Its a Slow Crawl

     Working toward our goal of moving from this tiny apartment to living on our own land is a slow crawl toward our goal.  Especially since we started with a dream and no money.  I feel like the people in the days of Moses when they lingered in the desert for 40 years.  Are we going to give up?  Nope.  Will we ever achieve our dream?  I don't know.  Will we find happiness along the way? We will.
     Last night I was reading about the life of George Albert Smith.  For those of you who know us, we are Mormons and in our lessons at church we learn about the lives & lessons of the Presidents of our church.  In case you don't know, our church is not called the Mormon Church, it is called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the presidents of our church are known to us as Prophets, Seers & Revelators.  This means that they are the mouthpiece for the Lord to guide His people - just like Moses in the desert who was also a Prophet, Seer & Revelator, otherwise the people could not have been lead out of bondage & through the parting of the Red Sea.
     Anyway, I was reading about George Albert Smith & something he said really stood out.  George Albert Smith was born in 1870.  His father & grandfather were stalwart men in the church - very strong members who fulfilled their callings & served the Lord.  George Albert Smith was no different.  Long before he was called to the Presidency of the church - when he was just 22 yrs old - he met the woman he was going to marry.  He told her, "If you are interested in marrying someone for money it would not be me because I have long ago decided that I will not devote myself or my life or my time in making money but toward serving the Lord and toward helping His children in this world."  That didn't mean he wasn't going to work to support his family - what it meant was that his main focus was to serve the Lord first.
     When I read that I thought of Barry & I and wondered how we could live our lives with the same devotion.  I thought of our children & grandchildren & how busy our lives are & how we spend every day from morning to night keeping our tiny apartment organized as we work with the things we have: furniture, clothing, necessities, food storage, crafts, seasonal, ebay business, books, movies, paperwork, etc. etc. etc. & I realized that we should want for nothing else.  If we just took one day & set it aside for service to the Lord how much happiness could we bring to others?
     Maybe our main focus should be on service & put buying land on the back burner.  Maybe serving & searching for land could work simultaneously.  I don't know.  I know that when you serve others, the Lord blesses you with what you need & as you continue to do all that He has ask you to do He will bless you with the desires of your heart.  For Barry & I our desire is to have our children with us as we travel through this earths journey & the hearafter.  Our desire on this earth is to serve others in their needs.  It is to own land that we can expand on & then leave a legacy for our children after we've left this life.
     Buying land is still a hope - a dream - a vision - for us.  Its not so that we can sit upon a hill & show off what we have, but to be able to better live a provident life, one where we are as self-reliant as we possibly can be, one where we can avoid the myriad of manufactured goods, where we can give back to the earth what we've taken from it, where we can feel the sun on our backs as we work the ground, smell the unpolluted air as we hang our clothes on the line, hear the sounds of birds chirping, cows mooing, pigs grunting, or the serenade of the crickets in the evening when we sit outside under the moonlight in awe at the vast expansion of the great & wonderful universe, and when our lives are over & our earthly missions completed, we will have left a piece of Gods green earth to our children so that they too can have their own hopes & dreams & visions.  But, to get their, its a slow crawl.