First tooth and some random thoughts

Daniel has been working on it for quite some time, but his first tooth finally started poking through yesterday! Today it's poking through even more, so pretty soon he'll be able to use it to start crunching down on some food (and hopefully not on me). His second tooth looks like it's not far behind, and his top gums are getting a bit swollen too, so I think it won't be long before he has 4 teeth. When it starts coming through well enough to actually see it better, I'll take a picture and post it.

Okay, now for my random thoughts. As you all know, I teach Gospel Doctrine in our ward. I've actually been pretty excited to be able to teach the Book of Mormon this year. I still don't know that I'm a great teacher or anything, but I really like the studying and learning I get to do as I prepare for the lesson each week. I'm sure that every 4 years, these things are discussed, but there's still usually one or two points in the lesson that really stand out to me and keep me pondering through the week. For yesterday's lesson, it was the point about where the Book of Mormon was in the whole scheme of the Restoration. The only thing that preceeded it was the First Vision. President Ezra Taft Benson pointed out that that should make us pause to consider the importance the Lord puts on it. This next week's lesson covers 1 Nephi 1-7. The lesson has you ask the question (again, something that was probably asked 4 years ago, but it stands out to me this time) about how you would feel if you were asked to take the trip back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates like Nephi and his brothers were. Would your response be more like Nephi's or more like Laman's and Lemuel's? That question itself didn't really cause my pondering, but when I turned it into more of a "if my dad, the prophet, had asked me to do that, what would my response have been?" We all know what the response should be to that question, but if we honestly look at ourselves and our attitudes, could we honestly say that we would go willingly without complaining that it's a "hard thing" he asks of us? And are there things the Prophet asks us to do today that we think are too hard to do so we don't do them? And does our response change at all when we realize that it's not the prophet who is asking us, but the Lord? I know that for me, I'm going to be looking at my life and my attitudes to see where my response really is and try to change it when I'm not willingly following.