Young Joseph

When JoLyn and Lisa were shopping in TriCities a few weeks ago, they came upon a picture of Shane in the LDS bookstore. It's called "I Saw a Light" and the artist is John McNaughton. JoLyn bought it, knowing I would want it, and added it to my tab. She showed it to Rick and asked him who it looked like. "Shane Washburn," was his immediate reply. I phoned my trusty describer, Julie, and asked her to find it online and let me know if she agreed with them. She did and she did. Julie then located another picture by the same artist called "Let Him Ask of God." I now have that one waiting for me at our local bookstore. They're both perfect for a room we'll be redecorating in a sort of early New York/Joseph Smith era theme over the next few months. It's so awesome that the Joseph of the pictures looks like our very own Shane, whose middle name is Joseph, and who's serving a mission in New York at this very time, and, who just completed his first six months in the mission field!

To celebrate, I'll copy and paste part of an email he sent on May 3rd, wherein he shared a persona linsight with us. I consider it a great blessing when we get to learn from our children. He wrote:
My companion has a saying he likes to say every once in a while which is, "You are who you want to be." I suppose much of the
time, I get stuck in a pattern of thought that if I live and float and try to make
good decisions with the things that are presented to me, then things will work out
and I will be good, and good things will happen, and I will float slowly down a river
of goodness. But I have been realizing more and more that what my companion says
is completely true. If we want to become something, we have to work so we can achieve it.
I forget where, but I read a scripture that said that all the blessings we get, and
everything we attain to depends on our efforts. It basically said that we are what
we choose to be through our actions and efforts. My Branch President also told me
that if a person is thirsty, he buys water and drinks the water. If you want a baptism,
or if you want to achieve some characteristic, you go and you start the steps
to develop that particular attribute you want. The "go-gettiveness" is what separates
the awesome people from the good/all right people. There are tons of people that have
the same knowledge, but unless they act, they learn nothing. Elder Crump was telling
me about one of his brothers who returned from his mission. Before the mission he
was kind of lazy and didn't really have anything he was good at. After the mission
he came back, and whenever he saw something he thought was cool he would plan to
start learning how to do the cool stuff, like learning to use a yo-yo
or playing guitar. He acted on all the things he wanted to and as he acted on those
impulses he gained the knowledge to do those things and he developed more talents.
If you want something, you go and you do it. If repentance is making a change in
ourselves, and we are not supposed to procrastinate the day of our repentance, we
learn that we need to, as soon as we see something we would like to change, to start
working on it immediately. If we have a hobby we want to do, or a relationship
we want to build, or a career we want to pursue, the only way to achieve those things
is to seek for them and to act.

I think our youngest is growing up into a fine young man. Which reminds me, Neil used to have a nickname for Colin or Shane when they were small fry. He called whoever it was young Jonah. I think Greg got in on that too. They liked to play with and sometimes even tease their little brothers back in the day. Whether we call him young Jonah, or young Joseph, this stalwart young man is a youngster no more.