Tribute to Stephen, also known as Beaver Boy

Stephen is my cousin leaving on his mission on Wednesday. His family came to visit us in Nauvoo one last time before he left. Most of the time his family was here, I was EFY. And when I came back, I had lost my voice from screaming so much. And then they were touring Nauvoo and Monday was my first day of school, and they left while I was at school. When I was with them, I meant to ask Stephen to write in my journal. But I forgot, so I desperately texted home on the way to school asking him to do that before he left. It's so weird for me that he's leaving for the MTC on Wednesday. I mean, I grew up with him. Even though my family lived in Japan, we'd see them every summer when we'd come back to visit Utah. They were me and Tashi's favorite cousins. And our ONLY cousins for a long time. It was just us 4 for about 6 years.



I looked up to Stephen so much. He was my brother separated from me during the year. I thought I was going to marry him! (Until my mom told me it was illegal to marry your cousins). Haha but we'd find the best hiding places and just sit there together and each read our own book. That's how nerdy we were. We were only 5 and 7! One time we hid so good, our parents couldn't find us all day! 



And being a member of the Limburg family, we all had to take piano lessons. Later on, we all took voice lessons. So now everytime we get together, Jordan just sits down at the piano and starts playing sheet music and plays it really good the first time. Our favorites to sing together were Phantom of the Opera, High School Musical, and the EFY medley. And oh my, their voices are so good. They can read music and have the perfect pitch without hearing it on the piano. And Jordan can sing higher than me! Their singing ranges are huge! Singing with them was so happiness, I wish we could do it everyday (now you see why I was so upset that I lost my voice).



All my life, people have been leaving on missions. But nobody this close to me. Nobody I've grown up with. It really feels like my older brother is leaving on his mission. I'm so proud of him. He's going to Japan!!! It runs in the family I guess. He'll be a very good missionary. Haha the boy I grew up with is going on a mission to the place I grew up in! I'm so excited that he's going there. And I loved how we talked about patriarchal blessings that last night and how 2 years seems like a long time, but it's really not.




When I came home from school, I ran to my journal to see what he wrote. He had written 2 whole pages!!! And my journal is huge, so that's a lot of writing. I sat there and sobbed while I read it. My heart hurt. It actually hurt. Like it was going to fall apart. (Now I know what a broken heart feels like haha) But that's how much I love him and how much I'll miss him. I'm going to be writing to him like, everyday!!!



This is what he wrote in my journal:

Hello. My name is Stephen Mulder. I'm Lexi's cousin. I'm staying at her house in Nauvoo, or should I say, I've BEEN staying there. We're leaving in about 30 minutes. We've been here since Wednesday evening. She was at EFY for the first couple of days, but we still got a chance to do some things together. We had a lot of fun last night recording ourselves singing. Jordan and Tashi sung with us too. It was pretty hilarious because Lexi had pretty much lost her voice from EFY, the songs were way to high for me, and everyone kept going in and out of key Haha. It was great.



Well, I think the main reason I'm sitting here writing in someone else's journal is because in 9 days I will be heading into the MTC. I've been called by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to go and serve a proselyting mission in Nagoya, Japan for the extent of 2 years, and I won't be able to see or talk to Lexi for at least that long. We've been kind of like best friends our whole lives. Lexi was showing me some pictures of us last night when we were little. By the way, I'm 19 years old right now.

Well, I'm not exactly sure why Lexi asked me to write in here because she didn't ask me in person, and I've got to hurry so we don't miss our flight. But I want to leave you a short testimony, Lexi. 



Satan has a lot of tricks to make the filth of the world appear fun and exciting and popular, but it's fake, and it only brings misery. It may seen like those kind of people are happy, but they're not. Find joy in being different! Take the opportunity to use that in your favor to be a tool for missionary work in the Lord's hands. Try your very best to be a good example and lead others back to Father. Remember they're our brothers and sisters, and that EVERY soul has great worth in the eyes of God. Bring people to the church and to the gospel, and you will find happiness. If you ever feel lonely or upset or confused, remember to ask yourself if you are reading your scriptures. That is ALWAYS the answer. In spite of what's going on around you, you can be happy if you are being obedient to the Lord's commandments, and doing the SMALL things. Those are the ones that count.



I know that Heavenly Father loves me, you, and all of His children. I KNOW that. I don't know how to describe it, but I know that he does love us, no matter how much we distance ourselves from Him through our disobedience. I know that the atonement is the only way that we have a chance of making it back. I KNOW...that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and I love him very much. I know that a testimony in the Savior is the rock upon which we MUST build is we are to be standing to greet the Lord when He returns again. The casualties in this great war of Latterdays are increasing everyday. The Lord needs our VERY BEST! Don't give up, and have faith that the reward for enduring to the end is as great as God promises (D&C 14:7). And finally, ALWAYS look to the temple. I don't unserstand everything yet, and I'm sure I never will in this life, but somehow, I know that the temple is how God will raise us up to overcome this carnal body and realize our full potential, in His presence.



Remember this and plan for the temple, and nothing less. Promise this to yourself and to your God. I love you Lexi. May God be with you to comfort and bless you. He is the light, rely upon Him. If he can trust us...surely WE can trust Him. 

♥ Stephen Mulder

"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor..."

- George Washington

"The first and almost the only book deserving of universal attention is the Bible..."
- John Quincy Adams

"Our liberty depends on our education, our law and habits...it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart and on the influence all these produce on public opinion, before that opinion governs rulers..."
- Fisher Ames

"It is religion ad morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue..."
- John Adams

Mere Christianity

Ohmigoodness. If you haven't noticed already, I am in love with Narnia.
I don't know what it is, but there are certain stories that grab me. My daddy used to read to me and Tashi every night before bed up until we were in 2nd grade. He read classic stories. Little Women. Anne of Green Gables. Narnia.
And I never really understood what he was reading to us. But I still liked it.
After he would read to us, he would go read the Jane Austen romances out loud to my mom.
And I've been able to read since I was 4 years old. I couldn't understand what I was reading, but I would do it anyways. I would find any book and get lost in it. For Christmas and my birthday, all I wanted was books.

Now I don't have as much time to read as I used to, but I still like it. And I am amazed by this man: C. S. Lewis. We all know he was an amazing religious writer, but I was doing some research on his life. I was very surprised.

His family were members of the Church of Ireland, but he declared he was an atheist when he was 15 years old. Because he was "very angry with God for not existing". And "Had God designed the world, it would not be a world so frail and faulty as we see." And the interesting thins part is, his best friend J. R. R. Tolkien helped him change his mind. Tolkien really wanted him to join the Catholics, but he joined the Church of England instead. "You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England....I came into Christianity kicking and screaming".

But after he became a Christian, he never stopped. The Narnia series are so much deeper than I thought. I'm so excited for the next movie to come out! Because in the next book, when Aslan is asked by Edmund whether or not Aslan exists in their world he replies:

"I am... but there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

And I'm excited to see if they'll say that in the movie or not. Probably not. But you never know, because Douglas Gresham is helping with the movies. Oooooh I'm so excited.

C.S. Lewis wrote the Narnia series while Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings series, as a contest to write the best fantasy series for children. Both of the series became some of the most famous ever.And both of them are so deep in Christianity symbolism.

C. S. Lewis believed that Jesus was NOT God. Which is surprising. And he talked about in one of his books he says that there is a common morality known throughout humanity. Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect other people to adhere. This standard has been called Universal Morality or Natural Law. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles.

"These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in."

Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In The Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "Deep magic" which everyone knew.

I love his books. I think that Edmund and Eustace in the Narnia series are supposed to be himself. They don't want to believe in Narnia and cause trouble for everyone else. But once they meet Aslan, they become the truest to it and never forget Narnia.

I am I C. S. Lewis nerd. haha Anybody else?

A real summer has just begun! We're gonna hav efun in the sun!

Hooray. Today is a happy day.
It was my last day of work. And let me say, I hated it there.
Carl's Junior is gestapo/natzi headquarters. A brand new one opened up here in our little town back in February. Me and my friend, Gina both applied because we had both quit our last jobs, and we needed a little more money for our trip to Japan. It seemed like the perfect place to work.
But it was not so. They never gave me the raise they said they would (even though I was there from the beginning). They took our employee 50% discount off (even when we were working). I was over-worked one week and on the schedule only one day for the next week. I admit it was organized, but too strict. You couldn't sit down or have a drink unless you were on break. You got sent home early if you weren't doing something. So you were always running around. Especially if it got busy. And if it got too busy you never got to go on a break. There were about 10 cameras behind the counter. There was one everywhere you went. And the owner just sits and watches us. It's creepy. The only place that doesn't have cameras is the bathroom (thank goodness). You couldn't sit around and talk to your co-workers. If you were in charge of drive-thru, from the time the people pull up to the menu and start ordering until they drove away with the food had to be below 2 and a half minutes. Insane crazniess!!! That was impossible if the customer had a big order or you had a new cook in the back (having no idea what they were doing). And "Natzi woman from California" (I won't mention any names) would pop in at least once a week unannounced and yell at us for what we were doing wrong. Or the owner and his wife. Pure evilness. I mean, I don't mind having a job, but it was to high-stress. And considering I'm still a 16 year old in high school, and I'm not trying to support my family, (just trying to pay my cell phone bill and earn some spending money), it was definitely not worth it.

But oh, how I will miss the Captain Crunch Shake. Or the chocolate cake. Oh my, the chocolate cake. My sweet sugary goodness. Luckily it's only a dollar and a half...the cream cheese frosting, the moist moistness...um, I'd better stop now. Before something happens. But I will miss Hayden too. He looked exactly like Linguini from Ratatoullie when he wears his chef hat. I don't have a picture of that, dang it.

Now I feel like my summer has really started. Haha this video is how I feel.
(A real summer has just begun! We're gonna have fun in the sun! Now that all of the hard work, work is done!)


And what you've all been waiting for! The winner of the fabric drawing is...

Jeni from Our Safari !!!

I just want to thank everyone for commenting. They were all really nice, and made me feel happy. This turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Keep up the comments and I will do another drawing!!!