The Garvin Chronicles: "The Things of My Soul"

CAUTION: This post has turned out to be a lot longer than I had planned. I got really sick this weekend and they have put me on antibiotics and a steroid. So this is the affects of me being on a high from the steroids. It won't be long before they wear off, but why not take advantage of them when you can. If you are receiving this through automatic email, you might want to click on the grey words at the beginning of the post that say, "The Cancer Chronicles" and it will take you directly to the blog which will be easier to read in proper format and see appropriate pictures.

When Craig and I were married 36 years ago, we set a goal to make it a high priority in our lives. The Temple has always had a special place in my heart. When I was young, we lived 3 hours from the Mesa, Arizona Temple and so when my parents went to do a session, all of us kids usually went with them. We hung out at the visitors center or played around in the beautiful outside surroundings. I don't know if that is why I have such a love for the temple, but it is there and it burns within me! We have also tried to instill this same love for the temple in our children through our example. One of the most special things I was given right before I received my Endowments, was a little 39 cent spiral notebook from my older sister, Shawna. She handed it to me and challenged me to keep a record of my temple attendance in it. Well, I took that challenge literally and it has become a precious sacred record to me for the past 36 years!

I call them "The Small Plates of Michele." Every time we went to the temple I would put the name of the temple we were attending, the date, and what we did that day, whether it was endowment, initiatory or sealings. Then I would record who was there with us sharing in the temple experience. Several times we've needed to refer to my record to check out important dates.

As the years have progressed (36) we now are on our 3rd volume and it is just as expensive as the one above. But I did splurge this time and get one that was bound on the left side. I also found that as the years went by, we had more family and personal challenges than before. Without me even realizing it, I soon found myself writing the statistics kind of information on the right side of the page and then on the left I would write the spiritual blessings we had received or financial or emotional challenges we needed special help with. I soon began to realize that these were becoming my sacred writings like that of Nephi. Now they are more precious than gold to me and I'm so thrilled to share them with my kids.

But lest you worry that there are no "Large Plates of Michele," I just happened to have a picture on hand for you. Most of you who know me, know that I have "verbal diarrhea," as my husband lovingly puts it. But one of my favorite past times is writing and so I also have been blessed with "digital diarrhea" too. (For some reason I am feeling impressed to share this much detail, so please bear with me.) I started keeping a journal when I was a freshman at BYU and have written in it on a fairly regular basis up until now. I never wrote every day or forced myself to write. It was just when I felt there was something important to share and often I would be prompted by the Holy Ghost to find time to record that special experience.

This last year I took an amazing class on Family History from Ann Lewis. She has a class starting in Orem, Utah in August 2014 - her email is annlaemmlenlewis5@gmail.com for the specific date. I would encourage anyone living on the Wasatch front to take her class. She not only talks about the dead part of genealogy, but also how to preserve things for your living children and how to present it to them in a more "user friendly" form that they can relate to. What jumped out at me was when she told us that on the 3rd floor of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU they have some of the most sophisticated scanners available for FREE. When she said the magic word "free", my eyes lite up and I knew that this was going to be my next project. So since January 2014, a friend and I went down to BYU almost every Tuesday and scanned our hearts out. I loaded what I thought I could scan that day into a rolling suitcase and off I went. Above is a picture of the box with all the original journals in folders. I ended up scanning 22 volumes of journals! Below is a screen shot of the digital, dated copies.

This has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, especially for the fact that I am not going to be around much longer. What a wonderful way for my children and grandchildren to have an opportunity to get to know me in an intimate way, that doesn't always happen when we are alive.

In addition to this, for the last two years I have also been seriously working on my Life History to leave for our kids. It is a summary of my childhood to now. I'm trying to summarize it up to when we moved to Lindon, Utah. I've still got about 25 pages to go. Then I plan to burn a DVD for each of my 5 kids with my Life History and all of the 22 volumes of journals on it. This way when I am gone and they are having a hard time with one of their kids and wished they could call me, they can look at my scanned journals, estimate the date they would have been that same age and click on it and read how we as parents handled them! Maybe they'll get a taste of their own medicine. Hopefully this will be a good experience and not back fire on me in Heaven.

I am so thankful for the example Nephi has provided for all of us.

2nd Nephi 4:15 And upon these (plates) I write the things of my soul, and many of the scriptures which are engraven upon the plates of brass. For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children.

********

A BIT OF HEAVEN ON EARTH

Who needs to go to Heaven, when it is right here?

Byron, Tracy, Steve, Amy, Daniel, Kyrstin, Craig, Michele, Charlene, Paul, Tauna and Isaac

I just realized that I never posted pictures of what may be my last trip to the temple. Two weeks ago our kids planned a night for all 12 of us (our 5 kids and their spouses) to go to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple and do Family Sealings. What an amazing feeling it was to sit in the Celestial room looking at each of our children and knowing that they had chosen mates that would go to the temple with them and hopefully allow this legacy of temple attendance be passed down to our grandchildren. It was extra special because we had been able to do some of the other ordinances for these same people and so we recognized some of the names who were sealed, and it felt like we had a special bond with them.