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My Spiritual Game-Changer

Hey friends, this is Ashley. I felt impressed this morning to take a few minutes and tell you a part of my story. A few years ago, I was going through the motions. I didn’t realize it but I was complacent with my life in a lot of ways. I was running at a pace that wasn’t manageable and my priorities were mixed up. Church was something I did on Sunday and didn’t think much of throughout the week, other than obligations or commitments. I wouldn’t say I was making any time for improving my spirituality or being proactive with my health at all, really. One day I was in the car and a song came on the radio that I liked. It had an acoustic guitar and I was humming along. It suddenly hit me what the lyrics were and I was so annoyed, thinking ‘why would they ruin which great music with those awful lyrics!’ They were offensive and degrading. Much to my disappointment, I turned the radio off and started to think. I reflected on how much music really impacted my life. I listened to it all th...
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Sunday Miracles Continued - Elk Grove, CA

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Another adventurous day... We woke up in Smartsville, CA where we had been staying with a connection from one of our networks, on a beautiful farm. We were sent on our way with a dozen eggs, a quiche and crust recipe (DELICOUS), and an invitation to come back and stay longer next time! We've yet again met some amazing people and have been spoiled by some amazing views... sneakpeak below. Here is the link to the full post about our stay and adventure up to Reno! We'd planned to drive in to Lodi, where we were going to stay overnight on a farm property, and visit a cousin of Ashley's living there, but made a mistake in our travel plans and did not leave enough time to make it all the way to Lodi (according to our GPS) so I quickly found another church house on the way that we could make by 1pm, in Elk Grove, CA. That was even a stretch as we pulled into the parking lot with our big rig right at 1pm and still needed to change our clothes. The first meeting, Sacrament M...
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God is in the details

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📷: Letitia Waters Pierce I'm not sure I'd ever be able to believe that God isn't aware of me. That has been reinforced in the last 10 days. This trip has been a new adventure at every turn. We really didn't know what would happen or what to expect. We sold all of our stuff, quit our jobs and the way money has been burning up in the gas tank and at the unexpected campground spots, we have felt a bit of an unexpected pinch.   Fast forward to Amarillo Texas. It was 105 degrees the day the AC died. We didn't know how us or the cats could survive that kind of heat without AC. Luckily the next day, the high was supposed to be 85. We had someone say they could be there the next day to fix it, and then 15 minutes later, I had someone explaining to me over the phone how to fix the AC that day, at no cost.   As we are leaving Amarillo on June 19th, Ashley happens to look up to see the temple schedule in OKC. Temple closed for 2 weeks for cleaning, fr...
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Lessons From a New Congregation

One of our highlights of traveling is getting to attend a church service with one of our ward families in another area. It's a great feeling to have 300 new friends every week. This week we went to the Choctaw, OK ward and I was blown away. First of all, the people here are generally very kind. During the Sacrament service, two young men spoke - one recently returned from a 2-year church mission, and one preparing to leave. They delivered two very well prepared messages! Afterward, it wasn't 15 seconds before we had members of the ward there greeting us and asking about our visit. Secondly, I was amazed at their interactions as all the women gathered for the Relief Society meeting, the last hour of the block. Again, it wasn't a few seconds after I'd sat down that someone turned to me and asked who I was. We chatted for a few minutes, then the meeting started and they pointed me out as a visitor. My fast, new friend spoke up and said, "This is my friend, Ashley...
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OKC - Change of Plans!

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Well, we are getting ready to head out of Amarillo, TX and head for Oklahoma City, OK. This will be our next new temple, #51! I was on lds.org looking up the temple schedule and uh-oh... I realized that it closed today for two weeks for cleaning... TWO WEEKS. Bummer... When we found out it was closing for two years for major renovations, I made a very unfortunate assumption that it wouldn't be closing before that for any smaller maintenance. I was wrong. So... We will be getting up to drive from Amarillo to OKC tomorrow and the temple will be closed. So we've been discussing our options - none of which are very appealing. School is picking up for me (I have my first set of exams this weekend) and we've already traveled over 1400 miles in the last two weeks. We've decided to stay put in OKC for two weeks and explore, take it easy, catch up on work and school, and wait for the temple to open again on July 5th. Definitely a huge curve ball... BUT, things happen for ...
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Service in Amarillo, TX!

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So, today is Sunday, and we attended a ward in Amarillo. The meetings were really good, and today we learned about an app called Just Serve. It lists out service opportunities in your area, or whatever area you choose, and makes it really easy to find ways to serve in a matter of minutes! So cool - we are really excited about this awesome find! We already had plans today to go to a nearby cemetery after church and collect pictures pictures for individuals searching for their ancestors! We've done this a couple of other times and, if you do family history, you know how exciting this can be to have someone go out and get these pictures for you! We stopped by Memorial Park Cemetery, which happened to have a funeral home on-site and got some help from the staff there on where to look for our interments. We spent a couple of hours there and only found 3 of our dozen or so individuals. Not too many, but we blessed the lives of three families by taking some time out on our Sunday ...
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The Plan (kind of)

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A question we get asked all the time is "Where are you headed first" We have a map of all of the temples, and mark with a Gold Star each one that we've been to. We then connected the dots on the rest and created a route. I've added other neat attractions and things along the way. Here is the link to our map!
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