Al Shaqab

If you're ever reincarnated, you could do worse than to land a life as a horse at Al Shaqab. Al Shaqab is a horse breeding farm / riding school / hippotherapy center / horse competition site located about five minutes south of my school on the same vast Education City campus. It's also a paradise for horses.

I was invited to tour the facility with a team from our school. Allow me to share with you some photos from our tour.

These are some shots from the box seats overlooking the arena. They haven't had their grand opening yet, so the guide let us use the entrance that will, in the future, be reserved exclusively for the Emir.

Yes, that's a retractable roof.

 The decor had a decidedly 60's feel to it. Someone called it mid-century modern, I think.

The site is built around its namesake, an old Arab fort that the Qataris once used to defend themselves against the Ottoman army when they declared their independence from the Ottoman Empire. You can just barely see the fort between some trees in this photo. It still has its original stables, which is where the staff used to have their offices.

Here's the arena again, from outside.

I didn't get any photos of the rest of the facilities, but let me just say: wow. The stables were immaculate, temperature and humidity carefully controlled, and only the very best food and medical care for them, naturally. Each horse had a sign on its individual stall showing its pedigree for four generations. There was a horse spa, including a horse swimming pool, a horse jacuzzi, a horse shower, and horse heat lamps where they can receive horse massages. There were beautiful fountains, rivers, waterfalls, and running areas for the horses, huge areas of real grass, carefully manicured and irrigated. It would be a perfect place for a horse to live. Some of the horses are not purebred, though they are well-bred, and those are usually the ones they use to work with the kids. We asked our tour guide about the prize horses and she said they're just plain crazy. They've been so hardwired genetically to run fast and look taut, and so strictly regimented from birth that they really are, every one of them, high-strung primadonnas... which can easily fetch six-figure prices. While we were there we passed by a potential buyer sipping a drink while someone showcased a horse for him.

And now for something completely different.

We were really worried that we'd miss out on the blatant commercialization of Christmas this year, particularly the usual appearance of Christmas items in the stores even before Thanksgiving. So imagine how relieved we were to see these displays popping up in all the stores around. Ha ha! Silly us. Nobody's better at commercialization than Qatar!

Big...

 Bigger...

Biggest!

What do you think, should we go for the 15-footer? Or maybe the gold one. Decisions decisions.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Halloween

Rachel posted about our camping trip during the week-long Eid Al Adha break, so I'll just refer you there for that story. Here are some other videos and pictures, though:

We were right at the southern tip of this little spit of sand. I'll add that snorkeling there was nice to stay cool, but it simply couldn't compare with my first ever snorkeling experience at Sharm El Sheikh in the Gulf of Aqaba during my BYU study abroad to Egypt. That place was just amazing. Thanks for ruining every other snorkeling site in the world for me, Dil Parkinson!
This year, Eid happened to coincide nicely with my birthday / Halloween, so we spread out our celebrations throughout the week. Rachel and I went out for dinner and exploring at Souq Waqif the first night after school got out. We enjoyed getting lost in the twisty alleyways inside until we really started getting hungry. So I pulled out the GPS on my phone and got us to a Malaysian restaurant where I had squid and Rachel had a chicken mushroom dish. It was still pretty warm that evening, but the weather has been cooling off quite a bit lately (high 70s to mid 80s).
Well before my actual birthday, I spotted a Carrom board for sale at the Lulu Hypermarket. Having fond memories of playing Carrom at the home of the Sun family and during my mission to India, I asked Rachel to buy it for me for my birthday. She did, and I finally got the chance to break it in by playing a few rounds with our compound's Indian security guard, Haris, after he went off duty one night. Elliott was so excited to hear us playing that he refused to go to sleep and instead of fighting with him about it, I just let him sit and watch, and then let him play a bit when we were done. His version of the game consists of guiding discs into the pockets with the striker held under one hand and just sliding it around to push the discs rather than flicking it to strike them. So he may not understand gameplay, but he sure paid attention to the terms and rules Haris explained them to me and as I re-explained them to Rachel later. "This is the striker," he says, "and you have to flick it like this. You put this dust on the board to make them go faster. The black ones are worth two and the white ones are worth eleven." Well... not quite, but we got a kick out of him explaining it.

Rachel found a very affordable dark green pumpkin at the vegetable market (for $4, maybe? Orange ones in stores cost something like $15). It was just a normal size pumpkin, but when I cut into the top, the flesh of it was easily 3 inches thick. So I took out a lot of that and removed all the innards myself, Elliott being far too squeamish to grab that goopey glop (though Playdoh is no problem). I think it was the only jack-o-lantern in our whole compound.

Raisin bran was a daily staple for my breakfast all through college and basically up until we moved here. It was cheap and filling, and I liked the taste. However, it costs something like $5 a box here, which is just absurd, so we've been eating a lot of other things like foul (Egyptian style) with pitas, oatmeal, eggs, pancakes, etc. As delicious as all that sounds, I still really miss my simple bowl of raisin bran and milk every morning. So for my birthday present, Rachel made me raisin bran FROM SCRATCH. It was pretty amazing, and very thoughtful of her. I was completely surprised by it, too, despite having accidentally walked into the kitchen before she was done cleaning up the evidence of her preparations. I thought she'd made pumpkin rolls or something, judging by the parchment paper I saw. But raisin bran had never crossed my mind.
We had dinner on my birthday at the clubhouse, and went swimming in the outdoor pool, probably the first time I've ever done that on Halloween.
We visited another beach called Fuwairit (say "fwearit") the next day, which was much cleaner than the one at Al Wakrah. My neighbor and I swam out a good half mile from shore, and the water never got deeper than my neck. But we saw a crab with a body as wide as my hand is long, about 100 sea urchins, some live oysters, plenty of small fish, and even one foot-long fish that skipped several times across the surface of the water.
We had dinner this past Friday at the home of a delightful family from the UK who used to live in a country cottage they rented from a little old lady named Elizabeth Windsor. They told the funny story of how they went to look at the place not knowing whose it was. The person really grilled them about their family and lifestyle ("Do you have a dog?" "No." "Good answer. How many children do you have?" "Five." "Good, you couldn't rent it if you didn't have lots of kids."), then when they asked if they could ever buy it, he said, "You can rent it forever, but it will never be for sale." "What, you mean we could put all sorts of improvements into the place and then just get kicked out when the owner likes what we've done the place and decides to move in?" "Trust me, the owner is never going to move in here." "Who is it?" "Have you heard of Queen Elizabeth? She has plenty of other places to live."
Then yesterday afternoon, Rachel took me to the Museum of Islamic Art, which was like the Islamic Art exhibit at BYU we visited this summer, but about 10 times bigger, more beautiful, more varied, and more valuable. We took in about 1/8 of the museum before deciding we'd better just come back another time to really appreciate it. Then we walked along the corniche.

So many stories to tell, and so little time to type them up. So a few more pictures and videos for good measure:

One of those days

It's a good thing we have a week off of school coming up.

This morning I went for a drive to find a local charitable organization to see about volunteer opportunities. I got lost for twenty minutes on the way and had a screaming baby in the back seat. When I finally found the place, it was closed.

On the way home, our rental car's tire started making noise and thumping. Having just heard some of our friends talk about how the tread had come right off their tire, I imagined the worst and called the rental company.

Meanwhile, Rachel said one of the other people in our compound (with exactly the same house design), had un-stacked their washer and dryer and put them side by side. So I unscrewed the clamps holding ours together, wrestled the dryer down off the washer, and attempted to put them both into the space where they'd been stacked before. Unfortunately, the concrete wall actually slopes outward down near the floor on one side, so in OUR house, the space is half an inch too narrow. And I had to pick the dryer back up and reattach it.

In the middle of that project, the kitchen tube-lights went out, and tripped the breaker. We tried turning it on a few times, and it kept tripping, so we called maintenance. The guy came, didn't bother looking at the light, just fiddled in the breaker box while I was moving the dryer, and then went on his way, the light apparently fixed.


Rachel had put Miss A to bed, and I read Big E stories and left him in his bed for his afternoon nap. He came downstairs several times and I got irritated because I was trying to relax. Then Big E came downstairs again smiling. He had pooped in his underwear, and I got to clean that up. Then I stayed with him until he fell asleep and I finally had some time to relax and talk with Rachel. The rental car company guy came to check out our complaint, got the keys, and drove off without any indication of when he'd return or what he planned to do with our car. And the car we'd bought was in being serviced. An hour or so later, it was time for us to go trick-or-treating. But Miss A's stroller--which doubles as her costume when we dress it like a big shark (she's Sharkbait-ooo-ha-ha!)--was in the trunk of our rental car. So I called a friend who kindly came to pick up Rachel and the kids, and they went ahead of me. I waited until the rental car guy came back and said he couldn't find anything wrong other than a slightly low tire; if it continued tomorrow, they'd bring us a new car.


Trick-or-treating actually went pretty well, thank goodness!

After a late dinner with an uncooperative toddler and a screaming one-year-old (tomorrow!), I set about washing the dishes. Rachel asked if I could smell something burning, and I could, but we couldn't locate the source. The smell seemed to be coming from the AC unit in the kitchen. But then the light exploded into flame, and we decided it was probably the light. Rachel ran to turn off the breaker as I scrambled up onto the counter we have ten-foot ceilings--even I'm not that tall!) and tried to get the cover of the light off with one hand. Finally, I did yank it off, and it fell (glad it was just plastic), and the whoosh of air put out the flame.

In all this time, our smoke detector hadn't gone off, which isn't really comforting, you know?

So I called maintenance again. The guy came and after looking at the burned light, he said he'd replace the transformer part of it. I said I wanted the whole fixture replaced because of the potential for melted wires and smoke damage, and he grudgingly agreed. Then he installed a temporary screw-in socket held in place with electrical tape and zip ties.

I asked him why the emergency backup light hadn't come on this evening when it had in the afternoon. He said something about a direct connection in broken English, and I asked him to change back whatever he'd fiddled with in the breaker box, suspecting (given the exploding transformer) that he had simply circumvented the breaker, and that's what he meant by "direct connection". He again grudgingly obliged and opened up the breaker box, where it looked to me like he had directly wired the circuit instead of running it through a breaker. So I called his supervisor after he left and said, "I don't want the guy to get in trouble or get yelled at or get fired, I just don't want him making any more direct connections with wiring in my house. I want stuff fixed properly with proper breakers. I don't want a repeat of Villagio (don't click on that link if fire deaths are a trigger for you) in my house." He clearly talked to the maintenance guy, because he was back in five minutes to show me that he had simply switched to a spare breaker, and not actually circumvented the breaker. He said most of the villas have a problem with the original breaker tripping too easily, so he'd just switched it. I apologized and called his supervisor again to admit my mistake and make sure the worker didn't get in any trouble because of my misunderstanding.

So after all that, I get to go to bed feeling like an idiot and a jerk.

I'm glad there's repentance.

Let patience have her perfect work

Today's attempt to watch general conference Sunday afternoon session at church was one of our most trying sessions since having kids. Constantly squirmy and vocal children do not make for a really great listening environment. But that doesn't mean we didn't learn!
Case in point: if my younger self had walked in on Elliott experiencing a level 17-delta poop disaster in our living room this evening, I (younger self) probably would have shouted and scolded. But because I at least partook of the spirit of general conference this weekend, I think my heart was softened instead, and I went easy on him. To his credit, he was doing what made the most sense in his 3-year-old mind to fix the situation... even if it actually made it worse. I'll spare you the details.

Wheels

We bought a car yesterday: a 2008 Chevy Uplander, in white, of course. I say "of course" because probably 90% of cars in Doha are white. Most of the rest are silver or off-white, with a few colored cars thrown into the mix.
We actually were looking at a 2005 Dodge Durango when I called a Sri Lankan friend who used to be a professional car inspector to ask if he thought it was a good deal. He advised us that it wasn't and offered to find us a car instead. Apparently, that's what he does for a job now: he's a freelance car matchmaker. Within three hours of my call, he had the car at our house for a test drive. For an extremely reasonable fee, plus the cost of an inspection, he took care of every aspect of the buying process, even to the point of driving me to a far-away branch of my bank because the ones nearby were closed when I needed to withdraw the cash to buy the car (by the way, I've never held that much cash in hand before, yet it was only 10% more than the ATM withdrawal limit at most ATMs here). So thanks a ton, Naveen! It feels good to have a vehicle of our own again.
Driving isn't as bad as I expected now that I've had some time on the roads. I've even started learning some of the back ways to avoid the huge lines of traffic that inevitably form on the main arteries in and out of town. Of course, having an accurate GPS helps a ton (thanks, Google Maps!).

Exploring

I don't have any photos to go with today's post. I've been sick all week with a head cold in various stages of annoying, but before I felt sick, I managed to do two fun nights of fun Doha activities.

Sunday evening after the kids were in bed, I felt like exploring some of the less-luxurious parts of town to see what else there was besides malls. I'd seen a few shops on the side of the road that reminded me more of the shopping scene in Egypt or India, so I drove over there and discovered that those few shops were actually just the exposed edge of a whole shopping center full of shops all about 10 by 20 feet in size. They all had glass floor-to-ceiling windows at the front and probably rolling steel shutters that came down when they were closed, like you might see in New York. There were several dozen shops, but really only different owners of the same kind of shop repeated a dozen times. The basic shops were: ladies' tailors, gents' tailors, ready-made clothing shops (full of Chinese, Thai, and other Aisan-produced cheap clothes), the fabric store, the jewelry store, the snack food store (where you get high off the scent of cheap sugar!), the satellite receiver / tv repair store, the shoe store (almost all of which had no "shoes", but a dizzying array of sandals), the gents' saloon (barber), the ladies' saloon (salon), the seedy-looking pet shop, the stationery store, the perfume store, the hardware store, and the traditional Qatari crafts store (all made by imported labor, of course). Along the far side of the parking lot were a dozen stalls made of scrap wood and metal where people shined and repaired shoes. I got a lot of strange looks as I walked around, so it made me feel I'd done something exciting. On the way home I found a good place to buy flowers, so Rachel will have something to go in her bud vase that I got for free in my swag bag at the Doha Counselors Conference last week (not going to write about it--if you've ever been to a conference, you know about how it went).

Monday night I visited a Qatari home on school business. I'll be visiting the home of each senior, along with the principal and assistant principal. You might think that a large time commitment, but we do only have a class of ten seniors! Still, I've been warned these visits might, out of courtesy, have to last several hours each. Our first visit didn't, though, because the father had a meeting he had to attend. So we only stayed 45 minutes. In that time the family invited us into their majlis, or sitting room. Often a majlis is a separate building from the main house, and it's often exclusively for men (if it's just two families of close friends, for example, the wives might join in since everyone is familiar). Of course, every home's majlis is unique, some made to feel like tents inside, others more like ballrooms (see the link above for some pictures). This family's majlis was inside their house, just to the left inside the front door, as a parlor or sitting room might be. It could have seated thirty comfortably around the periphery. The son (our senior, but the youngest male in the gathering) served us, as is the custom. Two trays filled with sweets and crackers were already on the coffee table, as were a teapot and a coffee pot. We were first offered Turkish tea, to be drunk with the sweets first, and then Arabic coffee, to be taken with the savory crackers and other snacks. The family was impeccably hospitable, and made us feel like honored guests which, I suppose, we were, as their son's educators. The parents said it's practically unheard of for a school's administration to take time to visit the home of each senior, and that they would brag about it to their friends. My principal told me afterward that he was sure that would happen, as people visit each other in majlises several times each week, and there's a very active word-of-mouth news scene in town. I was sick later in the week, so I didn't attend the second appointment with a different family, but my principal said they were served a gigantic dinner of traditional food that lasted several hours. I'm looking forward to having a night like that to report!

Rachel has been like a saint while I've been sick, really going out of her way to take the kids off my hands at night and help me rest. Thankfully, I think I'm better now. Also, today we got plants! I'll let Rachel write about that.

My talk from last week at church

Qatar is one of the few nations in the gulf region that permits Christians to build churches, so we are blessed to have the ability to worship here, albeit quietly. In our denomination (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), we take turns speaking in the main worship service on Fridays, and last week was my turn. Below is the text of my talk from last week. All scripture references can be found at https://www.lds.org/scriptures/?lang=eng

Let's talk about hope. We use the word hope in so many different circumstances in everyday life that I think it's important to first establish what kind of hope we're talking about here. Gospel hope is not of the teenage "I hope that cute boy or girl comes to school today" variety. This hope is simply a wish or desire, unfounded in any good reason for hoping. Gospel hope also is not simply optimism for the sake of optimism, refusing to acknowledge the difficult realities of life. And though gospel hope does give us hope for humanity, it is not founded in confidence in humanity's ability to redeem itself. Instead, gospel hope stems from well-placed faith, an understanding of the truth, a knowledge of "things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls" (Jacob 4:13). We have gospel hope only in and through Christ.

As we learn from the Lectures on Faith, we can have faith in God because of a knowledge of his character. And knowing that He is perfect gives us hope that all his promises will be fulfilled. Adam and Eve's transgression in the garden, and God's response to it, are one of my favorite sources of hope in God's character, because to me that story shows how God can take any seemingly negative event and make something good out of it.

Because gospel hope is based in faith, it removes doubt. It is the exact opposite of despair. Moroni wrote "And if ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair cometh because of iniquity." (Moroni 10:22) The only thing that can hurt our gospel hope is choosing to reject it completely through sin.

When Paul was in Rome, and probably beginning to have an idea of how literally his visit would be cut short, he wrote to the Hebrews that Christ came as a high priest of good things to come (Hebrews 9:11). This was a message of hope that those converted Jews under both Roman and Pharisaic oppression needed as much as they did in any other century of their millennia of persecution. He reminded them that the temple rituals performed with the blood of rams and oxen never had power to actually cleanse the people, but that the Messiah would, with his own blood, enter the holiest place of all and make an infinite atonement for their sins. This is the ultimate message of gospel hope, and if you'd like a more thorough exploration of that message, read Elder Holland's talk "An High Priest of Good Things to Come" from the October 1999 General Conference.

It's hard to talk about gospel hope without discussing faith and charity, as well. Both Paul and Moroni linked the three, and consequently, so has pretty much everyone who has written about hope in a gospel context ever since. In Moroni 7, we read:

"33 And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me.

34 And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved.

35 And now, my beloved brethren, if this be the case that these things are true which I have spoken unto you, and God will show unto you, with power and great glory at the last day, that they are true, and if they are true has the day of miracles ceased?

36 Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved?

37 Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain.

38 For no man can be saved, according to the words of Christ, save they shall have faith in his name; wherefore, if these things have ceased, then has faith ceased also; and awful is the state of man, for they are as though there had been no redemption made.

39 But behold, my beloved brethren, I judge better things of you, for I judge that ye have faith in Christ because of your meekness; for if ye have not faith in him then ye are not fit to be numbered among the people of his church.

40 And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?

41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.

42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.

43 And again, behold I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek, and lowly of heart.

44 If so, his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a man be meek and lowly in heart, and confesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity."

The way I understand these verses, whenever Mormon uses the phrase "if a man have [blank], he must needs have [blank]", he means that the second quality named is a natural consequence of the first. So anyone with faith will automatically have hope, and anyone with faith and hope will develop meekness and lowliness of heart, and anyone with faith, hope, and meekness, will surely develop charity. That's a lot more cheerful than the way I used to read it, which was the other way around. You couldn't have faith unless you had hope first, and you couldn't have faith and hope unless you were meek and humble first, and you couldn't be meek and humble or have faith or hope unless you had charity first. This seemed like a pretty tall order to me, given what I knew about myself. But thinking of it the other way around gives me a lot of hope. If I have faith in Christ, then I will feel hopeful, both for myself and for other sinners like me. And that hopeful feeling will give me the energy and encouragement I need to go and serve others. Faith is the knowledge, and hope is the feeling that it gives us. Just as you can't help salivating when you know you'll have your favorite food for dinner tonight, you can't help feeling hopeful when you know that Jesus is in control. And just as you'd want other people to try your favorite food, you want other people to have the same hope that you have, so you try to share the gospel with them and serve them. Charity is the way we think about and treat others that results from feeling gospel hope.

“And what is it that ye shall hope for?” Mormon asked. “Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.” Gospel hope is excited anticipation for the fulfillment of God's promises. It's a feeling of confidence that heaven is waiting and that we can bring a bit of heaven to earth through gospel covenants.

So what is this heavenly life going to be like? In his April 2008 General Conference talk, Elder L. Tom Perry said:

“I believe that if we could create in our minds a clear and true picture of eternal life, we would start behaving differently. We would not need to be prodded to do the many things involved with enduring to the end, like doing our home teaching or visiting teaching, attending our meetings, going to the temple, living moral lives, saying our prayers, or reading the scriptures. We would want to do all these things and more because we realize they will prepare us to go somewhere we yearn to go.”

What I’ve prepared to share with you next, then, is the clearest and truest picture of eternal life that I can come up with from the scriptures. Keeping a picture of heaven in your mind will fill you with gospel hope, and I encourage you to search for this information in the scriptures yourselves, since the process is likely to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to grant you a more complete picture than you’ll get from listening to me. A picture of eternal life ought to include these details: What does it look like? Who will be there? What will the experience of living there be like for them? What besides those people will be there? Who and what won’t be there? And where exactly is this “there” we keep talking about, anyway?

The last question is probably the easiest one to answer: Where will eternal life be? Those who live in the celestial kingdom will be living right here on earth. At the end of the world, it will be given a new beginning. John saw that “before the throne [of God] there was a sea of glass like unto crystal” (Rev. 4:6), which the Lord revealed to Joseph Smith to be “the earth, in its sanctified, immortal, and eternal state” (Doctrine and Covenants [hereafter D&C] 77:1). Whether the earth will be in the same place, circling this sun, we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter because “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended” (Isa. 60:19-20). God will be there living with us, and we will receive all the warmth and energy and light we need directly from Him.

God won’t be the only one in the Celestial Kingdom who shines. Everyone in the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom also will have received the fulness of God’s glory, “whose glory the sun of the firmament is written of as being typical” (76:56, 70). As it is written, “This is eternal lives—to know the only wise and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent” (132:24; John 17:3). Those who have eternal life will know God perfectly and personally, because they “see as they are seen, and know as they are known... and he makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion” (v.94-95). Or as Paul wrote, “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

 Because “the glory of God is intelligence,” (D&C 93:36) “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness” (which I think means those who try to help other people be righteous) “[shall shine] as the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:3). So the just and good and true people you know and interact with will here on earth will by that time be every bit as glorious to behold as God himself, and so will you. “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as [Jesus] is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2-3). Picturing that, and knowing that it really will happen fills me with hope.

What will it be like in heaven? As Paul taught (1 Cor. 15:41-42), if you compare the brightness of the stars to the brightness of the sun, that’s how much more amazing the celestial kingdom will be than this one is. Joseph Smith “saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire; Also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son. [He] saw the beautiful streets of that kingdom, which had the appearance of being paved with gold” (D&C 137:2-4). “That same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (D&C 130:2). “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for [the Savior’s] sake, shall receive an hundredfold” (Matt. 19:29). There will be many mansions there, room enough and to spare for everyone (John 14:2). “Both he that [sowed] and he that [reaped will] rejoice together” (John 4:36), so we’ll all celebrate together with God to see so many people brought home safely to him.

I expect heaven will be a lot like the times in your life when you were the most excited about learning, because “This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s. Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known” (D&C 130:9-10). To me that sounds just fascinating. Have you ever gotten absorbed in trying to find an answer to some question? Do you take pleasure in learning about how the universe works or in learning about plants or animals or the economy or medicine or the finer points of aesthetics? Do you catch yourself sometimes just reading articles on Wikipedia for fun? Well, let me tell you, Wikipedia’s got nothing on a Urim and Thummim. Heaven will be a place of limitless growth and learning. When I feel like I'm stagnating because all the mundane demands on my time keep me from studying, I feel hope because I know I'll have eternity to learn in heaven.

As the Prophet Joseph Smith saw in his vision of the degrees of glory in section 76, heaven will be populated with wonderful people. Imagine spending every day surrounded by people who have unquestionable testimonies of Christ and who have been tried, suffered, and proven faithful to him and his teachings (D&C 76:53; D&C 138:12-13). If you’re sealed to your family, then you’ll be a family still, and those who are sealed to a spouse will be able to carry on having and raising beautiful children (D&C 131). If you never find your loving spouse in this life despite trying, you’ll find a good one there. That’s reason enough to stay worthy! Every child who ever died under the age of accountability without baptism will be there (D&C 137:7-10). Everyone there will have accepted baptism (v.51) and all other saving ordinances, whether in this life or by proxy (D&C 138:34). Everyone will keep the commandments to love God and love one another, and everyone there will understand the will of God (v.52). Everyone will be reverent when the occasion calls for it (v.93). According to Isaiah, they’ll be the kind of people who walk righteously, speak uprightly, despise the gain of oppressions, don’t accept bribes, don’t listen to gossip or backbiting, and don’t look at inappropriate things (Isa. 33:15). Everyone will be a king or a queen, a priest or a priestess, and they’ll act appropriately to those titles. In other words, these will be people who attended the temple regularly and with an eye of faith on earth (v.56). They’ll be people who enjoy doing the works of Abraham (D&C 132:32). An examination of his life tells us that some of these works were 1) seeking the Lord; 2) obtaining the necessary ordinances; 3) leaving his home to go out into the world to do good; 4) rejecting the evils of the world; 5) obeying the Lord and sacrificing whatever the Lord commanded; 6) raising up a righteous posterity; and 7) being a missionary to all he met. In other words, he was a just man, and as the vision states, “These are they who are just [people] made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood” (v.69). A few specific people who will be there and who I hope to meet are Adam and Eve, their righteous children, including Abel and Seth; Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Elias, Malachi, Joseph Smith, the Nephite and Lamanite Prophets, (D&C 138:38-53) and prophets and members from all times and all nations (D&C 137:7-10).

I’ve heard people complain about there being too much conformity among members of the church, saying that we don’t have enough diversity. I’ve heard other people speculate that it’ll be pretty boring in heaven if everybody has to follow the same rules to get there. But how much do the commandments say about how we can and can’t behave, really? The gospel is that we should have faith, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then continue on in keeping the commandments and our covenants to receive the remaining ordinances of salvation. The only limitation on diversity I hear in that list is a limitation on sin. And anyone who can’t imagine a way to be an individual without fornicating, backbiting, abusing, stealing, or being irreverent is suffering from nothing so much as a severe lack of creativity! Diversity will never be a problem in a heaven full of people from every nation, kindred, tongue, and era of human history. And we can be full of hope for unity in diversity in this life because we have this vision of what heaven will be like.

Perhaps I can mention some things that won’t be a part of eternal life, which I think we all hope to be rid of: In the celestial kingdom there will be no more sickness or death (Isa. 33:24), no more sectarian confusion and fighting (D&C 76:99-100), no more lies, infidelity, hate, abuse, starvation, sickness, cruelty, injustice, or sin of any kind. Finally, all our enemies will be gone (D&C 76:61). If they remained wicked, they’ll be somewhere other than the celestial kingdom, and if they repented, they will be there; they’ll just be our friends, instead. Would it change the way we treat our enemies if we knew they might some day be our friends and live with us with God? Maybe that’s one reason Jesus commanded us to pray for them (Matt. 5:44).

To conclude, I should tell you that as I thought about this topic, I remembered something in Isaiah that made me think twice about Elder Perry’s statement. “Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” So if we’ve got nothing in our experience that compares with how great heaven will be, how can we develop the “clear and true picture of eternal life” that Elder Perry wishes we each had? How can we feel hopeful about it if we can't experience it? Fortunately, both Paul and Joseph Smith each received some clarification about this statement. From 1 Corinthians: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. ” And from the Doctrine and Covenants: “For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will—yea, even those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man.” Like all spiritual knowledge, the picture of what eternal life will be like, the picture that Elder Perry says will fill us with hope and motivate us to endure to the end, is accessible through the spiritual senses. If we search for what the scriptures can tell us about heaven, and then ask Heavenly Father to show us that picture for ourselves, then we can and will gain at least a taste of what it will be like. Then, “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, [God will give] eternal life” (Rom. 2:7). I invite you to seek this gift of hope from the Lord and testify that if you seek, you shall find (Luke 11:9).

You know... stuff

 Here are some photos for you. Miss A likes eating a lot. She regularly out-eats Big E. And yet she's still only 16.5 pounds and 26 inches tall, which puts her below the 5th percentile for her age (both by birth and by her due date).

Here we are relaxing on a Friday (sabbath) afternoon. I originally wrote Sunday because it's just natural to call the sabbath Sunday. But we're still trying to adjust to the way the week works here. Thursday is sort of a U.S. Friday (because it's the end of the work week), and sort of a U.S. Saturday (because it's the day we get ready for Suuuuuunday--er, Friday). Friday is our U.S. Sunday, but it leads directly into Saturday, which is the same as a U.S. Saturday, except the next day is work (U.S. Monday), not church (U.S. Sunday). And then when anyone says Sunday, I have to remember that means U.S. Monday. Anyway, relaxing:

 Big E likes having such easily accessible mirrors here, and I regularly hear him having shouting matches with his reflection.

 Miss A likes to watch TV.

Here's a view from one of the balconies at work. 

This is some of the nice architecture inside Education City's Student Center.

This is Big E's favorite thing to do when we go shopping at Lulu Express. He pretends to microwave a snack for himself and for mom or dad.

Boy, that Christmas commercial season just keeps getting earlier and earlier. I wonder if they'd spiral slice the turkey for me and if they allow artificial ham flavoring into the country...

On the right is the roll-over simulator and on the left is the "seat-belt convincer", both of which I wanted to try while at our driving instruction, but didn't get the chance.

Miss A likes to interact with us either by making a kissing noise or snuffling at us with a squished up face. Here is the latter.

Rachel, as always, has managed to make a lovely play area for our kids, and fortunately for us, there was a perfect little alcove for them under the stairs. They spend lots of time down there, not least because the mats are so much more comfortable than the marble floors.

Big E is going on four or five days now without any accidents, and diapers only at night. He's even putting on his own underwear! Well... working on it.

These couches make good forts.

I got my Residence Permit (which, paradoxically, allows me to leave the country), my medical insurance card, and my permanent driver's license this week. Navigating has been pretty easy since Google Maps added turn-by-turn GPS support for Doha just a few weeks ago.

Rachel is getting out of the house a lot. This week she had three nights of outings in a row, either for church or for time with friends. I'm glad for that, since it really helps this feel like a home.

We are blessed and happy and safe.

Every cloud has its silver lining

Content advisory: this post talks about poop. You've been warned.

Big E has been having big problems with his bowel movements for the last three days. Loose stools ahoy! He needs his diaper changed at least once an hour, and the mess inside does a good job of irritating his skin, so he's got diaper rash, too.

Each bowel movement is preceded by rather painful intestinal efforts, which sends him moaning and groaning. However, it also makes it very obvious when he's about to poop, obvious both to us and to him. This, in conjunction with his declaration the other day that we should go to the Lulu Express to buy him some big boy underwear, means that potty training is finally going somewhere.

Today he successfully went about two hours wearing underwear--no diaper!--without having any accidents, and he used the toilet four times for various waste disposal needs. So although his being ill meant he and I didn't go to church today and he's been really whiny, perhaps the days of changing his diaper are coming to an end.

P.S. For your artistic appreciation, here is a still life I call "Anticipation."

Photos and videos from consumerism week, and friends

You know how Walmart often has smaller stores just outside the checkout lines, like banks or optometrists or hair salons? Well, the stores have those here, except they include things like jewelry stores. This is at the Lulu Hypermarket where Big E and I had checked out already and were waiting for Rachel to come to the checkout line. Note that Big E is actually looking at the Christmas lights, and not what's in the window.

 This is one of the roads leading downtown. The city is set up like a wheel with the harbor as its hub and spoke-like main roads connected with concentric ring roads. Instead of intersections with lights, most intersections are roundabouts, which become important landmarks for directions and usually have nicknames among the expats.

This is at City Centre Mall. If you refer to my last post, you can see the map, which gives you a sense of scale based on the size of this ice rink. This is at the center of the mall, and on most floors, there are wings branching out right and left from here several football fields long.

There's a great glass elevator going up and down next to the ice rink. Some floors have these escalators without steps over on the wings. They're like this at Landmark mall, too, and there are special grooves in them that hold your shopping cart in place so you can take it from floor to floor. Big E was in heaven.

On Wednesday night, our friends two doors down took our kids so Rachel and I could have a night out at The Mango Tree, a Thai restaurant at The Pearl, Doha's artificial island. Our friend from school drove us, and we really appreciated it. Again, everyone has been extremely helpful!

The Pearl used to be one of the few places serving alcohol in its restaurants. As is common in the US, that was a central part of most restaurants' business model. So when their liquor licenses were revoked a year or so ago, several of the big name ones tanked, and the ones that were left were forced to change their pricing and offerings in order to attract a larger crowd. Judging by our night there, the larger crowd doesn't come in August. We were one of three couples in the restaurant, and by the time we left around 8, we were the only couple in sight on the entire pier. No yachts around any of the docks. Only a few lights in the high-priced apartments overlooking the bay. Perhaps the crowds come back when the weather cools off.

 Here's a hallway connecting some of the larger stores at the Pearl.

 Big E and Miss A came with us to my school director's house for an open house he hosted for the staff and our families. There were tons of kids there. Big E settled right in with several on the couch to watch Tangled.

Miss A finally released her death grip on my neck and crawled around with a few of the other pre-toddlers. In our groups of friends both at work and at church, there are lots of kids their ages, which we're very happy about.

And remember to keep tabs on Rachel's blog!