October Halloween Challenge

I challenge you to not buy any candy until the day you need it. Too late?

Okay, if you've already bought your candy, don't open it until the moment you need to hand it out. Too late again?

All right, all right - here's the REAL challenge:

By the way, good job to any of you who have accomplished either/both of the above challenges but assuming that most of us haven't been that disciplined, I'm focusing on improving the aftermath of the nutritional debacle known as Halloween:


Aww, makes me wonder
what little Grant will be
for Halloween!

Challenge: Get rid of any Halloween candy you have left by the end of election day, November 6. Give yourself/your kids a week to enjoy the spoils of All Hallows' Eve.... maybe even celebrate the outcome of the election (because Obama WILL be out... we hope, we hope, we hope) but come daybreak on November 7, the leftovers go promptly in the trash.

So make sure you've eaten any of the good stuff you want, then throw it out and clean up your eating for a few weeks before the next round of holiday goodies! I think we should enjoy our holidays, but we don't need to prolong the debauchery so that it becomes a two-and-a-half-month-long "chew-chew" ride on the (literal) gravy train. (Can you believe I just made that up... I know - waaaaay clever).


So.... you get 1 point if you wave bye-bye to your left-over candy by November 7.

And don't forget to vote!

The First Great Commandment (of Unlaziness)

Of all the fantastic messages I managed to hear during this General Conference, Elder Holland's words really struck a chord within me. I take this excerpt from his talk:

Elder
Jeffrey R. Holland

“’Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.’ Jesus said. So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right, truths to share, and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can’t quit and we can’t go back.

“To all within the sound of my voice, the voice of Christ comes ringing down through the halls of time, asking each one of us while there is time, ’Do you love me?’ And for every one of us, I answer with my honor and my soul, ‘Yea, Lord, we do love thee.’ And having set our ‘hand to the plough,’ we will never look back until this work is finished and love of God and neighbor rules the world.”

This resonated with me because to show God we love Him requires conscious effort from us in both our thoughts and actions. It requires from us a lifetime of service to our fellow man. It requires the discipline to overcome negative and complacent attitudes. It requires us to overcome Lazy in spirituality, attitude and action!

Let's show God how much we love Him!

Did anyone else listen to conference? You get a point if you did!!!

Overcome Spiritual Lazy(ness)

This man has probably never been lazy
a day in his life.

This is the first challenge in October; there will be another one coming. This one is for this weekend and involves General Conference so I wanted to get it out there, pronto!

CHALLENGE: Pay attention and select a principle/thought/teaching, etc. from any talks from this General Conference that you will incorporate more fully into your life to help you overcome spiritual laziness.

This challenge was inspired by a portion of Sister Carole M. Stephens' talk during the General Relief Society Broadcast where she talks about becoming more "spiritually awake" in order to fulfill our duties. This concept really hit home with me as I realized how easily I can become lazy in my spiritual attitude and actions. I really needed to hear her words: "It isn’t enough to just be on the journey (of life); we must be awake to our duty and continue with faith as we draw upon the comforting, strengthening, enabling and healing power of the Atonement.”

Since this challenge will be hard to quantify and thereby reward points.... how 'bout this: If you watch any part of General Conference, you get 1 point!!! This should be a gimmee for everyone, right???

So, pay attention to the talks and I would love, love, love it if any of you emailed or posted about the principles that stood out to you this session.

Overcome... snoozing during conference! (You thought I was gonna say Lazy, as usual, huh?)