Our Temple Trip + Valentine's Day

The weather this week in Rexburg has been significantly warmer than previous weeks, which has been a nice surprise. We've had days where it's 50 degrees or slightly warmer! My body has adjusted enough to the temperatures here that when it's 45, I can simply wear a light jacket and be totally fine. To think I used to bundle up and complain about freezing when it was 60 back in California...

The beautiful Rexburg temple!

The weather was especially great on Wednesday, so I decided to walk to our public library and explore a bit. I hadn't been there before, and I've almost run out of books here at home to read, so I figured I should take advantage of the weather. I was pleasantly surprised by how big the library here is--Rexburg is a pretty small town, but their library was almost as large as the one back home in Simi. I spent about an hour there, and came home with 7 books...only because I made myself stop looking! I'll definitely be going back again soon, and I'll walk if the weather stays nice. Most of Rexburg is flat, no hills at all to speak of, so the nearly 1 mile walk there takes me less than 15 minutes.

On Friday, Jake and I took a trip to the Rexburg Temple. It was so peaceful and nice to spend time there! We were also able to participate in some sealings, which was SO special. I thought it was a great way to start the weekend of Valentine's Day; by helping husbands and wives who were unable to be married in the temple finally be able to be reunited for eternity. If that's not love, I don't know what is!  When we went inside it was still light out...but after all that we did, it was pitch black outside as we left! The temple is always lit so spectacularly.

Saturday I woke up to a sweet homemade card from Jake, explaining that my present is to get to play with puppies! Recently I discovered that there's a new company here in Rexburg that lets you "rent" puppies for 1-2 hours at a time, and they have a weiner dog AND a pug; two of my favorite breeds of dogs! So that will be happening sometime in the near future and I'm very excited about it. Jake had to work an afternoon shift, which we were bummed about, but it was only a few hours and I just read some of the books I got at the library. Once he came home, we went out to dinner, did some grocery shopping, and then came home and danced to our wedding song in the living room. It was a BIG difference from our Valentine's Day last year, where I was in California and Jake was in Utah, and we Skyped each other and sent packages. Just being able to spend time together was very special.

This Week's Spiritual Thought

In our scripture study this week, still in the book of Alma, I noticed a pattern that I'm sure appears in other places in the Book of Mormon. What I wrote down in my study journal was "Iniquity always leads to more problems in the end." It's a simple concept, and something most people have probably heard before, but for some reason it hit me more powerfully this week than it has before. When we make bad decisions, more problems usually arise, because of our actions.