Hiking Timp in Pictures

(August 14th, 2021)

The only problem with being a year behind is that one of my guest bloggers is currently in a different country. But I still want to include her experiences. Last year, she and some friends hiked Timp. If you are from Utah, you know that is probably the ultimate hike around here. Tyler and I hiked it in college and it took us 14 hours round trip. Not for the faint of heart. I actually don't know how long it took June's group. (Probably less time.) In fact, I have no accurate commentary to go with these pictures, so I won't give any. Just enjoy photos of June hiking Timp for the first time. 

Renovations to Carnegie Hall

(August 7th, 2021)

I know I've mentioned this before, but we name our rooms; at least most of them. The kitchen is just the kitchen. (Boring, I know.) But we have Midgard, Atlantis, and then the most presumptuous...Carnegie Hall. Since the piano is in there, I can truthfully say that all my kids have played in Carnegie Hall. 

Last summer. we did some renovations to Carnegie Hall. It has always been a room with not enough light. There were actually NO lights in the room. It was wired, so you could set up lamps and the switches would turn them on and off if they were plugged in, but no overhead lighting. I'm not a fan. I love light. 

Tyler already did the can lights in Atlantis, so it was time to do a set upstairs as well.

Oh, and we painted too, because we had finished the library the month before and it was right next door. So we did that too. I've never been a huge fan of the yellow walls.

We also had this large crack running down from the window seat, so Tyler fixed that as well. He is quite an excellent handyman, which you may not expect from a computer nerd.

We had a lot of help from the girls again. 

The wiring was a little tricky, but after a lot of pictures of duct work (which I won't show you here) Tyler got it all figured out. And he had the kids do some of the work too.

Looks like we just need some final touches. 

Don't you think the gray looks better?

Then the lights went in just in time for the art show. Beautiful!

I know gray is a much cooler color than that warm yellow, but I like less buttery walls. And now we can officially say that after renovations...Carnegie hall is cooler than before. 

Spiritual HIGH

This week was the best week of my mission! Before this week I have felt the Spirit. Lots, actually. I have the gift to have the Spirit with me always and always the blessing of being a missionary and having a mantle that brings the Spirit in a different way. But this week was different.

It started off with exchanges. I learned a lot from Hermana Cotui, a Dominican. When we got back together my comp and I had a good talk about how we can be a little more Dominican in our teaching of the gospel — more straightforward, more firm. Not in a mean way, but we've been a little too nice and we need to help people progress. Change isn't easy but it's also important. We're here to love them too much to let them stay the way they are.

The next day I had the best lesson of my mission so far. We showed up to their house and the wife was ready to listen. But we really needed to talk to the husband too. So I asked if he could participate, and when she said he was busy washing his motorcycle, I said, okay, we can go outside and teach the lesson there. (Normally I would just kinda timidly be like, okay dang, next time then.) We went out there and I did not know what we were going to be teaching until I opened my mouth and experienced it getting filled like it says so many times in D&C. I said we would teach the law of chastity, and we did, and the Spirit was so strong. They were both like, yeah we want to get married. We invited them to set a date and are going to try to set them up with a member of our ward who works in marriage and government stuff.

Next day, ZONE CONFERENCE. The awesomest thing ever. It was so amazing. The topic was basically the Spirit. How to have it, how to keep it, how to teach with it. We watched this MTC devotional by Elder Holland as prep and it was so good, I would highly recommend it to everyone. It's from April 15, 2021 if you want to look it up in the list of MTC devotionals.

We learned about teaching for understanding, relying on the Spirit to extend baptismal invitations at any point not only when we're teaching the third lesson and talking about baptism itself, and testifying throughout the lesson instead of just at the end. That last one was especially powerful to start implementing in our teaching. The next day we had our first lesson where we started testifying as we taught instead of just to finish the lesson, and it made a huge difference. The first time one of us said, "I know", I could literally feel the Spirit enter. As noticeably as someone walking into the room. It was there. And it hasn't left.

I am on the longest and awesomest spiritual high I have ever been on in my life. Since that conference I have been filled with the Spirit. I feel so different. I feel so pumped about the work, about being exactly obedient instead of being pretty obedient and that's enough, about how awesome it is that I get to testify about Jesus Christ and his gospel every single day.

I also finished the Book of Mormon for the first time in Spanish this week. It's taken me a while because I can't just sit down and read like I want to because my life is so busy. At least, I thought I couldn't. My awesome comp has inspired me. She has a goal to read the entire Libro de Mormon in Spanish during the month of August and she's spending every spare moment reading. I've been following suit. I was in Helaman three weeks ago and I just finished it on Saturday. I know that book is true and I am so grateful to God for giving us a way to know that every single other thing in His gospel is true.

Remember that if you've been baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you have the gift of the Holy Ghost. You can feel at peace, full of joy, and close to Christ ALWAYS. He's a constant companion. But he doesn't dwell in unclean temples and we have to be willing to make changes in our lives to live worthy of having the Spirit with us always. I would invite you all to make one small change in your lives starting today to let the Spirit in a little more. Dieter F. Uchtdorf said we should let some things go and other things grow, so it doesn't necessarily mean sacrificing something (though it can), it can also mean consecrating something to the Lord, or putting Him first as we continue to use the gifts He has given us that we might have joy (2 Ne 2:25).

I'm doing the same thing and giving up something that is hard for me to give up to allow the Spirit into my life more. Our mission president asked us to stop writing emails to friends to more fully consecrate ourselves to the work we are doing. You can still feel free to email me, I'd love to hear updates about your lives and all of you mean a lot to me. But right now I'm on a mission and God comes first before everything and everyone else, so I will be following my mission president's advice to not respond to any emails. I still love all of you guys.

Have an amazing week!

Hermana Cazier

pics!

1-2 there was a goat stampede. They actually were running but stopped right when we started taking pictures and attempting to take a selfie with them

3-4 más selfies

5. this awesome member named Lourdes

6. helado bon on the exchange!