19 pandemic.  Each weekend is sunny and warm and the fall colors are the best I've seen in years.  On Saturday the girls and I went to a farm in Red Hook.  Josephine loves farm animals and Charly was gracious enough to come along.  We played a Halloween playlist in the car on the way up and had so much fun singing the songs!!  Once we got there, it was delightful to see Jo run all over the farm.  The girls rode a tractor together through a corn maze as well.  I can't tell who had more fun.  Josephine, Charly or me!  It's one of the those days I want to remember forever.  Which reminds me of a talk by President Eyring.  He says this:

 “I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.

“He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: ‘I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.’

“I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it.

“I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: ‘Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?’” (Henry B. Eyring, “O Remember, Remember,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2007, 66–67).