The Sacred Grove

On Friday, June 21st, I visited the Sacred Grove with my mom, my sister, and my nephew.

The first time I visited the Sacred Grove was when I was 14 years old. The same age that Joseph Smith was when he went into the grove to pray and saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. 

I've thought back on my experience quite a bit through the last 12 years. I had always wished that it had meant more to me. I remember walking around the trees and thinking, "Wow, God was here once." It was beautiful and so peaceful, and you can't help but whisper when you're walking around because you can just feel the sacredness of the spot. I didn't have any big spiritual experience, I didn't cry, I didn't sit and ponder life. It was a really good experience, don't get me wrong, but part of me always thought that I should have had a bigger spiritual experience. 

As I grew up and learned, my testimony of this church has formed and it's changed my life. So many life experiences have taught me that God loves everyone of us, Jesus Christ did live and died for us and lives again, the true church was restored on this earth through his prophet, Joseph Smith, and we continue to have prophets and apostles on this earth to lead us just as in Bible times. I know these things because of life and experiences I've had.

When I was a missionary in Korea I spent every day teaching these truths to people in a foreign language, trying so hard to convey my love for the gospel to God's children. I always thought that if I could revisit the Sacred Grove, this time I would feel everything I wanted to feel that first time and it would be the most amazing experience of my life.

So, on Friday, June 21st, as we pulled up to the Sacred Grove and walked into the trees, I thought for sure a spiritual awakening would fall on me like a ton of bricks and I would be so overcome with everything that maybe I'd cry or something. 

But as I walked through I felt the same feelings I felt when I was younger. "Wow, God was here once." The beauty and peace that was there was overwhelming. We whispered the entire time we were walking through. It was so quiet that we could hear the birds singing and the breeze blowing the leaves on the trees. There were pretty butterflies. It was like the whole grove knew that it was a sacred spot and even the trees were grateful that they were able to grow on that soil. 

We took pictures of "pillars of light." I even recited the "First Vision" in Korean for my family. I always wanted to do that since I memorized that in the MTC. We smiled as we watched youth groups studying their scriptures and writing in their journals. It was perfectly peaceful.

I didn't have that huge spiritual downpour of enlightenment that I thought would come. But it was just like the first time I read the Book of Mormon. When I got down on my knees and asked God if the book was true, before I could even listen for an answer I felt my answer. I felt, "You KNOW it's true Mindy. Why do you even need to ask?" 

So as I walked into the Grove and started to ask God for the affirmation of the truth of the First Vision, instead of the emotional spiritual experience I was looking for, I just felt it. I felt, "You KNOW it's true Mindy. You don't need anything more."

I didn't have a huge spiritual experience, but as I've learned throughout life, I didn't need a huge experience to solidify what I already knew to be true. Because I already know it! I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, that he helped bring the restored church to the earth. I've known this since before I was 14 and before I was a missionary and before I walked in the sacred grove a few days ago. I knew this all to be true. 

I think more than anything I just felt so grateful to know all of this. To really KNOW all of this and not just believe it or think it might be true. But to know and to live life with this knowledge and comfort of God's plan for me and for everyone. 

I'm so glad we were able to visit the Sacred Grove. If anything, it just helped me remember what I know because of Joseph Smith's first vision and how incredible it is that because of that one event, I am able to be with my family for eternity and once again live with God again.

Family Trip

Well, now that It's been a few months, I thought I'd tell y'all about my family trip to Santa Cruz/San Francisco!

 

We talked my dad into renting a van for the occasion, the best idea we had. Mom, Dad, Ryan, Connor, and I were in the van and riding in style. I got the back seat. Captains chairs, in the middle, went to the boys. We started out driving on Tuesday in the morning and drove to Reno.
I actually read a book on the way. Chronicles of Narnia. Quite an accomplishment for me since I hate reading.

At first glance this picture is adorable.
But what really happened was that
Dad wanted to hold the Old Lady's
hand while crossing the street.

We got to Reno, and quickly figured out that unless you were there to get drunk or gamble, there was not much to do there. We walked around a little bit. Met up with family, ate dinner at a buffet, and got our rooms at Harrah's. Lowy, Kevin, Jon, and little Kent met up with us late that night. I got to share a room with Lowy, Jon, and Kent. Jon likes to sleep in his underwear and yell "Mindy, don't look!!" haha.
We got up, got ready, and went to Denny's for breakfast as a family. So much fun. I have the best family in the world.
We got back in the car and drove on to California. Ryan drove for part of it and didn't even kill us.
One of the funniest parts of driving was how fancy our van was. Two tvs, plugs for an X-box, dvd player, satellite radio. Lots of buttons and fancy things. Well, at one point we were driving in front of Lauren and Jon and my dad says, "Should I deploy the tacks?" As he reaches for a button, my mom says, "Don't! There's a baby in there!" We erupted in laughter for a long long time.
We made it to Santa Cruz and drove to our KOA cabin.

Our first view of the beach.

That cabin was made for 6 people to stay in it. And even that was pushing it. Of course, there were 9 of us! It was interesting, to say the least, to fit us all in there when we didn't have all of the beds out.

The bathroom was as big as
this mirror. True story.

We met up with family and tried to make some plans for the next few days. We drove down to the beach and got to play in the sand and watch the ocean for a little while.
I love the ocean. There is something so peaceful and calming about it. The sand is nice and soft and warm, the ocean makes soothing noises, the waves lap against you. The water was freezing! But we ran around and Kent got his first experience with the sand. He loved it.
We went back, ate dinner, and made a campfire.

Dad and Kevin had a "jiffy pop"
competition. Kevin won.

So cute.

Something I totally love about our family is that we all have gotten to the point where we like to go to sleep early, around 9pm, and wake up early. Around 6. It was great that we all ran on the same internal clock.
Mom and Dad got the master bed, Lowy and Jon were on the fold out bed, and kevin and ryan got the bunkbeds. Connor and I had air mattresses on the floor, underneath the kitchen table. We had to move some chairs outside to make room for us.
We found out really soon just how severe Connor's snoring problem has gotten. It was awful. We were miserable trying to get to sleep. Around 11 or so, Jon got up out of bed, told Lauren he was going to sleep in the car, and as he was leaving he said, "Connor, you suck!" SO funny.
We did get some sleep. Connor said he slept really well. We gave him a really hard time about it all day. We kept saying, "Every time I yawn today, Connor, I'm going to hit you!" We ended up taking a vote and he spent the next two nights sleeping in the car. Mom and Dad were a little mad that we banished him like that, but we did not feel bad one bit. He snores like crazy.

The next day was our Santa Cruz day. We spent the morning taking a ride on a train through the redwoods. It wwas a lot of fun. I love spending time with my family. Most of my cousins and aunts and uncles got into the caboose of the train. We were funny and loud. It was a pretty ride. At some points the train would go really slow and we thought we were going to get stuck on the hills, but it went well.
We drove down to the boardwalk afterwards and put on our swimsuits and played at the beach. The water was freezing cold, but it looked like too much fun, so me, Ryan, and Connor went into the water and played for a long while. We eventually got out and ended up burying Connor, Ryan, and Jon in the sand. Kent had a blast crawling all over the sand and playing.
After playing and getting some sun, we walked along the shops at the boardwalk. I bought a sweatshirt. We ate deep fried oreos and twinkies.
We went back to the KOA and went into the pool for a while to wash out some of the sand we had up in our crevices. Haha. We took showers, had another fire, and spent a while with our cousins talking and laughing about the gipsies that were in a campsite up the hill. "Gipsied!" was the quote of the trip, said by Kevin. Our cousins got a kick out of that. They also got a kick out of how the Crocketts turned in for the night at 9 again.
Friday was San Francisco day! The day we had planned months before and were so stoked about. We left the KOA and drove up to the city for a few hours. Ryan drove like a champ. We made it to the city and eventually found this shady parking garage. (Oh yeah, we didn't have enough seats for everyone, so we made Connor lay down in the trunk of the van! hahaha.) The parking garage was full, but the attendant let us park, telling us to leave the keys so he could move it out of the way of other cars if he needed to. It sounded a little weird, but they do that in Korea all the time, so we did it. Ryan accidentally made the car alarm go off in the garage. Talk about LOUD! ha. We left the garage and walked to the pier.
ALCATRAZ was next! Oh my goodness, I still can't get over how amazing of an experience Alcatraz was. Quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen. Riding the boat over was fun. It was a cold morning, so we were all sporting our sweaters and jackets. We made it to the island and after a brief orientation, we walked up to the cell house and got our walkmans for the audio tour.
It was amazing. It was so awesome to see where prisoners so many years ago lived. And I guess I've never really known anything about prisons, so to be able to see it first hand and imagine what it must have been like was incredible. I loved the stories of the inmates and the escape attempts. I loved seeing the bullet holes in the ground and the pictures of the scary people. I loved walking into the cells and imagining the loneliness of solitary confinement. The tour led us all over the cell blocks and outside to the exercise yard and up to the cafeteria. My family loved it all as well. Kevin said, "Don't you kind of want to root for the prisoners and want them to escape?" So true. It was such a neat experience.
We walked around a little bit more and then headed back to San Francisco on the boat.
Hunger struck. We took out our little map and decided to go up to Pier 39 and fisherman's wharf to find some food. We ended up eating at this amazing little place with some great chowder and sourdough bread bowls. So yummy. We then decided to make the trek to Ghiradelli square so we could get some chocolate. We just didn't really realize how far of a walk that would be.
We saw some pretty cool stuff on the way. A guy painted gold like a statue, street performers, bands, weirdos, markets. I love walking in the city with tons of people. Reminds me of Korea.
We finally made it after walking for what seemed like forever. The shop was PACKED with people. We each ordered an icecream and waited. It was delish. Kevin wanted to steal the cups they came in. But we didn't. We walked on a back street back to the parking garage. Grand total was 4 miles walked. Doesn't sound too bad unless you add in that we had a baby (or two....) in the group.
Our car was there and not stolen! Jon drove us home. I got to say, I don't know how anyone did vacations without google maps on a smart phone. I gave directions the entire trip to all of the drivers, even my dad. We did use the map that Mom insisted on buying and bringing a time or two, but my good old iPhone saved us.

Packed car. Connor in the trunk! Ha.

We got home that night and ate a family dinner with all of the extended family. I smiled and nodded like I could relate when my cousins talked about their kids and husbands. And I talked with the younger cousins who are still single and haven't popped out a kid yet. And it was fun. We took a few pictures, and then, in good old Crockett fashion, we were in bed around 9 or so.
Saturday morning we woke up and had to watch Lowy, Jon, Kevin, and Kent pack up. It was sad to see them go. We still had a lot of fun without them, but it would have been way more fun if they stuck around too.
The rest of us decided to go berry picking at a local field. It was a cold and overcast morning. I think I wore a long skirt and a sweatshirt. COLD. We picked blackberries and strawberries. I think we would have picked for hours and hours had we not had to have paid for what we picked. It was fun to pick them and they tasted AMAZING! We stopped by the shop and had some strawberry rhubarb pie. That was also amazing.
After that, we made our way to the beach to get in some more hours of quality beach time. It was still really cold and muggy out when we got there. I spent a good deal of time just digging and looking for shells. Cousin Jenny came with us too. She and Ryan took a nap. Connor and I ended up taking a long walk on the beach. It was so peaceful.
THEN the sun came out! And all of a sudden the beach and the waves and the water were so irresistible! We walked back to our spot quickly and run up to the car to grab our suits and suit up!
Ryan, Connor, and I then entered the (FREEZING COLD) water and stayed there for about 3 hours. It felt like 15 minutes! It was a blast. We had a boogie board and after that broke (ha) we body surfed the waves, yelling and screaming! Our favorite thing to say was "SHEE-HAW!" Don't ask. Also, my personal favorite, "Son of a beach!" haha.
We yelled and screamed and ate a bunch of sand and salt water and finally decided to get out. We packed up our stuff and left the beach. What a wonderful day.

Sunburned.

We snuck back into the KOA we were at and hurried to use the gipsies' showers. That was nice to be able to shower. We got back in the car and drove a few hours to Stockton and stayed the night there. On the way we stopped at the Garlic fest and had some pizza at a local joint. It was amazing pizza. Cloves of garlic on the pizza. YUM.
As we sat, waterlogged and tired in our hotel room that night, Ryan and I started to prank call Mom and Dad's room. Then Ryan ordered a chocolate shake. And Dad said, "Sure." and gave us his credit card to go out and find some chocolate shakes! Woot woot! We got some at burger king.
After a Sunday morning continental breakfast, we headed back into the car and drove over to Yosemite National Park. It was crowded. And hot. And we were sun burned. I'm sure Dad wasn't too happy that we were all just lazy and tired and didn't want to do much. He was willing to let us rent horses or go hike or go on a boat or something. But we were lame. We did stop at a gorgeous lake and sat there having lunch. Dad kept daring Ryan to swim out to the middle of the lake and tell a "Columbus" joke to them. (What bus killed thousands of native Americans? Columbus.) Ha.
I ended up having to pee, so we had to leave the lake and drive on.

Mom and Dad and Half Dome

We drove for what seemed like forever and almost stopped at a super creepy town for the night. Instead, we kept driving and stayed in Eli, NV. Quite an interesting place too.
Monday morning we got up and drove home. Good times.

Took this by using the timer on Mom's
camera. Impressive.

This trip was so fun. SO FUN. I loved almost every moment of it. (I did not like Connor's snoring.)

Dad and Ryan, in adjoining hotel rooms,
doing the same thing. 

I love my family. All of them. I have the best parents ever, the funnest siblings. They were the best part of this trip. The only thing missing from this perfect trip was Davy, Nat, Camden, and Alli. Other than that, perfect! Loved it.

Yellowstone

I was able to finally get more than two days off in a row.
I actually managed to get four off! So Annalie and I went on an adventure to Yellowstone.
I admit I was most excited to just drive my car and find out how the gas mileage did on just highway. (32 mpgs.) in Yellowstone, just going 45 and using cruise control I got 39 mpg! Rock on!
Anyway....
I picked Annalie up from her house after she had worked the night shift for 12 hours. I was so proud. She lasted until about 2pm and even then only slept for an hour and was recharged for the day. The drive was great. It seriously felt like it was just a nice afternoon drive and we made it up there by 3. We started exploring Yellowstone right off and went to a few geyser spots and then saw old faithful.
The best part of old faithful was the visitor's center. We went around and we bored until we found the kid's section. We learned a lot from this little diseased looking girl. The next best part was watching all the people wait for old faithful to erupt. Chinese people taking pictures, people asking dumb questions. And this one guy with a disposable camera that kept taking the crappiest pictures of the geyser. Entertainment at its finest!

That first night we went back to West Yellowstone and ate at a restaurant where we both ordered Bison to eat. We were so sick of the bison crossing the road and causing too many tourists to be idiots, we thought it would be great to eat one to show them who was boss. Delish!
We slept in a hotel that night. I slept great, Annalie was up at 2 and never fell back asleep.
We paced up in the morning and headed up to mammoth to reserve a campsite for the night. Lots of bison crossings later we made it and found a nice spot and put up our tent. We then decided to go on some hikes. One hike we went on had some crazy warning signs about bears that kind of freaked us out. We hiked in a little bit then got too freaked out and turned around. Haha.
We then drove around to the geysers again, ate lunch at a pretty riverside place, and continued on the "loop." Annalie fell asleep almost instantly every time we were in the car. Haha. But I woke her up when we got to cool places. Like West thumb, where we saw a bear! And Yellowstone lake. And then stopped at the mud volcano and did that little hike. Tired and worn out, we drove back to our campsite and made dinner.
We went to sleep fearing bears. I brought this book called "death in Yellowstone" about how people have died there. The chapter on bear attacks was terrifying. I thought it would be fun to read in the tent for scary stories but no! I was too scared. I didnt sleep much that night.
We ate, packed up, and started on our way up to Tower. I think this part was my favorite part of Yellowstone. Gorgeous. And hardly any people. We saw this beautiful waterfall. I kept asking Annalie what she would do if I fell of of the cliff. Basically she would leave me to die.
We did a couple more hikes. One to the "lost lake" that was so quiet and pretty. Again, scared of bears we returned right afterwards. And one to a waterfall. Then we went back on our way to see the grand canyon of Yellowstone. That was pretty and wow, I didn't pretend to fall off that cliff. Crazy.


We drove down to the Teton National park. We decided to camp there for the night. I'm so glad we did. It was breath taking. So gorgeous. And I was so happy to get out of the car and stop driving for the day. We set up camp and went down to the lake side and had some good talks about how amazing nature is and God is to create it all and how we are so glad to understand that and our place in the world. Deep conversations.
We ate a ton of food and then cleaned up in a hurry before it started pouring rain. That made me less scared of bears, luckily enough. We spent the evening in our tent, texting Cyann and reading about more deaths by lightning and falling off of cliffs. Annalie made a bracelet. And we fell asleep.
The next day we explored the Teton park a little bit more and stopped in Jackson Hole for lunch before setting out for our drive in the middle of nowhere Wyoming back home. It was a boring drive. But Annalie got some good sleep in and I jammed out to my iPod tunes.
We made it home. I was so tired.
It was a great trip. I miss it up there already. It was just a great trip to remember all the beauty in the world and that there is a world outside of work.
Can't wait to go back again!

monday

on monday, i didn't have to work after working around 51 hours the week before.

so after sleeping in, taking a nap, and lying there, i got online.

and i started looking at pictures that reminded me of how much i love fall.

for me, summer is my favorite. then winter. and spring and fall are tied.

so, i got to thinking how much i love wearing fall clothes, and being out side in the fall.

so i got ready, grabbed a book, and drove up the canyon.

I stopped at a park that I went to this summer. It was so beautiful. And there was hardly a soul there. I wanted to sit close to the river, but there were a few painters nearby with their easels set up. I didn't want to be in their paintings. (That was really cool. When I got up there, their canvases were empty. When I left, they had a magnificent fall scene.)

 Yeah, I took pictures of myself. Maybe around 20. I deleted most. And kept this one. My hair rocked that day.

Pretty.

I took a "panoramic" picture with my camera. I messed up a bit on the left, but it captures the park.

I sat there, reading the book "Heidi" for about 4 hours. It was AMAZING. I would love to do that everyday. (I would have done it today again, but it was SNOWING. crazy.) It started to rain a little bit as I was leaving. PERFECT. I love rain.

And, at one point, a LARGE weird looking thing was on my blanket. I might have freaked out a bit. Then i took a bad picture of it.

On another note, the book "Heidi" is really cute. I grew up watching the movie with my mom and sister all the time. We loved watching it. Recently, my sister and I found it on netflix and re-watched it all. CLASSIC.

The book was different, as books are. It was cute and sweet and full of great lines.

I think the things I got out of it were the cheesy religious things that she would say. Clara's grandmamma taught Heidi about prayer. And so she prayed to God because she couldn't tell anyone else her problems. After a while when she still didn't get what she wanted, she stopped praying. And grandmamma taught her that you can't stop praying. God has his own time table; He'll give us what we need when we need it. She wanted to move back home, but didn't for a while. She later realized that if she got what she wanted when she wanted it, she would have never learned to read or been good friends with Clara, both things that blessed her and others immensely in her life.

She went on to teach and remind other people in her life about prayer. How you have to pray to God and tell him everything, that he'll listen, and give you what you need when you need it. And be grateful.

What a beautiful Monday.