Reunion, Breakfast, and Another's Memories

Yesterday was an interesting day. I got a lot done. That is always nice, to have a productive day. Later, though, I went to my mission reunion up in Salt Lake. It was nice to see some people, but not very many that I knew were actually there. Still, it was good since I may never be able to go to another mission reunion.
The picture here is of me with my "mom" and my "sister". From left to right: Valoree, me, Kalia. Valoree was my trainer and she also trained Kalia.
This morning Sara and I went to a friend's house for breakfast before the first session of general conference. It was really good, and a lot of fun. Then conference was really good, too. The new apostle was announced, Neil L Anderson. I'm not too familiar with him, but I'm sure that he will have a lot of good things to say.
Recently I've been reading a book called "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer." I just read a part that was really touching. This is what it says: "I did not ask myself, Should I do this? but How will I do this? Every step of my childhood had brought me to this crossroad; I must take the right path, or I would no longer be myself.
You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of the Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis all at once. One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence. Now I was making plans to get a dorozka, a wagon, from the farm where Helen lived, and to transport in secret the Morris brothers and their wives ten kilometers from Ternopol, to the back-shadowed forest of Janowka.
But even my first feeble efforts to help the Jews back in the Radom ghetto could have brought me a bullet in the head; I knew I could only be killed once, and as the saying went, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. The Nazis did not distinguish between leaving food under a fence and smuggling four people in a dorozka, and so I did not, either. . . For four years I had been in the middle of war, and I had different hopes and expectations now. I only wanted not to die in too much pain, and to foil the Germans as much as I could before I went."
In my Russian Literature class, we've been reading Soviet Literature. One of the themes that we have continuously come across is the need to "howl" and not just remain silent. There are different ways to do that, of course. Not too long ago, we also talked about the importance of family, and keeping the family together. A student in my class said, well wouldn't it have been better to not "howl" but keep silent and protect their families? My first thought was, "How can you protect your family when you lose yourself?" For me, by not standing up for your beliefs, you lose yourself. And then what really is the point of protecting the family? Plus, physical safety isn't everything. Sometimes the safety that a family needs is to understand what is right and what is wrong and be willing to sacrifice for what is right. That's the essence for me of the passage above. She didn't think about whether or not she should do it, she just did it because she knew it was the right thing to do. If she died, that wasn't what really mattered. There are things in this world fighting for, and dieing for, and protecting innocent people is definitely one of those things. Now, this is not a justification of killing others for your beliefs, but only of being willing to stand up, and if necessary risk your life for the things that you believe in.