family history whenever I darn well please it day

I am so excited about my recent family history discovery that I've decided it can't wait until Friday. I have to start back a couple of years for you to appreciate the truly cool nature of this. :) When Rachel and I were preparing for our trip to China and Korea a couple of years ago, I had a friend encourage me to video tape a lot while we were there. After debating about hauling an extra camera around, I remembered that my camera has video capability! (Yes, my memory is always that bad) I ordered some super big 32 gb cards to give me lots of storage space but really didn't video tape much of anything. (Ok, scratch that. We do have some pretty cute baby videos from starfish) On our last night in Daegu with Chris' dear sweet grandma, Chris' mom pulls out her Dad's "jokbo" (a huge book of family history going back to 1566) and says I might like it. I remember being so thrilled and thinking "I MIGHT like it??" We were leaving the Seoul at 11 the next morning and from the binding of the book, I know I wasn't going to be able to take it to get copies.  I thought about how I would be able to get the records in this jokbo home ALL night long until I had the simplistically awesome inspiration to photography each page. (yep, using those lovely memory cards!)

Skip ahead to two years later.  The jokbo has sat on my hard drive, untouched.  I was, once again, inspired to tap into our dear sweet exchange student as a resource to understand our Korean family history.  I wish I had been inspired a little earlier as she is leaving in a month, but I'm hoping that she will teach me how to fish between now and then.  She has helped me understand a lot of the basics and also helped me find a few great resources for Korean family history! (wanna translate a chinese character into Korean?  want a book with great english explanations to  the different parts of the jokbo?)  The book that I have goes to the 21st generation, which starts in 1566 and ends in the 37th generation.  I would love to know how to get the other book that goes even further back, BUT the 1400 pages of this book could keep us busy for a while.  Never has a Korean class been so tempting to me!

Bottom line, this Korean genealogy hurts my brain.   I can do a little each night before I want to pull out my hair because I am translating from Chinese (that I don't know) to Korean (that I don't know) to English.  Sigh.  Rewarding?  Oh, yeah!  And this weekend I taught Chloe and Autumn beginning jokbo translating lessons and Rachel has put her limited knowledge of Chinese characters (numbers) to use. They are in charge of translating dates while I get the places and names. I got the short end of the stick, but not for long.  Pretty soon they will be jokbo queens.  :)  And Rachel announced in sacrament meeting that I am "in the middle of translating our Korean genealogy book", so I better get past the first page!

the happiest trip on earth

Last week our family took a trip to the happiest place on earth. (debatable about it actually being the happiest place, but it IS definitely the happiest theme park as we also went to Six Flags, which stunk in the happiest category!)  This involved two Sundays of me driving 7-10 hours instead of attending our normal church services, which really bummed me out.  I couldn't figure out a way to avoid it, but I sure do hate traveling on Sunday.   In young women's this year, the theme is "Stand Ye in Holy Places" and we've talked with the young women (girls from the ages of 12-18) about how this doesn't just mean hanging out at the temple 24-7, but it also means to learn how to create holy places in our own life.
I decided to apply this to our trip and looked for ways to make our car trip a holy place.

Sometimes I hate technology and sometimes I just love it so stinking much!  I had my lovely iphone loaded up with the latest general conference talks, hymns from the mormon tabernacle choir, and my favorite Sunday Variety playlist. (which is fabulous, if I do say so myself)  With a 7 hour car ride ahead of me, I started with conference and basically played it until the kids wanted something new. (they lasted pretty long!)  And then I brought in the music.  I love that the spirit can fill a car, a house, a room....anywhere that you invite him.  My car really became a holy place as we made room in our day for the spirit.  I felt my Savior's love as I listened to the words of the Prophet and to the many songs that sing of our Savior.  It was such a spiritual experience to feel the promptings of the spirit as I had opened up my heart.  I had opened up the door to personal revelation as I was (rather unsafely) jotting down tidbits of inspiration that I was receiving about parenting issues, ideas for young women's, thoughts about different young women in our ward and ways that I could help them and of course, things that I need to work on.

Sometimes, we tend to think of all of the things we shouldn't do.  We shouldn't listen to this music, we shouldn't watch that movie...you get the idea.  But I think it is much more important to find the things we should do.  I could have listened to any old music on my iphone and I probably wouldn't have been "hurt" by it.  I keep a dang clean stock of music.  But the music that I listened to on our drive drew me close to my Savior and reminded me (once again!) that he is so aware of each and every one of us and is WAITING for us to reach out to him.

Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you.  Seek me diligently, and ye shall find me.  Ask and ye shall receive.  Knock and it will be opened unto you.  [D & C 88:63]