Saturday, September 17, 2011

Catching Up, part 3: Little Miracles :)

One beautiful, Spring morning in April, my services were needed in our family dig. Apparently, our in-house paleontologist, Thomas, could not find 3 dinosaur skulls.
The day before, Thomas had taken his set of dinosaur skulls out to the sandy section, "the dig," in the front lawn and buried ALL 12 of them. I'm sure Thomas had fun digging in the sand trying to uncover the hiding treasures! Unfortunately, 3 of the dinosaur skulls were really good at hiding!!!

Of course, Thomas had forgotten over night exactly where he had hidden the bones...he was able to give me one clue...he pointed to one section and said he thought they were here...
Great!! No Problem!! You may be thinking...Thomas told me right where to look, it shouldn't be that hard!!!

Well, this picture just doesn't do the story justice...so I'm adding a bigger picture...
this section of sand was about 2 feet across and maybe 3 feet long...about 1/3 of the entire sandy area...NOTE THE SMALL SHINEY OBJECT ON THE LEFT...this was a AA battery I placed on the sand to give some perspective!

The missing dinosaur skulls were about as long as the battery. So I got my trusty rake...
and started raking through the sand, hoping that I could find the dinosaur skulls pretty quickly. Well, I didn't realize how much sand there was!!! The sand was about 2-3 inches deep in most parts. After a few minutes of raking and finding nothing, I was starting to realize I was looking for a "needle in a haystack!!"

After raking the little section Thomas had showed me and finding NOTHING, I realized I would have to rake the whole sandy section, which was about 8-9 feet long. After awhile, my rake hit something hard...it was a dino skull!! :)

A little while later, I found another dino skull!! But after raking through ALL the sand quite a few times, I was starting to wonder if there was indeed a 3rd skull hiding. Sure enough, Thomas assured me that it was his Brachiosaurus head that was still missing. So I kept raking and raking and raking and raking....

As I raked, I had a flash back of another "needle in the haystack" I'd been looking for!!

Another day, a few months earlier, during the winter, Thomas came running into the house, in tears!!! He'd lost his brand new, most favorite shark!!!

This time the "needle" and the "haystack" were much bigger! Thomas had taken his shark next door and was playing with it by the neighbor's play set, which is surrounded by a TON of pea gravel!! Think 8ft x 16ft of gravel!!!

Thomas had buried his shark in the gravel, ran off and played for a few minutes, then went to get the shark, but he'd forgotten where he buried it and couldn't find the shark!! So being the nice mom that I am, I got my trusty shovel...
and started digging in the gravel. After digging a while, I was getting pretty discouraged. So I realized that I needed some help finding the shark. I knew that Heavenly Father knew where the shark was so I said a little prayer and asked him to help me find the shark. When I finished my prayer, I kept digging for a few minutes, but stopped and walked around to the other side of the play set. There was the shark!!! Sticking out of a mound of gravel!!! It was almost perfectly camouflaged, but even in the fading sunlight I could see it!! :)

This memory reminded me to pray for help! So I paused and said a quick prayer. Then continued to rake the sand, looking & hoping I'd find the Brachiosaurus head soon!! A couple of minutes later, my rake hit something hard!!! I was so excited!!! I bent over and poked my fingers into the sand and retrieved a ROCK!!!

Boy, was I disappointed!!! I was so ready to be done raking!!! I asked Thomas if we could just paint the rock to look like a Brachiosaurus head...it was about the right shape and size...but Thomas wouldn't go for that. He wanted the real thing so I went back to raking. I'd lost track of the number of times I'd been up and down the whole sandy area, but I knew I had to keep looking.

Finally, my rake hit something else hard!!! This time my fingers pulled out the missing Brachiosaurus skull!!! :)

Here is the Brachiosaurus head and the rock next to the battery...
Needless to say, I was VERY THANKFUL Heavenly Father heard and answered my prayers!! :)

This post is very fitting for today!! In Primary, our lesson was about prayer. I told my class this story about trying to find the Brachiosaurus skull and how I couldn't find it until I prayed for Heavenly Father's help!!

As I was typing this up, I started thinking about that little rock I found!! I'd been through that sand so many times and didn't feel it there at all...was it there the WHOLE time I raked that area and I missed is each time??? It was a test of my faith...which is another thing that was talked about in church today.

What if I'd settled for the rock? I never would have found the Brachiosaurus head!! How often do we short-change ourselves because the going gets rough and we want to quit and just settle for what we have...or achieved thus far???

Another talk today was about the prophet President Gordon B. Hinckley and how he was such a hard worker, even when he was in his 90's!!! If we work hard, we can endure the trials of our faith and obtain our goals. :)

I'm thankful for the little miracles that come along my way to remind me that Heavenly Father loves me and will help me! I'm thankful for trails and hard work too!! :)