Mediocrity

I love conference weekend.  It is such a great opportunity to learn.  I will talk about that a little more later.

 

On Sunday we had a hymn and testimony meeting that was really good.  Everyone had the opportunity to go up and tell their favorite song, bear testimony of a principle it taught and then we should sing a verse from it.  It really was great.  I love these types of sacrament meetings!

On Tuesday I got a pair of video cards to replace my current card.  They are not really that much better than the current card but they will allow me to run all three of my monitors at once.  It should be really fun to enjoy the games like that.  Best of all the upgrade is only costing me 60 dollars.  Still a lot on my student budget, but within my range.

On Friday I finished the epic project that was packing my stuff.  Once a year I take all of my stuff out of where I keep it and spread it over the floor.  I then take the time to evaluate what I have, and either throw re-pack it, throw it away, or send it off to DI.  This year I am happy that I was able to throw out 3 large trash sacks of stuff, and send 2 large boxes off to DI.  I still have an incredible amount of stuff, but it is getting closer to the stuff that I actually should keep long term.  This next year is crazy, because except for a a small box and a half of mission stuff all my stuff will be in one house.  I haven’t done this since the I was a Junior in school.

 

Saturday and Sunday were of course conference.  I had a really good time at all of the sessions.  Saturday night after general conference our family all ate ice cream sundaes together, and then proceeded to watch skits from the onion.  It was really a lot of fun.

The next day I was surprised to see snow covering our yard, but I guess that is just life in Utah.  The apocalypse is upon us, and spring will never come…  Well, maybe that is over the top, but at times it sure feels that way.

Later that day I headed over to my sisters for dinner and several birthday parties, mine included.  It isn’t my birthday yet, but since my brother won’t be there for mine, we did a mini birthday party with it.  It was fun, and my sister did make a really good carrot cake.

So overall it was a pretty good week.  And, oh yea, I forgot, I am helping write my first paper.  We are submitting it to the IEEE for publication.  It may not get into that particular publication, but nonetheless it is great to start helping with publishing in our lab.

 

As for my thoughts on conference, there were two that really stuck out.  The first was the importance of covenants.  Several times is what stated that the power of the marriage covenant was enough to conquer problems in a marriage.  To me that is really such an amazing concept.

The second idea that hit me was that we live beyond our privilege, and a large part of that is because we are mediocre at being obedient.  At by we, I mean me :)  A lot of time it is like I am a B+ student.  I am not failing at being righteous, I am above average, and heck I am doing well, but I am not an A student.  And why not, because I am unwilling to follow all of the commandments as well as I should.

On the Sabbath, I go to church, I don’t shop, and I try to read my scriptures a little more.  But do I really not partake of weekly activities?  I may not do homework, but I do sometimes play video games.  While neither of these may seem bad, they are both activities of the week, and not really appropriate for Sunday, and yet I still partake of them.

Another example is the media I watch.  I am not entrapped in pornography, I don’t watch rated R movies, and I don’t listen to music that is full of sweating.  Yet still I watch PG-13 movies that endorse life styles that are inappropriate.  I watch shows that have sweating.

As you can see, these things are not hideous sins, but they are not living up to my full responsibilities.  Because I do not live up to those full responsibilities I also keep myself from receiving all the blessings that I could receive.

I spend so much time trying to justify why I shouldn’t do these things, instead of just doing better.  I think we all have things like this, where we are doing well, but we are not fully obedient.  We find ourselves happy to live not perfectly obedient, but somewhat obedient.  And at the same time we are living not quite up to our potential.

With conference I have made goals to try and fix some of these areas.  I hope that all of us can make goals to do a little better.  And that is why I love conference.  It gives us the chance to move our lives forward in very positive ways.