Happy New Year!

We celebrated New Year's Eve by wishing Sister VandeMerwe a happy birthday over lunch, together with the other senior missionaries serving in Belize.

Santa doesn't always wear a red suit and have a beard; sometimes he has a missionary tag and a tie!  Elder and Sister Flake delivered another one of Elder Flake's beautiful picnic tables he's made.

Because we were married on December 28, we received this Wisemen set as a wedding gift. (dip and drape crafts were the rage back in 1977)  As we have set up these Wisemen throughout the years, we've been reminded of two things:  our December 28th wedding, as well as the story of the Wise Men visiting the Christ child.

During our 41 years of marriage, we have collected many nativity sets.  The one on the left is a ceramic set lovingly hand-made by our sister-in-law, Kerri. Ever since we arrived in Belize, I've been on the lookout for a nativity that I can bring home to remind us not only of the birth of the Savior, but also of our missionary service.  I'm happy that I was able to find one of native hardwoods this past week at the Art Box Store in Belmopan.

Speaking of nativity sets, we have enjoyed cutting out and sharing paper nativity sets to the children here. This past Christmas season we were able to pass out about 50 paper nativity sets to the children we've come in contact with.

This young girl enjoyed coloring and setting up her nativity set.  

The Santa Elena branch members gather to congratulate two children and their family on their day of baptism. Sisters Holdsworth and Arteaga taught them.

It's a small world after all.  Elder Magnusson bids farewell to his friend Andrés from Belize City who soon departs to continue his studies at BYU-Idaho. Andrés' contact in Idaho is the brother of our son-in-law, and they met in the Middle East! 

Looking for a new year's resolution that we all could use?-- "Look Not Behind Thee"!

You can also see the video by clicking here. 

Elder Holland gave a BYU devotional on the same topic that is featured on our family blog.  You can visit  the blog by clicking here.  The highlights of his talk are below:

Remember Lot's Wife  

by Jeffery R. Holland

As a scriptural theme for this discussion, I have chosen the second-shortest verse in all of holy scripture. It is Luke 17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

The original story, of course, comes to us out of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, when the Lord, having had as much as He could stand of the worst that men and women could do, told Lot and his family to flee because those cities were about to be destroyed. “Escape for thy life,” the Lord said, “look not behind thee . . . ; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Genesis 19:17; emphasis added).

With less than immediate obedience and more than a little negotiation, Lot and his family ultimately did leave town, but just in the nick of time. The scriptures tell us what happened at daybreak the morning following their escape:

The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;  And he overthrew those cities. [Genesis 19:24–25]

With the Lord’s counsel “look not behind thee” ringing clearly in her ears, Lot’s wife, the record says, “looked back.”

It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind. It isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future.

I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. We remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. She thought that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind.

There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes—our own or other people’s—is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.

I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!

And soon enough everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what God, our Father in Heaven, pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.

Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.”