Graduation Gift

I knew last year what I wanted to give Nathan as a graduation gift.  I spent a lot of time writing a book to give him.  It's a compilation of our family's spiritual experiences (mostly mine and Alex's, but also includes things such as my parents' conversion story, which is a part of our story).  It was a very time-consuming project, with first going back through journals and searching my memory for the memorable spiritual experiences, organizing them into topics, finding some relevant photos, and then condensing and compiling it all in book form.  I even put in a Table of Contents and Index, for easily searching experiences by topic.  I started the book, but after the first chapter or so, I realized that the format would be too large for a book that Nathan would want to cart around and reference.  So I started a more condensed version, which turned out pretty well.  I'm still planning to go back and finish the full larger version for us to keep.  Anyway, I had almost finished it by the time I went to TX for Mother's Day.  I had some previewing to do before submitting and ended up waiting until Nathan got his mission call.  I ended up submitting it for publication on May 18th and it arrived just in time for graduation.  I didn't even think to take a photo of the book before I wrapped it up and gave to him or after he'd opened it, and now he has it on his mission... so here are some screenshots of the PDF.  I'm not sure you can see these pages that well, but it's called "Spiritual Treasures of Annie and Alex (last name)".  It ended up being 239 pages.  It's divided into sections:  Eternal Identity, The Purpose of Life, How to Return to Heavenly Father, and How to Show our Love for God.  I love how it turned out!

Here's the text of the Intro page:    

Welcome to the "Book of Annie and Alex"... This book isn't a book about our relationship; it's a compilation of spiritual experiences from our lives.  I wanted to have a place where I could easily find and look back on these experiences.  Many of these experiences are documented in journals, but they're not easy to find.  The goal of this book is to provide an easy reference for the spiritual experiences and blessings of our family, which hopefully will be a treasure and valuable resource for future generations.  Obviously this book is not an all-inclusive reference to the many spiritual experiences of our lives, but a selection of those recorded or most memorable.  In addition to experiences, I have included some favorite scriptures, insights, or other things that have helped in our journey.  I have chosen to organize the book into topics rather than by chronological order for ease in learning about and seeing things from the perspective of our experiences with different principles of the gospel.  In addition, this is a condensed version of experiences more fully documented in another book.  

In the Book of Mormon, Nephi talks about not writing the full history and account of his people, but that he desired to "...write of the things of God" (1 Nephi 6:3) and what would be of "...worth unto the children of men" (1 Nephi 6:6).  That's my desire as well with this book, to write about our experiences with God, which has been of great worth to our family.  Our other history and experiences are documented in other books, but this one is for documenting our spiritual treasures.    

The process of compiling the book was very valuable as well, looking back on so many experiences and times when we recognized the hand of the Lord in our lives.  We've been truly blessed!