On Regret

“The more we devote ourselves to the pursuit of holiness and happiness, the less likely we will be on a path to regrets.”

~

·      Resolve to spend more time with those we love

·      Resolve to strive more earnestly to become the person God wants us to be

·      Resolve to find happiness, regardless of our circumstances.

Today in my scripture study I read a conference talk by President  Dieter F Uchtdorf.  What an inspirational talk.  The entire talk can be found here

How simple it is!  Want to avoid regret? Yes! Pursue holiness.  So simple. In fact why didn't I think of that before??  

Resolve to strive more earnestly to become the person God wants us to be!  I can do that!  And it doesn't have to be overwhelming, just one day at a time try harder to be who the Lord wants me to be.

When you have amazing friends that encourage you to be the best you can be it makes it so much easier and I have always been blessed with the very best of friends.  They help me to remember that I am a daughter of God and he loves me.  One of my friends, mentioned today that we have to remember the incredible blessings we have received, "exceptional things happen to me!".  Isn't that the truth, when we remember that incredible things that happen to us, we realize more wonderful blessings that have been in our lives but we missed because we were to busy to recognize them in our life! 

I have been so blessed these past couple of weeks by a visit from my daughter Elizabeth.  She arrived in China on November 19th and has been spreading joy ever since!  She did a service day for our branch here in Hangzhou where she gave scalp treatments to the ladies of the Relief Society. 

 She has really been excited about everything Chinese which spreads the excitement to those around her, helping me to realize how blessed I am to be in China. Yesterday we traveled to West Lake and just enjoyed the beautiful scenery.  By the lake there was a clothes line with 10 ducks skinned, drying in the sun in preparation for the Chinese New Year!  Amazing.  Not something you would typically see in the USA!

We went with this incredible family to help them take their family picture for their Christmas card.  As we were taking the pictures, groups were taking pictures of their adorable children. So fun! The Chinese people love to see American children.

Liz made some great cookies today, she modified the Crisco Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe found here: instead of ¾ cups butter flavored Crisco, she used ½ cup regular Crisco and ¼ cup butter, dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar, 1 ½ cups of all purpose unbleached flour, ¼ cup of coco powder.  They taste amazing.  It was necessary to substitute with butter, as we didn’t have butter flavored Crisco.  The results are a chewy chocolate cookie. I wish I had some Crasins to put in them, maybe next time.  It’s even more amazing how wonderful this taste when you consider we don’t have a mixer so they were mixed by hand.