Sabbatical

Paul and I had stake conference this past week. It was a wonderful week with Ward Temple Night on Wednesday, the Adult Session on Saturday night, the Youth Session on Sunday morning and then Stake Conference on Sunday afternoon. We have THE best stake presidency. You can feel their love and know they are truly called of the Lord. President Thurgood talked on Sunday and told a story about when he was trying to decide whether to open his own business. He wasn't getting a clear answer so he loaded his tent, scriptures and journal into his truck and went to Francis Peak for 24 hours. He spent all night just studying, reading, meditating and writing in his journal. At the end of 24 hours, he knew he was supposed to start his business. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not receiving answers to my prayers, but I've never taken the time to spend 24 hours at Francis Peak waiting for my answer. While I don't think everyone needs to go to that extreme, Paul and I both had the same feeling after listening to that talk. We are in need of some answers and decided that the best way to get them was to "disconnect" from the world and have more moments of quiet in order to let the Spirit speak to us. So we came to the conclusion that we are wasting too much time watching tv. We decided to take a one week Sabbatical from watching any TV (except the Aggie game on Thursday night.......that is a must watch!).

It started on Monday. Monday at lunch instead of watching Everybody Loves Raymond, we put together a list of all the tv shows we DVR. There were 37 of them!!!! 37 TV shows that we were taking the time to DVR and watch. That adds up to 23.50 hours of TV per week or 3.5 hours per day. And yes, that is just the actual shows, that doesn't include any commercials. And that is just for the TV shows we are recording. That doesn't include the Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, etc. that we watch "just because" we don't have anything to do. I couldn't believe how much time we were wasting! Then we decided to cut down our TV watching to no more than 1 hour per day. We cut out 17 of the 37 shows and got our total TV watching for the week to 6 hours and 40 mins (less than 1 hr per day). Wow that felt good!!!

That night we were supposed to help a neighbor clean up his yard, but they canceled. We were left with nothing to do and no TV to watch. So we called up our friends to see if they wanted to come over for Pizza and Games and they accepted. We spent the night with friends having a great time instead of wasting it away in front of the tv. That night we were also able to spend over an hour studying the scriptures, reading conference talks and church books, and writing in our journals. Day 1 was a success and I wasn't missing the tv at all.

Day 2 was a little more difficult. I like to watch TV while I put on my makeup. It helps pass the time and there's always something fun to watch. However, this day I just put on my makeup in silence and obeyed our "no tv" rule. That night, Paul and I called his mom and had a delightful conversation with her for an hour! Then we played the best out of 3 games in Yahtzee (Paul won). What a lot of fun that was! I couldn't believe how much fun I was having and I hadn't watched TV once in almost 48 hours. That night we spent another hour studying the scriptures, etc.

The past 2 days have been wonderful. I am enjoying our Sabbatical and am actually loving the silence. Paul and I have spent more quality time together, we've had some really nice conversations, we've spent time with friends, and we've gotten things accomplished. We'll see how the next 5 days go, but I'm excited to see what happens.