One step at a Time

Some of you reading this may have only known me by the name Megan, others have only known me by MJ. And the lovely bunch in the middle has known me as both. I get the question, "Why MJ?" I had the thought to share a little about this tonight. Let me begin with the backstory of why I was named what I was. I'll start off easy; Baird, my father's last name and mother's married name. Nothing too crazy about passing that one down. Now onto Jeanne. I'm sure several of you read it as "Jee-anne", however, it is actually pronounced the same as "Jean". This is a name that was passed down for generations on my mother’s side. It did not used to be my favorite, but the older I have gotten, the more I have come to love the name. I look forward to one day passing it on to one of our daughters. Now, the fun one. Megan. I always smile a little when I think of this story. Megan was a name that my mom had come up with; a name my dad was not a fa...

Wowzers. It has been a hot minute since I have last made a post on here. This topic has come to my mind on and off for the past several months, so I thought it was time to write some of my thoughts out. This is an interesting world we live in, isn't it? So many different people living so many different lives. Different personalities. Different opinions. The range is incredible. And the best part? When people allow others to be just that. In this post, I am going to be blunt with who I am and I hope you will read until the end to truly hear me out and what I am trying to say. Let's start with where the inspiration for this came from. Have you all heard of the show "The Fosters"? I watched the whole series and thought it was pretty good. Then they came out with a break off show called "Good Trouble". I was pretty excited. They took some of the more major characters and continued their life stories. One in particular, being the main character, Call...

I was always that girl who loved the fairy tales and Hallmark movies. Cheesy love story with a happy ending? Sign me up. Weddings. Love. Romance. All of it. That was me. My biggest fear growing up? I'd never have that for myself. 21 years into life and a miracle took place. I did find him. I found my person. The one. My true love. My soul mate. My best friend. All the cheesy titles, he fits. What I did not expect was what it would actually feel like. Honestly, I don't know if there is a way to truly describe it. I kind of want to try though. Why? Because I had the thought to try and type it out. So here I am, giving it my best shot. At first, he was just my best friend. The person I could talk to about anything. The person who could make me laugh so easily. Then he turned into the person that I would talk to for hours on end, but the time feeling like it was standing still. He was the one that I felt this automatic, immense amount of trust with. Personally, that was something...

Today, 191 years ago, a young man named Joseph Smith received into his possession, the gold plates. An ancient record of the people in the ancient Americas. He had no idea how receiving those plates would change his life. From the moment he had them in his possession, he was constantly sought after and attacked. People never stopped trying to get them from him. His family suffered so much at the hands of keeping them safe.  I am not saying that Joseph Smith is some perfect man. He is far from, but so are the rest of us. When one talks about prophets, I feel like they are expecting him to be at the standard of Jesus Christ Himself. That isn't true however. God can make whomever He sees fit to do His work, be who does it. You see, there is only one Jesus Christ. There is only one perfect person who has walked this Earth and that is He. No prophet that walks this earth will ever be at that same level. That would mean Christ was not the only perfect One to walk this earth. Yet,...

Well summer has come and officially gone. Hard to believe that I have come home from a mission, gone to Illinois, adjusted to living in Arizona, visited Provo, and then officially came out to school. And as of yesterday, started school! First Day of Fall 2018 The last few weeks have been quite a whirlwind, but regardless I have been able to see God's hand in so many ways. Seeing God's hand is something I wanted to just write a little bit about tonight. Having a class with Sidney on the first day? I think yes. As I may have mentioned in a previous post (can't actually remember if I did or not), one of the many lessons I learned on my mission was to be aware and recognize God's hand in my life. To not give Him the credit would be avoiding the truth of whose hand is in everything. When I look around me. At the relationships I have. At the life I live. Everything I have. Everything that has happened to me. Every single part of my life, God has been invol...

As I have been home from my mission, one of the most popular questions is about what I am going to be doing next. Makes sense that people want to know. We are a curious people, who love to know things. I get that; I am not an exception. With that, I figured, why not let people know what is going on. I have been home for about 7 weeks now, and I'm doing pretty well. I have been back to Illinois and loved getting to go back to where I was born and raised. I have loved getting to learn Arizona and meet those whom I am suppose to meet here. Going back to my mission only 6 weeks after coming home was amazing and I have loved being able to go to Provo for weddings of some mission friends! Summer has definitely been busy!  For those who want a condensed version of what I am going to talk about, go ahead and skip to the end! Other wise continue on!  In about a week however, that true summer life is about to quickly fade away. For a lot of you, you know that I was attending Br...