Dia 13 - Happy Mother's Day

I think I've mentioned Marlon Lara, who sells dvds and cds, in this blog. Check out his nice new sign! Happy Mother's Day to my wife and mom! I talked to both of them today also. I also talked to my brother David who was asking me about what I'm doing here and what Cause for Hope does. I shared with David a story which I thought I would share here about self-reliance and how it differs from humanitarian aid or handouts. This story is from a great talk given by Marion G. Romney which appeared in the Ensign in Nov 1982, titled The Celestial Nature of Self-reliance.

It reads, "In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don't know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved....The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the...sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets. Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the 'something for nothing' lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout...Let's not be gullible gulls. We...must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence." ("Fable of the Gullible Gull," Reader's Digest, Oct. 1950, p. 32)

Side note, not to make this a political blog, but that sounds a little different than the plans of our current national govenment.

Also, we went to church today at the Acome Ward, which is about the extent of my adventures for the day.