Celestial Challenge

Merritt speaking (or writing if you must know).  This was first year as a Bishop in our ward.  Because of this, we wanted to do something extra special for the youth in our ward.  In January, we asked them all to participate in a “Celestial Challenge”.  We gave them a list of several goals that needed to be completed by the first week of August.  These included the following:

• Read the entire Book of Mormon
• Speak in Church (or teach a lesson)
• Complete two requirements in Duty to God or Personal Progress
• 10 other personal goals (physical fitness, family history, service, etc)

It was actually a very challenging list and required a lot of work on their part.  Everyone that completed the challenge was able to join us on a special trip to Salt Lake City.

We began our day of the Church History Museum. 

We were able to see a lot of really neat historical artifacts from the Church Archives, including several documents written by early leaders of the Church.  One of the coolest, was a copy of a letter written by Willard Richards from Carthage Jail on the day that Joseph Smith was martyred.  However, after seeing all of the really old documents, the item that caused the most interest in the group was a fairly new document.  The historian had pulled the records from the formation of our ward.  The records were handwritten by my Dad (who also happened to be a Bishop in our ward many years ago).

Here are the 2nd and 3rd generations holding the incriminating evidence.

Next… lunch in the park with the crew.

After lunch, we were able to have a special meeting with the youth.  It was an incredible, once in a lifetime type of experience that I will never forget, and I hope that they will keep close to their hearts.

Next, we were able to take all of the youth and the leaders to do baptisms at the Salt Lake Temple.

By the way… on a completely unrelated note… guess who was the moron that happened to misplace his temple recommend on the most important trip of the year just when he was supposed to be the responsible one in charge and making sure that everyone else was where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be and so on and so forth…

As it turns out, it can be a rather embarrassing situation in which to find yourself… not me, in particular… but someone else who would be ditsy enough to do such a thing.  Although… ditsy may sound a bit to girly for such an individual… “preoccupied with many important things on his mind” sounds much better, don’t you think?

Last, but absolutely not least, we stopped for a tasty smackeral (yes, I did just say smackeral for those of you who are Winnie the Pooh fans like us) at what might possibly be the greatest restaurant on the face of the earth (or at least the greatest in Brigham City) Maddox Roadhouse.  Don’t mess with my corn bread, dude.