Who You Are by Hilary Weeks

I know you wonder if you'll ever have a day
When the kids stay calm, the laundry's done,
and the dishes are put away
And sometimes you feel like your days are
spent and gone
And the question running through your mind
is, "What have I gotten done?"
And when you finally have a moment to
slow down
At the end of your day
I know Father would say
Believe in what you're doing
Believe in who you are
Hold tight to the truth that you're a daughter
of God
Believe in who you're becoming
Believe in who you are
It may seem simple--all the little things you do
But the lives you touch matter so much and
there's no one else like you
And Father needs you to stand tall and faithful
Be all you can be
Oh, if you could see what He sees
You'd believe in what you're doing
You'd believe in who you are
So hold tight to the truth that you're a
daughter of God
Believe in who you're becoming
Believe in who you are
When it's hard to believe in yourself
And you feel like you're beginning to doubt
Remember
He believes in what you're doing
He believes in who you are
Don't lose sight of the truth that you're a
daughter of God
He believes in who you're becoming
He believes in who you are.


Very early one morning I wanted to help out my sick husband get out of the snow covered drive-way so he could work (which he wanted to do) without killing himself (which, to me, seemed like what shoveling several inches of snow would d0) so I decided to get totally bundled up at 5 AM or so and shovel it for him.
I can listen to music on my phone and so I got my ear plugs and went to work. In the middle of this labor, the song above came on. I hadn't heard it yet as I'd just gotten this Hilary Weeks (an amazing LDS singer/songwriter) cd and just put all the song on my phone.
I listened intently and silently wept in the bitter cold and yet as I wept, really, my heart was leaping with joy at the truth of the words. The little things I did, including attempting to shovel snow in our huge drive-way, mattered to Heavenly Father. I felt my burdens become lighter.
This is what hope does. It lightens our burdens. It makes us feel stronger than perhaps we are.
Here are some thoughts from Education Week shared by Vickey Pahnke Taylor that focus on hope getting us through trials and adversity.

• Dark clouds are only temporary. Hope can disperse those clouds.
• We need to not just go through trials, but have them go through us to strengthen us.
• Hope transforms us. When we decide to be a part of the miracles then hope grows and more miracles can happen.
• "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."--Mother Teresa
• He rejoices when we move away from the darkness and change, pray, brighten up and then put that hope out for others to see.
• We need to find ways that we can be a hope to another person, even our children
• When we break through our disobedience, we will find that hope was missing.

Have you ever really pondered what the Savior says about taking His yoke upon us?
In my naivete, I really thought that this was just about an extra burden that we should take on in being a part of the gospel.
But what is a yoke?
It ties oxen together so that their efforts together make the work easier. It's that simple. If we yoke ourselves to the Savior, he will take on our heavy burden and make it a part of his burden. His burden is "light," he says. This means he is not going to add to your burden, but will share His light and hope and strengthen your faith.

And from Elder Hales, who spoke at the devotional: "Mothers...don't sell yourselves short. Don't let the world demean, debase or denigrate your position [as mothers] as invaluable or as mere servitude."
To all my mother-friends out there: I hope you have a very good week and remember that all the little things you do are truly a part of His great work.

Love,
Cami

Ok, this is from a genealogy class about using the internet as a tool and it is amazing information, but it's really just a Google tutorial. I promised my mother-in-law that I'd type them up for her. While the examples here are mostly genealogy based, I think that there's something here for everyone.

Customizing Your Google search:

• you can customize it into different languages
• you can change the number of results per page

Write a sentence out for what you're searching for and type in the key words from that sentence

Write words that you want to appear in the text you're hoping to see
Be specific
Use no more than 10 words in your search

Boolean Operatives:

• Using 'and +' means you want both words to show in your search. If you use the plus sign, don't use spaces between the words.
• Using a minus sign '-' means not, so if your child has to do a report on dolphins, but you don't want the Miami Dolphins to be part of that, in your search you would type: 'dolphins -Miami -football' to avoid getting those results.
• Using 'or' broadens your search to include either word
• Using quotations around a set of words will search for those two words in that order.
• Using parenthesis...example: if you type (mouse or mice) and (poison or trap) it will bring you results that contain one element of each set. ie a result with mice poison or mouse trap or mouse poison, etc
• Using '*'. Known as a wild card, this will work as a replacement for up to six letters. Must be proceeded by at least 3 letters. Example: I'm looking for the name Johnson, but I don't know if it is spelled Johnson, Johnston, Johnsen. I can type Johns* into Google and I'll get results that cover any spellings that follow that pattern.
• '*' can also be used for dates. Example: you type California Election "Oct * 2003" or "10/*/03" or "October * 2003" Google will find the day of the month of the California election in october of 2003
• Using '?' The question mark can help with alternate spellings as a replacement of one letter. Ex. Johns?n will bring results that could be Johnson Johnsun Johnsen, etc.
• Using '..' This can help with a numeric range. Say I'm looking for Iowa Maps that existed between 1800 and 1850. I type: Iowa Maps 1800..1850 (only two dots!)
• Using '~' This is called a tilde. If you are looking for a census guide you can type: census ~guide and it will bring results like census guide, census help, census tutorial

The following are for searching specific sites using Google's all-powerful search engine

• If you don't necessarily trust a link and want to know about it before you go type: info:and then the webpage. ex. info:www.ebay.com and it will bring up what looks like the results page, but specifically abou this address
• If you want to see sites that have a particular address as a link on their site, you type: link:and the site. If you found a great site for Irish Ancestry, this method could possibly lead you to similar sites.
• If you want to use Google to search for content on a specific site (Google is powerful whereas some sites little search boxes don't work as well) ex. I want to look for any instance of Anton Szuszutsky on RootsWeb. I type: "Anton Szuszutsky" site:www.rootsweb.com and it will only search on this site for this name.

Possibly a very boring post for most of you, but hey, you never know when this stuff'll come in handy.