I have a testimony of Jesus Christ - that He is our Savior and Redeemer.  I know that He suffered for me personally so that I can face all of life's challenges with His enabling grace.  It is through Christ's Atonement that we can receive forgiveness for our sins and find comfort and guidance in all the challenges we face in life.  I know that His Gospel - when lived to its fullest extent - will bless us and bring us closer to Him in many ways. For me, the most important of those ways is developing a stronger relationship with Him and becoming more like Him.  Everything He taught, everything He was, was to show us the way to live life. Kindness to our brothers and sisters and obedience to God's commandments will bring us the most happiness we can have in this life.  I will undoubtedly be referring back to Him in the explanation of my beliefs but He is the end-all and be-all of my faith so it's only fitting I start with Him.

From the beginning of mankind, God has revealed His will to prophets.  Just check out the Bible. Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are just a few of them.  Through them, God revealed His will to his people and guided them through life.  Eventually He sent His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ to fulfill all He had taught those prophets.  He set the perfect example and taught the fullness of the Gospel teaching us what manner of men we ought to become.  He called Twelve Apostles and like He had to the prophets of the Old Testament, He gave them the Priesthood Authority to act in His name.  But after His crucifixion, the church began to go in different directions.  Just read any of Paul's works to see just how much effort went into keeping false doctrines and practices from creeping into Christ's church.  Eventually the Apostles were martyred and their Priesthood Authority went with them.  After that, doctrines were determined by vote and councils and many of Christ's teachings changed with them.  After the Reformation, there were hundreds of different denominations claiming to have the correct interpretation of His Gospel.

Naturally that was very confusing - and it still is.  But in the early 1800s in upstate New York, a young man named Joseph Smith Jr was also confused by the religious fervor of his area.  He sought advice from a variety of different pastors.  His experiences left him confused until one day, while reading the Bible, he found a verse in James which reads, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all man liberally and upbraideth not and it shall be given him."  He wrote that he had never felt a verse of scripture hit home like this one did.  So, desiring to seek out wisdom from God, he found a secluded place near his home and knelt down and prayed.  While praying, he saw a pillar of light which descended gradually upon him and within the light he saw two personages - God the Father and Jesus Christ.

He asked Them his question - which of all these denominations were right? He was instructed that none of them held the fullness of the truth and he was to join none of them.  Through Joseph Smith, They restored the fullness of the Gospel and the Priesthood Authority.  This is the defining moment of my religion - we are Christians in the fullest sense.  We believe in an active religion that is still led by Jesus Christ today because He restored it through His prophet Joseph Smith and continues to lead it by His prophets and apostles today.

THE PLAN OF SALVATION

I try my best to live a life of obedience, chastity, kindness, understanding, repentance and progression.  That includes making covenants with God.  Some of these covenants include Baptism, the Sacrament, receiving the Holy Ghost, and temple ordinances like receiving the Endowment (an educational session combined with making covenants to keep the commandments) and being sealed to my future spouse. I love the idea of covenants because they keep me accountable to the Lord every day and helps me to keep my faith in the front of my mind every day.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

All right guys.  I know that was a while.  But a whole lot went down since I last wrote last year.  That whole getting unengaged thing can be kind of a bummer.  So naturally I didn't really feel like writing and as a result, this place has been LAME.  Sorry about that.  Thankfully, lots of REALLY COOL EXCITING things have happened to me since then.  And I'm just going to have to catch you guys up on that as we go along.  So get ready. Here it comes.

First off, I graduated from BYU with Honors in Biology.  That was a long time comin, but I loved my time there and made some really great friends that will stick with me for a long time.

Secondly, this past summer I was hired as one of this year's Eco-Explorers at Utah's Hogle Zoo!  And I LOVED it!  There's something amazing about standing next to an adult African elephant or looking into the burning eyes of an Amur tiger that just gets your juices flowing.  As an Eco-Explorer, I had some amazing experiences with some of the coolest animals in the world.  And what was even cooler is that I got to share them with people and help them to see why these animals are important and what we can all do to help save them.  It was pretty awesome.  But since each of these experiences deserve their own post, they're gonna be coming interspersed with other posts from the other awesome life event that has happened since then - VET SCHOOL!

That's right.  I'm a first year veterinary student at the one and only Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  It's incredible.  Now that I'm here, living the dream, I can tell you that all those classes I took at BYU to fulfill every prerequisite of every veterinary school in the United States have been well worth it - and that they have truly pointed me towards my calling in life.  I love animals.  I love medicine.  This place is perfect.

I also got into North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois.  But when I came here for my interview, I felt this is where I was supposed to go.  And now that I'm here, I can safely say that it pays to listen to the Spirit when He's prompting you!  God knows what He's doing and I'm grateful for my time here, what I've learned so far, and the friends that I've made.

So stay tuned.  It only gets better from here.

The most profound imagery for me in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the un-dragonning of Eustace.  After a brief conversation with Aslan, he realizes he has to remove his skin.  He does so only to discover another layer beneath.  This goes on and on until it seems almost hopeless.  Aslan then informs Eustace that he's going to have to let Aslan help him.  Aslan sinks his claws into Eustace's tough dragon skin and tears it from his body.  It's excruciating but exhilarating.  Eustace looks into the pool before him and realizes that he has been set free.  From then on out, Eustace is a changed boy who will come to play important roles in further Narnian stories.

Repentance is exactly the same.  Very often we realize that we need to change and begin to make efforts only to find further difficulties revealed.  It is only when we let the Lord take charge that real change actually begins.

     The magical world of Narnia exists as a place of ultimate freedom. Within it, there is a nature with an openness not found in our world.  Here fairy tales and imagination blossom in a more transparent yet more concrete way.  Right and wrong appear more distinct. The possibilities within Narnia appear endless.  The honesty and the other-worldliness in Narnia create the real growth the Pevinsies experience.  To truly embrace Narnia is to be un-fettered. This world holds us back.  Every day we are bombarded with messages that we are not good enough, smart enough, or attractive enough.  Before long, a chain of doubts, insecurities, and proprieties find the Gods within us crammed into neat little boxes.  Entering Narnia changes all that.  Narnia is a place where divine potential is unleashed.

I absolutely loved Perelandra.  The imagery and storytelling were entertaining but the most compelling part of me what the battle between the Un-Man and Ransom.

I'm not talking so much about the actual physical fight - which was pretty awesome - but the ongoing verbal struggle the two engage in.  I felt exactly as Ransom did as he tried his best to convince the Green Lady that the Un-Man was lying, that his half truths hid important facts from her, and felt as he did that nothing he could do would be enough.  He begins to wonder why Maleldil hasn't sent anybody to help him.  It was all so unfair.

The climax then is when Ransom realizes that he is who has been sent and that it is his responsibility to stop the Un-Man.  This is the most important moment any of us can have.  When we realize that each of us has been sent to Earth with a specific duty to improve it - in such a way that only we are capable of doing it - we realize the importance of our life, our choices, and our time.  From there every moment takes on new meaning and we find ourselves actively participating in the battle between good and evil.

As I read Surprised by Joy, the most striking thing for me was how extremely unique all of our conversions are.  Notwithstanding the unique qualities of each conversion, there are common threads that run through each of them.

I think this is where joy comes in.  That longing that causes us to search out for the truth and that surprises us and 'stabs' us with intense feeling when we stumble upon it.  That initial contact with the divine startles us and causes us to think beyond what is right before our eyes.

From there life becomes a search for that joy - for the fullness we all long for.  When this pursuit if pursued earnestly and honestly, joy begins to fill our lives and will bring us to true conversion.

Regardless of what background one is born into, when one follows the Light of Christ they will be brought as close to Him as their circumstances will allow, and when they are allowed more, that desire will be fulfilled and they will be welcomed into His presence.

Nature and its laws testify of God.  Muir was right.  Open your mind and feel what Nature offers you.

I just finished my first readings in Miracles and for quite a while I was a little bit upset at Lewis's assertions that God as a supernatural being was so outside of nature.  Nature and God go hand in hand for me.  I feel as the early conservationist John Muir did that Nature inspires and lifts us to nobler aspirations.  It is the very testimony that God lives.

Clearly this is not what Lewis was getting at though.  His argument was that people use nature as a means of discrediting God.  They believe that we are here by a chance that is so improbable the odds are simply astronomical.  They believe that some billions of years ago, a great explosion took place and randomly formed the precise elements in the precise combination at the precise distance from a sun of the precise age and size to form our lovely little planet that was hospitable to life.  Then they believe that evolution took its course and we are simply the by-products of a great deal of astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological chance.  Life and reason therefore is also a by-product and there is no real meaning.  And therefore that there is nothing outside of Nature.  Nature is the accumulation of all that chance throughout the entire universe.

I feel badly for those people.  I can't imagine going about my life thinking that my life is cosmologically insignificant.

Lewis does discuss that God made all the natural laws - that science and reason testify of Him.  It did take him some time to make the argument though.  The point of Miracles is that God does intervene in our lives. Lewis is trying to logically explain the Nature of Miracles and that they do exist. God's actions do obey His own Natural Laws.  What we have to realize is that they are His laws.  He is their creator and the only true master of them.  I love when Lewis talks about the subtler nature of poetic laws.  It is a perfect illustration of how to the lesser mind (which is all of humanity when compared to deity) a seeming violation of law is simply a misunderstanding of the subtler complexities of the very law we do not yet fully understand.

The more I understand about Nature the more I understand about God.  Nature is His canvas and His laboratory.  Any belief that depreciates the magnificence of Nature is simply ingratitude.

A consistent theme to Lewis's works is the idea of becoming like Christ rather than just doing Christian things.  The devils in The Screwtape Letters work to make sure any virtuous action is done for the wrong reasons.  If the right things are done for the wrong reasons, they are of little help to us.  Those who return to Hell in The Great Divorce do so because they refuse to become like God - that there is something about being themselves they won't give up.  The irony here is that by giving up those parts of ourselves that hold us back and choosing therefore to become more like God we become even more ourselves.  We are each divinely unique and when we focus on becoming like God we truly find who we are.

Lewis most clearly elaborates this concept of becoming in Mere Christianity.  He goes on to tell of various sins discussing why each one is important.  And then he gets to Pride - what he calls the worst of all the sins.  He describes Pride as the only Spiritual sin.  All our other sins come through some perversion or distortion of natural impulses and drives.  But Pride - that is the idea that we are better than others.  We get no satisfaction out of actually being smart, or good looking but in thinking smugly that we are better at those things than others.  This distinction is what makes Pride so dangerous.  It literally rips all our relationships to shreds.  We cannot feel Godlike love because we are too busy judging or disdaining others.  Once we let go of ourselves and focus on others and becoming like God, He takes the helm in our lives and the real journey really begins.

We are not the sum of our actions.  Certainly each choice is going to leave a mark.  But it is how we choose to look at each choice - whether we choose to grow, forgive and learn - that defines us in the end.  Christ invites us to come unto Him and become as He is.  That is the only thing that matters.

I'm taking a C.S. Lewis literature course this semester and I am LOVING it.  I will admit that, being a Biology major, I was a little intimidated about the quantity of reading required every day, but once I dove into it, I've loved it.  The pages seem to fly by as Lewis fills my minds with different worlds and profound truths.

This week we've read The Problem with X, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce.   If you haven't read them, check them out.  As I've read these beautifully written works I have been impressed with the importance of clearly seeing ourselves and others in God's Light.

I love the way these three works teach this.  The very complaining that we all relate to at the beginning of The Problem with X can very well be on of those vices Screwtape advises Wormwood to use against his patient.  That very focus on the sins of others can be the thing that keeps us from entering Heaven.  Just as the employer in The Great Divorce refused to go on to Heaven because his inferior, murderer employee and found his peace there.

But the other side of the coin is equally enlightening.  When we see ourselves clearly - with both our faults and our own divine potential - we can see others that way.  We begin to change and become one of Screwtapes enemies.  We can see the spark within each soul no matter how clouded it may be.  We can become one of those solid spirits in The Great Divorce while here on earth.  As we grow more like Christ, we can see others with that clarity of spirit that He sees them with.  We truly can become saviors on Mount Zion.

The choice is ours.  Our focus can become critical, offended, and increasingly inwardly imprisoning.  Or we can change, grow, and find ourselves liberated, uplifted, and ready to lift others.  Every road has its forks, and every fork its choice.

I know I've been spectacularly awful at keeping this thing up to date.  Life happens sometimes.  And I also discovered it's significantly harder to write when I'm not being assigned to do it.  But I've been thinking about this post for a little bit and so I decided it's time to write it.


I love water.  I always have.  When I was born the doctors told my parents that those were football shoulders.  Yeah I tried that, but it was not for me.  Shoulders this big give you wings and that's exactly how I used them.  I tried all sorts of sports and I was decently good at some of them.  But what I really loved was swimming lessons.  When I found out that you could swim competitively, I was in heaven.  From that moment on it was hard to get me out of the pool.  And though I'm not on a team right now and only swim sporadically, it's hard to get the pool out of me.

The United State Olympic Swimming Trials were last week.  And they were on NBC.  Not NBC Sports.  NBC.  My favorite sport has been on regular TV a lot the last couple years.  We're getting more limelight than just at the Olympics.  I loved it.  People I had met were swimming in that meet and people I hadn't were too.  But no matter who they were, I was proud of them.  I cheered and screamed and laughed and cried and fist-pumped with all of them.  This is the pinnacle of our sport - the best swimmers in the world vying to make the best Olympic Team in the world.  It's incredible.


I'll be cheering my heart out come this July.  But while I am looking forward to the Olympics and I'm trying to get back into the sport via triathlons or masters swimming, my love of water goes even deeper.

My parents took me to SeaWorld when I was five.  Since then it has been one of my favorite places to go in this world.  I've been there just by myself taking in everything I could.

When I was twelve or so, my family went on a cruise in the Caribbean.  I swam with sting-rays and snorkeled with some of the most brightly colored fish I had ever seen.  My ability to hold my breath and swim underwater for long periods of time took me far beyond the boats making the captain and my parents nervous.  But there was so much to see and feel and experience.  It was beautiful under there.


My favorite Christmas present was a 45 gallon marine aquarium. I fell in love with it.  I got this big Marine Aquaria book and I must have read it like a hundred times.  I worked and loved that aquarium.  And it was pretty dang good.  As soon as I have the means to do it, I am resurrecting that tank.

When I got back from my mission, I was hired at BYU's Evolutionary Ecology Laboratory taking care of hundreds of freshwater fish.  I was given the opportunity to travel to Panama and Costa Rica and play in the beautiful streams of tropical rainforests bringing hundreds of small Poeciliids back to our lab.  I've worked on research projects and even have one of my own.


I took a Scuba Diving Class and reveled in the freedom from the surface it brought me.

I've volunteered at The Living Planet Aquarium and landed the most wonderful internship ever at Aquarium of the Pacific.  There my love of veterinary medicine met my love of the watery world we live in.

You may be thinking, who really cares?  What's so cool about water or the things that live in it anyway?  I'll tell you.


Water has a way of moving things.  Its power to carve canyons and tumble down cliffs is breathtaking.  But it is full of lessons as well.  When water moves it is full of life.  Raging rivers and roaring seas are some of the most abundant ecosystems on earth.  Life came from those waters.  But water also pools.  It fills and stagnates.  Oxygen depletes and life struggles to survive.

Our lives aren't much different.  At times we are tossed about in the rapids, fearing that one wrong move might send us overboard and land us in treacherous water we know we can't handle.  Other times our lives get comfortable.  We stagnate.  We stop growing.  Life chokes and almost dies.

I think that life is a delicate balance.  We need the cool tumbling waters full of life and choice and growth.  We seek those waters.  When we are in the rapids of our lives we pray we'll find the gentle flowing streams and scream thanksgiving when we reach them.  When we land in the eddies we long for a way out and do our best to paddle and struggle to our freedom and breathe a sigh of relief when again life flows along its way.

I love water.  And I don't think I'll ever stop loving it.  Swimming is still the only workout I absolutely love.  Whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, sharks, fish, and penguins are still my favorite animals.  Aquatic veterinary medicine is a growing and exciting field that I can't wait to get into.

Water is beautiful.  It's full of life and meaning. And I think that is exactly why the Savior taught that He and His Gospel are the living waters that bring us that life and meaning.  It's such a perfect symbol.  And as far as symbols go, I really love this one.

You know...I love Biology. So much. I spent today in the streams, gulfs, and coasts of Costa Rica. I was with two of the most knowledgeable men I know - Dr Jerry Johnson and his PhD student Spencer Ingley. We collected a variety of fish, talked about the trees, about the intricacies of ecology and evolution, and even did a little bird watching. I love Biology because every bit of information you glean changes your life. You walk outside and appreciate the call of a bird, the colors of a fish, or the behavior of a reptile. Trees and flowers burst into life for you. Everything is exciting.  That's how God has got to see this world and it's got to be great. Today I got to see a Magnificent Frigatebird in the wild and I just about lost it. So next time you step out your door, open your eyes and let in the beauties of the world. There's no telling just what you might see.

This weekend it has once again been my privilege to listen to the Prophets, Apostles, and other General Authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints address the world.   It has been absolutely uplifting.  As I watch and listen and internalize their messages, it is clear to me that these individuals are inspired of God - that there is a God who is guiding their preparation and delivery who stands at the helm of this great work.  If you would like to hear their words, click here!

We live in a world of moral relativism.  Most people today believe that there is no definite morality, that the notions 'right' and 'wrong' are out-dated, relative, and insignificant.  Ironically it is this same society that demands exactness and verifiable data in their pursuit of scientific knowledge.  When we believe in moral relativism, we stop standing for anything as we declare our emphatic stance on the absolute nothingness of the position relativism ultimately ends in.  You cannot declare everything is equal and it's all up to the person and then become an advocate.

But I know that the notions of good and evil are real and exacting.  We are taught in the scriptures and my modern-day prophets, seers, and revelators how we are to guide our lives.  So many people spend their lives feeling an emptiness inside and I believe that comes directly from moral relativism.  You see, when we know that we are giving our best, the Spirit confirms our actions to us and we are happy.  That is why I am thankful for commandments.  It gives me a goal to be working toward, with real measurable results.

Now you may be wondering what all this Mormonism stuff is about.  And you wouldn't be alone.  But I promise you that it makes you happy.  We believe in a Restoration, meaning that after Christ's death, His church was ultimately lost.  You may be wondering how that happened and how we got it back.  Here's a little bit from my www.mormon.org profile.

He Lives by Simon Dewey

The White Swan

The Black Swan