Family Home Evening, Monday, June 9, 2008

The vines and grasses in our rock garden are wonderful! This dugout is our private retreat!
A mile from our home, the entrance to American Fork Canyon is beautiful. If patient, one can see big horn mountain goats in the hills, too many deer and not a few cougars, who have been seen a couple of times this winter near our home.
An interesting detail in this view of Lone Peak is the secondary irrigation reservoir, which allows us to keep our lawns green at a very low cost.
Happy Family Home Evening to Everyone!

We love green. It really lifts our spirits and serves as a great background to brilliant spring colors. Green has popped out on the Wasatch mountains, and lawns have never looked better. For those of us in Utah today was an incredibly beautiful day! We hope the days in Tennessee (Amanda) and Dijon, France (James and Maroon 5) are just as beautiful. Send us pictures.

Here is our message:

In my life's chain of events nothing was accidental. Everything happened according to an inner need.

Hannah Senesh

"It is inevitable when one has a great need of something, one finds it," Gertrude Stein reminds us.

Taking care of all our needs is important whether they be emotional, physical, social, or spiritual. Each need to be worked on, nurtured, and not treated casually. Concerning the attitude of spirituality and understanding sacred things, consider the teachings of Elder Todd Christopherson, (the most recently-called LDS Apostle and dear friend from our years at Duke University):

"The importance of having a sense of the sacred is simply this: if people do not appreciate holy things, they will lose them.

Absent a feeling of reverence, they will grow increasingly casual in attitude and lax in conduct. They will drift from the moorings that the covenants with God could provide. Their feeling of accountability to God will diminish and then be forgotten. Thereafter, they will care only about their own comfort and satisfying uncontrolled appetites. Finally, they will come to despise
sacred things, even God, and then they will despise themselves.

On the other hand, with a sense of the sacred, one grows in understanding and truth. The Holy Spirit becomes a frequent and then constant companion. More and more a person will stand in holy places and be entrusted with holy things. Just the opposite of cynicism and despair, their end is eternal life."

Good night, and love from Mom and Dad,
Robert and Shauna Valentine,
Highland, Utah