The Craft Basket

I feel it is important to take a moment and explain the one thing that has carried me through my life and the challenges life has thrown at me. The one constant when all other things were in total and complete chaos.

As stated earlier in these writings I mentioned the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the LDS missionaries. These Elders’ message was not just a blimp in my life, it soon would become the air balloon that would carry me over the valleys and mountains of life. My young mind would wrap it’s self around the message in a way that even to this day I can not explain. It was as if it was the only thing I wanted to understand or could truly understand.

The Elders gave me a book, a small blue book that they said had a message in it about God, Jesus Christ and His mission here on earth. I took one look at the book and threw it in my craft basket. Looking at it I knew that I could make some great paper airplanes out of the thin pages that filled the blue hard bound book. There the book would stay, burrowed in my craft basket until later in my life trek.

When I began my journey with my grandmother there was something really weird about her. Every Sunday she would make me put on this completely uncomfortable shirt with this ridiculous looking tie and black oversized shoes. She would spend what felt like hours in her room and then come out in what I saw as a fairytale outfit, load us up in the car and drive. We would arrive at  the same building each week with even more children and grown men wearing these annoying shirts and silly ties. All the moms and little girls looked like dolls pulled from the pages of story books. My grandmother called this Church, I called it weird!

This would become a weekly practice and so I quickly just got used to it. Each weekend I would play as hard as I could on Saturdays for I knew that that weird Sunday was just a few hours away and I would be forced to get up, get dressed and behave. On Sunday’s church would start off the same way. We would all go into this huge room filled with benches, babies crying, children talking and parents calmly quieting them. My grandmother would hand me a green hard cover book that look as though it had been through two million little hands just like mine. She would open to a page full of words and little black dots and then out of no where music would fill the room and everyone all at once would start to sing.

Some songs I could sing with while others were way over my head, but I gave it my best shot. There was something about these songs, something about the music. It would take me from the awkwardness of being in this odd place to a place of normality. After the song we would listen to a few people talk about things I didn’t understand and then all at once it was over. My grandmother would shuffle me off to a room full of children just like me.

This is where the weirdness and awkwardness would quickly subside and I would begin to understand all that was around me. This happened with music. Music I could fully understand and would engulf myself in. I felt something in those moments that I had only felt a few times in my life before. The Elder’s message was opening up more to me and it was passing the stage of only being a warm feeling to being an understood message of love and hope. Love that I could honestly feel and hope that I could touch. The songs we sang and the lessons we were taught were of a man called Christ, Jesus Christ.

His story was something I could understand, something my mind could wrap around. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” The Prince of Peace was one thing I truly longed for. My mind was still in turmoil and nothing felt right, but this did and I wanted to know more.

My grandmother had the nurses pack all they could of mine so as to keep what memories I could of my time in the Red Brick hospital. My craft basket was carefully packed and had been placed on a shelf in my new room. It was filled with little glued objects, fuzzy cotton balls that I had stacked together to make all sorts of creatures. Popsicle stick figurines and paper cuts outs filled the basket and macaroni houses lined the sides of the basket. Nothing had been moved since my last project was placed on top of this messy master piece. Peering through the Picasso’s of my childhood was the corner of the blue book.

I had not gotten around to making paper airplanes out of the pages of this blue book and there was no time like the present to get started on this magnificent project. But something had changed when I pulled the book out I had a curiosity of the message the Elders had spoken of. It was more then the curiosity about the book though, I was no longer afraid of church and in fact now my Saturday nights were filled with lining out my funny little clothes and making sure that I was ready long before my grandmother to head to church. I was excited, excited for something in my life, something more then skating in circles and quarters.

The time had come for me to take this little blue book out and see what it was all about. As I opened to the first page my child eyes were in shock. I kept turning the pages, nothing, I could not believe this. There were no pictures! What kind of book doesn’t have pictures? This was a complete and total disappointment. This book truly was meant for one thing and one thing only, paper airplanes! Who would give a boy a book without pictures!?

Reading was something that I can truly say as a child, I loved to do on one condition, there were pictures and lots of them. This book didn’t have any pictures and to top it off it was full of funny words like ‘Thee, Therefore and Ye”. This surely had to be a mistake. This book couldn’t hold a message for a young child. I ran to my grandmother and asked her why I was given such a travesty of a book. Why was I told this book had a special message and not even one picture? What was I supposed to do with this silly book?

My grandmother quickly solved this by sitting me on her lap, took the book from my hand opened to the first page and read, “I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I learning of my father; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days…”. From this moment on she would read to me each night until we finished the stories the book held. At nights I would stay up thinking about the stories she had read to me about battles, brothers, angels and prophets telling of the man Jesus Christ.

Church took on a new meaning for me. The songs had messages in them that I connected with the stories my grandmother had read to me and I understood more and more. My young mind had question after question and I was fully engulfed in understanding what was written and what I was feeling. This is a mission that I continue to this day and frankly I may not understand much more now then I did then, but I have grown a faith that can not be tempered or broken.

I began to read the book on my own and dive into it. Placing myself in the stories and leaning on the men that wrote the words that filled these pages. Unbenounced to me I was gaining a testimony of the Christ. Of His message and His gospel. Soon this would become the one steady thing in my life and my ultimate rescue vessel.

Each night I would roll over, grab the little blue book from my craft basket and read. Many nights I would wake up with the book somewhere hidden in my bed or it had found it’s way down to the floor nestled up next to my clothes from the day before. I gained something that even I wouldn’t understand till much later in life. I had gained strength through the message of Jesus Christ to overcome and endure life. Through Him I would find the courage to fight through what was soon to become a roller-coaster of emotion and challenges.

I soon finished the little blue book and would begin to read even more about Jesus Christ. My grandmother gave me another book, that in comparison to my little blue book, was three times as thick; but would teach me even more of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This book took me much longer to read through and had many more messages for my young mind to wrap around. The King James Bible is one book that will always be part of my book collection and will be one that I doubt I will ever fully understand each and every message there in.

My testimony of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father is something I will never hide under a bushel nor will I not share it with all those that care to hear or read it. I was blessed and given hope in Jesus Christ and so many more need to hear His message. It is only appropriate that on this, the eve of His birthday, I share with all of you my love and belief in His life, His message and His gospel. I would not be who I am today with out Him and His messengers both of old and today. No other lesson, book or message has changed my life in a greater way. Nothing has nor will, give me the strength to endure then the principles He has delivered to me. My life is a testament to the power of His gospel and His message.

I will never forget the first moments of learning of Him nor will I forget those nights reading with my grandmother. I hold these memories close to my heart each and every moment of my life. These memories single handily have given me the strength to battle through the memories my young mind hid deep in pits of my intellect.

The message of the little blue book was more then of hope, it was a message of life. A life that no other can compare to, a life of a man that would give His all for each and every one of us. A man that would endure all things and give each of us the power to do the same. This book was another testament of Jesus Christ, the Son of our Heavenly Father.

It was clear that my craft basket held the ultimate paper plane maker. The paper plane maker that would sail me over all life’s challenges and would lead me to where I am now, here in the middle of my life. I share with you this chapter has it is perhaps the one and greatest gift I can give anyone this holiday season, that of a testimony of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father. “And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.”