Powell, Ohio!

Well, here we are in Powell, Ohio. Powell is two things in one. Firstly, the center of the town is a little old hamlet that dates way back and is one of the first settlements in Ohio. It has evolved into a kind of Jackson, WY or Spring, TX. Second, the surrounding area took off a few years ago as a bedroom community to Columbus and has many fancy homes and brand new stores. Trouble is you can’t afford to go into very many of them. Even food prices (already high in Ohio) are nuts in the Powell area. We have to travel about 8 miles south or 5 miles east to get to get to a Walmart, Home Depot, or Aldi’s (a way cool cheap grocery store).

On the plus side, there are sidewalks, curbs, shoulders on the roads, and all those things were completely missing in the burbs around Cincinnati. The area is much more open that Cincinnati with far fewer forests, and is much flatter, lacking the narrow canyons that take the runoff down to the Ohio river. There are walking and biking paths, parks, playgrounds, soccer fields, all that stuff. Lots of families.

On the down side, the people are markedly less friendly. That surprised us a lot. Prosperity does mean things to most people.

The stake was recently reboundaried, which took the Powell ward from huge to tiny. Church today was fun, meeting all the great new people.

Here is the front of our apartment, we go up the stairs to the back.

We are in the top three windows to the right. Nice back yard.

This pond is full of nice mossy gunk. Special!

We got to go to the Columbus Temple on Thursday, and that was truly wonderful, having not been able to go for a year. The sister that April escorted was very thrilled and had a great experience there.

Here is the ward building. It is just about across the street for the Mission Office

Here is the mission office, the door in the middle. I see President Jensen is there, working late tonight.

Here are some shots of Powell.

Okay, now to something special. Lately I have been restudying Lehi’s dream. Lehi has the dream of the Tree of Life, the Rod of Iron, the Path, the Great and Spacious building (I Nephi chapter 8). Then in chapters 11 and 12 Nephi asks to see what his father saw. There it gets interesting, because the Angel asks Nephi if he knows about the condescension of God. Nephi’s answer is vague, but actually it is not. This took me YEARS to understand. Then, instead of showing Nephi what his father saw, the angel shows him Mary and the birth of Christ. There is too much to tell, but if you are interested I gave the hints here that will let you study it out and come to your own amazing conclusions.

Anyway, I recognized that much of the gospel is contained in those few chapters, and that if you go back and take in I Nephi chapters 1-7 and then add 13 and 14, you basically have covered the vast majority of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, all within the first 30 pages of the Book of Mormon. Missionaries often try to take investigators right to 3 Nephi to see the visitation of Christ to the Americas after His resurrection, and in so doing you miss the Gospel.

So today I asked one of the missionaries back in Cincinnati what their new mission president talked about in his conference with them last week. He said, “Well, he told us that the first 30 pages of the Book of Mormon contain all of the principles contained in the first three lessons of Preach My Gospel and most of the other concepts too.”

Now, I am not a bright man. If you took all the things I know and put them into a thimble, there would still be room for your finger. That means, that the effort I put into my daily scripture study resulted in Revelation. That is truly humbling.

One more tiny story; a week ago I mentioned to a good ward member in Cincinnati that I was learning so much more about how we are all beggars, and that everything that we can possibly do really is nothing in comparison with what Christ puts into the equation to bring us eternal life. He replied, “Yes, all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” I said, “What?” He replied again, “All of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, Isaiah 64:6.” I went home and studied it. April and I discussed what the rags looked like that the lepers wore and compared that to the pure white that we will be dressed in when we pass through the veil, washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. Powerful! We are indeed all beggars. When we compare ourselves to each other it is like sitting in the gutter deciding who is the lowest of the low.

We Sure Love You All!

Scott & April

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