This is my actual journal entry about Grad night:
I had such amazing things happen when working on Grad night. As I implemented the “laws”, I could not believe all the good that came.
First of all, I was able to work with Nelson at Pillars Etc. When I went in to have him look at some stuff I needed to get, I saw all these columns and pillars. I said to him, “why don’t you just let me borrow these and bring them back?” He said, “Why don’t you paint them and I’ll sell them on ebay.” So we worked out a good deal. I got to paint and use these thousands of dollars of columns free of charge and he got them painted and was able to sell them and get them out of his workspace. It was just the beginning of great things.
One of the things we were looking for was a mechanical bull. We thought it would be so fun as a game on the western side. Debbie was helping me with that side and had been checking into them. I figured that there was a parent out there with a connection, so I didn’t worry about it too much. One morning, I was getting ready to head to the work place. The phone was ringing and I could see a Idaho area code. I thought it was a salesman, so I didn’t answer it and kept gathering my stuff to leave. The person on the phone was leaving a message, and I heard the words “grad night” so I hurried and found a phone thinking it was a parent trying to get a hold of me. When I picked up the phone, this kid on the line asked me if I was interested in a mechanical bull for Grad Night. I could hardly believe it. He went on to explain that he was a student at UVU and his family built and sold mechanical bulls so he had run them for years. They had all the stuff needed and they come and set them up and take them down. Sounded perfect to me. He gave me the price and I told him I would confirm it with Kayleen. I asked him how he got my name thinking some parent had referred him to me. He said that he just thought there may be some school out there that wanted one for grad night, and we were the first school he called. To this day, I cannot figure out how a kid in Utah County got the phone number to a school clear down south and called us first. He actually had to add $50 on to the price he quoted me for extra gas because he didn’t realize we were in St. George.
I can tell you this—I KNOW that the Lord directed this. There were too many things that had to line up for this to work. I know that He was teaching me that if I lived the laws correctly, they work! And they work everytime. I was so intrigued at how easily and quickly all of this came to me. It is just so true—when you have a goal written down (or drawn) on paper, and you see it in your head, and you know it will come, then you relax about it and just keep knowing it will come, then it will. Ask…Believe….Receive. A powerful experience!!
From that great experience, my confidence just kept growing. I was calm and knew everything would work out. One thing that was bugging Debbie and I was that we needed to create some lodge poles for our corral. We had even tried to make one, but it just wasn’t what we wanted. However, I just kept thinking and telling Debbie, “Okay, we know that by law, the solution is out there and everything we need surrounds us. I knew that we would figure it out, I just didn’t know when and how.
We kept plugging away at things and came down to where the next day we would need to start working on these lodge poles. We were at the work unit when Kayleen called and told us she was heading over to Tuacahn to look at costumes and scenery. Debbie and I jumped in her car and went over there. When we started walking through the set scenery, Debbie saw something that interested her and she began talking to Kayleen’s son-in-law that worked there. Debbie became excited and said that she had figured out how to do the poles. We needed some wall plaster. After Tuacahn, Debbie and I headed to Home Depot and bought some plaster and puddy knives. We went back to the work unit and Debbie began slathering the poles. It created just the texture we were looking for—a bark texture. We worked on them until we couldn’t see anymore because of the dark. The next day when we came back, we took the dry poles that we had plastered and began painting and staining them. They looked so cool!!! We had done it. It was true—the solutions we need are all around us in the forms of people, places, and information. One great other lesson I learned from this is that it comes when the time is right. (Law of Gestation) We didn’t get the answer we were looking for until it was the right time.
As it turned out, Grad night was a great learning experience for me. Even down to the last day. I had wanted the dinosaur head to move and to growl and also wanted the DumDum GumGum guy to “speak.” I asked Randy (my genius electrician friend) to help me out. With some long hours, he figured the dinosaur out, but didn’t have time for Dum Dum although he had bought the stuff for it. Friday afternoon while the last things were just wrapping up and Randy was finishing the dinosaur, I realized that he wouldn’t get to the dum dum thing. I was a little discouraged, but thought that it really didn’t matter. No one would know, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Well, that afternoon, our grad night electrician came in and I was talking to him. He told me that he used to teach Randy and how smart he was and all. Suddenly, I thought, “hey, if he taught Randy, then he would know how to get dum dum to work!” I asked him if he could do it and had him go talk to Randy so he could tell him what he had in mind. The electrician left and came back a while later, and rigged it all up. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING I had pictured about grad night had fully come to pass—down to the smallest detail. Even though most of it didn’t matter, or people didn’t know. It all happened. And I personally think that it did as a lesson to me that when you truly plan, write, dream and believe, that Heavenly Father puts everything in motion for it all to work. All of it.
I will be forever grateful for the lessons I learned while working on Grad Night. I know now that if I do it again, or if I am to be “in charge” of something that I can rely on the Lord using the same principles.
Tomorrow, some stories on HOW the Lord works….